Sing with the Spirit and with the Understanding
David W Palmer
Jesus showed us the heart of true worship, and taught us about relating to God in the spirit. He then sent the Holy Spirit to expand, explain, and help us to apply this. Today, we look at some more of the Holy Spirit’s instructions to us; through Paul the apostle, he said:
(1 Corinthians 14:15 NKJV) “What is the conclusion then? … I will sing with the spirit, and I will also sing with the understanding.”
In this verse, we see that God wants us to “sing with the understanding.” I’m sure we all know what this means, and it would include: songs that are written, like the ones we read the words for on Sundays; or songs that we memorize and sing from online, the radio, recordings, or meetings, etc. However, the apostle Paul also says, “I will sing with the spirit.” This instruction is very interesting; what does he mean by this?
Earlier in the same chapter, Paul said:
(1 Corinthians 14:2, 14 NKJV) “For he who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God, for no one understands him; however, in the spirit he speaks mysteries. ... {14} For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful.”
From this, we see that our spirit man can talk and pray: “in the spirit he speaks … my spirit prays.” Because this is referring to exercising the God-given gift of “tongues,” it shows that our spirit man can make articulate speech that our mind doesn’t understand (unless the Holy Spirit gives an interpretation). So, when speaking or praying in tongues, although my intellect doesn’t initiate the words nor understand them, my spirit clearly does. Tongues is a supernatural miracle—a God-given ability to speak directly from my spirit man to God in languages known to him but are not known to my intellect.
If my spirit can talk and pray like this, it’s not a huge leap to understand that he can also sing in these languages. Hence, the directive to “sing with the spirit.”
If you have received the powerful, wonderful, miraculous gift of speaking in tongues (1 Cor. 12:4–11), you know you can choose to exercise it at will; you can control when to start speaking in tongues and when to stop—but you cannot directly choose the words you say. Similarly, you can choose to use this gift of supernatural, spiritual language as the words you sing. This would be intellectually initiated singing, with your spirit providing the words.
Added to this would then be the ability to sing with melodies coming from the spirit. It simply means to allow your spirit to guide your pitch and timing as well as the words you articulate while singing.
Today, I encourage you to practice this. Try it if you have never done it before. However, like all things you do for the first time (remember when you first rode a bicycle or drove a manual car), you may feel awkward and clumsy. But if you persist, you will soon learn how to readily let go and trust the Holy Spirit to guide you in this. The freedom you experience is amazing.
As you become more confident with—and dare I say captivated by—this, you will long to use it in praise and worship with others in a corporate setting. You will find yourself also spontaneously bursting out into worshipful singing in the spirit when you are enjoying some alone time with God.
Simply remember to do all things for “edification.” This gift is mostly for private use, but it has a corporate application as the Holy Spirit wills (as and when directed and led by the leader). However, we must not express this amazing gift to show off, or to force it on someone else. It must be expressed to edify, encourage, and to build up yourself and others:
(1 Corinthians 14:26 NKJV) “How is it then, brethren? Whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification.”
P.S. If you haven’t yet received the gift of speaking in tongues, I encourage you to study all th
