In an age where the headlines feel darker by the day, many Christians are wrestling with a question they can’t shake: How do we fight what we can’t see?
On the Directed Life podcast, Kap Chatfield and Luke Reelfs discuss how the answer isn’t found in another outrage cycle or another deep dive into corruption. It’s found in a spiritual weapon the Western church has often neglected: praying in tongues.
“There are things going on around us that we can’t see that have more authority over what happens in the world than we realize,” Chatfield says early in the conversation. He insists that praying in tongues, as Scripture teaches, is vital for fighting our spiritual battles.
When co-host Reelfs asked the question many Christians quietly wonder, he didn’t dance around it: “Can everybody do this? Is it a little more of one of those gifts where it’s like not everybody has the same gift?” Chatfield’s response was clear: “Every Holy Spirit-filled believer can access a personal prayer language to edify themselves at all times.”
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Chatfield frames the current moment as a pressure cooker—one that is tempting believers to react emotionally rather than respond spiritually. “We are being trained like a cat with a laser pointer,” he warns, describing how constant breaking news conditions people to fixate, panic and move on, only to repeat the cycle again. The result, he says, is soul exhaustion—and spiritual distraction.
Instead, Chatfield says Christians are being called back into a deeper dimension of prayer. “Prayer isn’t a last resort. It’s a first response,” he says. And the specific focus of this episode is what he calls an “undertaught” form of warfare: “Praying in tongues is one of the most effective forms of spiritual warfare that helps us build things and tear down things and create pathways.”
He grounds the practice biblically, pointing to Jesus’ words: “In Mark 16:17, Jesus says… ‘And these signs will follow those who believe in my name… They will speak with new tongues.’” From there, he walks listeners through Acts 2 and 1 Corinthians 12–14, arguing tongues function both corporately (with interpretation) and privately, as personal edification.
One of his central claims is that praying in tongues bypasses mental limitation. Quoting Paul, Chatfield says: “For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful.” That, he explains, is why it can feel strange at first—because the mind observes while the spirit prays.
And in warfare, he says, that matters.
“It is an unintelligible language,” Chatfield notes. “We don’t even know what we’re praying. The devil doesn’t know what we’re praying, but God knows what we’re praying.” He calls it “an unhackable source code”—a way to pray mysteries, align with God’s will and strengthen the inner man.
At the end, Chatfield keeps the invitation simple: ask God in faith, worship privately and yield your tongue. “Your mind will tell you you’re crazy… Your mind will tell you it’s fake,” he says, “and that’s when you just have to keep pressing through.”
In a world shaken by visible chaos and invisible battles, we cannot afford to fight with natural weapons alone. Scripture reminds us that we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers—and that kind of warfare demands spiritual firepower.
Praying in tongues is not emotional excess or spiritual hype; it is divine partnership. It is yielding our limitations to the Holy Spirit, allowing Him to pray the perfect will of God through us when we cannot see, cannot understand and cannot articulate the need.
Abby Trivett is a writer and editor for Charisma Media and has a passion for sharing the gospel through the written word. She holds two degrees from Regent University, a B.A. in Communication with a concentration in Journalism and a Master of Arts in Journalism. She is the author of the upcoming book, The Power of Suddenly: Discover How God Can Change Everything in a Moment. For interviews and media inquiries, please contact [email protected].
