To Peggy M Re: Tongues

I wanted to share with you my story of how I learned to pray in tongues. I went through a tough time myself, many years ago and was told that "I must have sin in my life" because I could not get tongues, though I had tried numerous times and been prayed over and everything. Then God told me that I already had it but I was not using it or stepping out in faith and that it was similar to the salvation experience itself, in that you must actuallize it, God will not force it on you. Btw Linda is my fiance as you may remember, and I was the one who prayed for her and taught her to setp out in faith in that gift. I was also the one with her in her story. We have had many wonderous times of miracles and prayer and God's grace in our lives. We love to share with others and see God move in other's lives as in our own. I will include the chapter from my book about this event.

And these signs shall follow them that believe; …they shall speak with new tongues

One of the first things that I noticed that was different about me almost immediately upon my coming up out of the water after my baptism, was a strange new involuntary quivering of my lower jaw whenever I even thought about God or praying. I wondered if this could be something associated with praying in tongues. I had heard of this strange phenomenon for years but had never had the experience myself. Now, I wondered if the Holy Spirit was trying to give me that gift.

My first ever hearing of this topic was way back in my Lutheran church in a young-adult Sunday School class, and it was not in a positive way at all. The Lutherans are among those who do not believe in such gifts as being for today. So they figure that anyone who operates, in that one at least, is doing so by the devil. Well, at least that’s what those fellow classmates of mine were saying, that day. I asked them what they were talking about and they said that I wouldn’t understand and that it was enough for me to just know that tongues was a bad thing so stay away from anyone who does it. I thought they must know what they are talking about so I took their word for it and made a little mental note to highly suspect anyone who did that “other tongues” thing, whatever it might be.

I pictured it as being something you’d find among Himalayan Monks in some monastery or something, anyway, not anything I’d ever encounter in my lifetime. However, it was sooner than I suspected that I would have to deal with it and much closer than the Himalayas too. Because that second Christian rock band I told you about, called The Philadelphia Band, were a bunch of “tongue-talkers”. Oh, they didn’t do it all the time and it was not real obvious, so it was after some time of my having been around them before I even became aware of it. And then, when I did become aware of it, I was scared at first. I thought, “Oh my gosh! It’s those tongues-talking kind of people! Run for your life!” And I really was wondering if they were going to do something weird to me or something. I finally got up the nerve to ask them about it and they said it was a gift from God and that it was nothing to be afraid of. I told them about the people at my Lutheran church and how they said it was of the devil but they told me that people who say that are in danger, like the Pharisees were, of a serious offense, even possibly the unpardonable sin, for calling God’s gifts, “of the devil”. I decided that I’d give them the benefit of the doubt for the time being but that the jury was still out on this one for me.

I eventually learned that Gene Scott believed in and taught about tongues also and that there was a proper place and time for them. Also that there were two different types of tongues gifts. One was for personal edification and one was for the edification of the whole body. The first, being the more common, was for the individual to practice wherever he was, alone, between himself and God. The second kind was for the church assembly and was less common and was meant for the whole church during a service.

Finally, I became convinced that it really was from God and was a good thing, and I decided I wanted it for myself. I wanted all that God had for His people and if this was something that would help me, then why should I miss out on it? So I began to ask about it to anyone who I knew that already was able to do it. It was still very mysterious to me but I felt like I was only half complete as a Christian until I could move in that area too.

I was receiving all kinds of advise and encouragement and finally prayer, with the laying on of hands to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, but no change would come over me and I was beginning to feel that there was something wrong with me. So did the people that were praying for me. Some of them said that maybe there was some unconfessed sin in my life that was blocking it. Others said that I got it but the timing was up to God when to release it. I was really feeling down about this and wondered if God didn’t like me anymore or what?

My seeking during this time led me one night, along with my then sister in law, Sherri, to accept and invitation to go to a church that was totally Pentecostal. I mean, more Pentecostal than I knew any church could be. I had heard Gene Scott describe some of his experiences growing up in the Holiness Pentecostal church about people that “climb the walls” or run around whooping and hollering like crazy people and calling it Holy Spirit led, but I always assumed that he was exaggerating. Or that if there really were such churches, they either had gotten over that by now, or else they existed only in remote regions of the mid-west maybe or something.

The first indication that something was a little askew about this little church was when the pastor invited anyone who wanted to, to get up and share a testimony. Okay, fine, right? But then this one girl gets up there and starts going all into this melodramatic display and starts theatrically telling about how she had been a Christian but then backslid, and with all kinds of overacting showiness, she tells how she became hopelessly lost in the clutches of the devil’s worldly, lusty, evil sin, brothers and sisters! How she was living the life of a lost, miserable and hopeless sinner, on the road to hay-ell, but prayezz God!, now I have been redeemed and brought back to my right mind by the power of our Lord, and savior, Jesus Christ, etc. It wasn’t so much what she said, but the manner in which it was delivered. As if lines from a script, it sounded more like a Saturday Night Live skit than a real person’s sincere testimony. Like the most phony baloney made up thing I ever heard. I know that I can’t really know what was going on in her heart, so I leave that up to God, but I felt like this was more about trying to impress men than anything real. It felt to me as though the church expected someone to get up there during this time and act that way. In order for it to be considered correct, it had to sound like it was from the deep south, or something. The rest of the congregation took it like it was completely normal. But Sherri and I were looking at each other like we wondered what we had gotten ourselves into.

So, as if that were not bad enough, here’s Sherri and I sitting in this church, already feeling out of place, when all at once, the pastor said the right word or gave a certain signal or something and suddenly the people started all jumping out of their seats, shouting and running all over the place and acting like nuts. We were actually scared. The guy who invited us – he was up on the platform with the pastor as some kind of leader of the church too, he was looking at us with sympathetic, understanding looks at our uncomfortable situation, and it was only for his sake that we stayed for the whole service. After it was over this guy, who seemed to be some kind of authority about Holy Spirit stuff like I was interested in, was helping me to come to some conclusion about my inability to “get the gift of tongues”. Sherri had already gotten it by this time, even though she was a relatively new Christian. This only made me feel even more like there was something wrong with me. Well, this young pastor finally decided, like others before him, that I must have unconfessed sin in my life. Yeah, thanks. Just what I wanted to hear. But I was asking God to show me if there was anything like that and I was getting nothing.

Speaking of Sherri, I need to back up a bit and fill you in about her. Remember how my younger brother, Dave, had become interested in God after he saw how I was willing to leave the band and going that way? He asked me a lot of questions and eventually somewhere along the line, he decided he wanted what I had and he made his own commitment. Well, after he had done this and began to change too, just as I had been, then Sherri, his wife starts giving him grief about it. So he tells her not to do that because if she makes him have to choose between her and God she’ll lose. He’s going with God and if she doesn’t like it then she can go ahead and leave him. This was one night as they are going to bed. Then he turns over and goes to sleep. She was stunned. What’s gotten into everyone?! First Barry and now Dave? She couldn’t sleep after that and stayed up worrying. At first she was angry and was thinking, “Yeah, okay, go ahead and leave, ya punk, who needs you anyhow…” But she knew that she was really scared and didn’t want to be left out and alone so finally she decides that she needs to find out more about this God stuff, too. So she gets saved, and becomes a sponge for anything she can learn about God. And she ends up getting the gift of tongues before I did. It was a wonderful time of learning and discovery where we all were growing together for a while. At first, I was the big spiritual guru for them as a young couple. They loved having Bible studies and inviting all their friends and making new ones at church. I was really looked up to for a while. But this tongues thing was a real bump in the road for me. How did Sherri get it and I still didn’t? I was so bummed out about this. I prayed and prayed but nothing was happening.

Finally, one day, I was at work at the ranch, and I was whitewashing this long wooden split rail fence that ran both sides of the length of the long driveway into the ranch from the main road. This paint job went on for many days and provided me with lots of time alone with God. So, I was able to just get serious with Him and ask Him why I can’t pray in tongues.

You know what He told me? He said that I did in fact already have the gift. But that it was up to me to step out in faith and believe that I had it, and act on it. He said that it was a lot like how you get saved in the first place. God doesn’t force Himself on you. You must invite Him in and then He comes in and begins to transform you from the inside. But never without your consent. So I already had the gift of the Holy Spirit from the first time that I had hands laid on me and asked for it. Where I went wrong was that I was expecting tongues to just start coming out of my mouth by themselves. I heard that some people have had that happen. He said that He wanted me to just start praying as if I knew how, in a language that I had never spoken before. I said,

“How do I do that? I don’t know how”… But I wanted to so bad, that finally about half way through the day, painting that fence, I decided to give it a try. It wasn’t a very sincere try because even with no one around to hear me, I felt very foolish making up a language. So I was actually sort of being a baby about it and saying,

“Okay, God, here goes… but this is ridiculous. You mean, I’m just supposed to say stuff like:

Oonky boonky shalla ma doonky… Hount talla shount a mounsecha jallound tralle fillop wendistillo vishnoputrilla…..” (I’m giving my spell checker fits…)

Wait a second – was I doing it? So I tried it again and this time it was even better. It really started to come out faster than I could try and make it up. I was just kidding at first. I really thought that I was just making up nonsense. But as I did, my nonsense started to take on a life of its own. I knew that this was not just me. I was so happy I couldn’t believe it. I got tears in my eyes. I had it all along. I prayed in tongues the whole rest of that day. Then that night I had to go to San Diego for something about 30 miles away one way, and I prayed in tongues the whole way there and back. I was exhilarated. Now I knew what “being filled with the Spirit” meant. I understood what Paul meant when he said, “Be not drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit.” Because, this feeling was like being drunk, only you didn’t get stupid, you actually got really smart. I kept praying for days on end and found it amazing. There was so much happening because of it. I knew things in my spirit without knowing how I knew them. I found that wisdom was just in me because of it.

That, by the way, was one evidence that I had seen in Sherri, that I knew was genuine. She knew things about people, including me, that there was no way she could have figured out on her own. She said it was because of her praying in tongues that God was telling her things. That it establishes an open line of communication between you and God where you never have to walk in darkness about anything that God wants to tell you.

John 11:9. Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world.

10. But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.

John 8:12. Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.

There’s a whole theology behind tongues that I don’t have time to go into here. It would take a whole book probably to do it justice. But in a brief nut shell, what is happening, is God basically made a deal with us. He said that if we would surrender our most unruly member of our body, our tongue, to Him, then He would help us to pray, with the Holy Ghost supplying the prayer, in a language that we don’t understand, but God does.

1 Corinthians 14:2. For he that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God: for no man understandeth him; howbeit in the spirit he speaketh mysteries.

We would be asking God, according to His perfect will for our lives, to give us what we need. Since we do not know how to pray as we ought, He prays for us. And God is able to answer 100 % of those prayers because they are not amiss, like so many of our own prayers are. Paul explains all about this in 1 Corinthians chapter 14. The Holy Spirit knows what the plan of God is for our life that we have gotten off of, and so He is able to see where we need to be, and He asks the Father, using our own tongue, to please give us the teaching and understanding that we need, as well as change our heart’s desires so that they line up with God’s perfect will for our lives. Those kind of prayers, God is of course going to immediately answer. So you very quickly begin to feel something wonderful happening to you. After you have done it enough, your own needs become altogether met and you are then free to start interceding for others by using the same prayer language.

Everything that I have just described to you is a summery of the teaching that one man named Dave Roberson has had as his life’s message from God to the church of today. I had attended a meeting that Dave was teaching at, many years ago and though at the time, he had tables full of different teachings on cassette albums for all kinds of subjects, this was the one that I wanted. It was called, “The Keys To The Mysteries Of God” Then all these years later, I decided to do a search for him on the Internet, and I discovered that more than any other subject, this was the subject that he has made his life’s message. He has available a book online that I highly recommend on this subject. It will explain all about what tongues is and what is happening when we pray that way. You will find it at

I would like to share with you an example of how my gift of tongues had a direct affect on an entire weekend when God used it in a very specific way.

It was one time when I was in Tijuana with a church group. (One that didn’t even believe in tongues. This was a different church that taught as the Lutherans do, that such gifts as tongues were not for today but ended with the apostles.)

Well, we were down there for the weekend camping on the beach and a group of us decided to take the van into town for some genuine Mexican food. In case you don’t know Tijuana is not a place that you want to get into a wreck. They treat it as a criminal offense. I was sitting in a window seat, a couple rows back, on the driver’s side minding my own business when suddenly God says to me,

In order to not be heard by anyone, I turned my head to the window and leaned my head against it as I softly prayed in tongues. Our driver was Dennis, the youth pastor. He was coming up on an opening in the center divide just big enough for one vehicle to fit through at a time, and he wanted to make a U-turn there to get back to where we were going to eat, since it was on the other side of the divided road and the only way to get to it was go past it and turn around. Well, at that very same moment, there was another vehicle planning to make a U-turn from the other direction at that same opening that we were going for. Dennis never saw that car coming because he was heading right for it as it was heading right for us. I saw the whole thing because of how my head was turned and looking out the window, but what’s more, even before that vehicle began to turn towards us, I somehow knew in advance that he was going to. So, I screamed, “Dennis, look out, STOP!” He put on the brakes before he even knew why he should and that other car came rushing into that opening just at the same time that we would have, had Dennis not stopped. We barely missed it and our trip was spared. There’s no way I could have known to pray for that in the natural, so God just bypassed my natural mind and had the Holy Spirit intercede for us. Praise God for His mercy.

This issue of tongues has been one of the most divisive to confront the church in our day. The Bible is not silent about this for us, but spells out exactly what we are to do in the face of this issue.

Jude:17. But, beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ;

18. How that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts.

19. These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the spirit.

20. But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost,

21. Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.

I hate to say it, but the above scripture is talking about people from within the Christian church who begin to mock those of their brethren who operate in these gifts. There is a very stark contrasting here between two kinds of Christians within the church. I mean, it is not possible for one group to separate themselves from the other unless they were once joined, right? In describing the group that separated, Jude says that they are sensual. Understand, that this does not mean sexual in any way. We tend to think of that word that way because we are such a sex preoccupied society today. But that was never the focus of the King James translators in their day. Rather the word simply means that these are people who never enter into spirituality at all but are completely led by their five senses only. Yet they still consider themselves to be in a relationship with God. Explain that one to me please. God is spirit and they that worship Him or have any relationship with Him must do so in spirit, not flesh. But because they don’t operate in that way, they then assume that anyone who does, must have something wrong with them, even calling them, “of the devil”.

So Jude is telling us that we must earnestly contend for the faith, as it was once delivered unto the saints. (That, right there, should answer the claim that the gifts ended with the apostles. It’s the same faith today that it was then.) In other words, don’t give in to their way, but you just go right on with the common salvation as originally delivered, which included tongues, and he says go ahead and pray in the Holy Ghost. He starts out by reminding them, (which really is us, it’s for us today, folks), that God did not take kindly to earlier groups of people and even angels, who start out right but then turn aside to unbelief, in the case of the Israelites; and of leaving their own habitation, in the case of angels. Then Sodom and Gomorrah going after strange flesh. You cannot read Jude without coming away with the realization that these are serious offenses being discussed here.

I heard someone say once that every false teaching or doctrine has been anticipated by God and answered somewhere in scripture. And I would like to show you an example of that for this issue of the gift of the Holy Spirit. For anyone who has been taught that the gift of the Holy Spirit is not for us today, and who claim that people who teach that it is for us today, and move in those gifts are getting a devil rather than the Holy Spirit, this is for you. Did you know that Jesus knew that people would one day be teaching that? He gives a very specific answer to just that error in:

Luke 11:11. If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent?

13. If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?

You see, God knows that some people are teaching that when you ask God for the Holy Spirit, you are instead getting a demon. And Jesus is saying, do you really think that God would give you a demon when you ask Him for the Holy Spirit? You who are fathers, even in your fallen sinful nature, you wouldn’t do something so horrible to your own kids, yet you accuse God of that? God does give us the gift of the Holy Spirit today just as He did to the earliest believers and you need not fear to ask Him for that gift, or worry that He will give you a demon instead.

I have come up against some of these types of Christians who seem to have a special dislike for anyone who believes in the gifts of the spirit, or operates in a spiritual way. This one church in particular, the same one that I was at the weekend trip to Tijuana with, was such a church.

One night I was at this church for a Sunday night fellowship, at a time when I was just learning to move in the spirit and trust God to use me to pray for others with needs that He wanted to meet. The meeting was over and we were all just talking casually to one another. I started talking to a girl there that I knew only slightly, but she began to tell me of a medical condition that she had had for some time. I felt led by God to pray for her to be healed.

I asked her if she would allow me to pray for her healing and she said okay and that she believed that God could heal her but also that she thought if God wanted her to have this problem for some reason, then she was okay with that too. I assured her that God wanted to heal her. So, I placed my hands on her head the way I had learned to do at a different church where they teach these things, and began to pray that God would release His power right now to heal her and I began to feel the power of God flow through me as I had for many others whom I had prayed for this way.

However, something else began to happen that had never happened to me before this time. In my simple naiveté, I had forgotten that this church doesn’t move in these kinds of ministering to one another, and now, although my eyes were closed, I could detect something wrong in the spirit that gave me cause to stop praying and look around, and my attention was drawn over to some guys standing nearby. Something I was not prepared for was going on there. This group of guys that I did not know at all, were looking intently at me with very hard looks. They were big, athletic, good looking types, like football jocks, that were very favored probably at this church. They were whispering to each other about me, that much I knew immediately. I could not hear them audibly, but to my complete amazement, I immediately knew their thoughts and what they were saying, in my own spirit, unmistakably. One of them was saying to the others,

“Look at him, look at him, he thinks he’s Elijah…” I felt such hatred coming off of them toward me and it grieved me so much and the power of Holy Spirit that had been so strong just a moment before, was suddenly sealed up and could not flow at all. But inside me, I heard the scripture:

Matthew 13:58. And he (Jesus) did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief.

I was stunned. If even Jesus Himself could be limited by people’s unbelief, then small wonder that I also would not be able to do this amongst these people. I was suddenly unable to pray for this girl, that only a moment before, I was sure God could, and would heal. But now I knew that God did not want me to continue to pray for her at all. I even sensed that she was relieved that I stopped, and that was that. I actually felt like those guys would like to have taken me out and beat me up. Their anger against me was that strong. I looked right at them with such intensity and my look said,

“Okay, you guys win this round, have it your way for now, but this is not over, we’ll meet again on the day of judgement…”

You may recall that Jesus also was able to discern the thoughts of His detractors.

Matthew9:2. And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy; Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.

3. And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.

4. And Jesus knowing their thoughts said, Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?