Pastor Barry's  "Chapter & Verse"  Day 44

February 13;       I Corinthians 14:4;       44/260(II);       ‘Building Yourself Up’

1 Corinthians 14:4 He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church.

I was talking to someone about this verse once and they thought it was saying that you are selfish if you pray in tongues to edify yourself.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Let’s take care of the second part of this verse first.  Since no one understands tongues in the natural, it would not help anyone in a church setting if someone got up and prayed in tongues.  If there was an interpretation, that would be the equivalent of prophecy, because then those in the church would understand what the utterance in tongues meant.  Back to edifying yourself in tongues.  As you pray in other tongues, the Holy Spirit is building you up spiritually.  The word ‘edifies’ has several very important meanings.  Edifies means to build a house.  Tongues strengthens your spirit which in turn will have a powerful effect on your physical body.  Edifies means to build up from the foundation.  Once we become a Christian we are to build upon our spiritual foundation of Jesus by the Word, prayer and fellowship with the Lord.  Tongues is a powerful way to strengthen your foundation with the Lord.  Edifies also means to restore, rebuild and repair.  This means that as you pray in tongues, the Holy Spirit gives you utterance that will help you to mend areas of your life that need adjustment.  The importance of praying in tongues cannot be overstated.  One of many additional blessings of tongues is when we are asked to pray for someone and we do not know all of the details, the Holy Spirit who does know all of the details, will enable us to pray a powerful prayer that covers every detail. Please seek being Spirit filled.