How to Authentically Speak in Tongues

1. The best way to illustrate how to speak in tongues is to share my own testimony of Spirit baptism. But first readers may find it helpful to read about my 3 prior childhood encounters with the Spirit that prepared me for BY FAR the best experiential day of my life: (1) There was no children's church in Calvary Temple. So I was a squirmy unhappy 5-year-old when I was forced to sit through a 1 1/2 hour long Pentecostal Sunday worship service week after week. In frustration my parents stayed home one July Sunday and I was ecstatic. I rode my little tricycle up and down the block, noticing the newly polished blue Chevy with huge tailfins parked behind the Jewish shoe store on the corner. I delighted in how it shone in the sunlight and returned to renew my delight again and again.
2. 
   Then it happened. As I again approached the Chevy, my attention was suddenly directed to a patch of blue sky next to the sun. Wave after wave of liquid love surged through my being, as I suddenly became aware that there really was a God who loved me. I told my parents about my experience, but it didn't register--until neighbors later came over and expressed delight in my testimony to God's love to their own little children.
   
   I still hated church and used to sneak out to buy life savers and browse comic books at the little store across the street from the church. After a while, the storekeeper shooed me out and I vividly recall standing outside the store, sucking on my life savers and pondering the meaning of life.
   (2) At age 11. I decided to please my parents by requesting water baptism. I had to attend catechetical classes and was the only child present. I recall all the abstract talk of propitiation, justification, and sanctification, which added up to so much excruciation for me because I had no clue what those big words meant. The teacher told us (quoting Colossians) that we needed to be "circumcised in spirit," which might have been meaningful if I'd known what circumcision is!
   
   Finally, 11 adult men and one child (me) were baptized in a Sunday evening service before 1,5OO people. I was terrified, especially because we were all expected to share our personal testimonies and I was too nervous to address that huge crowd. When my time finally came to wade out in the huge baptismal tank behind the pulpit, I was afraid my black robe would float up, exposing my nakedness. I was humiliated when the pastor asked me to share my testimony because I was the only one who declined to do so. So the pastor asked me some catechetical questions about what I believed instead. By this time, humiliated, I just wanted to get it over with. But after being dunked, I emerged from the water to be greeted by a vision of a smiling Jesus--the only waking vision I have ever had. He conveyed both amusement and empathy at my predicament and His presence transformed an embarrassing experience into one of the most sacred moments of my life. Like Jesus, I had experienced a vision of the divine at my baptism.
   
   (3) These 2 ecstatic and visionary childhood experiences made me hungry for more of God, or rather, more direct encounters with God. Bible reading and sermons didn't fulfill this need; so my attention was riveted to messages in tongues and the interpretations that often highlighted Communion service after Sunday morning worship. I was thrilled by the prospect of hearing direct revelation from Jesus that was relevant to my life. I had one of 2 reactions to Jesus' so-called messages through tongues: either I was profoundly moved to tears the moment the speaker erupted in tongues or I froze as if confronted by a cobra the moment the message was given. I just ached to hear the real thing. Unfortunately, my negative reactions far outnumbered the awesome blessings and this triggered doubts not only about the genuineness of the gifts of the Spirit, but about whether the Bible really contained God's Word after all. My skepticism was increased by the fact that these negative discernments usually applied to interpretations of tongues given by authoritative denominational leaders. Decades later, I came to realize that the Lord had in fact given this 12-14 year-old this gift of spiritual discernment. These doubts were compounded by exposure to evolutionary theory and apparent errors and contradictions in Scripture and my faith crisis became so severe that I think I would have permanently lost my faith and become an agnostic, were it not for an unbelievably awesome experience of Spirit baptism at age 16, which was BY FAR the highlight of my life. I will recount the build-up to that experience in my next planned post.

1. (4) In desperation at age 16, I sought to regain my devastated faith by attending the Pentecostal camp meetings at Manhattan Beach on Pelican Lake (Manitoba). Of course, speaking in uninterpreted tongues was not allowed during the public evening services, but we were encouraged to tarry at the altar after the service to seek God's face. When I tarried there, I was determined not to succumb to wishful thinking by just "stepping out in faith" and speaking in tongues. So I just waited there, pleading with God to make Himself real to me, but with no expectation of a divine answer. Then on Tuesday, I went on a 7-mile prayer walk toward the nearest town (Ninette) during which I made 2 points clear to God: (1) If I was going to serve Him, I needed to do so with integrity; so I needed Him to make Himself real to me to prevent me from renouncing my faith. (2) I promised Him that if He made Himself real to me, I'd serve Him with all my heart and mind throughout my life.
   
   When I returned to the campground, I was very hungry and went to the refectory to buy dinner. Then the thought occurred to me to do something I'd never done in my young life--to fast instead and put my dinner money in the evening offering. After the evening service, I dutifully went to the altar and knelt woodenly in unexpectant prayer, resisting every impulse to surrender to contrived wishful thinking. Then a strange thing happened--I felt what I assumed was an evening breeze coming into the amphitheater off the adjacent lake. But it was no ordinary breeze; it was the wind of the Holy Spirit enveloping my entire being, possessing me and compelling me to speak in tongues at the top of my voice. Wave after wave of liquid love surged through me, each wave more intense than the last! It was a hundred times sweeter and more powerful experience of God's love than anything I have experienced before or since. At one point it seemed like my mind was about to be absorbed in God mind and this was marvelous yet terrifying because it felt like me ego was about to be extinguished in the absorption. I have no doubt that any of my readers had this experience they'd view it as the happiest and most spiritually profound experience of their lives!
   
   By now the amphitheater was darkening and I noticed a man and a woman sitting nearby. I asked the woman why she was staring at me and she replied, "Don't you know? Your face is glowing in the dark!" A Lutheran pastor approached me and said, "I'm just here as an interested observer and I don't believe in speaking in tongues, but I can see that God is doing something special in your life." Rather than argue with him, I gently touched him on the forhead and he just exploded in other tongues.
   
   
2. I soon realized that God had been speaking to me through this experience. He said, "Son, you're desperate for answers to your difficult burning questions, but right now such answers aren't good for you because you need to live from your heart rather than your head. Instead, I want you to just live with the big questions until they lead you to the center of my heart."
   Then I realize that this tongues experience had transformed my mind and I received a word of knowledge that I would be acknowledged has having the highest academic average in the province in my senior year of high school. A blown-up photo of the premier of Manitoba, Duff Roblyn, shaking my hand at my graduation in acknowledgement of this achievement sits on my living room table as a testimony to God's grace and transforming power. The scholarships arising from that achievement helped finance my long educational pilgrimage (MDiv--Princeton, doctorate in New Testament and Judaism--Harvard). Thanks be to God for His grace and faithfulness!

John Caldwell said:

THE MISUNDERSTOOD SIGN SIGNIFICANCE OF TONGUES IN 1 CORINTHIANS 14:21-22:

Let me explain why you and other readers don't seem tp get Paul's point about the "sign" significance of tongues and prophecy in 14:21-22. To make his point Paul quotes Isaiah 28:11-12. The NRSV footnote on Isaiah speaks for many commentaries on Isaiah in explaining Isaiah's intent in 28:11-12:
"Since the leaders rejected as unintelligible nonsense the prophet's simple message that would have given them rest (see Isa. 30:15), God will speak to them in the incomprehensible [uninterpreted] "stammering lips" and "alien tongue" of the Assyrians."

So the uninterpreted public tongues of the Corinthians are an unfortunate "sign" against unbelievers precisely because these tongues are likewise incomprehensible. Paul doesn't want tongues to function as a "sign" in this way because he wants unbelievers to get saved! Paul wants tongues to function as a sign for believers: "These SIGNS shall follow THOSE WHO BELIEVE...They shall speak with new tongues (Mark 16:17)." Similarly, note that just as prophecy is a "sign for believers," it is also a sign for unbelievers whose "secret sins are exposed by prophecy, making them acknowledge that "God is truly in your midst (1 Cor. 14:24-25)."
Note too that Acts never identifies tongues as a "sign." To be sure, it functions as a sign on the Day of Pentecost, but only because onlookers hear their own languages spoken by believers. The tongues at Ephesus are uttered in private by a small group of "disciples" (Acts 19:1-6) and are neither understood nor interpreted.

A RESPONSE TO JOHN'S OTHER COMMENTS:
John Caldwell: "I agree Paul wished all had the gift of tongues and prophesy."

It's more than a wish. Paul tells the Corinthians that they "can ALL prophesy" (14:31). Paul's wish reflects Moses' wish in Num. 11:29 "that all the Lord's people were prophets"--a wish that Jews treated as a prophecy to be fulfilled when the Messiah came. The prophethood of all believers is widely taught by the early church. But that is a subject for a separate thread.


John Caldwell: "The greater gift, of course, is love."

No, "love" is not identified as a "gift" (Greek: "charisma"), but rather as a "fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22)." The "more excellent way" is not "love" as opposed to "spiritual gifts;" rather, as 13:1-2 shows, "love" is the more excellent way to exercise gifts like speaking in tongues and prophecy, i. e. for the church's edification.

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John Caldwell said:

No, Paul is clear that tongues is a sign for the unbeliever as opposed to prophesy being a sign to believers. This is also exactly how tongues operated in every example in Scripture.
Nope! No unbelievers are present for the tongues spoken by the Ephesian "disciples." And the scholarly consensus establishes tongues as a "sign for unbelievers" only in the sense that the Assyrian "stammering lips" and "alien tongue" are uninterpreted and there not understood. Thus, Paul's citation of Isaiah 28:11-12 makes "tongues" an undesirable "sign" in the sense that Paul wants unbelievers present in worship to understand what is going on, unlike in the Corinthian church.

Besides, you completely ignored Jesus' identification of "tongues" as a "sign" for believers in Mark 16:17. And you ignored the point that the secret sins of unbelievers are exposed by prophecy, resulting in their acknowledgement that "God is truly in your midst." So prophecy is also a sign for unbelievers. All this means that Paul's citation of Isaiah 28:11-12 is in no way relevant to the legitimacy of speaking in private prayer tongues.

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