But you, dear friends, must build up your lives ever more strongly upon the foundation of our holy faith, learning to pray in the power and strength of the Holy Spirit. Jude 1:20

Have you been involved in a building project or made a decision to build some muscles! If you have, you will know that it involves some effort and personal application to achieve it. In the same way God wants us to build our lives ever more strongly on the foundation of our holy faith and he tells us how to do this – by learning to pray in the power and strength of the Holy Spirit.

In the world today, there are so many things that come against our faith such that instead of us having ever increasing faith that comes from the word of God, we sometimes find our faith is not where we would like it to be. This was also the case with the disciples when they were with Jesus and He would do things for them that they could have done using the power and the authority in His Name. He would say to them that the reason was because their faith was little and he even called them a faithless generation. But I believe that this is not us in Jesus Name. The difference between what they could do, what they were authorised by Him to do in His name and what they actually did was their faith.

In Romans 3:12, we are told that God has given to everyone a measure of faith. So we as believers have a measure of faith in us. However one of the ways we practically and intentionally build our lives on the faith that is in us is by praying in the power and strength of the Holy Spirit. Praying in the Spirit is praying in tongues and we see Paul throughout the early church encouraging all believers to pray in the Holy Spirit. He said in 1 Corinthians 14:15, “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.”

I want to encourage you to spend time everyday praying in the spirit. If you don’t know how, ask God to fill your mouth with words from the Holy Spirit and speak it out in faith. Open your mouth today and start speaking a language other than your natural language given to you by the Holy Spirit. Once you start and no matter what your mind is saying to you, don’t stop for you are learning to pray in the power and strength of the Holy Spirit. It will transform your life and experience of God. Acts 2:4 says concerning the disciples, “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.”

Romans 8:26-27 Living Bible (TLB)  And in the same way—by our faith—the Holy Spirit helps us with our daily problems and in our praying. For we don’t even know what we should pray for nor how to pray as we should, but the Holy Spirit prays for us with such feeling that it cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows, of course, what the Spirit is saying as he pleads for us in harmony with God’s own will.