Baptism of the Holy Spirit (Testimonies)

[Paul James]

2 hours ago, Wayne222 said:

I cannot because it happen twice to me. But never again. There is the gift of tongues and there is the experience of speaking in a unknown tongue. I did not receive the gift. But had a experience. 

I can understand that.  It happens to a lot of people.  I think it is because people think that the Holy Spirit has to somehow burst out of them in tongues in an involuntary manner.  But I don't think that is faith, because faith is not impassive, allowing things to happen to us;  but it is active on our part.  I started speaking in tongues because I believed I had the ability and I tried to speak an unknown language in faith.  What happened was after a short time, the language flowed fluently out of me, and every time I start praying the words are there for me to either pray in English or in tongues.   It is as I am bilingual - English from my mind, and tongues from my spirit, but I decide when I want to speak either.

People also mistakenly think it has to be ecstatic, I think the description "ecstatic" such as William Barclay's, comes from teaching by people who have never spoken in tongues and don't know anything about it from personal experience.

I think that beginning in tongues requires personal effort, like priming an old-fashioned water pump when one pours water down the top and pumps like mad until the artesian water starts flowing out,  Then one doesn't have to put the same effort into the handle to keep the water flowing.  It is the same with tongues.  One must make the effort in faith until the language becomes fluent, then one doesn't have to think abut what to say, because it just flows out.

It all depends on what one believes he or she is doing.  Anyone can talk a whole lot of jibber jabber if that is what the person believes he or she is doing.  But a person praying in tongues to God, knows that he is talking to a holy God who understands what he is saying.   I decided a few years ago, to spend as much time as I could praying in tongues over three weeks.  As a result some amazing things happened in the writing and publishing of my ministry books, my preaching at church, and my prophetic ministry in my involvement in an interdenominational prophetic equipping group.

Also, God showed me beyond doubt that when I prayed in tongues, it was a real language that God understands, and He proved it to me one Sunday night at church when I was praying quietly in tongues and my NZ Maori friend heard me praising God in her own Maori language, which I have not learned at that time.

So, after experiences like that, and that of my friend who prayed in tongues at a prayer meeting and a Ghanaian visitor heard him praising God in his own village dialect, which my friend could not have known, no one would ever be able to convince me that tongues is not real and still active today.