For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful. (1Co. 14:14)
God is a Spirit. Man is a spirit. God contacts us through our spirits. He leads us through our spirits. He doesn’t communicate directly to our minds, because the Holy Spirit doesn’t dwell in our minds. God doesn’t contact us through our bodies either.
It should be easy for Spirit-filled believers to locate the human spirit. Those tongues come from your spirit, down on the inside of you. You speak the words out physically—but they don’t come out of the physical senses. You yield your tongue to your own spirit, and the Holy Spirit in your spirit gives you the utterance.
Tongues don’t come out of your mind or soul. When you pray in tongues, your mind, your understanding, is unfruitful. Your un-derstanding doesn’t know what you are saying. When you pray in tongues, the words come out of your innermost being—your spirit.
What is the conclusion then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will also pray with the understanding. I will sing with the spirit, and I will also sing with the understanding. (1Co. 14:15)
The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. (Romans 8:16)
God is going to guide us. God is going to lead us. We have scripture that says so: “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” (Romans 8:14)
How does God lead? Romans 8:16 gives us a clue: “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.
”You don’t know you are a child of God because someone prophesies that you are. You don’t know you are a child of God because someone says they feel like you are. That’s not how you know these things. You are not a child of God because you had a vision. (You might, or you might not have a vision, but that’s not what makes you a child of God.)
How, then, does the Bible say we know we are the children of God? God’s Spirit “bears witness” with our spirit. Sometimes you can’t explain exactly how you know, but you just know it on the inside of you. You have an inward witness that you are a child of God.That’s the number one way God leads His children—through the inward witness!