Why Speak in Tongues?

10 Reasons for Christians to Enjoy the Glorious Gift of Praying in the Holy Spirit

“Dude, this is seriously so amazing,” a friend texted me this the next day after we prayed for the baptism of the Holy Spirit. But when we first prayed, he felt nothing at all. He had been seeking God and studying the Scriptures to see if the gift of tongues was a spiritual gift for today. We met at a Starbucks to look over some Bible verses and discuss this spiritual gift. At the end of our time we prayed in the parking lot and although it seemed to him at first that nothing happened, I got the text pictured below that as soon as he left for home after our meeting, he prayed in tongues all the way home. As we talked later, if memory serves me correctly, he basically asked, “How do Christians live the Christian life without this?”

Over the years I’ve seen some incredible testimonies of how people’s lives have changed as a result of praying for the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I’ve seen demons, flee, people receive healing from depression, find strength in God’s love, start to hear the voice of God more clearly and receive boldness to witness and live out their faith in Christ all as a result of receiving the baptism and speaking in tongues. There have definitely been excesses and aberrations of how spiritual gifts like tongues are to be used but I want to encourage you to examine the Scriptures and consider these benefits of speaking in tongues.

Before getting into the list, what is speaking in tongues? It’s a gift of the Holy Spirit found in the New Testament (Acts 1 & 2, 1 Corinthians 12 & 14). It is a gift where the Holy Spirit prays through you in a tongue or language that is unlearned by your natural process of learning a language. Tongues can be a language that is heard and interpreted for specific languages (Acts 2, 1 Corinthians 14) and it can also be a private prayer language you speak directly to God (1 Corinthians 14). Tongues can be earthly languages you don’t know or a heavenly language (1 Corinthians 13:1).

10 Reasons Why should Christians Speak in Tongues:

1. Honor a gift of the Holy Spirit.

Receiving and using a gift of the Holy Spirit honors His place in your life (1 Corinthians 12:10). It stands to reason that if the Holy Spirit is giving Christians gifts to express, we honor Him by receiving these gifts and expressing them for His glory. Many Christians say pursue the Giver not the gifts. I say pursue the Giver and honor His gifts.

2. Experience the flow of the river.

Jesus said that those who would be full of the Holy Spirit would have rivers of living water flow from their inner most being (John 7:38-39). Tongues is a gift and language of the Spirit that allows you to experience the work of the Holy Spirit in prayer. All through the Scripture the refreshing of God’s presence through the Holy Spirit is likened to a river (Psalm 36:8, 46:4, Ezekiel 47). Praying in the Spirit allows you to experience the flow of God’s presence in your life.

3. Build yourself up in the faith.

Praying in the Spirit builds you up in the most holy faith (Jude 20). This gift allows you strengthen your faith and experience spiritual renewal. Satan loves to discourage and weaken Christians in our walk. Praying in the Spirit renews spiritual vitality to love and serve God.

4. Keep yourself in the love of God.

If context matters (and it does in Bible study) Jude’s instruction on praying in the Spirit to build ourselves in the faith is followed by an instruction to keep ourselves in the love of God. Praying in the Spirit keeps us in the love of God. St. Augustine taught that the Holy Spirit’s place in the Trinity is the personal bond of love between the Father and the Son. Other ancient Christians taught this too. The Holy Spirit is not just the virtue of love between the Father and Son, He is a person of the Godhead. However, the Spirit’s work is to flood our hearts with the love of God (Romans 5:8) so it stands to reason that praying in the Spirit keeps us in and causes us to experience God’s Triune love (Jude 21). Which is also the answer to the end of Jesus’ High Priestly prayer for us (John 17), that we would experience the same love the Father shared with the Son.

5. Experience the ancient roots of the faith.

I love the ancient roots of our faith. Christians have a faith handed to us by Christ and the apostles (Jude 3). We aren’t to innovate and add-on to or change our faith. We are to contend for what was given to us to stay pure and faithful to the original gospel. The church was birthed by the Holy Spirit and an expression of tongues was first released on that glorious day of Pentecost. Tongues isn’t new or novel, it’s the ancient expression of the Spirit working in our faith from day one of the church.

6. Prayer for when you don’t know what to pray.

We don’t always know what to pray. Many times we don’t know what or how to pray about a specific situation. So Paul the apostle told the Romans that we are given help in this weakness of not knowing how to pray: the groans of the Spirit (Romans 8:22-27). Now these groans may be tongues or even deeper than tongues in a type of travail. Some might believe that these groans are made by the Spirit apart from human agents, but I believe with other Scriptures on praying in the Spirit, Scripture best helps interpret Scripture and shows us how the Spirit can help us pray when we don’t know what to say with our natural language.

7. Pray the will of God.

In Romans, Paul goes on to describe these groans of the Spirit (Romans 8:22-27) as prayers that are in accordance or alignment with God’s will. When we pray in the Spirit, the Spirit prays through our spirit and the Holy Spirit doesn’t get His prayers wrong. This is a pretty radical claim by the apostle and beautiful invitation for us to elevate our prayers. We are not to only pray in the Spirit (1 Corinthians 14:15) but we can have confidence in the Spirit when we don’t know how to pray with our mind.

8. Grow in boldness.

Praying in tongues at the time of receiving the Holy Spirit for the early church released an incredible boldness over early Christians. We can’t reduce the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the ensuing boldness completely to tongues but it does seem to be a real part of producing boldness in the Christian. This is my testimony along with countless others, that praying in the Spirit stirs up boldness to live for Christ, witness, pray, turn from sin and pursue God in obedience (Acts 1, 2, 4, Jude 20).

9. Walk in spiritual power.

In the early church the Christian faith was associated with spiritual power. When the church expands into Samaria through an outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the apostles lay hands on people to receive the baptism of the Spirit, Simon the Sorcerer is so impressed with their power that He wants to pay for the work of the Spirit. He is rebuke for his trying to buy spiritual power with money. But it should not be lost on us that although we don’t see tongues specifically in Acts 8 connected to the baptism we see that something visible happens so that Simon wants to pay for it. With the rest of the testimony of Luke’s accounts in Acts, we can see that tongues through the baptism of the Spirit rivals and exceeds the power of witches (Acts 1, 2, 8, 10, 19).

10. Do something that AI can’t do.

When we pray in the Spirit we speak mysteries and directly to God (1 Corinthians 14:2). Some people believe this means that we bypass the devil when we pray in tongues. Others believe Paul tells us this in his letter to Corinth because the focus of tongues is more on us praying to God than praying to be heard by others. But whatever happens with tongues, we are tapping into mysteries. The mysteries of the New Testament of godliness, of the gospel and of the church all things to be discovered by the Christian. Why not the mystery of speaking to God in tongues as well? After all, artificial intelligence doesn’t have a spirit and can’t pray in tongues. So you may as well do something that AI can’t do.

I encourage you to seek God through the Scriptures and prayer about this gift. I have some more to write on this topic coming soon. But for now I pray that as my friend experienced after prayer in a Starbucks parking lot that you would experience the power and work of the Spirit in your life.