"Expect a Miracle" - Part 3

It's time for part 3 of some of my book review notes on "Expect a Miracle - My LIfe and Story."


If you have missed the start of this blog series please click here.


You can check back later on previous issues by searching my blog for the label "Oral Roberts" or by ptting the word "Miracle" in my blog "search" box.


Enjoy - and see you tomorrow for part 4.

Oral Roberts experiences with the spirit realm provide some interesting insights.

He states (1975, p 112) that the greatest source of supply a believer can have and the greatest security a believer can feel is when they don't have anything. It is then that the believer has to learn to be lean and hungry and to trust God. When Roberts was aged 17, God said to him, "Some day you are to build me a university. You are to build it on My authority and on the Holy Spirit" (p 262). God had never permitted him to have any money when he started a project and when it came time to build the university, God said, "I'm going to let you start with the same ingredient I used when I made the earth - nothing" (p 113). He relays a potent experience which demonstrates spiritually magnified sight in the spirit realm and seeing what God sees:

"One day I was walking across a piece of pasture land at the edge of Tulsa which hopefully would some day be the campus of Oral Roberts University. I was praying with my understanding - that is, in my own language, and getting nowhere. My mind was saying:
"NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!...YOU CAN'T DO THIS!!!!"
Then I shifted - by my will - and began to pray in tongues and my heart began saying:
"YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES!"
"You can!"
"You will!"
"You can!"
"You will!"
Then this knowing was transferred to my understanding. It came out of my belly - my inner man - it came up like a river. It came up into my mind AND I SAW IT. My mind began to blossom, to sharpen, to come alive to what God was saying to me.
All at once - believe me, friend, when I say this - I understand enough to build a university. I didn't understand all the details but i understood the basics...I saw that we would create a higher education for your sons and daughters and mine...they would get a total education - for the whole man.
I SAW IT!
I KNEW IT!
Today Oral Roberts University is a reality and growing all the time, including it's graduate schools, and fully accredited" (ibid, p 263).

His ministry also depended heavily on the understanding and guidance of the Holy Spirit, especially the gift of speaking in tongues. He believed and taught that the ultimate purpose of the prayer language of the Spirit is that it goes to God. Then God has the prayer that originates in our spirit and that is carried to him by the power of the Holy Spirit.
It is a prayer that was prayed in the will of God.
It is a prayer that was prayed without the inhibitions of the intellect.
It is a prayer that originates in our spirit by the Holy Spirit.

This is why God responds....always!
How does God respond? How does this take place?
Paul makes it clear: "For this reason anyone who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret what he says" (1 Cor 14:13). He encouraged believers: “After you pray in tongues ... or in the spirit...just stop a moment and ask God to give you the interpretation...to speak back in your own understanding. Then begin praying again in English or your own language. For in the process of praying in the spirit the Holy Spirit has enriched your mind and you will find God's response comes back in the mind.

I have discovered that what I have said with my spirit now becomes what I say with my intellect - and so I am able to pray with the understanding. When I pray I start in the spirit or in tongues (the prayer language of the Spirit), then I immediately go to my own tongue, my own language. I pray back and forth in tongues and then with my understanding until it is like they are one. I feel the nearness of being a whole man - to the extent that I can think more properly, I can make decisions more decisively and wisely, I can reach the highest degree of what I am to be on this earth - when I pray with the spirit and with the understanding also... I have a much deeper assurance of life.

I seem to develop a 'knowing' of what I am to do.
When I pray in the spirit or praise God with the spirit I always pause and ask God for the interpretation. I feel I receive the interpretation almost every time... What usually happens is I receive an almost uncanny awareness in my mind, an opening up of my understanding... I find I'm saying words in my own tongue that feel exactly like what I felt when I was praying in the spirit... the results prove it to me...and in time I get more knowledge, more wisdom. It is like my brain works better or like I am being handed inside information” (Roberts, 1975, p 257, 261).