Three times the Lord said “Open wide your mouth and I will fill it” (Psalm 81:10) and each time I responded with fear. When I opened my mouth to give voice to my ignorance for the 3rd time, the Holy Spirit washed over and through me in what felt like a flood of warm pure love. At the same time, it felt as if His hand took hold of my tongue and stretched it out until something hard and lifeless broke off from the end of it and I began speaking in a new language I’d never heard before. Overcome with emotion, tears of joy ran down my face as the words which could only have been highest praise for almighty God rushed from my tongue. For several hours I didn’t speak another word of English except to confess “I can’t believe I ever feared You”.

Try as I might the next day, I could not begin speaking in tongues again. When I expressed frustration, the enemy whispered in my ear “God gave you the gift of tongues just for the day so you could see what it used to be like. It is not yours to keep.” In my other ear I heard a different voice say “That is a lie. The gift is yours to keep. Now take your concordance and look up every scripture in which I say I’ll put my words into your mouth and read them aloud”. Still feeling frustrated, I did as the second voice said, reading the first scripture timidly, the second more loudly and with authority, and the third I yelled at the top of my lungs “Open wide your mouth and I will fill it SAYS THE LORD! Now GET OUT of my HOUSE Satan and TAKE your LIES WITH YOU!” With a welcome rush of the Spirit I began speaking in tongues once again and did so all day long every day for weeks. If ever I was thankful to be out of work and at home alone, it was then. What a joyous experience it was to receive such fullness of the Holy Spirit and the gift of tongues! Though it was 25 years ago now, I still remember the gentle beauty of it all as if it were yesterday.

Growing up in the Presbyterian church during the 1960’s, I can’t recall ever being taught about the Holy Spirit. On the rare occasion someone did mention the “Holy Ghost” as He was known then, my youthful mind imagined Him spying on my every move and waiting to pounce on me whenever I messed up. It wasn’t until my early 20’s that I first heard about the Baptism with the Holy Spirit (Matthew 3:11, Luke 3:16, Acts 1:5, et al), following a concert my gospel music group gave at a small charismatic church. When I told the man who asked about my baptism that I’d been baptized only with water, he shared from scripture about the baptism with the Holy Spirit and offered to pray with me to receive, where I heard for the first time the gift of tongues. The prayer experience left me conflicted for many years, for the man spoke in a beautiful and articulate tongue, while the woman who joined in spoke a single 3-syllable word over and over again. The one I believed to be genuine, the latter sounded like gibberish. Nevertheless, I left the concert with a new desire to seek and receive more of Holy Spirit and the gift of tongues, concluding simply “if it’s from God, I want it” (Luke 11:13).

The decades that followed ran the gamut of emotions for me, as I sought and prayed without receiving. I read a number of books about the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts; some encouraged me to press on while others frustrated me by claiming the gifts were only for the early church. A few of the books that claimed the gift of tongues had ceased went on to suggest that tongues today are either of the devil or delusion. The mainline denominations I attended all taught that believers received the Holy Spirit with water baptism, which in my case, was as an infant. According to that all-too-common teaching, I received all I was ever going to receive from God when I was just a few months old. There was only one remedy for me since the teachings of men did nothing but to sow confusion and frustration; I would ask, seek, knock and wait, and in the meantime deal with the range of emotions as best as I could as my prayers, unanswered for over 20 years, mounted up.

In my late 20’s I had great hopes for receiving more of the Holy Spirit and the gift of tongues when the Lord impressed me to be baptized again as my own declaration of faith and ongoing commitment to Christ. It was a joyful experience with my parents and siblings there to celebrate with me. If I felt any greater measure of the Holy Spirit after being baptized, it was only in context of James 4:8 which reads: “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.” In hindsight, the most valuable lesson in the experience was my decision to obey God and not be deterred by men who told me to ignore God’s leading. It was, I believe, a seminal moment on the path to the Spiritual filling I sought from God.

A few times I met a believer with the gift of tongues who insisted I didn’t have the Holy Spirit at all because I hadn’t spoken in tongues. Such was a belief espoused by a few of the books I read; specifically that tongues are the universal sign-gift for evidence of baptism with the Holy Spirit. As often as I encountered that kind of haughtiness (1 Corinthians 12:15-17) I would reason with them, pointing out the spiritual gifts I had experienced, specifically the word of knowledge, the word of wisdom, discernment, and that the Holy Spirit had given me many wonderful songs, a testimony and a concert ministry. Clearly I was hearing from the Spirit, and the gifts He gave me edify the body, unlike tongues which edifies only the speaker (1 Corinthians 14:14). Insisting I ask God for a gift that scripture says is less valuable for ministering to the body (1 Corinthians 12:31) made no sense to me. That they viewed the Baptism with the Holy Spirit through the singular gift of tongues only frustrated me and turned me away from seeking the gift for myself. Frankly, they sounded more like the accuser of the brethren than brothers for they did more to tear me down and discourage me than build me up.

It was out of hurt and anger that I resolved not to seek less valuable spiritual gifts, specifically tongues, and to be content with the gifts and measure of the Holy Spirit that I already had. Realistically it was a poor salve for a broken heart and a doctrine of ignorance that almost cost me my beloved wife.

We met as pen-pals through America Online (AOL) the spring of 1996. From the start we shared our portion of Christ with each other while revealing bits and pieces about ourselves, our families, and life story. I never figured we’d meet because we lived 2400 miles from each other. Still, there was no denying the love that grew between us. After several months, we made plans to meet over Labor Day weekend. She drove to the airport from her central Illinois home, I flew in from Seattle. Our time together was wonderfully blessed as God revealed Himself in several ways, orchestrating everything. It was during our third weekend together we went to lunch, talked about the Lord, and Karen asked “What are your spiritual gifts?” The church I attended had recently administered a “spiritual gifts assessment” which for a non-charismatic church had to do with matching people to common church roles with no mention of the expressive Biblical spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 12:8-10, Romans 12:6-8, et al). So I answered her question with the results of my test: music, giving, helps.

When I’d answered, I asked Karen about her spiritual gifts. She replied “I have the same gifts you do: plus teaching and … the gift of tongues”.

I had just raised my sandwich to take a bite but stopped and pulled it out from between my teeth and set it back on my plate. My mind suddenly in panic mode, I thought to myself “you’ve done nothing wrong here and there’s nothing to be ashamed of, nor have you shamed her if you just get up and walk away.” Then as if to knock some sense into me, the Holy Spirit said “Don’t be childish; you love her and you have always prayed to receive the gift of tongues”. I folded my hands over my sandwich, looked at her through tears with embarrassment and replied “I’ve probably said some hurtful and ignorant things about tongues, haven’t I?” Like I’ve seen her do countless times since, she looked at me with unmistakable love, smiled sweetly and said not a word. It was a love she could only have come by through the Holy Spirit. I apologized for my ignorance and told her I wanted and prayed for the gift of tongues but I’d been hurt by its elusiveness and by those who had it and were dismissive of me.

After lunch, I asked her never to check her gifts on my account, rather if she felt the Lord’s leading to use her gifts around me, to use them as she felt led. Strangely enough, for all the times I met believers who claimed to speak in tongues, that was only the 2nd time I heard the genuine gift of tongues when Karen laid hands on me to receive the gift for myself. Like the man who first told me about it twenty years earlier and prayed for me with love, I felt nothing but love from my soon-to-be wife.

We persisted in prayer for another 2-1/2 years before I received the gift for myself. Home alone in my living room at the time, it did feel like a baptism, but unlike the baptism with water, the Holy Spirit washed through me, in what felt like warm, pure love that remained inside of me and overflowed in tongues of praise. It was truly ignorant of me to have ever feared the Holy Spirit. The gift of tongues is beautiful to receive and use. The initial euphoria of tongues doesn’t last through the years. With use, comes faith, hope and love, which in turn causes the gift to fade away in terms of importance and fascination, because maturity has come. I still have the gift and use it regularly as the Spirit leads me, but it’s main purpose is largely fulfilled – to make a solid and mature believer out of this victim of man’s religious system, deep seeded insecurity and doubt. Where tongues are a sign for the unbeliever, the unbeliever was me and the gift of tongues was given to cement my faith and help to heal me.

Personally, I think it’s an error to emphasize the gift of tongues as the singular sign of baptism with the Holy Spirit. After all, Jesus said the disciples would be “clothed with power” when they received the baptism; not that they would speak in tongues, but “clothed with power”. Not long after Pentecost, Peter healed a man who was born lame (Acts 3:1-10). Was it power that healed the man, or tongues? I dare say, if power from on high is the measure of the baptism with the Holy Spirit as demonstrated by Peter that day, then very few of us have received the baptism. Unless of course that power is manifest through any and every gift of the Holy Spirit. Speaking in tongues is a manifestation of the Spirit’s power. Prophesy, speaking a word of wisdom or knowledge are manifestations of the Spirit’s power. Faith, healing and miracles are manifestations of the Spirit’s power. Discernment of spirits and interpretation of tongues are a manifestation of the Spirit’s power. Why? Because without the Holy Spirit, we could do none of those things!

In all our efforts to figure out and explain the Holy Spirit, it is well to remember the words of Jesus who said: The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you don’t know where the wind comes from nor where it’s going. That’s the way it is with everyone born of the Spirit (John 3:8). Why then do we try so hard to define and explain the ways of the Holy Spirit through doctrine and theology? If we don’t know where the Spirit has come from nor where He’s going, could it be that some of our beliefs about the Spirit are rooted in our experiences moreso than God’s word?

Consider that curious scripture found in John 20:22 where on the day Jesus was raised from the dead, He appeared to the disciples, breathed on them and said “receive the Holy Spirit”. The baptism with the Holy Spirit, aka Pentecost, would not occur for another 7 weeks. So what measure of the Holy Spirit did Jesus give the disciples that day? Was it the Spirit of resurrection – of being born again and made into a new creation? Is that the way Jesus marks us as His own? Or is it the seal of the Holy Spirit Paul wrote about in Ephesians 4:30? Certainly there was an initial release of the Spirit and power on that day, for when Jesus was raised from the dead, tombs broke open, the dead were raised, they went into the Holy City and appeared to many of the living (Matthew 27:52).

Whatever the John 20:22 portion of the Holy Spirit should be called, it’s different and separate from the Pentecost portion. It seems to me like the John 20:22 portion had to do with resurrection and breathing life into the spiritually dead – of setting the captives free from death. The Baptism with the Holy Spirit that followed 7 weeks later brought power and gifts of empowerment, one of which was tongues. 1 Corinthians 12:8-10 goes on to list 8 more spiritual gifts, aka charisma, all of which are manifestations of the Holy Spirit’s power and presence. Romans 12:6-8 lists even more gifts. Where long before I received the gift of tongues I wrote songs, had a concert ministry, and experienced occasional words of wisdom and knowledge, that could have been through a temporary filling of the Holy Spirit or my own John 20:22 portion of the Holy Spirit when I received Jesus as Savior. Any way you slice it, it’s absurd to suggest I did not have the Holy Spirit just because I didn’t speak in tongues. The power and inspiration of the Holy Spirit was clearly evident in my life, long before I received tongues.

Perhaps then the Baptism with the Holy Spirit, aka Pentecost, has more to do with greater commitment? Deeper relationship? Of a calling and equipping to ministry? Should we be looking at the Holy Spirit, His infilling and Spiritual gifts, with more of a relational mindset? I didn’t propose to Karen the day I first met her, rather, there was a season of courting and getting to know each other, that over time, turned to love and deeper relationship, trust and commitment. Gifts were exchanged, promises made, and finally came our joining in marriage. Does our relationship with the Holy Spirit unfold in similar manner? Is there a relationship between the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the parable of talents? Where the one servant is given a single talent, another 2, another 5 and it’s the demonstration of obedience and faith to invest the talents in the Master’s work which leads to trust, greater favor from the Master and being given even more talents?

I want to be clear, I am not here to present theology, rather, I am here to share my testimony and the deep struggles I endured in working out the tongues issue for myself. On the way, I encountered way too many people who take the “Bible answer man” approach to all matters of faith – as if salvation boils down to being “right” in all things and extra points for having everything all figured out. To put that in perspective, Paul said of his own religious history that he counted everything as “DUNG” – knowing Christ is all that matters. A few verses farther down in Philippians 3 Paul recognizes differences in our thinking while on the road to maturity, about which God will show us what to think in time. Our race isn’t about right theology, but simply knowing Christ and being known by Christ. That makes sense in that on the day my life here is over and I stand before Him, it all comes down to whether or not Jesus knows me.

My experience with the Holy Spirit has not followed a formula. The formula approach peddles such nonsense as telling people who are seeking the gift of tongues to “make motor-boat noises” to “prime the pump” to help receive the gift of tongues. God does not need help. That book went straight into the trash for the simple reason that discernment, another of the spiritual gifts, told me WHEN God does give the gift of tongues, it is entirely of and by Him and altogether beautiful and NOT forced. Just like He did at Pentecost with tongues of flame lighting upon the disciples so would it be for me when I finally received the gift. There is no need for motor-boat noises. When the Baptism with the Spirit comes over a person the way it did for me, there is no holding back the tongue of praise and thanksgiving! And no holding back the tears of joy!

My prayer for you dear friends, is this: that you will read, believe as truth, and act on the scriptures, especially those that exhort you to ask for more of the Holy Spirit (Luke 11:13) and His gifts (1 Corinthians 12:31).

I would also appeal to you not to let fear, the doctrines of men, tradition or religious leaders dissuade you from obeying God’s commands (John 14:15) nor from following the Holy Spirit as He leads you (Acts 4:19 and 5:29, 1 Corinthians 14:39). Like I heard in my spirit when I woke up a few days ago: “do not let your mind talk you out of what your heart longs for, when it comes to more of God’s Holy Spirit and the wonderful gifts He wants to give you”.

The transcript for this episode can be found at RSS.com. In it you’ll find a list of scriptures to prove the gifts are for today and that God desires to give them to you.

Please ask. There’s nothing to fear. Love to all.

Scriptures

I am Yahweh your God, who brought you up from the land of Egypt. Open wide your mouth and I will fill it. (Psalms 81:10 LEB)

While Apollos was in Corinth, Paul traveled through the interior of the province and arrived in Ephesus. There he found some disciples and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?” “We have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit,” they answered. “Well, then, what kind of baptism did you receive?” Paul asked. “The baptism of John,” they answered. Paul said, “The baptism of John was for those who turned from their sins; and he told the people of Israel to believe in the one who was coming after him—that is, in Jesus.” When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Paul placed his hands on them, and the Holy Spirit came upon them; they spoke in strange tongues and also proclaimed God’s message. They were about twelve men in all. (Acts 19:1-7 GNB)

“I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. (Matthew 3:11 ESV)

John answered them all, saying, “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
(Luke 3:16 ESV)

And while staying with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” (Acts 1:4-5 ESV)

If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13 ESV)

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. (James 4:8 ESV)

If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? (1Corinthians 12:15-17 ESV)

Therefore, one who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret. For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful. (1 Corinthians 14:13-14 ESV)

If any speak in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three, and each in turn, and let someone interpret. But if there is no one to interpret, let each of them keep silent in church and speak to himself and to God. (1 Corinthians 14:27-28 ESV)

But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way. (1 Corinthians 12:31 ESV)

For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills. (1 Corinthians 12:8-11 ESV)

Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness. (Romans 12:6-8 ESV)

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. (John 14:15 ESV)

But Peter and John answered them, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge. (Act 4:19 ESV)

But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men. (Acts 5:29 ESV)

So, my brothers, earnestly desire to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues. (1 Corinthians 14:39 ESV)