Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Prayers Rising Like Balloons—With Ribbons

Last night in Life Group (small group, home group, cell group, care group) we were worshipping the Lord, singing a song about how every nation, tribe and tongue would come and bow before Him in worship.

It came to me that the Lord has been preparing the soil for that for years, preparing every tongue to sing His praise. He has been sanctifying and anointing every language for worship, perfecting praise in every tongue.

The way He has been doing this is through the gift of tongues, a.k.a. praying in tongues. When we pray in tongues, we are praying in the languages of men and angels. Though there are thousands of languages and tens of thousands of dialects, I believe that the Church has been given every one in a prayer language, that is, in a tongue not learned, but given by God.

At that point in the meeting, we all began to pray to the Lord in tongues, moved by the thought that God was using those prayers to prepare the soil of the nations of the world to receive the Word of the Gospel.

When our prayer time ended, Sheila, one of the women in our group, said that, while we were praying, she saw our prayers rise like balloons toward heaven. Each balloon had a colored ribbon. Although she did not know what all the colors represented, she knew that some were for salvation, some for forgiveness, some for healing.

Your prayers, even from the solitude of your own little room or prayer closet, are changing the world. Even when you do not know exactly what you are praying, as in the gift of tongues, your Spirit-led prayers are accomplishing more than you could ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20).

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