Speaking in Tongues

Hall said:

This may seem strange, but I believe it it may also be God and His angels language. The reason being that my wife often has dreams that she is in heaven, I can hear her have conversations with God in tongues while she sleeps.

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i bet its awesome to hear her doing that

Solomons Porch said:

i bet its awesome to hear her doing that

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It's different that's for sure. She often gives me a verse God tells her to give me when it happens while sleeping. She speaks in tongues, then translates the verse in English. I always ask in the morning what she was dreaming of and she says that she often goes to the same place, a green pasture with tall grass slowly moving back and forth, a lot of light, she sees angels glorifying God's name all dressed in white and flying around, then she arrives at God's feet, but her head is always facing down not able to look at Him. She only sees the end of His white robe, and He begins to speak to her, and she speaks back to Him. And thats when I hear her having conversations in tongues.

Hall said:

It's different that's for sure. She often gives me a verse God tells her to give me when it happens while sleeping. She speaks in tongues, then translates the verse in English. I always ask in the morning what she was dreaming of and she says that she often goes to the same place, a green pasture with tall grass slowly moving back and forth, a lot of light, she sees angels glorifying God's name all dressed in white and flying around, then she arrives at God's feet, but her head is always facing down not able to look at Him. She only sees the end of His white robe, and He begins to speak to her, and she speaks back to Him. And thats when I hear her having conversations in tongues.

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Ive seen alot of things but never that, Im sure thats an awesome experience for her, no doubt.

Btw Brianna0013 I like your spirit and you gonna go places girly, keep it up, my HSRADAR picks up good things for you

Briana0013 said:

I ask because when I am about to speak in tongues , my jaw starts to move. Every time thus far it hasn't been intentional. It's also like I'm not controlling my mouth movements in any way. I just feel the muscles tugging and then they move. My heartbeat speeds up, and I go until it just stops. I haven't exactly learned how to intentionally speak in tongues, or to do it really in prayer , I'm not really sure how to explain it.

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32 And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets.1 Cor 14:32

all gifts of the spirit are subject to the person holding the gift. It should not operate unless you are willing it to. I speak in tongues and it's only when I want to. Never is it against my will

Solomons Porch said:

Ive seen alot of things but never that, Im sure thats an awesome experience for her, no doubt.

Btw Brianna0013 I like your spirit and you gonna go places girly, keep it up, my HSRADAR picks up good things for you

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Yeah, I wish I could go there with her.

Hall said:

How do we know if we have the gift? I've tried before and it sounds like Im speaking in tongues but am not sure if I am only immitating the sound of it.

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faith, all gifts operate on faith. If you have the gift, you will know it.

Traveling teacher said:

In 1 corinthians
My spirit prays but my mind doesnt.....
I have spoken in tongues for 20-25 years and still dont know exactly why God gave us this gift.....
But it is in the Bible ....all the apostles had it....
All Pauls churches were taught the gift of the babtism of the HS

To answer your question i blieve our mind is limited and God gives us the gift so we can stirr up our spirits and then later enterpret what God is trying to say....
In other words I believe our minds are crnal at times and this is the wy God has to bypass our minds and speak straight ot our spirit man

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I think this scripture may help answer why The Father designated the facility of "speaking in tongues" as the sign or reference that one had been baptised by Jesus in the Holy Spirit.

"And the tongue is a fire. That world of iniquity, the tongue, is placed within us spotting and soiling our whole nature, and setting the whole round of our lives on fire, being itself set on fire by Gehenna." James 3:6

What better way to signal to the new Christian that the inner man has been cleansed by the fire of God than to take the reigns of the unruly tongue and have it give praise and honour to The Father through the Spirit within!!

God Bless you All.

Solomons Porch said:

I personally think its awesome when Im hit with grief and heartache so bad that I cant even find a human english speaking word to form, HS steps up to the plate and does it for me and most of all, I FEEL IT when HE does this and it feels powerful and brings much relief.

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But why would we need to explain ourselves when God already knows how we are feeling and thinking?

Is it solely to bring you relief? Sorry Solomon I don't mean to be an annoying brat, I just can't understand it.

-Luca said:

But why would we need to explain ourselves when God already knows how we are feeling and thinking?

Is it solely to bring you relief? Sorry Solomon I don't mean to be an annoying brat, I just can't understand it.

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Father, Son and Who? Way too often we are missing the Holy Spirit in our lives. We do believe. But we’re uncomfortable when it comes to the Spirit of God. Why? Is it too wild? Too unpredictable? Too intangible? I hear you. But would you really prefer a tamed God in a cage? Of course not. The Holy Spirit is a gift, it’s God here and now.

This hope doesn’t put us to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:5, CEB)

Our faith is not balanced if we don’t embrace all the persons of God Almighty. The triune God is a mystery. But the whole Bible talks about it from the start to the finish. We need the Father. We need the Son. And we need the Holy Spirit.

You too heard the word of truth in Christ, which is the good news of your salvation. You were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit because you believed in Christ. The Holy Spirit is the down payment on our inheritance, which is applied toward our redemption as God’s own people, resulting in the honor of God’s glory. (Eph.1:13-14, CEB)

It is indeed easy to see why we need the Father who created us and the world. And it is quite easy to understand that we do need a Savior. But why do we need the Holy Spirit?

Without the Holy Spirit we would be on our own. It’d be our responsibility to come to God, become holy, and live in God. (And we know that we can not do these things without being empowered by the Holy Spirit.) But it is not us doing these things for God. It is God, the Holy Spirit, working in us, through us, for us:

The Holy Spirit draws us to God.
The Holy Spirit prompts us to repent.
The Holy Spirit awakens faith in us.
The Holy Spirit sustains our faith in us.
The Holy Spirit guides us to make wise choices.
The Holy Spirit enables us to die daily.
The Holy Spirit bears fruit in us.
The Holy Spirit encourages and comforts us.
The Holy Spirit prays in, through, for us.
The Holy Spirit warns us.
The Holy Spirit beckons us.
The Holy Spirit empowers us.
The Holy Spirit blesses us.

That's wonderful that you received tongues, praise God! It took me a few months of asking for it until I finally realized that I was given it. I may have received it earlier too, but I was assuming at the time that the first time happens automatically, and my pastor said you do have to start physically moving your mouth before it happens.

Now I can use my prayer language anytime I want.
I even now often pray in tongues automatically without thinking about it. Like if my flesh and thoughts have an intense feeling of awkwardness, immediately the Holy Spirit starts and I speak in tongues and then any feeling of awkwardness soon passes away.

I first received the gift of tongues back in the 70s.

I had been at a spirit filled meeting earlier in the day, and then in the evening was watching television next to my fiancé and something there made my spirit grieve. Completely unaware, I started muttering under my breath and my wife pointed out that I was praying in tongues.

I started using tongues that day and it grew and grew.

As far as I'm concerned, tongues is an incredibly valuable gift as it flows from the spirit and completely bypasses the intellect.

Ever since Adam in the garden of Eden, man has been living from the Tree of Knowledge rather than the Tree of Life. By that I mean he lives from his human intellect rather than his spirit.

Most Christians also live that way, having their perspective of God and the bible based in their intellect rather than their spirit.

It is our spirit that communes with God, that's why intellectuals have such a hard time with spiritual stuff. That can be seen in the gospels and the book of Acts when the intellectual priests and Pharisees were perplexed at the wisdom and power of the unlearned fishermen apostles.

In any given circumstance we can pray as much as our brain capacity leads, but then so often come to the end of our understanding. That's the beauty and wonder of tongues. Our spirit works in the spiritual realm and has no end limit on wisdom, so we can pray till we are exhausted, knowing every word has power way beyond our intellect.

Yes God already knows what is in our hearts, but prayer warfare is part of a judicial process in heaven, therefore speaking it out is essential for it to have power.

About 25 years ago, my wife and I were asked by a close friend to pray long distance for a relative of hers that we did not know. There was a critical health issue at stake.

We started to pray in English about the things we knew as facts. I discerned a spirit of death over the man so we started to rebuke it in the name of Jesus.

We then started to pray in tongues, and yes, tongues is not just reserved for speaking to God, it also includes angelic tongues, so I was rebuking the demons using tongues.

I was standing in our living room with my eyes closed facing the window while speaking in tongues in a very animated fashion.

My wife was sitting on the sofa, also eyes closed praying in tongues.

As I continued in the battle, I suddenly found that I had been transported into a vision of an extremely hot arid place. The sky was red and hot and I was standing in the street of a township consisting of what looked like low adobe flat roofed shacks.

At the other end of the street was a very evil entity. I couldn't actually discern its exact form but I knew it was the spirit of death that I was attacking.

As I spoke the words in tongues, I was bending down picking up rocks from the street (ie. the living room carpet) and violently throwing them at this demon, (ie. out of the living room window).
In response it was ducking and diving trying to avoid being hit, all the time retreating further and further away from me.

My tongues plus the rocks were clearly painful and driving it away.

My wife, who throughout this time had also been at war in tongues, suddenly broke into English with, "We stone you out of the town!"

I was jolted back down to earth.

When I asked, she described to me the exact same vision location that I had been in, doing the same thing, although neither had seen the other.

Briana0013 said:

I ask because when I am about to speak in tongues , my jaw starts to move. Every time thus far it hasn't been intentional. It's also like I'm not controlling my mouth movements in any way. I just feel the muscles tugging and then they move. My heartbeat speeds up, and I go until it just stops. I haven't exactly learned how to intentionally speak in tongues, or to do it really in prayer , I'm not really sure how to explain it.

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I think you should return to the basics. Praying in tongues is an act of pure faith in the promise: "These signs shall follow those who believe...they shall speak in other tongues." Here are the basic steps to receiving the ability"
1. Believe that it is God's will for you
2. Ask for the ability to speak in tongues
3. Receive it.
4. Then start speaking in faith.
You might have to make the first sounds yourself, then when the Holy Spirit starts flowing through you, the fluent language will come.

What you are doing is not faith. God does not take control of your mouth and jaw. Also, when the Holy Spirit flows through you, you sense a great peace and joy, not a rise of tension, stress and blood pressure. If I was assisting a person and they had that happen to them, I would stop them and guide them the right way. I told a group I was assisting to speak with expression, not just from their lips but from right down in their stomachs. One guy started speaking like a Japanese with constipation. He then said that his stomach hurt. I corrected him and said it was the expression, like thinking of an important prayer request and using tongues to express that request to God. He then got the point and the tongues flowed out of him with that sense of peace and joy that came with it.

Remember what God said to Moses when he was on his face pleading with God as the Egyptian armies were approaching. God told him to get up off his face, and use the rod that was in his hand. Moses then had to lift the rod over the Red Sea and it parted. Note that the rod did not lift itself, neither did God lift the rod for him. Moses lifted the rod in faith and God did the impossible.

After taking the three steps of faith, YOU have to do what you couldn't do before. YOU have to start talking. Then and only then will the Holy Spirit start flowing through you with a fluent language.

-Luca said:

What is the point in tongues Solomon? I feel like it is a pretty useless gift...but isn't it?

By the way I hope you are doing yourself well :]

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Tongues is a prayer language that is prayed to God in private. It enhances one's prayer life. It is a way of having direct communication with God when you run out of things to say but still feel the need to lift up your heart to God. Paul says that the use of private tongues builds up the believer in his most holy faith. The use of tongues is the gateway to the other spiritual gifts. It brings a person right into the presence of God and opens the heart and spirit to hearing the voice of God. It causes the person to develop the discernment between truth and error. It causes deeper insight into the written word of God. We don't see this happening right away in the same way when we train for powerlifting in the gym. We don't see ourselves getting stronger during one or two sessions, but over six months we realise that we can deadlift, backsquat and benchpress heavier weights. The increase in strength has been going on gradually all the time. This is how tongues causes the believer to be built up in his faith, knowledge of the Word, discernment, love, peace, joy, and all the other fruit of the Spirit.

Hall said:

That's the way it happens with my wife also, she doesn't try it just happens every now and then especially when in deep prayer, it takes over.

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What she doesn't realise is that her faith in prayer rises to the level when she can pray in tongues. But in reality, she can pray in tongues any time. I think she is waiting for a particular feeling before she does. That is not faith in the Word; it is faith in a feeling. The Word says that the signs that follow believers are...that they speak in other tongues. This means that she doesn't have to wait for a particular devotional feeling in order to start praying in tongues. I just wonder if it is shonky teaching about tongues that causes a person to think that they to feel a certain way before they can pray in tongues. When I want to pray about something and don't know what to say I ask God to guide my tongue and then I express the prayer in tongues. It is not long before I can express in English what I want to pray. It seems that tongues opens my mind and gives me expression to get right to the heart of a matter in prayer. This is why I pray in tongues and English, and I am the one who decides which. Remember that what is not of faith does not please God. Faith is then doing something without having any devotional feeling. You can feel as cold as a fish and yet pray very effectively in tongues.

Hall said:

How do we know if we have the gift? I've tried before and it sounds like Im speaking in tongues but am not sure if I am only immitating the sound of it.

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Use these three steps of faith:
1. Believe it is God's will for you to speak in tongues
2. Ask for the ability
3. Tell God you receive it into your life.
Then, on the basis of that, start speaking. You will then know that you are not just making it up because you are doing on the basis of the faith steps you have just taken. You will find that a new fluency in tongues will flow out of you and you will be amazed at where the words are coming from. Jesus told the woman at the well that out of her innermost being shall flow rivers of living water. That is what fluency in tongues is like. Try it. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

-Luca said:

But I dont understand. It confuses me so much. So God's spirit is talking through you to talk to himself? Why can he not just give you the strength or make something happen?

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God loves for us to have fellowship with Him. He enjoys us being in His presence. In His presence is fullness of joy. Tongues is an ability to pray from your spirit to God. It is an ability given by the Holy Spirit. It is not the Holy Spirit praying through you. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit helps your spirit to express its deepest desires to God. Paul says that when we pray with our spirit, we speak mysteries to God. This is deep fellowship with God. Paul says that he prays with his spirit (tongues) and with his understanding. We don't necessarily have to ask for anything, but just the enjoyment of just fellowshiping with our Father in heaven is one of the greatest privileges and pleasures we will ever have. When I used to live near a long beach, I used to just wander along that isolated beach and just enjoy fellowshiping with God. Those were some of the best times I have ever spent in His presence. I prayed in tongues and English and loved every moment of it. I got the sense that God loved every moment of it too.

You see, we have a mind. When we pray in English, we are praying from our mind. Paul called it his understanding. But we also have a spirit, and it is there where God speaks to us, and our mind interprets what God has said to our spirit. He is a Spirit, so He communicates Spirit to spirit. When we pray in tongues we are communicating with God spirit to Spirit. When we do that, we develop a greater sensitivity to the voice of God in our spirit and our mind is being transformed to be more aware of what God is saying to our spirit. That is the absolute value of tongues.

Traveling teacher said:

It would be good to get into a holy spirit tongue speaking church invironment and get some training....

I first spoke in tongues in my 20s and some from my conservative background talked me out of it....
The gift lay dormant for nearly 10 years......
Now i am constantly praying in tonges to get boosted in the Spirit and are currently visiting a. AG church as my wife and i have been in secastion church for some years......

Congrats on the babtism of the Hs. I have been talking to my 19 year old daughter for years to get her to seek the gift of tongues.......
Interesting her name is BreAnna

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Give her the three steps of faith which I have outlined an other post on this thread and she will be speaking fluently in two shakes of a lamb's tail.

-Luca said:

Good question!

I wonder what would happen if you went back into sin temporarily or you have backslided, would the gift vanish?

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Nope. After 12 years in the Pentecostal movement I became very disillusioned over events that happened to me, and I rejected it and went over to a traditional church. One thing I couldn't do was to stop speaking in tongues! This convinced me that what I had was from God and not from a Pentecostal church. In fact, I realised that tongues was not a Pentecostal thing but a New Testament ability that was not limited to one religious denomination. I also spent a storm and stress period in my life where I was not living up to God's standards for me, but all during that time, I never lost the ability to pray in tongues. I reckon that praying in tongues got me through it, turned the "Titanic" around and got me on the spiritual straight and narrow again with God. Also, the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. Once God has given the ability to speak in tongues, He will never take it from you.