Finally!

Ahhh - the controversy in many churches and among many Christians - speaking in tongues. Does it still exist? Is everyone supposed to do it? Is it to be used opening in church?

I have to say, I've had a lot of experiences with this particular subject and am very firm and sure in what I believe regarding it. Several experiences in my past have caused me to really stop & read the Bible to see what I think God says about this subject.

My first experience with the subject of speaking in tongues came when I was a new Christian. I went to the youth group at a large church, New Life Church (yes, the same one that Ted Haggard preached at in Colorado Springs, CO). Back in 1991 I went to their youth group for a short time called TAG. At any rate, NL is a rather charismatic church and speaking in tongues is something you will routinely hear during worship services. During the youth group they asked for people to raise their hands if they had not been baptized in the Holy Spirit with evidence of speaking in tongues. As a new Christian who knew NOTHING about this subject, I raised my hand. If God was offering something, I wanted it. I didn't realize what I was in for. They had all of us go into a back room where we were matched with a counselor. The girl that was matched with me told me to clear my mind & let whatever come out of my mouth, come out. (WRONG WRONG WRONG teaching but we'll get to that later). After what felt like and eternity of her sitting there praying in tongues "over me" and trying to get me to speak in tongues, I just mumbled some junk, pretending to speak in tongues, so I could get out of there.

My next experience came during college when I was working with our campus prison ministry. I walked into a ministry that was going into prisons through another organization (I'm not going to name the ministry although I can guarantee that most have not heard of it - it's not Prison Fellowship). After going on several small trips to prisons, I thought this was a pretty okay ministry - no real red flags - so I helped organize a trip for about 70-100 students to go to men's & women's prisons in Texas. Now, I went to a non-denominational Christian college but most people probably were in the tongues-ceased-at-the-end-of-the-apostolic-age crew or they just didn't know anything about the subject so the events of that weekend were very challenging.

We get to the pre-prison rally and some very well-known Charismatic preachers (husband/wife) were there. Ughh - I can't remember what exactly they were preaching on but I was so disgusted that I walked out. It was blatantly wrong. Later the ministry passed us out the tracts that we were going to take into the prisons. The first one was the standard "Four Spiritual Laws" tract but the next one really stirred the pot - "You've hear the good news, but have you heard the best news." You open it to discover that the "best" news is the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues.

EXCUSE ME? That's BETTER than what Jesus did for us on the cross? SERIOUSLY???!

Well, we got on the bus, took up all of those tracts and told our fellow students to just stick to the gospel and the Four Spiritual Laws tract.

The next day we get to the prison and what an experience. I honestly can't think of another time when I was as shocked. Several of our girls were talking with some of the ministry "regulars" and it came out that they did not believe in speaking in tongues. The "regulars" then made sure that none of these girls got the opportunity to speak to the prisoners without one of them there. In addition, I witnessed several "regulars" telling the prisoners that they needed to get saved and asked them to "repeat after them" the sinner's prayer and then they moved right into speaking in tongues - "Now you need to speak in tongues, REPEAT AFTER ME." No exaggeration!

In light of the first experience I had and then this current experience, I really decided to see what the Bible said about this subject myself. It was important to me to know what I believed on it and why. I was never comfortable in churches where you could sit there and hear the majority of the people speaking in tongues nor was I comfortable being in churches that taught that speaking in tongues no longer existed.

I do think that the gift of speaking in tongues exists today but I think that it is abused and misrepresented.

Where am I going with all this talk???

This morning in church, Pastor Pat preached on the gift of tongues. It was SO STINKIN' REFRESHING. Finally, speaking in tongues laid out there as it's outlined in the Bible. If you've ever questioned this particular gift, if you aren't sure of what you believe, if you wonder what the heck I'm talking about then go HERE and listen to JULY 15 message.