The Power of the Heavenly Language Pt 2

Prayer brings us to intimacy with God.

Rapturous joy fills our hearts, when we are in communion with the one who loves us the most.

Heaven opens up and his glory floods our very being.

Yet there are times, a believer struggles to pray. 

The stresses in one's life, preoccupies the mind and burdens the soul.

The flesh dominates the consciousness and our spirit is weak and dull to His presence.

Rom.8:26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness.

At such times, we need to humbly come to Him and confess that we are far from Him, that we are struggling to focus and that we don't feel like praying at all.

Confessing our weakness, we call on Him to help us.
We pray to ask for help to pray.

Then start to pray in the heavenly language.

The heavenly language is the means the Spirit comes to pray for us.

He comes alongside and brings the strength we need.

He awakens and stirs our spirit. 

He silences the flesh and helps our mind to be collected in focus on God.

He ushers us into the presence of the Majesty.

He provides the words of the heavenly language.

The Spirit of God does not chide us in our sputtering feeble prayers.

He does not mock us when we ask for help in such a seemingly elementary spiritual discipline.

The fact is, we are actually incapable of any spiritual progress apart from Him.

We are not as great as we think we are.

And He knows it. He knows us better than we know ourselves.

Therefore, God's Spirit delights in us asking Him to help.

He dashes to our side when we whisper his name.

He hears our faintest and frail utterance.

The Spirit comes to us. The Almighty comes to us when we call on Him. 

With all that God has to attend to - the salvation of the world,the healing of the sick, the defeat of injustice, the battle against evil...etc He still comes and comes quickly to the least of His children calling Him to assist in their prayers.

He comes.

He comes to help.

To help us in our weakness to pray.

The Power of the Heavenly Language Pt 1

Have you ever run out of words to praise and to pray?

You do not know how to pray for a particular need.

You are not certain of what the will of God is, and your prayer is reflective of that uncertainty.

You struggle to connect with God and His presence seems so distant. 

You are weary and dry in your walk with God.

You lack power in carrying out the work of the ministry.

You need the heavenly language.

But what is this heavenly language?

It is the language of the Holy Spirit. When a believer is baptized with the Holy Spirit, He gives the believer the ability to speak in other tongues. These unlearned tongues can be languages of the past and present. When the 120 disciples first received the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues, the volume was so loud that a crowd of more than 3,000 people gathered around them. These people who came from different regions and the surrounding countries heard them speak in their own local languages. They heard at least 15 languages spoken. They knew that the disciples were Galileans.  Mind you, the disciples were not students from a foreign language learning centre. These simple Galileans were speaking fluently in different languages and they were all declaring the wonders of God. (Acts 2:1-13)

The heavenly language can also be the language/s of angels. Whether angels speak only one language or different angelic languages, I do not know. Paul does state in the famous love chapter of 1Cor.13:1 that a believer can speak in tongues of men and of angels. (tongues of...angels) I will assume that there is more than one angelic language. Angelic languages is of a different kind from every known human languages. Yet, through the Holy Spirit, we can access and have the ability to speak in angelic languages. This is a priceless gift that no man, nation or linguist can ever teach a believer.

Tongues are a means to aid the believer to praise and worship God in a different dimension.

The Holy Spirit enables the believer to break through the limitations of our minds and our vocabulary and releases our inner self to freely glorify God. A believer filled with the Spirit is not inhibited by what he knows and the words he knows. His spirit is set free and enters into a new level in praising the matchless God. A new found freedom and deep inner connection with God is experienced.

In your personal and corporate worship time, release the language of the Holy Spirit and let your spirit soar free and boundless to declare the greatness of God. Enter into the private chambers of the Lord and let your praise gush forth from your deepest of the deep within you. 

My tweets in March 2015

@ArisSiew  If you want to go far in life, look up to Jesus daily and look within your heart regularly.

If fear is at the driver's seat of your life, remove him right away. Fear will always crash you.

Any contamination of the heart is a weight that will slow you down. Get rid of them and the excuses they give for staying.

Train your eyes to look inside your heart and mind; your ears to what your mouth is saying. Your inward health is key to your happiness

My tweets in February 2015

@ArisSiew  Do what is right with no fear of people of might.

@ArisSiew  After any crash, rise up, wise up, step up and move up.

@ArisSiew A wise leader knows when to give away power and when to give away his position.

@ArisSiew Leaders destroy lies, or lies will destroy a leader.

My tweets in Jan 2015

@ArisSiew: A person is not fit to lead when he puts his pleasure ahead of the pain of his people.

@ArisSiew: A leader run towards crisis, not from it. He looks for solutions, not dig for skeletons.

@ArisSiew: True religion sacrifices oneself so that others may live. They are life givers not life takers!

@ArisSiew: There are those who talk well but seldom do. And there are those who can't speak well, but quietly, do.

@ArisSiew  Be FEARLESS in chaos. Cancel fear with faith and you can change your life.

@ArisSiew. Face your deepest and ugliest fears if you want to fulfil your destiny.

@ArisSiew. When fear tries to push you back, PUSHBACK YOUR FEARS with greater determination.

@ArisSiew. Fear draws a line, stares you in the eye and dares you to cross it. You either stop, turn around OR shout 'In Christ I can' and cross it.

@ArisSiew. In Christ I can do the things that I and others say I can't.

My Tweets June/July

@ArisSiew: In a tough and mean world, clad your soul, actions and words with the full armor of grace and gentleness.

@ArisSiew: Don't allow the little irritations of life to puncture your heart and rob you of peace but irrigate it often with the rain of His presence.

@Aris Siew: Many devise excuses, tell lies, or give reasons why it can't be done when the same efforts could be harnessed to move ahead

@ArisSiew: Dependence on God is not a lecture to be given. It is the air that we breathe, the dynamo of our strength, the reservoir of our wisdom

@ArisSiew: Too many are building empires, while their souls are in tatters and ruin. Spiritual poverty is the worst poverty..

@ArisSiew: There is too little fruit of the Spirit in too many so claimed spirit-filled lives.

If there was no Baptism in the Holy Spirit...

18 June 2014

If there was no Baptism in the Holy Spirit...

1. The church will be weak, devoid of the power of God.

2. The mandate of the church to be a witness of Christ to the world will be carried out very feebly and easily overlooked.

3. The miraculous will be absent in the church. It will function as any human organization but it will not carry the divine expression of God's power.

4. The church will not be a world wide organization as it is today. The church may not even exist. Persecution in the early days could have easily destroyed the church.
5. The prayer life of the church and individual Christians will be ineffective and ritualistic.

6. The gifts of the Spirit will be lost.

7. Vision for the world and the lost will be blur.

To be baptized in the Holy Spirit is more than an experience, it is a continuous lifestyle. To obtain the experience and not live daily filled with the Spirit is as good as not being baptized in the Spirit at all. The expression of a life that is filled with the Spirit is power and witness.

Acts 1:8 

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
(Holy Spirit Baptism = Power + Witness)

The Unpleasantness of Being Convicted by the Spirit

26 March 2014

Conviction is not a comfortable word.

It speaks of a wrong that has been done and then the Spirit of God comes and shines a torch light on it and exposes it right in your face.

He reveals a secret, and ladens us with guilt and calls us to admit and turn from it.

Of course you can minimize the wrong, totally ignore it, or justify yourself for doing wrong instead of repenting and asking for forgiveness. However the consequences are extremely damaging. 

Why is conviction so unwelcome and unpleasant to the modern Christian?

1. He does not want to look weak to himself and to others. Image is more important than truth - which leads to great dangers. The modern Christian is more concerned about impressing others than impressing God.

2. He thinks that only young believers and non Christians should come under conviction. He believes that he is matured and has moved beyond conviction.

3. Guilt is burdensome. He believes in the fantasy that joy and peace is incompatible with conviction and guilt. He believes the ultimate aim of the gospel is to make him happy not holy.

When conviction is aborted by the Christian, it leads to hardness of the soul. He is deceived to think that things are ok when it is not. Greed, pride, compromises and lust can easily gain a sure yet unnoticeable foothold in the consciousness of that believer. External achievements acts as a heavy smog screen to the presence of such spiritual viruses. Often at the height of glamorous success, hell breaks lose, the mighty falls and he becomes another trophy of the devil's sly strategy. Not forgetting the damage it does inside and outside the church.

Conviction is the work of the Spirit of God. A matured believer never grows beyond conviction, in fact he embraces conviction fully knowing he has feet of clay. Conviction keeps him sensitive to the Holy Spirit. Conviction keeps him humble, it keeps him dependent on God. It keeps him free from the tentacles of sin. Let conviction rip into your heart and soften your knees that you may crash before the Holy God, only to be cleansed by fire and then lifted up higher and stronger again by grace.

May our hearts be regularly convicted and bear the fruit of holiness. Stay in fellowship with the Holy Spirit and be thankful for His conviction. He is masterfully honing us to be more like Jesus.