Bait and Switch

Ever since Jr. High I’ve regularly had pain in my knees. If I don’t do anything athletic for long periods of time my knees will return to a comfortable state, but immediately after any kind of athletic activity my knees well swell and stiffen for weeks. And of course this inactivity actually makes the problem worse as my knees grow weaker.

I’ve never had a major knee injury, though I have had a doctor tell me in high school that I had some torn cartilage. But the main problem he said was tight tendons have caused the cartilage to wear down so that I have bone on bone friction and pinching of cartilage and tendons that causes swelling. Furthermore, the degradation of cartilage has caused lateral instability in my knees, making the friction and pinching worse.

When I met Becca, she introduced me to co-ed volleyball. We’ve been playing on co-ed leagues pretty much ever since. I’ve really come to like volleyball, it’s a great team sport, yet requires practice to improve personal performance, and it’s indoor which is important when it’s 110 degrees outside. But volleyball is hard on my knees. I love hitting, but when you land from a hit, you have to plant yourself hard so you don’t go into the net. I believe that stopping action causes a great deal of grinding in my knees. The result is for weeks my knees are swollen and painful. The pain got so bad that sleeping and walking (especially stairs) were sometimes very difficult. With pain killers and warm up I could get through the next game, but my reaction speed and vertical jump suffered greatly.

Several years ago, at the recommendation of a much older opponent, I started wearing Robocop style knee braces that have metal inserts on both sides of the brace, on both knees. I still had pain, but I could tell immediately that the swelling was down, and more importantly, I could play the next week without terrible pain or loss of performance. Even still, a fair amount of pain remained that still sometimes makes walking uncomfortable.

We spent Christmas 2009 in Colorado and I got to enjoy a couple of days of skiing. I pushed myself a little harder than normal because I wanted to keep up with my brother-in-law who is ~8 years younger than me. I felt pretty good on the trip, but after we got back, possibly because of the car ride, my knee pain was much higher than normal. Then shortly after that I had a minor twist on a sand volleyball court which really tweaked it. The pain was so bad that when lying on my back with my knee pointed towards the ceiling I physically could not pick up my foot, much less straighten my leg. For the first time ever it was starting to worry me. Not because I’m afraid to have surgery, but because I was beginning to realize that at this rate I won’t be able to enjoy a lifestyle where I have the option of doing athletic things very much longer before my knees make it physically impossible without serious therapy and/or perhaps surgery. This depressed me because I want to be healthy for years to come, so I can challenge my grandkids to a game of basketball and at least get their respect.

I had already seen God move mightily in response to prayer (see previous post), and there was news that the prayer team of our church had experienced some physical healing miracles. I decided what the heck, let’s go get prayer for my knees. I decided to believe that God did not want me to live in a life of pain any more than the cripple who lived a life of immobility next to the pool of Bethesda. (John 5). At first I was reluctant because I believed my knees were insignificant, I still had my health and could function fine either for my own secular desires or for the Kingdom of God, why would God heal me? But later a useful analogy was given to me. If your child falls of their bike and scrapes their knee, wouldn’t you do everything possible to make them feel better physically and emotionally? God wants to heal us because he loves us that much, and what’s more, everything is possible for him.

So probably for the first time ever, I sought out prayer for physical healing. I am pleased to say that today my knees feel much better than they have in a long time, though I wouldn’t say they are completely healed, but that really isn’t what this post is about. I believe God used the physical pain in my knees to bring me to humble myself to have me pray for something even greater, the old bait and switch routine.

While I was there, one of the individuals praying for me asked me if I had ever been “baptized in the Holy Spirit”. Fortunately I had already started reading The Holy Spirit & You, so I knew what he meant when he asked me that question. I really dislike the expression “baptized in the Holy Spirit” because it confuses the issue of water baptism and receiving the Gifts of the Spirit. Thanks to the book I now realize that being “baptized in the Holy Spirit” actually has little to nothing to do with baptism, a much better phrase I think might be something like “realized the power of the Holy Spirit”. I think that all believers have the Holy Spirit in them, but those who are “baptized” in the Holy Spirit have a greater appreciation of what that means. Not that they are greater, or any more special to God, or have received anything extra from the Holy Spirit, but that they understand and believe that with the Holy Spirit comes the Gifts of the Spirit (1 Cor 12:8-11), which are powerful, applicable to the world today, and for the purpose of expanding the Kingdom of God.

Anyway, when he asked me this question I immediately got excited. I had already been praying in my personal prayer to be “baptized in the Holy Spirit”, but this individual was able to coach me a little on what that means, how to release the gifts when they are granted, and had the prayer team lay hands on me to seal the deal.

Long story short, that night, for the first time, I received the gift of tongues.

He prayed that the Holy Spirit would speak to my spirit, encouraged me to verbalize what I received, and encouraged me to put aside any judgement my mind may make about the unusual words. As he explained, the mind is used to being in control of the body, and so when we allow our spirit to take the driver’s seat, the mind becomes jealous. And of course the enemy wants to keep us from believing in the gifts of the spirit, because they powerful weapons in spiritual warfare.

To my surprise, I did receive some words. It’s hard to describe, but it did feel like they were received, not constructed. In the security of the prayer group I mustered the courage to utter them, but to be honest they sounded absolutely absurd even to myself. They had no meaning to me. I wasn’t sure what to make of the experience, but I went home hopeful, and perhaps joyous that I had received such bold and profound prayer. It was a breath of fresh air of Christianity for me.

As soon as I got in my car, I wrote down the words that I had received as best I could guess to spell them, “itcus milack shallock”. After writing them down, I prayed. “Lord, I don’t know what to make of this. You tell us that if we seek we will find, so I’m sorry if I’m acting like a man of little faith, but I need to know that this means something to you or to somebody.”

The Lord did not disappoint, but before I get into that, I want to share some things that I learned about speaking in tongues. Before this year I only thought of tongues in terms of Pentecost, speaking in human languages that we do not know so that others can hear the word of God in their own language. This is certainly an important reason for tongues, but there is another that is equally documented in the New Testament, but yet was new to me in my Christian experience, and that’s “praying in tongues”. Praying in tongues is simply listening for the Holy Spirit and verbalizing what you hear. It’s a way of allowing your spirit to pray, instead of your mind. God wants us to intercede in prayer for others, but sometimes we don’t know what to pray for, God does! You can be sure that praying in tongues is “effective” prayer because the words are coming directly from God! Here are some good verses that show the validity of “praying in tongues”, that is, praying with words that are only understood by God. (1 Cor 14)

2For anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God. Indeed, no one understands him; he utters mysteries with his spirit.

4He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself,

14For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. 15So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my mind.

18I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you.

There are many many more verses about speaking in tongues in the bible if you will only have faith and accept it as truth, yet it is so unusual that most Christians reject it as being a gift from God.

Even though I had read these verses before receiving these 3 words, I wanted to be sure that they were from the Holy Spirit and not something that I conjured up. So I got on google. Within 30 minutes I had found, with very little modification to my original spelling of the words, a very plausible translation.

Itcus – Latin – wound. As soon I found that “itcus”, a word that I had never heard before, was a real word in another language, and more over, that its translation, “wound”, applied directly to the subject for which I was seeking prayer, my knees, I was floored! I got goose bumps. I was humbled that God would think so much of me not only to bless me with his gifts, but also grant my request to allow me to find an interpretation for my tongue. Think of it this way. Imagine you make a promise to your son AND you’ve kept every promise you’ve ever made to your son, how would you feel if your son said, I don’t believe you dad? I know you’ve been really good to me all these years, but I just don’t believe that you’re telling me the truth here so you’re going to have to prove it to me.” Wouldn’t that kind of annoy you? Maybe that would hurt your feelings a little bit? Here I was, a bratty adolescent Christian saying “I don’t believe your Word, God, prove it to me so I can know if it’s true or not.” That’s probably not the best tone to take with God, but yet He did prove it to me, and as you will soon find out, he answered my prayer abundantly.

Milacku – Czech – my love. Wow! That’s pretty good, that sounds like something God would call me! Thank you God!

Shellac – English slang – defeat decisively. This was the hardest translation. The other words translated so directly with very little effort, but this word I had to change the spelling and use a slang definition, but hey, God knows slang! More importantly, in the context of the other three words, my spirit rejoiced because I felt like it was the right fit.

Put it all together, add a few connecting words, and rearrange it into an English grammatical structure and you get this:
“My love, [I will] defeat [your] wound decisively.”

Holy cow! That sounds like the words of a God who loves me, who hears my prayer, and who has the power to do what he says! Praise Jesus!

That was it, 3 little words was all I needed to experientially believe God’s Word. Praying in tongues is a legitimate way to communicate with God. But there’s more…

My prayer group had encouraged me before leaving that night to repeatedly pray the 3 words God had given me. They said they are now a part of my “prayer language”, and praying them will give me confidence to begin to accept new prayer words.

So a couple of days later I was out walking the dog, repeating itcus milack shallack to myself, thankful for what God had revealed to me, when I got 3 new words, “morrocon iyeki yha”.

Morar – Spanish – to live.
Moro – I live.
This was initially a hard translation until I discovered that Morar was actually a Spanish verb. Once I realized that ‘moro’ was a conjugated verb for ‘I live’, my jaw dropped! Not only was God speaking to me and giving me the interpretation, he was even conjugating verbs for me!

Con – Latin – with, together, connected
Extremely easy translation.

Iy iki – Turkish – good that
Very easy translation.

Yah – Hebrew – Name of God
Extremely easy translation once I saw it context with the rest of the sentence.

Push the pulse button on the blender:
“[It is] good that I, God, live with/in [you].”

That sounds like God, in fact he even calls himself by an Old Testament name, Yah, and it lines up with scripture. (1 Cor 3:16) Praise God!

Later that week, on Saturday afternoon, I received 3 more words: “eco tata sasa nara”. It sounded like complete jibberish, even after having had these two amazing interpretations I thought to myself “this can’t possibly mean anything”. But again, God revealed it to me:

Eco – Greek – root word ‘house’
Tata – Italian – nanny
Sasa – Swahili – now
Nara – Turkish – cry

“House nanny now cries.”

Not much to leave to the imagination there, but what did it mean? Not very many people have nannies so I this was another instance of God speaking directly to me. Then I remembered that on that very same afternoon, our nanny was acting as a bridesmaid in her friend’s wedding. This wasn’t just a gift of tongues, this was also a word of knowledge, another Spiritual Gift. If I had not known she was at a wedding I would have called her and make sure everything was okay, but given that she was participating in a wedding I figured this was normal and therefore not urgent. When our nanny returned on Monday I asked her if she cried during the wedding and what time she thought that was. If I remember correctly the time she gave me was only about 3 hours prior to the time I received the word. But what I really took from this experience is that our opinion of what the words sound like is irrelevant.

Summary
This whole experience has really woken me up to the fact that the Gifts of the Spirit are alive and well in the world today, and that there is a way to pray that I had never been taught before. I do pray in tongues regularly now, but I do not take the time to look up all the words that come out of my mouth and I do not allow it to dominate my prayer time. I do not expect that all words of a prayer language exist within a known language on this Earth, that would be far too limiting for God. And we know that the Spirit can pray in groans (non-words, Rom 8:26). No, in fact I think the 3 experiences I had of direct translation are probably rather rare, and were gifts given to me explicitly for the purpose of building my stubborn and doubting faith.

Instead, I pray in tongues when I want to intercede for someone but I do not know what to pray for. As Paul says, praying with our mind is fruitful, but praying with our Spirit is a different kind of prayer that is equally important.

I have also learned through experience and observation that praying in tongues is often times kind of a “stepping stone” in learning to utilize the other Spiritual Gifts because it is the least intimidating to step out in faith to do, and it can be “practiced” in the privacy of your home or car.

I am slowly learning that a large portion of the Christian world does pray in tongues today, but even among them praying in tongues is often kept on the down low. This is one of those things that can scare newcomers away because it is so different. But I’ve had the privilege of participating in prayer with some mature prayer warriors and I am amazed by how fluid and natural their prayers can be. I don’t know what they’re praying but my spirit tells me that their spirit is praying something intense, and we’re all getting the benefit from it. I’ve also learned that prayer languages can sound utterly absurd and that’s okay too, as long as it isn’t being coerced or forced.

Conclusion

I’m not sure how to end this blog. I have hesitation about posting it because it’s one of those topics where people get labels applied to them like radical, zealot, or freak. But the purpose of these blogs was not that you would think more of me, but rather that you would think more of God, and hopefully the testimony I have shared here does that.

God is good,
Nate