Spiritual Songs?

I previously wrote about praying in tongues, but even with the amazing words I received from the Lord, it still took many months to feel at all comfortable praying in tongues,. At the same time, I didn’t understand what Paul meant by “sing with my spirit” in 1 Cor 14, also referred to as spiritual songs.

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.

The closest thing I could relate was the book of Psalms, which is more like prose poetry. But not long after I had the experiences I previously wrote about with my prayer language, I had a dream in which I experienced first hand what a spiritual song is.

In my dream, I was at a retreat center. About 5 or 6 of us were lined up in a hallway outside of the sanctuary. People inside were worshiping. The pastor then asked us to go into the sanctuary to pray with people. I recognized one of the people in the worship area and felt called to go pray with her. This lady was recently the main female vocal leader of our church’s worship team, but she and her husband moved across the country for a new job. This dream occurred before their move. After praying for her with my mind, I began praying for her with my spirit, which quickly became a spiritual song. She, being a spirit-filled worship leader, joined in the spiritual song. No, we weren’t singing the same words, nor the same notes, but our songs were beautifully complementary, they blended into a single song. My prayer language was much more fluid than it had ever been before. It sounded good, and it felt like we were intensely praising the Lord together.

The dream ended. I woke up thinking, “holy cow, I just sang in tongues in my dream!” It was a neat experience, I was stoked. I got up and emailed this lady telling her about the dream and what a neat experience it was for me. She replied and said she was so thankful that I shared the dream with her because she had been very stressed about the upcoming move and it meant so much to her that God would have me pray for her specifically.

Now that I’ve heard what a spiritual song can sound like, I’m not afraid to experiment with singing in the spirit during times of worship, however I have to admit that it doesn’t sound as good as it did in my dream. I thank God for giving me experiences that continue to grow my faith and ways to experience him.