Tongues is your language from heaven. It is downloaded in your spirit at the reception of the Holy Ghost. That language will change the world and change you....
When the Lord told me that speaking in tongues will change us and change the world, I already knew it was true from reading the Bible.
I’d read many times about the striking changes that took place, for instance, in the disciples present in the upper room. As Acts 2 records, when they received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and His holy tongues of fire connected with their tongues of flesh, immediately their language changed, and they began speaking in new, supernatural tongues.
But the changes didn’t stop there!
More quickly followed.
The disciples’ behavior, for example, changed dramatically. No longer content to sit by themselves in the upper room, they went charging out into the street, praising God in tongues with wild abandon. They went from praying privately to publicly proclaiming God’s mighty works in so many different languages that the masses of people who gathered to hear them “were all amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘Whatever could this mean?’” Some even thought they were drunk on new wine (Acts 2:12–13 NKJV).
The Apostle Peter, in particular, was so changed he seemed like a different person. Just weeks earlier, when Jesus was about to be crucified, he’d been a coward. Afraid of what might happen to him if people knew he was one of Jesus’ disciples, he’d denied Him three times. But after receiving the baptism of the Holy Ghost, Peter became bold as a lion.
Not only did he join the 120 disciples, speaking in tongues to the people of Jerusalem, he took the lead. He had such a burning passion to speak that he couldn’t help but stand up before the multitude and preach Jesus. Addressing some of the very same people he had so feared just weeks before, he said:
Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves also know—Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it. (Acts 2:22–24 NKJV)
What was it that made such a massive difference in Peter? He had been immersed and changed—baptizō! Through the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the tongue of God’s fire had connected with Peter’s tongue of flesh, and when it did, it turned him into such a fearless and anointed preacher that 3,000 of the people in the crowd believed on Jesus and were baptized that day!
The change in Peter and the other Holy Spirit baptized believers in the early Church didn’t stop there, either. They continued to change the world so dramatically that Acts 17:6 says they “turned the world upside down.”
Although I’ve studied these scriptures for years, as I considered the prophetic word the Lord gave me and reflected on the change that can so easily be seen in those original disciples, I thought, But what about me? How does being baptized in the Holy Spirit and speaking in other tongues change me?
Shortly after I asked that question, a piece of the puzzle fell into place when a Spirit-filled neuroscientist came to minister at our church. A clinician and researcher, she has spent decades studying mind-brain connections, mental health, neuroplasticity, and the science of renewing the mind and healing the brain. So, when she was with us, I took the opportunity to talk to her about speaking in tongues.
I specifically asked her if she’d seen any scientific evidence confirming the fact that, as 1 Corinthians 4:14 says, when we pray in tongues, our minds are unfruitful.
“Oh yes,” she said, “it’s been proven!” She told me that normally when we talk, the language center of our brain, the prefrontal cortex, is very active. But when we begin to pray in other tongues, a change takes place. The prefrontal cortex shuts down. We shouldn’t be able to speak at all when that part of our brain becomes inactive. Yet we can still speak in tongues because God takes over and gives us the ability to say supernaturally, in our heavenly language, whatever He wants us to say.
Another fact I learned about the brain is that while the prefrontal cortex becomes inactive while we’re praying in tongues, the parietal lobes, or receptive parts of our brain, remain active. That puts our brain in a posture of receiving and learning information.
There’s also evidence that when we pray in tongues, the activity in our amygdala, which contains a library of information that helps us respond correctly, increases. This results in increased wisdom and discernment. At the same time, there’s also an increase in the activity of the hypothalamus, which causes emotional stability to increase by as much as 86 percent.
No wonder praying in tongues changes us! It opens us up to God’s influence. It positions us to receive wisdom from Him.
How to Do the Impossible
The neurological effects of praying in tongues makes me think of a letter my husband, Mac, and I received from Oral Roberts many years ago. In it, he told about a time in his life when he’d been staggering under the load of what God had told him to do, which was to build a university to educate the whole man. In the natural, Brother Roberts had no idea how to go about that. It seemed impossible.
Overwhelmed by the enormity of his assignment, he went out to the open field where the university was to be built and began to pray. He started by praying what little he knew to pray in English. “O God, help me!” he said. “Show me the way!” Then, from deep inside him, His heavenly language began pouring out of him.
In writing about it he said, “By divine prompting or by what some might call a coincidence, when I finished saying those words in other tongues, I started praying in my own language again. But... something was different. The words coming out of my mouth in English were not the same as I had been using just before I spoke in tongues.”
What had changed Brother Roberts’ speech? While he was speaking in tongues, the prefrontal cortex of his brain had shut down, and God had taken over. So, even when he spoke in English again, his language was different. It wasn’t coming from his brain. It was coming from his spirit.
As he explained in his letter, “These words, although in English, had a message for my mind. God was speaking back to me. He was enlightening me. My intellect was coming alive in a new way. What I didn’t know until two or three days later was that I was interpreting my tongues back to myself.”
Before he began praying in other tongues and interpreting, as Brother Roberts walked and prayed just in his own understanding about the impossible challenge God had given him, he couldn’t work his way through the limitations of his own mind. His intellect could not grasp or understand how to do what God had said. It was beyond his mental powers and human ability.
But as he prayed in tongues, his spirit prayed and the Holy Spirit in his spirit helped his inadequacy and inability to know what to pray and to receive understanding. As he put it in his letter, “Suddenly, I realized this new tongue in which my spirit was speaking to God was in reality another new tongue.
“Before that, it had been more of an intellectual prayer, my intellect creating the words. My mind was unable to solve the problem I was facing. The answer to it lay in my spirit. Unfortunately, I had been failing to respond first with my spirit to this challenge that had been laid upon me. Rather, I was attempting to pray it through with my mind, and it wouldn’t work. I just wasn’t getting my answer by praying with my intellect alone.”
Brother Roberts said that after praying in tongues, however, “when I resumed praying in English, I was actually interpreting God’s response to what my spirit, by the power of the Holy Spirit, had said to God in tongues, which was incomprehensible to my mind. In other words, my spirit had bypassed my mind, and by the help of the Holy Spirit, knew exactly how to help me reach God.
“God was using my tongues as the vehicle of expression to God so I could better get His response to the ‘know how’ that I needed.”
In that situation, Oral Roberts not only prayed in other tongues; he interpreted them back to himself in English. But, really, even what he said in English could be considered “other tongues.” Although we haven’t thought of it this way because we haven’t understood interpretation; both tongues and interpretation are given by languages from heaven.
The heavenly languages Brother Roberts prayed that day changed him and they changed the world. How? By equipping him with exactly what he needed at that moment to do what God had called him to do. Those languages, because they were accompanied by the fire of God, carried the very essence and nature of God into the project Brother Roberts was working on.
As a result, what had seemed impossible moments before suddenly became possible. God revealed to Brother Roberts, as he spoke by the Spirit, how to do it.
In a sense, that’s what happened in Acts 2 to the disciples when the Holy Spirit came on them. When His tongues of holy fire connected to their tongues of flesh, the language each one of them spoke became supernatural equipment for them. It empowered them to do exactly what God had called them at that moment to do. It enabled them to speak to each person in Jerusalem in that person’s own dialect and to carry God’s power to people from the ends of the earth.
Step into the life-changing power of your language from heaven.
Have you ever reached the end of what you know to pray? Do you pray in tongues but wonder what is actually happening—or whether there is more available to you? Have you longed to recognize the Holy Spirit’s direction with greater clarity, confidence, and spiritual sensitivity?
You were never meant to depend on your natural understanding alone. God has given you supernatural help in prayer, and there are depths of that gift you may have only begun to explore.
After decades of praying in tongues, internationally known prayer teacher Lynne Hammond was awakened by the Lord with a word that challenged what she thought she already knew. That encounter launched her into a fresh pursuit of Scripture and revelation concerning the baptism of the Holy Spirit, tongues, interpretation, and Spirit-led prayer. Your Language From Heaven brings those discoveries together in a practical, Scripture-rich resource designed to help you go deeper.
In these pages, you’ll discover how to:
Pray beyond the limits of your natural knowledge when you do not know what or how to pray.
Build yourself up spiritually and expand your capacity for deeper fellowship with God.
Recognize interpretation and revelation as the Holy Spirit brings mysteries into greater understanding.
Develop greater spiritual sensitivity through watching, fasting, perseverance, and fellowship with the Holy Spirit.
Understand the biblical purpose of praying in tongues and why it is a powerful devotional gift.
You do not have to remain stuck in passive, repetitive, or uncertain prayer. You are not powerless when spiritual opposition arises or when circumstances exceed your understanding. As you learn to yield more fully to the Holy Spirit, you can grow in faith, discernment, perseverance, and confidence—and become increasingly effective in the prayer assignments God entrusts to you.
Key Revelations Include:
Tongues as a devotional gift for your personal prayer life
How praying mysteries prepares the way for revelation
Why tongues and interpretation work together
How corporate prayer joins believers in Spirit-led assignments
How watching, fasting, and fellowship sharpen spiritual awareness
Why your prayer life should continue expanding rather than plateau
Perfect For:
Spirit-filled believers who know there is more to prayer
Christians seeking biblical understanding of the baptism of the Holy Spirit
Believers who pray in tongues but want greater understanding and interpretation
Intercessors, prayer leaders, and church prayer teams
Anyone longing for deeper fellowship and greater sensitivity to the Holy Spirit
If you have never prayed in tongues—or still have sincere questions about the subject—you are not asked to abandon prayer with your understanding. Scripture teaches both. This book invites you to examine the Word, discover the Holy Spirit’s help in prayer, and explore the supernatural resources God has made available to you.
There is more available to you. Go deeper—and discover how your language from heaven can transform the way you pray.