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How To Speak in Tongues

This document provides guidance on speaking in tongues as a prayer tool. It explains that speaking in tongues allows Christians to pray directly to God through their spirit rather than their mind. The document offers biblical support for tongues from Acts and 1 Corinthians and shares a testimony of how praying in tongues helped one missionary receive guidance on how to pray for others. It then provides instructions for how to start praying in tongues, encouraging readers to allow their spirit to worship God through sounds and syllables.

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196 views3 pages

How To Speak in Tongues

This document provides guidance on speaking in tongues as a prayer tool. It explains that speaking in tongues allows Christians to pray directly to God through their spirit rather than their mind. The document offers biblical support for tongues from Acts and 1 Corinthians and shares a testimony of how praying in tongues helped one missionary receive guidance on how to pray for others. It then provides instructions for how to start praying in tongues, encouraging readers to allow their spirit to worship God through sounds and syllables.

Uploaded by

Quotesfly
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Listening

Prayer Tool:
How to Speak in Tongues
What?
Begin to hear God through the spiritual gift of tongues. This prayer tool will show
you how.

Why?
“We enter the heavenlies by means of a heavenly language that condescends to the
use of our feeble, stammering tongues to express the inexpressible.” Richard Foster

Bible references:
“
All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as
the Spirit enabled them.” Acts 2:4

“For anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to people but to God. Indeed,
no one understands them; they utter mysteries by the Spirit.” 1 Corinthians 14:2

A quick introduction to Praying in Tongues

One of the ways we can really develop in listening prayer is, rather ironically, by
speaking. Speaking in tongues is an amazing and unique way we can activate our
prayer lives and in particular, our ability to hear God.

While still viewed as a controversial gift amongst some in the church - particularly
in reaction to the charismatic renewal of the last 50 years - the reality is that many
generations of Christians have received this ‘gift of the Spirit’ from the birth of the
church up until today.

Speaking in tongues doesn’t make you a better Christian (or person, for that matter)
but it is a gift that is for everyone. And it could make us more effective in praying
and hearing God.

The first time we hear someone ‘speaking in tongues’, or we read about it, feels
weird. But if we step back from our rational sensibilities for a moment and think
about the fact that we are first and foremost Spirit beings with bodies – not as we

Prayer tool: How to Speak in Tongues


are prone to think, the other way around – then maybe it’s not so far-fetched after
all!

Our spirit is where the real ‘us’ is anchored – we groan and ache in our spirits, we
experience joy and love and connection in our spirits – and all of these emotions
and connections release a response in us that doesn’t always sound like English.

The Holy Spirit wants to reside in this tender part of the core of who we are and
release a unique love-language between us and our Heavenly Father. While often
awkward and strange at the start, once you get used to the transition, it becomes
the most natural thing in the world.

To everyone else of course, ‘speaking in tongues’ will sound like gobbledygook, and
in some respects that’s what the Bible says; in relation to other people, it is.

However, the Bible also tells us that when we speak in tongues we are uttering
“mysteries in the Spirit”. In other words, we are, in our own way, we are bringing our
hearts a little bit more into harmony with Heaven. When we speak in tongues we
are allowing and releasing our spirit into the Spirit of God, inviting His Spirit to pray
through us.

While this type of prayer is an exaltation of the spirit to God, whereby less control is
exerted from the conscious mind, it’s important to point out that when speaking in
tongues, we are never out of control.

Learning what to Pray

The testimony for hundreds of Christians down through the ages, of such an
intimate spirit-to-Spirit language, is when they aren’t sure how to pray for
something or someone in English, when they pray in tongues their minds are often
informed with a Heavenly wisdom revealing to them what they ought to pray.

At other times, even if they don’t become informed but they pray intentionally in
tongues , sometimes things just happen!

One such testimony is from Jackie Pullinger, a heroine of the faith, who has given
her life to rescuing those caught in addiction and gang culture in the back streets
of Hong Kong. After Jackie became aware of the gift of speaking in tongues, every
day she spent 15 minutes praying in the Spirit.

Before praying in the Spirit, she told God she didn’t know how to pray and asked
God to pray through her and to lead her people who want God. While she honestly
admits finding this a struggle initially, the results – in her own words – were
“remarkable”:

Prayer tool: How to Speak in Tongues


“After about six weeks I noticed something remarkable. Those I talked to about
Christ believed… This time I was talking about Jesus to people who wanted to hear.
I had let God have a hand in my prayers and it produced a direct result. Instead of
my deciding what I wanted to do for God and asking His blessing, I was asking Him
to do His will through me as I prayed in the language He gave me.”

Do it: How to Speak in Tongues


1. Ask for the gift! The Bible exhorts us to ‘eagerly desire’ these gifts. (1
Corinthians 14:1)
2. Receive by faith. Everything we receive as a gift of grace from God we
activate in our lives through faith.
3. Try to avoid a mind-control scenario, where your mind alone controls your
mouth.
4. Allow the core part of you to worship God. Maybe begin by saying the name
of Jesus or allowing yourself to sing a ‘song of your heart’, any sound that
naturally flows out of your spirit unto the Lord. As you do this, notice if a
sound or syllable begins to rise up from your heart and out of your mouth –
as it does, keep saying it.
5. Don’t worry if it sounds choppy, repetitive and awkward initially. Often like a
child learning to talk it can be one or two words, syllables or sounds for a
period of time. Just rejoice that you have a couple of words and keep saying
them.
6. Ask for increased faith to keep going.
7. Don’t overthink it!

Books on Speaking in Tongues


• Everyday Supernatural – Mike Pilavachi and Andy Croft

Prayer tool: How to Speak in Tongues

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