I’m just an ordinary person who has found that tongues is a key to another dimension – it feels like the dimension of heaven. It feels like that river of water Jesus spoke about (John 7:38) and is still speaking about and wanting for you. (But, I have friends who do not pray in tongues but pray deeply and silently – almost as if the river is flowing underground.)
I happen to be a retired Early Years teacher, wife and mother of 4 grown-up children, living in the Midlands UK, but I could be anyone. There are millions of people in the world who pray in tongues (thought to be 600 million in the year 2000) and hear or feel God speaking to them personally and in great love. It’s brilliant! I would encourage you to go for it.
When I first spoke in tongues it came out of a sudden realisation of what Jesus did on the cross – I felt great joy and it was as if Handel’s Halleluiah chorus was going off in the middle of me. I was disappointed that I could still think about other things – that’s a choice. It is still like that over 30 years later.
One day I seemed to be quietly singing the same words and tune over and over all day throughout various activities – it was unusual for me to hear the same words and so I asked what I had been singing. The inner thought answer was “It was pretty much like Psalm 91 – you were singing ‘God’s my Dad who always looks after me and I love it!” I think that was a case of the Holy Spirit trying to move head knowledge to my heart.
Some people who have attributed the success of their ministry to praying in tongues:
When Jackie Pullinger arrived in Hong Kong in the 1960s she was encouraged to pray in tongues for 15 mins a day by the clock. She didn’t want to and felt nothing but after about 6 weeks she noticed a change. The people she talked to about Christ believed. After that time many addicts came off heroin without pain when they prayed in tongues. See ‘Chasing the Dragon’.
John G.Lake had 100,000 recorded healings in his ministry in 5 years during the early part of the 20th century. John G. Lake said “ I want to talk with the utmost frankness and say that tongues has been the making of my ministry. It is that peculiar communication with God when God reveals to my soul the truth I utter to you day by day in the ministry ….. many times I climb out of bed, take my pencil and pad, and jot down the beautiful things of God, the wonderful things of God that he talks out in my spirit and reveals to my heart.”
Kenneth E. Hagin witnessed many miracles during his 70 years of ministry up to 2003. His son Kenneth W. Hagin has compiled ‘Tongues beyond the Upper Room’ of his father’s writings (see below). He said that he found that it easier to pray in tongues than in English and that he could get further spiritually in tongues than in any other way. “For instance, the greatest healings I’ve ever seen in my ministry came after a time of praying in other tongues. …I saw in the Spirit what I was praying about… And then as I did what I saw in the Spirit the person would be healed!”
Dr Bill Hamon thinks tongues activates our ‘dunamis’ (the power Jesus said his disciples would receive). Dr Hamon has interviewed Benny Hinn, Reinhard Bonnke and other well known ministers who all say they spend hours praying in tongues before a meeting in order to: charge themselves with the power of God AND wait for words of wisdom, knowledge and what the Holy Spirit wants to do.
Smith Wigglesworth, William Seymour and Oral Roberts also attributed the success of their ministries to their closeness to Almighty God through their use of tongues in prayer. In our own day, Heidi (who spends 3-6 hours a day in prayer) and Rolland Baker speak and sing much in tongues each day!