Hi so today i went to church.
I had a dream and we wanted to pray about it.
So halfway in he said i get the strong feeling you can speak in tongue to.
So i did. It was verry thrilling but scary to. Since im new to all this.
He said to practice it. But i have no clue how to practice this. Do you guys have any pointers or tips.?
Back in '73 I was prayed for to receive the "Baptism in the Holy Spirit" (as we in the Full Gospel Businessman's Fellowship referred to the Acts 2:4 experience). Nothing happened.
But, about a month later during worship in a FGBMFI Dinner meeting, an "odd word" popped into my mind, so I spoke it, and then more "Odd words" began to flow as I spoke them. And I was aware that I was "speaking in a tongue", and that I wan't "making it up" personally, but it was being sourced from somewhere else (The Holy Spirit). It wasn't "Thrilling", or particularly "Emotional" in any sense. It was "just there", and I spoke it as it came.
I still do 46 years later.
For ME, there's never been any "Grand emotional feelings" connected to it. It's satisfying to know that I'm manifesting in speech something that is being given to me by the Holy Spirit. Some folks have joyously cataclysmic experiences, and some don't
It DOESN'T TAKE PRACTICE!!!! You simply Speak the words that the Holy Spirit sends into your mind.
There was a brief period of doubt, as I realized similarities between what I was speaking, and what other "tongues" had sounded like (I was afraid I was just "copying"), but remembering the beginning of the utterances, I realized that I was simply speaking WHAT THE HOLY SPIRIT provided, and wasn't copying anybody else, or "Making it up" myself. I haven't doubted since, and am aware if I'm "making sounds" out of my own mind, or flowing with the Holy Spirit.
NOTE: there's a DANGEROUS TEACHING in Pentecostal/Charismatic circles about "Priming the pump" - i.e. that you should "make random sounds", or "Talk Baby talk" in Order to "Get tongues going". This can result in a person babbling gibberish that their own mind is generating, and THINKING that It's "tongues" from the Holy Spirit - reinforced by zealous alter workers that tell them "you've got it!!"
The additional reinforcement that "something significant" had happened after I first spoke in a tongue was that, almost immediately, I found myself deeply engaged in leading Bible studies, teaching for HOURS when before that would simply have been impossible for me - I'm not "quick of tongue", and the Holy Spirit simply loaded me with what I should teach the night before, and then I gave it to the folks in the study.
I also was burdened several times to deliver Interpretation of tongues in Church service - the FIRST time, interpreting the "Tongue" of a man, whose tongues I'd written off as "Phony" (Before I ever experienced the gift myself). I got less "judgmental" after that.
As has been pointed out here (and what was probably the "Corinthian problem") is that speaking in a tongue as a personal gift,
DOES NOT MEAN you can deliver a Message in tongues in a meeting - any more that speaking English means that you can deliver "prophesy" just because you feel like it.
Apparently the Corinthians were "Showing off" their prayer tongues, and creating confusion. IF you're burdened during a service to speak in a tongue, God will "Choreograph" the service, holding it for your utterance, burdening one (That He already knows is there) to interpret, and then releasing the service flow when the Interpretor is finished.
Interpretation, and Prophesy come exactly the same way that "tongues" do - the Holy Spirit supplying directly to your mind, the first few words you're to speak (now in the common tongue) along with a "Spiritual Burden" to speak when God "holds" the service for your utterance. When you speak the few words you HAVE, then they will "flow" until the message (or your part of it, if multiple interpreters are involved) ends. You don't add to, or subtract from what the Holy Spirit gives you.
