Tongues The Gateway To The Supernatural - Part 1 by Pastor Philip Olubakin: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Thirst Is the Gateway

Isaiah 44:3. "I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon dry ground; I will pour my spirit upon thy seed." Tongues is the initial evidence of the infilling of the Holy Ghost, not the ultimate evidence. The emphasis this morning is on hunger, because Jesus will visit every hungry heart he finds. He does not care what denomination the hunger is found in. Anywhere he sees thirst, he will come there.

• God moves by first moving someone's heart to begin to pray. Every move of God in any generation began because he steered the heart of a man or a woman toward prayer. There is no move of God without a person in it.
• Psalm 42:1-2. "As the deer panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God." Thirst is the currency of that pursuit, and it is what is missing in most people's lives today.
• When you are genuinely hungry and food is delayed, filling yourself with junk in the meantime will kill your appetite for the real meal when it finally arrives. The enemy uses the same strategy spiritually, filling people with trash so they lose their hunger for the presence of God.

John 7:37-38. On the last day of the feast Jesus cried out, "If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." There is no exclusivity to that invitation. The only qualification is thirst.

The River Gets Deeper as You Go Further In

Ezekiel 47:1-5. The man with the measuring line led the prophet through the waters flowing from the temple: a thousand cubits in, the water reached his ankles; another thousand, his knees; another thousand, his loins; another thousand, and it was a river he could not cross, waters to swim in. Notice that it was the man who had to keep going further, not the river that changed. The river stays the same depth at the source; you are the one who must move closer to go deeper.

• God is calling people out of the shallow end into deeper realms of prayer, deeper dimensions where they become sensitive enough to recognize the call to pray for someone, or to see what needs to be seen in the spirit.
• Your prayer is God's limitation. The heavens are the Lord's, but the earth he has given to the sons of men, so he cannot do what is not prayed for. Prayer gives God legitimacy to operate on the earth.

A Burden to Pray Can Save a Life

In an account from a book on tongues by Kenneth Hagin, a pastor's wife was awakened one night with an unshakable burden to pray. She began praying in tongues and deep groaning, not knowing who or what it was for. She and her husband prayed together, sensed some relief, and tried to sleep, but the burden returned twice more before dawn, each time stronger, until they finally stayed up praying in agreement that God would warn whoever was in danger through a dream or vision.

• The next morning a man from their congregation called with the story: he had dreamed at four in the morning that a cable would snap while he was up on the drilling tower and take his head off. He refused to climb the tower that day. Another worker who was not moved by the warning took his place and was killed exactly as the dream had shown.
• When you pray in tongues, you enter a deeper dimension of prayer where the Holy Ghost helps you pray out things you do not know how to pray for in your own understanding, according to the will of God.

Prayer Is the Walking Stick of the Believer

• If you cannot pray while standing in a room full of other believers, how will you pray alone in your house? An attack on your prayer life is a profound attack on every other area of your life: your marriage, your health, anything can fail once your prayer has failed.
• Jesus told Peter, "Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for you." When we tell a friend, "I will pray for you," are we actually praying, or only saying it?
• Short, powerful public prayers and public declarations are the fruit of long, private, intercessory prayer. If your axe is dull and you refuse to sharpen it, you will need more strength to cut the same tree. Sharpen the axe in secret so that when you stand before a crisis, you only need to speak.