I am sharing with you practical tips from my own life and experience, how the Lord has taught me from His Word to become more aware of the Lord's presence in my own life. Here is a fourth tip in this regard.
Speak and pray regularly in tongues
Yes, I know! Most of us come from a religious background in which “speaking in tongues” is strange, unknown, and a bit of a gimmick! Especially if we come from a typical Afrikaans Reformed background!
Yet we only need to start to examine the Lord's Word on this in a relaxed manner to discover in quite a few places that “speaking in tongues” is not a Pentecostal or charismatic thing, but that it is part of what God's Spirit also wants to do in your and my life and wants to teach us.
In my own life, through the Lord's grace, I discovered how the Lord's Spirit "taught me to speak in tongues".
I say this specifically because it did not come easily and automatically. I had to learn to “make my tongue available” as it were, to discover and experience how my tongue, first just sounds, and now a heavenly language, began to speak like a baby learning to speak!
Nowadays, it is even an important key for me to learn to be more aware of the Lord’s presence in my life.
The apostle Paul said that he spoke in tongues more than anyone else in the Corinthian congregation. (1 Cor. 14:18). That is why he also encouraged every believer to pray in tongues. (Eph. 6:18)
This means that speaking in tongues and praying in tongues also became part of his normal spiritual life and time with the Lord, throughout the day, from when he woke up, working, or whatever he was doing!
The remarkable thing about speaking in tongues is that our logical mind is not normally involved in it or served by it.
Yet the Holy Spirit can also speak to His congregation through the gift of speaking in tongues in public, within the assembly of believers, through this gift. But then the Lord will also use the gift of interpretation of tongues to give those believers a divine interpretation of what was said. (1 Cor. 14:13)
Be that as it may, speaking in tongues is a particularly important gift, because the Bible says our spirit is built up by it while we speak or pray in tongues. (1 Cor. 14:4)
As this building up takes place, it helps us to be more aware of the Lord's constant presence in and with us.