2 Timothy 2:14 Keep reminding them of these things. Warn them before God against quarreling about words; it is of no value, and only ruins those who listen.
1 Timothy 6:4 he is conceited and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions
The subject of speaking in tongues has caused many heated debates for years and years and the scripture above warns us about quarreling about words. Some people believe speaking in tongues is for today and some people believe it is not. Everyone has the right to their beliefs and we should all be respectful of that. I am going to share my own personal experience with speaking in tongues.
When I became a Christian the Holy Spirit came and dwelt in my temple….my body. This is a wonderful gift that God has given us…. to have His Spirit living inside of us. I’m so grateful for this gift that is given to all believers. It’s how we are guided, taught, comforted, encouraged and how we can be connected and interact with God Himself. The Holy Spirit is an awesome power and He is in us….wow! This enables us to abide in Christ and He abides in us. Speaking in Tongues for me is an added benefit to the Holy Spirit that is already dwelling in me. My experiences with God are enhanced because of the Holy Spirit’s infilling me in this special way.
When my husband and I committed ourselves to the Lord in 1984, we wanted so much of God. We did a lot of bible studying and were at church with our kids almost every time the church was opened. We were assigned a deacon who helped us along in our Christian walk as newly committed Christians. Our deacon spent time with us talking about the things of God. My husband had been Catholic and I had been Lutheran and we had very little knowledge of speaking in tongues except seeing some relative’s speaking in tongues at funerals in our past. We told the deacon we would like to join the church (it was a Pentecostal church) but we were not going to do that speaking in tongues thing. The deacon just smiled and said OK.
But…..as we became so overwhelmed with the presence of the Lord at every service and at home in our private time of bible study and prayer, we started to want more of the presence of the Lord. One night my husband went to church without me and when he arrived back home that night he had a look on His face that I knew something had changed in him. I asked Him what happened and he said he was speaking in tongues in church. The kids and I asked him to do this for us and we all sat down on the couch in the living room and he prayed and spoke in tongues and we were so amazed.
It sounded so beautiful….so heavenly. So now I wanted that too and for weeks I prayed until I too was able to speak in tongues. The experience of this is so amazing to me even all these years later. These foreign odd words just seem to flow from deep inside me to out of my mouth. I have the original words that I say from when I started speaking in tongues but the words expands into longer phrases the longer and deeper into prayer I get. If I worship the Lord in tongues it can change to be more beautiful and then lead into singing in tongues. If I’m praying hard for an urgent need for someone then the tongues get loud and powerful. I don’t lose control of myself and can stop speaking at anytime.
In my early years I have spoken in tongues out loud in public church prayer meetings and this is something I have learned not to do unless there is interpretation of the tongues for the purpose of encouraging the body or prophesying. Tongues are mostly for private prayers.
One night when I spoke out loud in tongues in church, there was a woman who spoke Chinese and she said she recognized some of the words I spoke as being a very old Chinese language. There have been a few time that I have gone to pick up my order at a Chinese restaurant and I wanted to start speaking in tongues to see if they understood me and maybe the tongues would be about Jesus….but I have never worked up the nerve to do that……Many of you are saying right now….Thank God!!…..I know…LOL.
In my personal prayer times I have spoken many different dialects and I’m so amazed! I don’t know what I’m saying, but I do know this….I trust what God through His Holy Spirit is doing and saying in me. God is not going to hurt me or cause me to be confused so I just let Him do in me what He wants to do and I let go and let God have His way with me. I so trust my God like that….I trust Him.
I heard a sermon from a preacher a few years ago and he gave this advice which I totally agree with….he said speak in tongues often. I believe he said this because speaking in tongue is so supernatural that to speak it often keeps reminding us how supernatural our God is and that speaking in tongues build us up in our own spirit.
So I’m going to end this here…but I want to say… I love speaking in tongues and I’m so blessed by this presence of the Lord in my life in this way. This does not make me anymore special than anybody else and it doesn’t mean if you don’t do it that there is a problem, because it’s not! If you are a Christian then you have the Holy Spirit in you now. We are all different and have different experiences with our wonderful God. The main thing is that we all worship, praise, glorify Him with all the honor that is due Him for being our creator and Most Holy Father God!!!!!!
