Saturday, May 30, 2015

The Speaking in Tongues Controversy

 

There were certain circumstances I lived with growing up which afforded me heaps of time to my self which I deeply enjoyed. One, less than pleasant, circumstance which gave me a good deal of alone time as a child was IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome). I spent an inordinate amount of time in the bathroom. Sorry if that's TMI, but it's necessary with the telling of this story. Thankfully, a few years ago, God miraculously and instantaneously healed me of this painful digestive disease (a story for another time), but as a child I'm grateful for all the time alone in the bathroom it gave me. I would sit, in a good deal of pain and be driven to prayer. This was before the dawn of smart phones, so one had space to sit and simply be in the bathroom, without a thousand voices beckoning to you from your pocket.

In my pain, or patience during times of simple waiting, I'd start to pray, to talk to my Heavenly Papa and pour out my heart  without any distractions. My little private prayer closet. For whatever reason, this, more than any other time, became a place I would talk to God out loud. Speaking turned into singing over the years. The little melodies I  heard in the stillness of this place, when I'd quiet my  mind and stretch my soul heavenward, I'd pour out of my mouth accompanying my concerns, requests and thanks to God. Paul writes of singing and making melodies in your heart to the Lord. I think this is where I first learned about that.

They say everyone sounds good singing in the bathroom, maybe that's why I was confident enough to make up songs and sing out my heart to the Lord there. I wasn't embarrassed or afraid, no one was around to hear me. I wouldn't call my self good at making up songs, not in the least, but I grew bolder and more fluid in singing what felt. I'd sing as I felt was in tune with the Holy Spirit. What came in I'd simply pour out, without hesitation or worry of messing up, it was just me and a considerably gracious audience; God. Sometimes, what I felt was in sync to sing, was a string of gibberish to skat to the tune I was singing. It came pretty easy, I knew about skatting, Five Iron Frenzy and the Jazz kings I heard in my Grandpa's car told me it was perfectly normal to sing strange sounds that only made sense in your soul, words only the soul could interpret.

"Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we don't know exactly what we should pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with unworded groans (groans which words can't express)." - Rom. 8:26

I didn't grow up hearing people 'speak in tongues' at church. In fact, I'd never heard anyone pray in tongues until a few years ago. I was at a small spiritual retreat with some people I greatly respected. I sat in a table four feet from the speaker in a beautiful stone clad modern room. Small tables grouped three or four strangers together. The first speaker walked up to the podium at the front of the room. Behind him, a glass wall of windows framed a captivating view of downtown Corvallis. The speaker, Ben Pasley, took a  moment to gather and look over his notes classically collected on a yellow pad. A few moments passed. I thought I heard him  mumbling under his breath. I strained my ears but couldn't make out what he said. He began teaching and I forgot about his odd mutterings, until he paused for questions. After one was asked, he took a moment before answering and again I heard him mumbling. I was sure no one else heard him, I was the closest to him and his odd behaviour nearly escaped me observation. Was he praying in tongues? Later, we broke into groups of four or five to pray for each other and I found my self in a group with Ben. We huddled up, hands on shoulders - a good old fashioned football style man-prayer - and as the guy across from me started praying I very clearly heard Ben speaking gibberish under his breath. He was praying in tongues!

The next day between sessions I ran into Ben in a consignment  shop near the building we met at. We struck up conversation for near the first time and I asked him about the  mumblings I overheard. He admitted he had been praying in tongues. "See, it builds up your spirit man. It's like vitamins to your soul. Have you ever prayed in tongues Thomas?"

"I don't know. Maybe. I think so." I told him about my singing and skatting in the bathroom. "Maybe I was praying in tongues, I don't know."

"Sounds like it to me." I asked him to pray for that gift for me and 'impart' what he had. Sounded biblical. He put his hand on my shoulder and said a short prayer asking the Spirit to stir up the gift of tongues in me. He finished his prayer then advised me to, "Pray in the Spirit as much as you can. When you wake up, when you shower, when you're doing mundane things like the dishes or driving in the car. Ya see, it builds up your spirit man, strengthening your spirit's connection with the Holy Spirit." A picture popped in my head of a string growing thicker and thicker into a sailor's rope, connecting my spirit to God's inside my chest.

I grew up thinking God was fully and completely in charge of anything spiritual. If something supernatural was going to happen, He would do it. It was up to Him, right? He's in charge. He's God. Contrary to this idea, I'm finding that God in reality loves working in tandem with His children. YHWH the God of actuality, not in theory or idea, is a living, active, with-His-people God. I like that. Speaking in tongues, then, is not something God forces on us. He doesn't overpower us and move our mouths to speak. Rather, when I connect my spirit to His and speak the sounds I feel in my heart, however strange they sound, it's a choice. I open my mouth and join with Him to pray. Of course we can mess up. Sometimes, maybe I am just making up gibberish and it's not from God. I'm learning that that's Okay. We get to stumble and trip when we're learing to walk in the Spirit, just like when we're learning to walk as a baby. I have a little niece who's just about at that stage. I was on the phone with my Big Brother last night and he couldn't stop talking about how his daughter is grabbing everything she can find to pull her self up to try to walk. She doesn't succeed most of the time, but she's building the necessary muscles she'll need to walk one day. The same process is true regarding spiritual matters. I may mess up at times. We're imperfect and in process. But I knew if I didn't try I'd have no chance of growing.

So when it came to learning the skill of praying in tongues, letting God's Spirit pour through my spirit words my mind couldn't process, it took time and practice. But I took Ben's words to heart and practiced listening for the river gurgling steadily through my soul; hearing it, articulating it, giving voice to it, through my heart or mouth as it felt appropriate to  do. Sometimes, I just felt the words were meant to be spoken out loud. Sometimes, it felt wrong to speak them audibly but my heart was just the right volume for them to come out at that moment. Either way, it was terrifically uncomfortable and awkward the first few weeks of daily effort. It sounded so foreign, so odd and uncomfortable. Am I just faking it and making all this gibberish up? It's so weird. SO WEIRD! For my entire life my entire culture and every voice in its history said, "If it doesn't make sense don't do it!" Our civilization is built on following reason and logic, to rational conclusions and actions. Primitive cultures act on feelings and intuition; superstition. What am I doing?! Why would I say words I don't understand? There can't be any value in this! But what if the words I'm saying do carry meaning? What if I'm learning to speak the language of my spirit, of the Holy Spirit pouring through me, praying  the perfect prayer of the moment to my Heavenly Father?
So I took my medicine regularly. Steadily, I heard the gurgling river become more crisp, loud, and clear in me. The more I did it, the more clear it sounded. When I heard good news from a friend, or a beautiful statement of God's character, the same word leapt in my heart, "Shabba!" like an 'Amen.' Was this a real language? Did this gibberish actually translate to real words in some small corner of the earth? or Heaven?

I don't know. But I can't deny that I felt more in tune with God's voice and leading. I was having more significant conversations with friends and strangers where I spoke encouragement  and what seemed like God's words of encouragement to people. One weekend a couple months into this praying in tongues exercises I hit a crescendo of praying in tongues. I was doing it constantly. Even while thinking and talking with people, the river of it was constantly flooding through my soul. This same weekend I had the most interesting weekend of my life when God worked three physical healings through me, one where I'm pretty sure I saw some angels and immediately experienced the remission of lifelong debilitating IBS (like I said earlier, that's a whole story in itself). That made me think, there's definitely more going on than me just making up gibberish on my own. Things are really happening here. So I continued to do it regularly and can say its only led to good things in the Lord.

Only one time in the last three years of praying in tongues have I felt lead to do so in a Church gathering and, surprise surprise, someone else felt like they had an interpretation. It was a beautiful admonishing experience for our community. That can happen, but most of the time it's a private prayer between me and DAD.

A handful of times I've felt God's presence strongly stirring in me to pray in Tongues, times where it's more Him than me, but usually it's been an act of my will engaging His. I grew up thinking, perhaps along with a few other people, that, "If God really wants something to happen He'll make it happen. We asked Him to heal grandma and it didn't happen, He must not have wanted to heal her, etc..." But what if there are more factors at play? What if He's waiting for us to grow and mature to engage with Him on His business in this complicated spiritual and physical world?

I've never  been bothered by the people who say you have to speak in tongues to be saved. It's always struck me as a such a silly and unbiblical idea that it didn't merit worry. I still believe that. All you need to be saved and  forgiven is to "confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved (Rom. 10:9)." That's all -- full stop. You don't need to earn or prove your salvation in any way, and I want to make that very clear. But, I also want to always remember that there is a lot more to life with God, to walking in His Kingdom, than merely 'being saved.' That's simply the beginning, the doorway into the Kingdom of God. That just gets us Born Again. We are created to be Born Again and then grow from infants into spiritually mature men and women of God, fully equipped to do the great works He's prepared for us to do (Eph. 4:11-13). The Father has so many gifts waiting for us to open and mature in. We don't get punished if we don't open them--our salvation is not at risk. But we can miss out good and beautiful gifts God's wrapped for us. I want everything He has for me. I want to open every gift with my name on it and learn to use it to my full potential.

Ask DAD to bring to mind a spiritual gift He wants you to open or to grow in right now. He is the giver of good gifts and He has a storehouse full of good things for you. Maybe even the gift of Tongues.

"Run after Love, and zealously pursue spiritual things...I want all of you to speak in tongues, but even more, for you all to prophesy (1 Cor. 14: 1, 5)."

nearly escaped me observation. Was he praying in tongues? Later, we broke into groups of four or five to pray for each other and I found my self in a group with Ben. We huddled up, hands on shoulders - a good old fashioned football style man-prayer - and as the guy across from me started praying I very clearly heard Ben speaking gibberish under his breath. He was praying in tongues!


The next day between sessions I ran into Ben in a consignment  shop near the building we met at. We struck up conversation for near the first time and I asked him about the  mumbling I overheard. He admitted he had been praying in tongues. "See, it builds up your spirit man. It's like vitamins to your soul. Have you ever prayed in tongues Thomas?"


"I don't know. Maybe. I think so." I told him about my singing and skatting in the bathroom. "Maybe I was praying in tongues, I don't know."


"Sounds like it to me." I asked him to pray for that gift for me and 'impart' what he had. Sounded biblical. He put his hand on my shoulder and said a short prayer asking the Spirit to stir up the gift of tongues in me. He finished his prayer then advised me to, "Pray in the Spirit as much as you can. When you wake up, when you shower, when you're doing mundane things like the dishes or driving in the car. Ya see, it builds up your spirit man, strengthening your spirit's connection with the Holy Spirit." A picture popped in my head of a string growing thicker and thicker into a sailor's rope, connecting my spirit to God's inside my chest.


I grew up thinking God was fully and completely in charge of anything spiritual. If something supernatural was going to happen, He would do it. It was up to Him, right? He's in charge. He's God. Contrary to this idea, I'm finding that God in reality loves working in tandem with His children. YHWH the God of actuality, not in theory or idea, is a living, active, with-His-people God. I like that. Speaking in tongues, then, is not something God forces on us. He doesn't overpower us and move our mouths to speak. Rather, when I connect my spirit to His and speak the sounds I feel in my heart, however strange they sound, it's a choice. I open my mouth and join with Him to pray. Of course we can mess up. Sometimes, maybe I am just making up gibberish and it's not from God. I'm learning that that's Okay. We get to stumble and trip when we're learing to walk in the Spirit, just like when we're learning to walk as a baby. I have a little niece who's just about at that stage. I was on the phone with my Big Brother last night and he couldn't stop talking about how his daughter is grabbing everything she can find to pull her self up to try to walk. She doesn't succeed most of the time, but she's building the necessary muscles she'll need to walk one day. The same process is true regarding spiritual matters. I may mess up at times. We're imperfect and in process. But I knew if I didn't try I'd have no chance of growing.


So when it came to learning the skill of praying in tongues, letting God's Spirit pour through my spirit words my mind couldn't process, it took time and practice. But I took Ben's words to heart and practiced listening for the river gurgling steadily through my soul; hearing it, articulating it, giving voice to it, through my heart or mouth as it felt appropriate to  do. Sometimes, I just felt the words were meant to be spoken out loud. Sometimes, it felt wrong to speak them audibly but my heart was just the right volume for them to come out at that moment. Either way, it was terrifically uncomfortable and awkward the first few weeks of daily effort. It sounded so foreign, so odd and uncomfortable. Am I just faking it and making all this gibberish up? It's so weird. SO WEIRD! For my entire life my entire culture and every voice in its history said, "If it doesn't make sense don't do it!" Our civilization is built on following reason and logic, to rational conclusions and actions. Primitive cultures act on feelings and intuition; superstition. What am I doing?! Why would I say words I don't understand? There can't be any value in this! But what if the words I'm saying do carry meaning? What if I'm learning to speak the language of my spirit, of the Holy Spirit pouring through me, praying  the perfect prayer of the moment to my Heavenly Father?
So I took my medicine regularly. Steadily, I heard the gurgling river become more crisp, loud, and clear in me. The more I did it, the more clear it sounded. When I heard good news from a friend, or a beautiful statement of God's character, the same word leapt in my heart, "Shabba!" like an 'Amen.' Was this a real language? Did this gibberish actually translate to real words in some small corner of the earth? or Heaven?


I don't know. But I can't deny that I felt more in tune with God's voice and leading. I was having more significant conversations with friends and strangers where I spoke encouragement  and what seemed like God's words of encouragement to people. One weekend a couple months into this praying in tongues exercises I hit a crescendo of praying in tongues. I was doing it constantly. Even while thinking and talking with people, the river of it was constantly flooding through my soul. This same weekend I had the most interesting weekend of my life when God worked three physical healings through me, one where I'm pretty sure I saw some angels and immediately experienced the remission of lifelong debilitating IBS (like I said earlier, that's a whole story in itself). That made me think, there's definitely more going on than me just making up gibberish on my own. Things are really happening here. So I continued to do it regularly and can say its only led to good things in the Lord.


Only one time in the last three years of praying in tongues have I felt lead to do so in a Church gathering and, surprise surprise, someone else felt like they had an interpretation. It was a beautiful admonishing experience for our community. That can happen. But most of the time, it's a private prayer between me and DAD.


A handful of times I've felt God's presence strongly stirring in me to pray in Tongues, times where it's more Him than me, but usually it's been an act of my will engaging His. I grew up thinking, perhaps along with a few other people, that, "If God really wants something to happen He'll make it happen. We asked Him to heal grandma and it didn't happen, He must not have wanted to heal her, etc..." But what if there are more factors at play? What if He's waiting for us to grow and mature to engage with Him on His business in this complicated spiritual and physical world?


I've never  been bothered by the people who say you have to speak in tongues to be saved. It's always struck me as a such a silly and unbiblical idea that it didn't merit worry. I still believe that. All you need to be saved and  forgiven is to "confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved (Rom. 10:9)." That's all -- full stop. You don't need to earn or prove your salvation in any way, and I want to make that very clear. But, I also want to always remember that there is a lot more to life with God, to walking in His Kingdom, than merely 'being saved.' That's simply the beginning, the doorway into the Kingdom of God. That just gets us Born Again. We are created to be Born Again and then grow from infants into spiritually mature men and women of God, fully equipped to do the great works He's prepared for us to do (Eph. 4:11-13). The Father has so many gifts waiting for us to open and mature in. We don't get punished if we don't open them--our salvation is not at risk. But we can miss out good and beautiful gifts God's wrapped for us. I want everything He has for me. I want to open every gift with my name on it and learn to use it to my full potential.


Ask DAD to bring to mind a spiritual gift He wants you to open or to grow in right now. He is the giver of good gifts and He has a storehouse full of good things for you. Maybe even the gift of Tongues.


"Run after Love, and zealously pursue spiritual things...I want all of you to speak in tongues, but even more, for you all to prophesy (1 Cor. 14: 1, 5)."



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