May I tell you how the gift of tongues operates through me?
When I received the baptism of the Holy Ghost, I felt a tremendous power, like nothing I had ever known before. This unseen power began to move my physical body back and forth. Now, I could have resisted it, and stopped it, if I had chosen to. But I chose to yield, because I knew this was not evil. I had known God for many years. I knew the Bible. And I knew this was God, and I knew it was biblical.
I also knew that Jesus promised a true child of God may ask, and will receive, the genuine Holy Ghost. It is impossible for a child of God to ask the Father for the Holy Spirit, and then to receive a serpent from the Devil! Luke 11:12-13
so, I yielded to the power of God. He took all the power out of my physical body, to stand in His presence. I fell and yielded to the Holy Spirit, and spoke in a full language I had never known, for 2 hours. It felt like water rushing through my soul. When the torrent ceased, I felt so clean. So peaceful. So in unity with God. So loved.
The language? It sounded a lot like Italian. It had sentences, expression, emotion, inflection. All that a language contains.
Since then, God has given me the gift of various kinds of tongues. It flows when I am in intercession.
When I go into prayer, I will pray in English (with the understanding) until I feel the urge to allow the Spirit to take over my tongue (also with the Spirit). And what comes out is not of my own volition. I hear myself making sounds I never think up. And I hear a "kind" of language... it usually starts out in something related to Italian, like I first spoke in. But then, I feel the burden to pray for another person or situation, and I will pray in English all I know to pray. And then, again, the Holy Spirit will take over, but this time, I will hear a completely different type of language coming out. I have spoken in probably 10 or more different kinds of tongues. Oriental, African, German-type, Spanish-sounding, and others I have no way to categorize.
All of this is without my choosing which sounds my tongue will form. I hear myself saying a few words I recognize, such as Hallelujah, or Yeshua, or Elohim. But I don't know what I'm saying.
All I know is that as I speak in tongues, the power of God rests heavier and heavier on me, until sometimes it takes my breath away, like I am in the very holy of holies.
God has given me the gift of interpretation, but I have done it only one time. As He willed. Not as I chose.
It's not about me. It's about the power of God.
I once was on the way home from work, and the Spirit fell on me, and I had a split-second vision of three vehicles high overhead, on a mountain road, with a guardrail. The place I was standing in the vision was at the bottom of a very steep incline, and it was a dense mature pine forest. Very unusual setting... I knew to pray for the people in the center vehicle, a white pickup truck.
I heard myself shouting desperately in tongues, praying for those people in the white pickup. I didn't know who they were, or what was happening. Then the burden lifted.
I got home, showered, and barely got to Bible study in time. But there was a big disturbance. Pastor and my close friend, Juanita, were leaving... her brother had been in an accident. At the end of Bible Study, they returned. Her brother, whom I did not know, had narrowly missed death. There had been a 3-vehicle accident on a winding mountain road on which I had never been. His white pickup had gone head-first down into the woods, off the road. But he missed all the big trees, and hit only saplings, which slowed his descent. His wife and he walked away with only seatbelt burns.
A few days later, I was riding with my Pastor and his wife, to go visit another church. And they took this mountain road where I had never been on before. We came to a spot I recognized! It was precisely the spot I had seen in my vision! the mature pine forest, on a very steep incline--at least a 60 degree incline. And there was the guardrail--exactly as I had seen it in the vision. I began crying out that this was the spot I had seen.
But that was not where the accident had happened.
The accident happened actually about 1/2 mile further on. there was no guard rail there. And the forest was mainly young, deciduous trees, with a few very large ones. There was a fence the pickup had broken through. And the incline was only about 35 to 40 degrees.
This puzzled me for months. I asked the Lord why He had shown me a place where it didn't happen.
His answer was very clear: the accident would have happened at the place I saw in the vision, if I had not prayed. He would have flipped over the guard rail, and down that cliff to his death. God wanted the accident to only wake this man up spiritually. Not take his life. The enemy wanted his life.
But God dropped it onto me, to pray... in tongues.
It saved the life of my best friend's brother.