Sid: Someone’s neck was just healed and anything you need in the head area right now be in sinuses are opened, migraines are gone, and the back is being healed right now. Boy we have an explosion of the Holy Spirit; someone if you move your right are and you’ll see that the joint that was hurting you is not hurting you anymore and someone’s hip has just been healed. We were listening to Corey Russell on yesterday’s broadcast; he came from a loving Godly family but he went kind of berserk like most kids do when he went to college; he got into hard core drug addiction, and alcohol, and sexual sins and he was addicted. And his main supplier who he used to do drugs with and everything, his best friend, Zach becomes a Christian. How? He had a praying mother, and as a matter of fact Corey had praying parents and so he confronted Corey, and tell me again, “What did he say to you that actually probably upset you when you were with him?
Corey: Yeah, he told me because he was in a four month season Sid to where literally he just checked out, he wasn’t the same anymore, he wouldn’t talk to people normally and he would just look off in the distance. And he told me you know later on after that he said, “That he was seeing in the spirit realm, he was seeing angels and demons and he says, “The very last night we were shut up in a little house partying and he says the voice of the Lord broke in and the Lord said, “Satan is raising up an army, but I’m raising up an army too and I’m calling you out tonight, and I want you to go call your friends out.”” He tells me this and I said, “Just take me back to school.” And he took me back to school and I’m…
Sid: Wait a second, I bet you didn’t say it that way I bet you were irritated as a human could be.
Corey: Totally, I think we probably cussed at each other and get me out of here and whatever and I just didn’t want anything to do with him. I just said, that was my last straw was that lunch as far as trying to befriend him and I felt betrayed, I was really hurt. So we pulled back into the parking lot and I’m about to get out of the van and the Holy Spirit fills the van, I didn’t know that it was the Holy Spirit at the time I just felt some presence come into the van. And before I know it I’m beginning to shake violently like I’m having a seizure; my friend pulls in back of the parking lot and he starts praying and he just went right for it, he said, “In the name of Jesus I bind that anti-Christ spirit, I bind that anti-Christ spirit.” As soon as he binds the spirit it manifests into a choke hold around my throat and I can’t breathe at that moment, I couldn’t breathe, but I knew that I had to get out the name Jesus, so I go to say the name Jesus, but I try to say it and all I could get out was geez, and the thing kept getting tighter. I tried five, six, seven times trying to say the name Jesus, but the hold would not let me say His name. Finally I just took a deep breath with all the power in me and just yelled, “Jesus!” like that, “Jesus,” and the hold just broke right off of me, and it was like someone came and breathed it in my mouth. And my friend jumped out the van dancing giving glory to God. I set there for about five minutes saying, “I’ve got air, I’ve got air”, and after a couple of minutes I heard a voice come into my mind and the voice said, “Now get down on the pavement and give Me your life, your Mine,” just like that. There was kids running everywhere it was a college parking lot; by those days you know we were fully gone, you know sticking needles in our veins, smoke a bag a day, drink a case a day, threw away our sexuality throughout our teenage years. And I laid on that February 18, 1997 I laid on that concrete in that parking lot cried out to Jesus and gave Him my life and He in that moment completely saved, delivered me of all drugs, all the detox; all the after affects from it.
Sid: No withdrawal?
Corey: I was set free from everything right there.
Sid: Humph.
Corey: I mean I never had another, I mean no other longing ever came back in me for it. Stripped it completely out of me and yeah right there it just exploded which in the next couple of months a whole bunch of friends who had similar encounters and we saw a small move of God in Northwest Arkansas. My first six months was God breaking me in five meetings a week until three in the morning, and I just got addicted to the presence of Holy Spirit and it’s still what’s moving me to this day what God did in that six month season.
Sid: Let me take you back to this God encounter that was so strong so powerful, you know what it sounds like? It sounds to me like the same power that raised Messiah Jesus from the dead came in and deposited Himself in you, drove out all the drugs, but now were you baptized in the Holy Spirit at that moment?
Corey: Yeah, I would say I was, I wasn’t just speaking in tongues on that day per say it began to happen the next few days in revival services that began to explode.
Sid: Now, just out of curiosity your first encounter in speaking in tongues, do you remember it, and tell me what it was like.
Corey: To be honest with you I don’t I remember I laid on my back for six months and I was speaking in tongues all the time from about day one or two out of the shoot. Again the revival culture we were experiencing the presence of God all the time and so every time that I spoke in tongues I felt like it increased His presence in my life, it just increased it, increased it, increased it and that’s where I really got sold to it.
Sid: Now, you were in college at the time however your local high school had a bit of revival, what happened?
Corey: I ended up leading my little brother to the Lord who was a leader in the school, and he just went crazy for Jesus in the school and over the next six months we saw half the high school get saved or brought back to the Lord.
Sid: That’s going to happen again, you know that, that’s going to happen in high schools all over America, that’s what my faith is telling me.
Corey: Well, you know that’s exactly that’s the only thing I can believe for is for whole cities to come underneath the manifest presence of God in high schools, and junior highs, elementary schools for God to touch these campuses.
Sid: I have a question for you, tongues is so powerful, and we’re going to discuss the benefits for praying in supernatural languages and releasing the glory of God that’s within you. I mean the benefits are so amazing; tell me why people that have spoken in tongues that have tasted of that glory have stopped. I mean in most charismatic churches they don’t even baptize people in the Holy Spirit any more.
Corey: It’s true the thing that the charismatic’s are most known for are the things that we do the least of. And I don’t know what it is, I think it’s life, I think it’s us getting away from keeping that fresh flow of God and that fresh…
Sid: I just think a great deal of churches are just plain backslidden that’s what I think, but go ahead.
Corey: You know I agree with you and I just think we turned it into a badge Sid as far as speaking in tongues.
Sid: Yes, I spoke in tongues and now let’s go on to another badge with the scouts.
Corey: We see it and that’s the real issue we treat it like a badge that you get it or you don’t got it and then you move on from there to the deep or to other things in the Kingdom. I say it this way “Tongues is the gateway, is the key into the realm of the supernatural; it’s the key that unlocks that door into all the other gifts of the Holy Spirit.” But many of us want to move on, but we don’t understand that it’s that humble reality of extended times of praying in the Holy Spirit that actually open us up to that realm.
Sid: Let me tell you a quick story that is so amazing to me; I have a friend that’s an evangelist, and just out of the blue after twenty years of marriage wife picks up, leaves, leaves the Lord. He’s devastated and so he reached out and he was in a pit for a long time and I kept talking to him and I kept challenging him to speak in tongues. Well he somehow, something I said worked and he started praying in tongues one hour a day; and I tell you he went from being average Christian to, as far as I’m concerned, someone that’s written about in the Bible. I know it has to do with him praying one hour a day every day seven days a week in tongues. That’s really not a lot for anyone to do to revolutionize their life.
Corey: Oh, it’s not at all, I think we have clearest doorway into the greatest. I mean the man that wrote pretty much the whole New Testament, the man that did more for Christianity than any other person, the Apostle Paul said, “I thank my God I speak in tongues more than you all.” He is giving us the clearest doorway into his devotional life; is whether he was working; whether he was walking; whether he was in prison or preaching the man lived in tongues; the man lived praying in tongues communing with the Holy Spirit. And I want to tell you that those same times are available to us today; so many of us have 45 minute commutes to and from work every morning and evening; so many of us have those little gaps in our days just to say “Lord for the next 25 minutes, the next 30 minutes I’m just going to pray in tongues and just set my eyes on You, turn off the radio, turn off the phone and connect with You. And I have never been disappointed you know in fifteen years of walking with Him of doing that and giving myself to that and it’s a lot easier than a lot of us project. We think that it’s so much bigger than it actually is and it’s very simple it’s just getting and opening up and taking advantage of the gaps that we have in our day.
Sid: And I like the way you say this, “Where not just speaking a language into the air we’re talking to God! Elaborate just for a moment.
Corey: Well, Paul tells us in 1st Corinthians 14 he says, “When a man speaks in tongues he doesn’t speak to men he speaks to God.” I want you to know right now that we have a direct phone line to the Creator of the Universe; to the President of the Universe, you and I by the right the indwelling Holy Spirit and by right of that heavenly language we have a direct phone line to speak directly to God.
Sid: And not only is it a direct phone line, everything you say is perfect because it does a mind bypass and is calling Spirit to Spirit.
Corey: It’s exactly right spirit to Spirit.
Sid: Woops we’re exactly out of time pick up right here on tomorrows broadcast.
