Quote:
Originally Posted by countmeworthy
I am guessing you do not pray/speak un tongues. Yet you did at one time. Am I correct OBW? Were you simply disillusioned by the whole AOG experience? When you prayed in tongues especially at the off set, was it spontaneous?
Did the LC life move you away from tongues? Would you be willing to pray in tongues again today? Why or why not?
I am simply trying to figure things out.
Thanks Mike!
Blessings in abundance!
Carol G
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The truth is that I never spoke in tongues.
I started doing some research into the basis for the teaching, primarily to be able to support it to others that I knew from other denominations.
The experience gave me a reason to be less certain. I saw the reference to speaking in tongues at Pentecost, once among the Samaritans, then at the house of Cornelius, then the parts in those three chapters of 1 Corinthians. And while I did not have the mental acuity to see the things in those three chapters that I do now, they did not simply endorse it as something for everyone.
And that bothered me.
Along with the fact that it seemed that really only a very few at our church actually did anything other than engage in some kind of random jabbering when there was a time when all were praying. Rarely was there anything that could be passed off as some kind of language. While not explicitly stated, Paul seemed to suggest that even the "groanings" of the Spirit were still words and thoughts that we were unable to come up with, not just repeated monosyllabic gibberish.
Having said that, there were some occasions when I sensed something "in the air" upon entering the sanctuary and before the service was over, someone (generally from among two or three specific people) had risen and spoke something that was more complex than the gibberish I just mentioned and someone else (or on very rare occasion, the same person) then translated it.
But even then, there was never any situation in which the language was known by someone else in the room. And virtually always, the English spoken was some kind of near-quotation of either OT (generally) scripture or a typical warning from a hell-fire kind of sermon. I don't recall anything that was unique or specifically meaningful (although years later my mom mentioned that the "warnings" were typically assumed to be for the benefit of some unsaved person there, and not for the majority of us — in other words, the assembly as a whole pitchforked it).
On the whole, nothing that stands out as a remarkable evidence that God spoke or acted. And, as I mentioned, I do not recall ever seeing any kind of actual miracle. There were stories about them in the past. Or somewhere else. But not there. Or anywhere else in the general vicinity.
I don't think that anyone is intentionally faking it in these kinds of groups (although there are plenty faking it in some groups) — just so determined that it has to be true that they believe what is otherwise unlikely. They suggest that, to begin to speak in tongues you should "help out" by jabbering. In the kind of emotionally charged environment of those prayer times, I would now be hard-pressed to accept much as genuine just because somebody "felt" something euphoric.
But at the same time, I do not deny that God can do as he pleases in these areas. But the first example was a bunch of Galilean fishermen speaking in languages that they clearly did not know while people who did know them were present. The sign was more to the hearer than the speaker. The speaker probably had little idea what was going on. And surely would make no personal claim about it. Peter surely did not. He declared that everything going on was according to God, as evidence of the truth of Christ.
Not something to make him and the others stronger in their faith or to have a special blessing.