Last night, Jan and I were having a long and wonderful conversation with some good friends. The conversation lasted the entire evening. We talked about life, our ministries, God’s Kingdom, and how we met our spouses. As we spoke about those first encounters, it was like we had entered a romantic time machine.
As the conversation developed, and after almost 50 years of marriage, I made a connection regarding a similar experience Jan and I had just prior to our connecting as a couple. Both our experiences shared a similar substance. We had someone pray for us in tongues without any known language being spoken. Each experience became a marker event in our lives that changed the course of our personal histories.
Jan was 19 years old and going through a challenging time in college. Jan, the normally straight-A student had burned out and could no longer read, study, or write the final term paper that was due in just a few days. A friend invited her to join the line of young people who were being prayed for in the home of an old and dying saint who attended the Portland Foursquare Church in Portland, Oregon.
When it was Jan’s turn to be prayed for, she approached the bed where the old man was waiting and knelt down. The man reached out his hand and touched Jan’s head praying only in the language of the Spirit. Jan had never heard someone pray in tongues before. She said something began to happen as the words of the Spirit began to fill her heart. After that brief prayer, she returned to her dorm room, sat down, and wrote the term paper. The feeling of burnout was gone.
To this day whenever Jan ministers to someone, she will either pray quietly to herself or out loud in tongues when someone needs help knowing the language of the Spirit has the power and ability to unlock what seems locked and immovable.
For me during that same time, I had a similar experience. In the summer of 1969, the Jesus Movement was in full bloom. A friend and I went to a conference on the Holy Spirit being held at Bethany Bible College in Scotts Valley, California. We took our seats along the back wall of the auditorium that was packed with other young people just like us who were searching for truth.
About halfway through the service, I watched as one of the conference speakers rose from his seat on the platform and began moving through the crowd of hundreds of young people as the sounds of the ongoing worship music filled the room. The man came and stood directly in front of me. He put his arms on my shoulders, looked me in the eye, and then pulled me close into an embrace. He spoke briefly in tongues in my ear. It was also the first time for me to hear that language. He then pulled away and looked into my eyes for another second, turned, and made his way back to the front.
I parked that experience in the back of my mind and forgot about it. Ten years later, Jesus would visit me in the middle of the night, and in a personal Damascus Road experience, He would supernaturally transform my life forever. Within weeks of that visitation, the Lord took me back to that time ten years previously when I was nineteen and attending the conference at Bethany. The Lord said, “I am bringing the interpretation of the words the man spoke into your ear. Your life will be a living interpretation of what was spoken to you that day by my Spirit.”
After Jan and I recalled our personal histories last night with our friends, I came away from that conversation asking, “Where Did the Gift of Tongues Go?” I ask that of the historic Pentecostal churches, Charismatic churches, and all with a history of visible and demonstrative expressions of the Spirit.
I ask the question while still hearing the distant echoes of corporate singing in the Spirit when a congregation enters a deep moment of Spirit-led worship that is both profound and beautiful, never offensive. I ask the question for those held in emotional bondage like Jan experienced or people like me whose future would unfold based on something only the language of the Spirit could express.
In the last few years, Jan and I have increased our prayers in the Spirit, both while apart ministering and together. We are seeing interpretations of those words take place in profound ways impacting the lives of people in circumstances where no hope of change seemed possible. Maybe the way forward for the Church is not discovering something new but re-engaging the timeless power of something old that has always been there but has been neglected in this generation of faith.
I love this.. The gift of praying in your heavenly language is so necessary for now and for where He is taking us into the future..
Although I’ve been praying in the Spirit for over 40 years, foolishly I sometimes forget its effectiveness and necessity. Today that is changing. Thank you for another much needed post.
Garris,
Thank you so much for this story. Blessings to you and your loved ones. What a great story. I always wished I was old enough to take part in “The Jesus Movement” but I was playing with GI Joe’s and climbing trees,riding bikes,playing tag and “hide-n-seek” at that time.
My dear big brother, what a time to be alive and grow up…and the music…I grew up in a house next to a senior high school and the older teens would play ball with my brothers and I in a vacant field next to our house. In my minds eye, I can still see the setting sun from the kitchin window and the leaves changing color in Fall.
Memory Lane is the name of the street
where the house of remembering stands.
I was born again January 25th 1984. I spent my first 8 years in a United Pentecostal church and tongues were a normal occurrence. However, I also saw a lot of “faked” tongues, spoken strictly because it was expected. One night I recall an absolute farce at the altar. A group was praying for a young man that was clearly not free. But the culture of that particular church was determined to “pray him through” without dealing with the deliverance that was necessary first. I heard the pastor of the church making statement like “Watch out Ronnie, if you’re not careful you speak in tongues” This went on for well over a half hour. I was in the middle of a 30 day complete fast and simply did not have the energy to continue in prayer that was based more on physical exertion than authority in the Spirit. Many times I’ve heard young pentecostal people going through the Yamamamamaha and Zuuuzuuuzuuki calisthenics.
My purpose for even posting this is NOT to discourage tongues but rather to be careful to not push them to the point that tongues become a manifestation for acceptance rather than the miracle of revelation through the Spirit of Jesus that it is. IMO, reverence should be the order of the day anytime the Spirit of the Lord is manifesting Himself. I’ve witnessed charismatics run up to new cars, laying hands on it, speaking in tongues, claiming the car for themselves.. Folks with some years in the Lord might recall that “Name It, Claim it” period of time. A time in which holiness and reference for the Lord was replaced with anything goes and materialism.
I too, wonder where tongues have gone. The real thing that edifies the body and not just the individual. The apostle Paul taught in I Corinthians 14 to not forbid speaking in tongues but he also taught the mature objective of every believer, that is edifying of those around them. What does it profit if I’m giving thanks in tongues but the person next to me doesn’t understand and cannot say Amen at my giving of thanks.. Therefore, let him that speaks in an unknown tongue pray for interpretation that others might be edified also. Very obviously within the context of the testimonies in the article, at times the interpretation comes slowly, but it does eventually come.