SPEAKING IN TONGUES?

A long time ago - and we're talking about 35 years back - I visited a church that was very much into the Holy Spirit. 

At least, that was the impression I had. 

But what they were really into was speaking in tongues. AND they understood speaking in tongues to be THE litmus test proving a believer was filled with the Holy Spirit.

I didn't know my Bible all that well at the time. But now I know that such an idea finds no support in Scripture. 

I wanted desperately to have the experience of speaking in tongues. I didn't know anyone in the church and so I had nothing to lose by going forward at the end of the service to "receive the gift of tongues". 

Some folks prayed over me and, as they did, I was hoping that a jumble of unrecognized words would soon come pouring out of my mouth of their own volition. But after a few minutes of prayer, it became clear to me that if I was going to speak in tongues in that moment, it would require me faking it. 

I couldn't bring myself to do it. After all, I didn't want something fake - I wanted what was real.

Now I look back and wonder what I really hoped to experience. Upon reflection now as a 58-year-old lifelong believer, I think it was this: 

I wanted to lose myself completely. I didn't want to struggle against sin and uncertainty. I wanted to escape my own poor self-image. I wanted God to show up inside my brain, push me away from the steering wheel and take over. 

When read about how the Holy Spirit came over the crowd of disciples at Pentecost, as recorded in the opening of Acts 2, we tend to hyper fixate on the tongues of flame and the commotion of the disciples speaking in other languages. 

And if we do that, we miss what is really important about the story:

When the Spirit comes, He inspires the disciples to WITNESS about God's power and goodness and He miraculously enables them to communicate these things to the waiting world in a way that they can understand. 

Being filled with the Spirit doesn't necessarily result in speaking in unknown languages. It's about speaking and living as witnesses to the love of Jesus.