Andy Croft - The Gift Of Tongues

I don't know when you became a Christian but I became a Christian when I was seventeen sixteen seventeen and one of the things I thought initially when I became Christian is that God's done this great thing for me and now I need to live differently and try harder and be a better person and be more like him and what I found out over the following years is that I was however much I tried I I couldn't become like him just by trying and one of the things that God began to show me is that that's part of the purpose and the role of the Holy Spirit is to transform us and so you probably had a similar experiences where I imagine where you notice after a little while of following Jesus that you've begun to change and it's an amazing thing and actually can we just start the clock otherwise this could be a very long one it's an amazing thing to to understand that God loves us just as we are like the best of us and the worst of us he sees the worst of us and he stays but also that that love when it's poured into us changes who we are and so in Romans chapter 5 verse 5 it says that God pours the love of God into our hearts through the Holy Spirit and it's impossible to encounter God and encounter the Holy Spirit and not be changed it's like trying to press your face against the Sun and not get burned like if you go near the Lord he will change you and we'll each have our own version of what that's looked like in our lives and so for me what it's been is one of the big things has been just to do with my emotions so when I became a Christian for various reasons I was emotionally very shut down I've been hurt in a few different ways and I decided I made a vow one day no one will ever hurt me again and put on all this protection armor as it were to make sure that no one could could ever do that and without realizing what I did is I really shut down all emotion because you can't just shut down like pain you have to shut down joy at the same time and so by the time I became a Christian I was quite cold as a person a little bit robotic and people used to talk about me like I was this aloof and distant person who didn't care and I did care I just didn't know how to show it and I found that I couldn't change that when I realized that there was a problem what happened is God softened me and it's a little like if you you know when you come from a cold day outside and you come inside your hands are all numb what you do to warm them up as you breathe on them and it was as if when I came to know Jesus he breathed his life into me and just gradually softened me up and I discovered that being a Christian wasn't just going from being bad to being good but going from being dead to being alive again and there have been other things I have a massive and it's a journey I'm still in a fear of failure like this crippling thing that that that hobbles me in some ways because I think if I'm not successful no one's gonna love me and God's working on that one I still have battles with it regularly but gradually over time I've come to see in it in my soul not just in my head that he he really is my dad and he really does love me and I don't know what your story of change has been but it's the work of the Holy Spirit that has brought that about and what I wanted to talk about this morning is to be really practical and I supposed to ask the question all right if the Holy Spirit changes and transforms me how can I open myself up more to that transforming power and I want to get really specific so one of the ways that the Spirit works in the church is through the gifts of the Spirit and our partnering with him in that and I wanted to talk about one gift so there's loads of different ones prophecy and praying for healing but this morning I want to talk about the gift of praying and speaking in tongues and if this is something that you already do hang in there cuz I hope there'll be some stuff here that might be a refresher for you but either way this is where we're going to go so first question what is the gift of speaking in tongues and in a nutshell what it is is it's a prayer language that God gives us supernaturally and sometimes it's an actual foreign language that exists so it could be like Chinese or something but other times it's an angelic language or a heavenly language that no one on earth speaks the key point about it is that it's a language that you don't learn you don't do a GCSE or a degree in this language it simply gets given to you supernaturally by the Holy Spirit and I understand even as I say that that sounds a little bit weird doesn't it and so one of the first questions I would have if I was listening to that is Wow okay that's strange where's that in the Bible and to answer that you don't need to look any further than our family history the book of Acts and in the book of Acts on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit is poured out and we read in Acts chapter 2 verse 4 all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the spirit enabled them and that happens Acts chapter 2 on the day of Pentecost it happens elsewhere as well so Acts chapter 10 dear old Pete is given a talk to a whole load of Gentiles and halfway through his talk the Holy Spirit just interrupts him and he breaks out in power and what happens then is the Spirit comes and then also they begin to pray in tongues in that particular moment the same thing happens in Acts chapter 19 Paul meets a bunch of believers in Ephesus and they've heard about Jesus but they haven't heard about the Holy Spirit yet and so he tells them and the Holy Spirit again arrives on the scene fills them up that were told in acts 19 that they begin to prophesy and also to speak in tongues and so right off the bat what that shows us is that it's quite a normal thing in the book of Acts that when the Holy Spirit arrives people begin to pray in a prayer language he distributes these prayer languages now it doesn't have to happen it doesn't happen all the time but it's quite a natural thing and it will be a little like if some music were to come on can we have some music on please well that was not the check I was expecting genuinely but if some music come to switch that off now I'm gonna switch the sound guy after as I said give me a track we can dance soon that's why you chose so if some music comes on yeah you don't have to dance to it but it's not an unusual thing but when music happens people start dancing again it's a similar connection you don't have to pray in tongues all of us you know as Tim said so well last night we those of us who know the Lord have the Spirit of God living inside of us whether we pray in tongues that we don't pray in tongues but what we see in the book of Acts is it's quite a normal and and natural thing that when the Spirit arrives people begin to pray in prayer languages and one of the churches that this happened in in the early church was a church on a place called Corinth and Paul wrote a couple of letters to the Corinthians 1 and 2 Corinthians and in 1 Corinthians in chapter 12 and chapter 14 he writes about the spiritual gifts and when I first read 1 Corinthians chapter 14 and I was looking at what Paul says about the gift of praying in tongues I thought wow he seems to be pretty negative on tongues I don't even read that chapter but there's some stuff in there that makes him that makes you think oh he's not that into tongues and the first point is he says that it's not the most important gift of all the spiritual gifts and it isn't he says the most important gifts are the ones like prophecy that build up the church that build up other people and so he says in 1 Corinthians chapter 14 verse 4 anyone who speaks in a tongue edifies themselves but the one who prophesies edifies will builds up the church so he says it's not the most important of the gifts and the second thing that makes me think our Paul's not that enter the gift of tongues is he tells them off for the way that they were using it and what was happening in the church in Corinth is that they were using the gift of tongues in a way that it wasn't designed to be used so they were getting up and giving sermons in the gift of tongues and can you imagine that like if you took your mate to church and taking someone to church for the first time is this a weird experience for them anyway but then the person who's speaking gets up and gives a talk in a language that nobody understands and that they don't even understand and then it happens again and again and again because that's what would in the church in Corinth a number of people will get up and give talks and they would all be speaking in languages that nobody understood and so Paul is saying don't do that he's correcting them he's saying you're using it in the wrong way and so he says in 1 Corinthians 14 verse 18 and 19 I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you but in church by which he means when he's preaching I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue what's the point of saying ten thousand words that nobody understands pick five that they do understand when you're speaking is what he's saying but what's really going on there is it's a little like if I was just walking around the campsite early this morning and I saw some people brushing their teeth and you were brushing your teeth with like hair wax or something like that now what I might do if you were brushing your teeth with hair wax is go up to you and say hey don't brush your teeth with hair wax that doesn't mean I'm anti hair wax in fact I thank God that I use hair works more than any of you what it means is that you need to use it for what it's designed for and that's what that's the point that Paul is making to the Corinthians and though the passage on the surface might seem like he's not that into tongues actually there's all these clues that reveal that for him though he understood it wasn't the most important of the gifts to him it was a precious one and one of those clues is where he says we just read it I thank God but I pray in tongues more than any of you the weight of that only hit me a little while ago but Paul the Apostle liked that you know he's the big daddy like you know he God uses him to write hallowed in the New Testament to plant churches everywhere Paul the great apostle prayed in tongues loads more than anybody else and a question that that causes me to ask is why what does he get about this gift that nobody else got in the same way and one of the things that he understood about it one of the things that he got is that it defies you it builds you up to pray in tongues so you may have picked up that there is a tiny bit of rivalry between myself and Mike the friction that's evident on the stage is even more evident off the stage and we're a little competitive and one of things that we love to compete in is we we go to the gym and Mike Mike is stronger than he looks it's 120 stone of pure muscle and we we have competed at the gym for years and years and years and all these different weights machines and one of the we went through a phase like a few years ago where he just was beating me everything and I couldn't understand I just couldn't get my head around it how is he managing to talk me out we do we doing all the same training sessions and he was still winning and he confessed to me after about three or four months that he had been secretly drinking protein supplements and hiding them in his kitchen every time I were in his house and as if he needed help bulking up but he that's what he was doing and what protein does when you exercise when you exercise what protein does is it builds the muscles so it's there to kind of help muscles grow and we as followers of Jesus okay we're all going to grow spiritual muscle we're all going to do that as we follow him you build muscle as you as you read the word you build muscle as you obey Him you build muscle but what praying in tongues can be is it can be helpful in that process it can it can supplement I want to compare compare bringing some sort of protein so I've already done it but it's like it's it's it helps you grow and it helps build you up it's like exercising in a way or it's like taking something that's yeah that will grow a muscle it's a tool that's helpful in that Paul did it a lot because he understood that and so here's three different ways if you take your note so there's three different ways I want to suggest that praying in the gift of tongues or speaking tongues can build us up way number one is this it gives our soul a voice and I do have you ever had a time where like you got some stuff in here that you just want to say but you don't know how to say it you know it's just like a whole maybe a whole mess of emotions or cocktail emotions you don't know how to how to get it out and it's a little like if you imagine that we are like this bottle of coke yeah and sometimes things happen in life and they just shake they shake us up like the coke gets shaken up when the coke is shaken up all of this wants to come out the bottle now it's dying to get out the bottle but the cap is stopping it from getting out of the bottle if I were to come along with like a pen or something like that and just punch a hole in the side of this bottle then all that would come out of the side and a little bit sometimes we're like that where we've got all this stuff churning around inside of us and the mind although it's incredibly important isn't always that helpful for articulating really deep emotions sometimes we don't even know how to say what we're feeling inside something you know you can't even describe the smell of coffee can you say sometimes to describe how you're feeling really deep in your soul is incredibly difficult and what the gift of tongues is is it's as if it punches us in the soul directly bypassing the mind allowing all this stuff that's in there to come pouring out to God and the way that Paul writes about it is he says in 1 Corinthians 14 again in verse 14 so if I pray in a tongue my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful so what should I do I will pray with my spirit but I will also pray with my understanding I will sing with my spirit but I will also sing with my understanding and so what I love about that is it says really clearly where to praise God with our minds you know our minds are important Paul had a big brain and he used it well we're told to love God with our minds it's great and glorious to sing the mighty truths of our faith as we have been doing but also it says that there's a place for praying in the spirit well we're not using our minds but something's just being poured out directly from our spirit to God's Spirit and that's one of the ways and that's one of the places where the gift of tongues comes into play and as someone who personally has operated from my head for most of my life that's where I function from I have found the gift of tongues to have immense value so one of those times is when it comes to praise and it comes to worship I think if you ever had an experience where you just want to say something to somebody like thank you or I love you and you've run out of the ways to say it you know yeah I find that you just can't articulate what it is that you to say so for me sometimes it's with Beth and with the kids I don't know how to put it sometimes for Mike if someone gives him some free food he's lost for words and it's that thing how do you get that out that's where the gift of tongues can come in handy it's where you know like when for for God sometimes when he shows us that his unconditional forgiveness and you finally get a revelation of the fact that everything you've ever said for and done is completely you know wiped clean how do you say thank you for that sometimes it's when you see the unending grace of God that it goes ahead of you and that all the times you're going to stumble in the future he's gonna be there to pick you back up again and you have a revelation of that maybe it's what Ali was talking about yesterday morning when you finally get you know my word you're my dad but there are always going to be times when we don't know what to say and it's no coincidence that on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured out and they began to speak in tongues they declared the praises of God it's not just a prayer language it's a language of worship so sometimes it can be in a moment like that it plays a role other times it can be in times of despair and one of the darkest times of my in my life in the last couple of years you just saw my little boy Joss Josiah who's now two up on stage a minute ago when he was when he was born obviously it was amazing and we Beth and I were thrilled and all the birth and everything went really well and we took him home the next day and there's nothing quite like that you know you arrive home with your with your child for the first time and it was just our house was just so full of joy and of life and everyone's come around to see him and we just say we were celebrating and then the next day the district nurse came over to have a look at Josiah check he was all good and she said he doesn't look there's something not quite right so we ended up having to take him into a knee that night and they were really concerned about him and I remember holding him as they as they put a feeding tube up his nose and he was discreet you know screaming his head off and then they checked Beth in and they checked him back in because they were just wanted to make sure everything was all right and I remember driving home that night and arriving back to my house which that morning had just been full of joy and it was just empty and dark and it was me and I was pretty low and I remember waking up the next morning just expecting Josiah to have rallied because they've been in hospital prompt and full of food and stuff that expecting him to have got better overnight and quoting Beth at like 6:30 in the morning and finding out that they but they had actually got more concerned about him overnight and they moved him from kind of like medium care to like super special care and that she was just so exhausted because she's just given birth so she couldn't be with him so that drive in I remember as a cheese there morning driving to work for General Hospital I mean I felt absolutely sick and I remember going up to the special baby unit and seeing him as I walked into this room he's just by himself in this incubator my tiny little boy with all these tubes coming out of him and it didn't get better very quickly it didn't feel very quick anyway it took a wire up and down and during that time I just didn't know what to do I I sat in silence before God I read some Psalms before him and I prayed in tongues I just had all this stuff and I just didn't know what to say and that's where for me praying in tongues became like this direct tapping into the soul and pouring out what I knew what I remember I didn't know how to say it tongues was was helpful for me in that moment and it's not just at times of high praise or utter despair it's the normal everyday press where it can where it can be a really useful tool so and if you've prayed for somewhere maybe you prayed some for somebody for like 10 years and stuff like that and you're like I don't know how else to say now you know I've run out of stuff I just want this person to be a Christian but I've said that like a thousand times to you well sometimes now what idea if I don't want to say is I just I'll name a person before God now I'll just pray in tongues for them and Paul himself says that he had moments which is a bit of a relief where he didn't know what to spray either so he says in Romans chapter 8 verse 26 in the same way the spirit helps us in our weakness we don't we do not know what we ought to pray for but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us through wordless groans and he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit because the spirit intercedes for God's people in accordance with the will of God now in that Paul is talking about more than just praying in tongues but praying in tongues is a big part of what it is to pray in the Holy Spirit and so when you don't know what to pray pray in tongues because the Spirit always knows and the father listens to the Spirit it gives a voice a voice to our soul the second way that praying in tongues can build us up is it draws us near to God and praying in tongues can seem like an activity like it like a job you put on there to do this I'm gonna pray in tongues today but actually it's not like that it's it that will be like thinking about a conversation like I'm going to have a conversation with somebody today it's it's not that it's like a relational thing so you know if you've if you've seen a friend here that you haven't seen for maybe a few months you want to go and have a coffee with them or whatever and catch up over a piece of cheesecake and you're looking forward to that and what that is is that's a relational thing that's are sharing hearts with somebody and that's what it is to pray in tongues it's not I'm going to do this today it's I'm sharing my heart with God no we're having a moment of intimacy or in a moment of relationship and again pill of and I occasionally we do crazy things and we I can I drove a few years ago now from Watford to Shepton Mallet which is like a two and a half hour drive and we decided at the start of this drive that we were gonna pray in tongues for the whole thing so we started praying in tongues just as we're pulling out of the driveway in Watford and we kept praying in tongues all the way down the m25 at - laughs hours later we arrived it's Shepton Mallet by the time we arrived at Shepton Mallet we were ready to take off I mean we were gonna fly like we felt like we were gonna explode and I don't know where it happens on the m25 exactly but at some points it was like the glory of God just filled the car and a points we were laughing our heads off at points there was jet we were just adoring him but it was like it was just like the presence of Jesus was right there with us and I don't if you find them this but sometimes my experience has been when you're at a place like this it's easy to feel close to God you know there's those of other people we all go in for it we're outside of our normal everyday lives but then you go home again and one of the questions I have is when I'm at home how do I be in his presence how do I be near to him praying in tongues can be one way it's not the only way by any means but it can be a helpful way of drawing near and so it says in Jude verse 20 and praying in the spirit keep yourself in God's love it's a bit like the Spirit is like a wave poured out on a beach you know the wave goes out on the beach and what it does is it draws the pebbles into the ocean so the spirit is poured out by the father and he draws us back into relationship with God he keeps us in the love of God so it's one way of staying near to him and the third in the final way that the Holy Spirit praying in tongues builds us up is it can lead to breakthrough in our lives and in the lives of other people and so in Ephesians chapter 6 verse 18 Paul says and pray in the spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests and the context of that verse is spiritual warfare and what Paul is saying is that we want to it's kind of like we want God's kingdom to come and we want his will to be done we want his his power to breakthrough in our towns in our families in our own lives in the lives of the people that we love and praying in tongues does build us up but also it seems to have an indirect effect on those around us and at this point I just want to invite Mike to come up and he's just cuddling Judah so he's going to have to put him down and just share about something that happened to him a little while ago you weren't listening to anything I was saying yes some years ago sorry we were going to feature for truth so I'm still in that mode some hunts some years ago at a Soul Survivor festival it was at the time at the big top in Somerset we we had an evening where at the end we invited people forward if they wanted to pray in tongues like we're probably going to do in a few minutes and a whole bunch of young people came forward and there was at the a Romanian youth group came and they were connected with the church in Yorkshire I remember and you know they enjoyed the week but the youth leader didn't believe that the gift of tongues was for today and when we got all the young people together and I said you know what we we step out in faith we won't know you know we you know we and I'm just we're just gonna start to pray in tongues and I'm gonna encourage you to just begin to open your mouth it says in Acts chapter two they spoke in tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance and the Spirit doesn't take over you you know you have to do the speaking but the Spirit will give you the utterance and then I said and what we're gonna do is or those of us that pray in tongues we're going to begin to worship the Lord in our prayer language and when you're ready you join in you just join in no one's gonna be listening and all of that well anyway um I started praying in tongues over the microphone and I just suddenly thought gosh my tongue sounds a bit different to normal it sounds a little bit more is it more posh am i putting it on a little bit I actually thought this I might putting it on a little bit subconsciously because people are listening to make my tongue sound a little more posh and and it was like well I just go for it anyway and and I did and what happened was when we started praying in tongues this romanian youth leader started to walk out in anger and he was halfway out the tent when he just stopped in his tracks because apparently what he says was and i was i was praying in in a kind of medieval Romanian and I was actually reciting a well-known Romanian prayer poem poem and the poem was called a prayer for protection and this is the crazy thing that poem was tattooed on his father's back and that guy started believing in the gift of tongues after that and you know I thought it was gobbledygook and needless to say mark was very pleased with himself when he found out me speaking Romanian but you see said there's this sometimes we pray in tongues and without even knowing it begins to have an impact on the world around us and so Jackie pull injure famously went off to Hong Kong years and years ago now when she was in their early 20s and she found herself working with drug addicts and triad gang members and stuff like that and in the early years it was incredibly difficult for her to make any headway and she writes about one of the times when she began to see real breakthrough and it came when she decided that she was going to pray in tongues so she just literally she did it by her watch so she said I'm just gonna commit to praying in tongues for 15 minutes every day and after doing that for six weeks she says this after about six weeks of this I began to lead people to Jesus without trying gangster's fell to their knees sobbing in the streets women were healed heroin addicts were miraculously set free and I knew it was nothing to do with me and she would say it was everything to do with beginning to pray more in the spirit and particularly for her with the gift of tongues and so what does it do the gift of tongues builds us up and it builds us up because it gives our soul of voice it draws us near to God and through it it can lead to breakthrough fight now suppose I ask the question if that is what the gift of tongues does how do we get that you know how do we receive it and Jesus says these words in Matthew chapter 7 verse 7 ask and it will be given to you seek and you will find knock and the door will be opened to you for everyone who asks receives the one who seeks finds and to the one who knocks the door will be opened which of you if your son asks for bread will give him a stone or if he asks for a fish will give him a snake if you then though you are evil know how to give good gifts to your children how much more will your Father in Heaven give good gifts to those who ask him so how do we receive the gift of tongues three things firstly ask we just ask for it and for years I made asking God for stuff more complicated than it needs to be it's really very simple you just say I would like to have the gift of tongues please that's basically it it's asking now to make it simple doesn't mean that we take that lightly so we want a first after the gift and what Jesus seems to be implying when he says ask and seek and knock and then he repeats that thing again ask and seek it not is that there's a persistence involved sometimes in seeking something from God even though it's not a complicated thing and so sometimes we're tempted to treat receiving things from God like we're trying to stream something live you know and if it takes more than 30 seconds to buffer the video you just quit and we think I'm not getting it from the Lord I'm just gonna call it a day that's not what it is it's thirsting so think of it more like imagine that you've just run a really like a marathon or something on a really hot day 26 miles in the heat by the time you get to the end of it you are you are gagging for a drink your body's been pouring outs where your mouth is part your tongue is thick in your mouth and you go up to somebody you don't need to say it make it complicated you just say I would like a drink of water please but then you're waiting for that water and that's like it's a simple asking but it's a really you really want this asking I really would love to receive this gives the water from you and if they take a while you don't just call it a day and quick because you need it so you ask that's this first step asks for the gifts of tongues the second step is believe that he wants to give it and this is one of the sets that this is the thing I find really hard believing that he wants to give it to me I have faith that he wants to give it to every other person in this room but me not always sure you know the guy next to me yeah the person in front of me sure but me I'm not sure about that and this is it really helps to believe that he wants to give this gift to you to receive it and it's a bit some of the stuff that Addie was saying yes about understanding that he is as Jesus says a good father who wants to give us good things and one picture that really helped me was when a friend of mine told me about his his niece and how she was seven years old and he says her favorite game is hide-and-seek so he's playing hide-and-seek with her a little while ago and he said when he's playing games with tiny little kids he's realized that it's always best to clarify the rules beforehand because if you do it during the game they tend to go against you and so he asked a little at us you know what are the rules of hide-and-seek and so she said to him okay uncle the rules are I'm gonna go and hide behind the kitchen door and you close your eyes and count to ten and then you come and find me so he said okay then let's do that so you know counts to ten and then when he's finished counting to ten he just starts looking for Alice where are you is Alice underneath the kitchen table squeals of laughter from behind the kitchen door where's alice is Alice hiding in the kitchen cupboard squirrels have left her from behind the kitchen door where's Alice is earliest behind the kitchen door absolute hysterics from behind the kitchen door and he finds her and then she says okay uncle okay we're gonna play again the rules are at this time okay I'm gonna go and hide under mommy and daddy's bed and you stay here and count to ten and then come and find me and what I love about that is the fun thing for Alice is the being found in that sense God is similar you know he says okay we're gonna we're gonna this is how we're gonna do it I want you to ask I want you to knock and I want you to seek and then here's the rules you will find me that's the best bit for me you are definitely definitely going to receive I will for sure open the door you will find me so believe that you will because you will and the final step is you've got to step out you have to have a go at doing it for it to happen and this for me was one of the huge things I've been learning about spiritual gifts I'm still learning it over the last couple years but one of the keys to understanding growing in the spiritual gifts is to get that spiritual gifts most of the time do not feel very spiritual most of the time they feel very very normal and I just want to finish by saying my story about how I received the gift of tongues and then I'm gonna get Mike to come and say share his because his was a big step for me in receiving my gift I wish I had an impressive story to tell you but I don't this is how it happened I remember hearing Mike preach about the gift of tongues and thinking I want to have that gift so I came forward in a couple of meetings and asked God to give the gift to me and nothing happened mainly because I just was too scared to step out and try fear of failure don't like taking risks so I wouldn't do it and then there was this one time when we were in Australia and again I came forward in the meeting and it seemed like everybody else began to pray in tongues apart from me and I remember leaving that me just feeling really upset and down and frustrated and going or finding a tree and I sat underneath this tree and I just I just decided there was no one there to watch me fail it was just me and Jesus so I decided that I would just have a go and I said Lord I really want this gift please give it to me and then I decided now's the time just say something and the way it works it's not how I thought I thought he'd take over my mouth and it would be like you know this beautiful language would come out it turns out it's not like that saw doesn't feel spiritual at all really and it's like this partnership and as Mike just said you speak and the spirit enables you and this is kind of like teamwork thing going on so I just choked out this this unimpressive seriousiy unspiritual sounding noise that's all I can say it didn't sound like a word it sounded more like a noise and and Mike had said in his talk that when he was receiving this gift he decided if this is going to be gobbledygook may it be gobbledygook for you Lord and so I thought that's a helpful principle I'll take that so I said to myself if this is gonna be a coughing choking sound Lord maybe for your glory and I continue to do it and I did it for a little while there under that tree and it didn't get any more spiritual sounding than it was when it started initially and then what happened is it grew a bit like a kid learning their ABCs you know they start out and already be able to say it and then just gradually language comes and I know that was when it began at the gift of tongues as really normal as that sounds and then one of the reasons I know is because I've been praying in it ever since and what I found as I've prayed in it is that it's given my soul a voice and it's drawn me into his love and I've seen breakthroughs in my life and others that I don't think I would have seen otherwise now mike is going to come and share his story and for me it was and I'd become a Christian I was sixteen years old by this stage and I heard about the gift of tongues and I had exactly the same as Andy you know God's not gonna give it to me and this will be the proof that I'm not a Christian that he hasn't accepted me and when I heard about that I read this book and this in the author of the book said you know you just got it you just gotta ask Jesus and begin and I didn't want anyone to pray for me because if it didn't happen then they'd know that God hadn't accepted me so I went up to my bedroom one evening and I closed the curtains because I've always believed it's more holy in the dark and and the book said in the book the guy said if you want to receive the gift of tongues first of all confess your sins so that everything's clear then praise God in English and then after a while you know just just begin and under and the Lord will will give you the words so um I confess my sins I praise God in English and then I went and nothing happened and I thought I haven't I haven't confessed my sins with enough sorrow so I confess them again this time feeling really bad about them I praise God in English and then and nothing and then I remembered that in the book the guy said that often people begin to speak in tongues when they're more relaxed so I went to the bathroom I put the bath wore on I put it really hot I got in the bath I lay in the bath I confessed my sins this time I confess sins that I might commit in the future I confess sins that I'd read about in some newspapers and ER and then I praise God in English and then and nothing and then I thought I know what's wrong so I got the ray docs out and I put it in for extra relaxation I confess my sins I praise God in English I and still nothing and by this stage I just desperate I was desperate so I plucked up the courage to go to this couple who heads it up my little home group and I said I said um I've been asking the Lord to speak in tongues and maybe he doesn't accept me but nothing's happened and could you pray with me and they said of course we will and they said come into this other room we sat in the room and then they said to me what we're gonna do is first of all we're going to confess our sins and I thought being the head doctor bought the t-shirt and and and then we're going to all praise God in English and I thought I could teach you a thing or two about praising God in English and then they said and then the two of us are gonna begin to pray in our prayer language and after a while one of us will touch your lips and then by faith begin at this stage I just panicked I thought oh no and then they we confessed our sins we praise God in English and then they began to pray in their prayer languages and their languages sounded beautiful they sounded wonderful and if there was one thing I just knew straight away was I'm never gonna be able to do that you know and and I was dreading it I was thinking what am I gonna do when they touch my lips you know and and and and and I was like and and then after it seemed ages but it wasn't longer than one of them touched my lips and it's like I had a choice and and rather than say nothing I just under my breath I just went shallow balla balla and then I was waiting for one of them to point at me and say false tongue speaker stone him but you know they didn't I heard them saying oh thank you lord thank you give him more and I thought they'd like this you know so they carried on I thought okay I'll give it another go so I went Charla baila baila baila and they and they were like really excited thank you lord thank you lord give him more and all my life I've been nothing if not a showman so so this time so this time I went Charla baila baila baila bulla bulla well they went hysterical at that and for the next for the next I know ten minutes they spoke in there beautiful Latin and ancient something whatever it was and I shall a balla balla balla balla balla all over the place and that's all I did sharra boola boola boola boola boola and then at the end we finished and I looked at them and I said was that it and the husband looked at me and he said yes and I want you to do that every day for the rest of your life and I remember thinking I am NOT doing that every day for the rest of my life Charlotte by Levina Balaban anyway I left thinking what is that and I remember thinking thinking I think I think everyone else gets the gift of tongues in life and he said and I've got the gift of gobbledygook and I was halfway home walking home and I remember thinking you know what if I end up with just the gift of gobbledygook may it be gobbledygook to you Lord Jesus maybe for you so I just made sure no one was nearby and as I was walking I just Shahla by Levina boola boola boola boola boola boola shala sha la ba la shala boola boola shala I did every combination and I and I shall a bullet all the way home but you know what I promise you there came a point and it was just like this magical little line there came a point where I stopped thinking about my shallow palace and I started focusing on him and and actually being aware of him and and just suddenly everything changed and I just sensed his presence in a way I hadn't before now often when I'm praying tongues I you don't sense his presence every time like that but I just knew all my word you're here and I started not to mind what it was but you know what over the weeks and over the months it was like the shallow Bala was was at the beginning it was baby talk and then as we went I went on it just it just developed and it was it was I was focused on Jesus and it wasn't that the language developed the point about the gift of tongues is not the tongues the point is the prayer you know the point is the prayer it's a way of praying anyway of praying is good any way of praying gets you close to Jesus and and so over the years since I have found it so so I can't tell you so helpful in my personal walk with the Lord you know I you your your mind is unfruitful and there are times of praying with your mind but there are times you know praying with the spirit we do not know how to pray as we ought says Paul in Romans 8 but the Spirit helps us in our weakness you know this is one of the ways the spirit helps us in our weakness and and what it is in Romans 8 Paul talks about sighs and grows too deep for words there is that as well but there is also this which is which is a cry from the heart that the spirit inspires and and since there have been times when I know that that so often the gift of tongues is the doorway to the other gifts the number of because it sensitizes you prayer makes you sensitive to other gifts the number of times I've been wondering what Lord what you want me to do what's going on and I've prayed in my prayer language and then I just know while I've been praying God has spoken to me

Channel: Naturally Supernatural

Views: 4,160

Rating: 4.7922077 out of 5

Keywords: Andy Croft, Soul Survivor, Mike Pilavachi, Holy Spirit, Gift of Tongues, Ministry, Naturally Supernatural, Holiday Camp, Power

Id: o6MXiTuQXzI

Length: 43min 53sec (2633 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 04 2018