Tongues in the Light of the Grace Gospel

Sunday, 24th January 2010

Sometime last month, I blogged about how a fellow NTU graduate had asked me about healing and discipline in the light of the gospel of grace.

You can read about that here.

Subsequent to that, he also asked me about tongues.  I have obtained his permission to reproduce our email exchange here on this blog as a means of mutual sharing and learning.

From: name withheld
Subject: Tongues
To: "Malcolm Loh"
Date: Tuesday, 24 November, 2009, 10:54 PM

Hi Malcolm,

What is your view on speaking in tongues? Is it a must and is it something that every Christian can receive/do? I have also been troubled by this for years. Good will charismatic Christians have prayed for me, asking me to imitate them in speaking a few "word" to kick off the momentum whatsoever, but to no "success".

Here was my response to him...

To: name withheld
From: Malcolm Loh
Re: Tongues
Date: Wednesday, 25 November, 2009 07:51 AM

Hi bro

I used to be against tongues when I was a youth. There was this youth leader who would go around "showing off" by speaking in tongues and that really put me off.

However, my view has since changed (yet another case of God "child-training" me) :-)

God has actually given us the gift of tongues as a means to communicate with Him spirit to spirit. The devil does not want Christians to experience this and hence he will tell us that it intellectually nonsense.

And therein lies the mental block. The more we try to reason, the more we are unable to speak in tongues. The more intellectual we are, the less we are willing to surrender our tongue for the spirit to take over. I have heard a couple of testimonies from ladies in our church who shared about how many years before they finally got a breakthrough.

In 1 Cor 14:4, Paul says that speaking in tongues helps to edify oneself. The Greek word for edify means "to build oneself up".

There are several other passages that talk about how tongues in good in building oneself up. You can listen to Ps Reuben's sermon on this topic at the following link:

http://www.box.net/shared/yemtqr43du

Coming back to your question about whether speaking in tongues is compulsory. The answer is that it is not. I know many godly Christians who don't. However, it is something that has been given by God for our benefit, so why not?

Don't be pressurised to speak in tongues. If you so desire, let God know and He will definitely make it come to pass. The first time I tried speaking, it also sounded hesitant. However like any language, the more one speaks, the more one becomes fluent in it. It is also the only spiritual gift that God has given us which we can switch on and off at will.

As for myself, I pray in tongues just before giving a presentation or going for an important meeting and believe it or not, it helps calms my nerves :-)

Say, why don't we meet up for a drink or something, so that we can share our spiritual journey? You can contact me at 9029-5677.

Shalom
Malcolm