I Wish You All to Speak with Tongues

As Richard Foster said , Christians today are eager for prayers but try to escape from them at the same time. It’s one of the paradoxes of the modern age. Everybody today is busy, very busy, no time even for the most important…

Wise Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes, “to every purpose there is time” (Eccl. 8:6). Well, God says that there is time for every good purpose. “There is time,” confirms the Bible. Time is not the real problem. The problem is when we use our most precious resource for wrong purposes. If God has been giving us a certain time to fellowship with Himself – and He had – but we use it for work, family or leisure then can He fully bless us? Afterwards, some people can be amazed or even mad at God why they work for the purse with holes, why their children turn to the worldly ways and families fall apart. Shouldn’t the Lord warn us? Should He bless us when we are disobedient? There is time for work, children and family, but also there is time for prayer, the Word of God and fellowship with Him and His people. Moreover, prayer can and should become an inalienable part of our everyday life.

Philosopher Thomas Kelly tells us, “There is a way of ordering our mental life on more than one level at once. On one level we may be thinking, discussing, see­ing, calculating, meeting all the demands of external affairs. But deep within, behind the scenes, at a profounder level, we may also be in prayer and adoration, song and worship and a gentle recep­tiveness to divine breathings.” It’s here, “the wells of living water of divine revelation rise up con­tinuously, day by day and hour by hour, steady and transfiguring.”

How can we rise to this glorious level? What should we do? The truth is – we can’t do it. But what is impossible for men is possible for God the Holy Spirit! The gift of the Spirit is available to every Christian today. This gift enables our spirit to communicate to the Lord on the new level of prayer in the spirit. In particular it happens also through the prayer in other tongues.

I wish you all to speak with tongues! Yes I do, but this is actually a direct quote from 1 Cor. 14:5 and since we all believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, I dare to say that here we deal not just with my desire, and not even Paul’s desire, but with the wish of the Holy Spirit. “All” means just simply all, which is contrary to the beliefs of many good Christians. Nevertheless this verse is written in the Bible as well as many other Scriptures which will be discussed later.

Why am I writing this? The answer is simple—I sincerely want to see all my precious brothers and sisters in Christ to be blessed and the gift of praying in tongues is a great blessing, which through the grace of God is available to EVERY CHRISTIAN. The number of modern believers who have received the gift of the Spirit mounts to hundreds of millions[1]! If the gift is available and I am experiencing this great blessing every day than why should I remain silent?

At the same time I want to be sensitive because I know that this subject creates all kinds of reactions among many wonderful believers. Some are fearful of wrong teaching or emotionalism. Others even attribute tongues to “the works of the devil.” These negative responses cloud sound Biblical teaching. It grieves me that the issue of tongues can be so divisive in the body of Christ, when God intended the gift of the Holy Spirit to be a great blessing for all and ultimately an instrument of unity. I believe that the more Christians from various circles receive the gift, the more dividing walls between Pentecostals and mainline denominations, Charismatics and non-Charismatics, will fall down. Let it be so that we all may “come into the unity of the faith” (Eph. 4:13)!

(extract from Andrei’s book “Prayer in other tongues”)