A privilege this morning to open up God's Word together.
And so if you've got your Bible with you either in the original
book version or in some kind of digital device, now is your
moment to produce it. We're continuing a series that
we've been doing for, I don't know, several weeks called
Impact, which is really looking at how a group of really, really
ordinary people ended up changing the world.
And so we're working our way through the book of Acts, and
we're just pausing wherever the Holy Spirit is mentioned.
And we're looking at what was really going on for those people
in that place and therefore what it might mean for us in our time
in our place. And we've reached really the
ultimate mention of the Holy Spirit in the whole of the
Bible, the day of Pentecost. And so if you've got your Bible
with you, we're going to be first of all in Acts chapter 2
and later on one Corinthians 14, if you want to be like super
eager and on it, but let's just read together.
Well, I say read together. I'm going to read.
You're going to listen. Acts chapter 2, verse one says
this. When the day of Pentecost came,
they were all together in one place.
Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came
from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.
They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated
and came to rest on each of them.
All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.
If if you're the kind of person who likes to like, circle
things, underline things in your Bible, all would be a good one.
All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak
in other tongues or other languages as the Spirit enabled
them. Now they were staying in
Jerusalem, God fearing Jews from every nation under heaven.
When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in
bewilderment because each one heard their own language being
spoken. Utterly amazed, they asked on
all these Who are speaking Galileans?
Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native
language? And that's our scripture for
this morning. So now that we've got to know
each other a little bit over the last few weeks, I feel like it's
a kind of a safe and secure place to be able to share with
you that when I was 15 years old, I stayed the night.
I slept in a public toilet. And the reason like there is a
bit of a back story to that. I didn't just randomly one night
think I know what I'm going to do.
I, I was a scout. Do we have any scouts in the
room? You know, DIB, DIB, DOB, DOB.
I like I was in the scouts and, and it was a kind of a rite of
passage that basically we, we were driven me and some friends
to a car park at the bottom of a mountain.
And it was like, OK, you've got three days to get home and, and
it's like 50 miles away back to the youth hostel where we were
staying. You got, you got 3 days.
And so off we went. And, and I was like, right,
let's get the map. Let's have a look at where we're
going. And my friend David was like,
no, no, no, we don't need a map. What do we need the map for?
He said, I was here a few weeks ago with my family.
I know exactly which way we're going.
It's this way. And off he went.
And I was like, guys, could we just please look at the map?
And he was like, I don't need the map.
I know where I'm going. So off we went up the mountain
and maybe like two or three hours later, he's looking
slightly less certain of the then he knows the way and the,
the clouds were starting to come in and you could hardly see your
hand in front of your face and the wind was really getting up
and and then it started to get dark and we and I was like,
could we please just look at the map?
He was like, I think I know the way.
I was like, no, no, honestly, I really think we need to look at
the map. And eventually it was properly
dark. We had no idea where we were and
and we met this old man who's probably about the age I am now.
And, and he said, he said, listen, you guys, I can tell
you're lost and this is quite dangerous now.
And so he basically took us down the mountain.
He took us to his van. He put us in the van, He drove
us to civilization and he left us there and we started to put
up our tent, But to be honest, we were absolutely exhausted.
And then just as we looked up, we realized that he dropped us
just outside the public toilet and, and we were like, well, we
could put up the tent or we could just use this shelter
that's already been provided. And, and so, so we, so we went
into the gents and it absolutely stank.
And, and there was an inch of what we'll call water, but
wasn't really water on the ground, but we were like, it's
still better than being outside. And so we slept the night on the
floor of this public toilet. And then the worst part of the
whole experience was the next day we realised, do you know
what? Let's go and have a look at the
ladies. And we went to the ladies.
There were cut flowers. There was like, you know, it was
beautifully warm. It was just like, oh, I can't.
And that's basically the story of my life unfolding right
there. But you might be wondering what
my point is. And to be honest, I need to look
at my notes to remember what my point is.
Thank God he's given us the map. There you go, That was the
point. Thank God.
There you go. Very good, very good.
Thank God he's given us the map. You know, we, we don't have to
spend our lives wandering around in the dark wondering what a
Christian should be or, or how we're to live or, or what it
looks like to be a Christian in different environments.
Because God has given us the map.
He's given us this book. And I think what we're supposed
to do with this book is instead of being super self confident
and like, oh, I think I know the way.
I'm, I'm pretty sure I know the way.
I don't need to look at the map. Instead, day by day, we're
supposed to re examine the map and we're not supposed to come
to the map with all kinds of assumptions and preconceptions
and self-confidence. I think we're supposed to
approach the map with humility. Like, Lord, I, I'm not sure I do
know the the way and even if I think I do, I just want to
check. And so really what we're going
to find ourselves doing as Christians day by day is saying
what does the text actually say rather than what I think the
text says, What does the text actually say?
And how am I going to go about applying that to my life?
And today we're going to do that with this extraordinary
phenomenon that appears in this text that we just read.
The whole concept that when the Holy Spirit comes into our lives
and into our bodies and we're filled afresh with the Holy
Spirit, there is a chance that we might find ourselves speaking
a language that we haven't learnt before, that nobody's
taught us. The Bible calls that the gift of
tongues or praying in tongues or speaking in tongues.
And we're going to look at that this morning.
Now let me just say to you, if you're new into church and
you're thinking, I knew it, these guys are all nutters.
You know, I would understand why you might think that.
But what I want to say to you is you came here today and maybe
you came to Hatfield or Hemel. You came here today because
you're looking for a power that will change your life.
And so all I'm trying to do today is introduce you to the
kind of power that might really change how you live and why you
live. And so that's what we're going
to do today. And just to warn you, I'm going
to go a bit deep this morning. There will probably be less gags
than usual, but that's OK. There are more gags next week.
And so I just feel like it's important to just kind of
address this. Do you know what?
Just by way of a gag, you know, it was quite funny when I was
typing my talk into my laptop. You know, when you get the word,
the the spelling slightly wrong and it says did you mean?
And so I, I typed in badly the gift of tongues and it said, did
you mean the gift of fondue, which I thought was really
funny. So we're not going to despise
the gift of fondue this morning, but we are mainly speaking about
the gift of tongues. So what is actually happening in
this text? The Holy Spirit comes on, these
disciples, 120 of them in the upper room, and the next thing
that happens is that they find themselves speaking in other
tongues. And if you're the kind of person
who likes to make sure you understand everything really
well, you might find it helpful. If you've got the NIV version,
for example, that I'm using this morning, there's a little a next
to the word tongues, and you follow that down to the bottom
of the page and it says all languages.
So when we're speaking about the gift of tongues, we're speaking
about languages, we're speaking in languages.
And so the Holy Spirit comes on them and they start speaking a
language that they haven't learned.
It would be a bit like the Holy Spirit coming on my beautiful
wife Taran, and then her suddenly speaking in Mandarin
Chinese. You know, I can assure you she's
never learned and been taught a word of Mandarin Chinese.
But that's the kind of thing that's happening here, right?
They're suddenly speaking Japanese.
And even more amazingly than that, there are people in the
crowd who are like, wow, that's amazing.
That's like my language. And suddenly they find
themselves understanding what Taryn is saying, and she's
speaking about the good news of Jesus.
And they hear it and they repent and they're baptized, right?
So it's an amazing thing that's happening.
That's basically what's happening in this text.
There's actually only one other place really in the New
Testament where something like that is happening, where, where
people find themselves speaking a known human language that
other people understand. And I, I think that's in Acts
chapter 10. So in Acts chapter 10, the
apostle Peter is in Cornelius's house and the Holy Spirit comes
on, all the people in the house and they start, well, actually
what it actually says is let me try and find it.
Acts chapter 10, verse 47, it says they Peter says they've
received the Holy Spirit in the same way that we did.
In other words, in the same way as it happened in Acts chapter
2. That seems to be the only other
place. And So what I want to suggest to
you this morning, and again, it's just my suggestion, it's
just my reading of the text, is that that idea that the Holy
Spirit might come on you and you might start speaking another
foreign language. That seems from the text of the
Scriptures to be a rare thing rather than a common thing that
enabled by the power of the Holy Spirit.
A Christian might just suddenly start speaking Japanese or
Chinese or whatever it is. That seems to be rare.
For example, it only seems to appear in the book of Acts.
It doesn't seem to appear in any other part of the New Testament.
It's never mentioned or taught about anywhere else in the New
Testament. And Christian history and
experience would also suggest that.
So, so most Christians you meet might have a story.
Like I've got one story. You know, my friend Paul Reed,
who led an amazing church in Belfast for many years, he, he
tells a story about how he was in a, a, a meeting and someone
stands up and they speak really loudly in tongues.
And then the whole back row suddenly starts talking to each
other. And, and he's like, how rude.
They're just like, you know, not paying attention to what's
happening at the front. And it turned out that that
person had begun to speak Mandarin, unbeknownst to them,
and the whole back row was Chinese.
And so they're like, I recognised that.
And that was an amazing thing. That seems to be super rare.
Does anyone else in this room have a, a, like, I'm not going
to ask you to share it, but like, just you, you're aware of
something like that happening. OK, so I can see a few hands.
So it's not like it never happens, but it seems like it's
kind of rare. It's not the only form of
speaking in tongues that appears in the New Testament.
There's actually two types of speaking in tongues.
The other one, which from the biblical text seems to be way
more common, is when a believer empowered by the Holy Spirit
starts to speak in a language that doesn't seem to be another
human language. It's not Japanese or Chinese or
German or anything like that. This person is praying in a in
in a language that doesn't seem to be another human language.
Perhaps it's the language of angels.
I'm getting that from 1 Corinthians 13.
You know, you've got this amazing passage that often gets
spoken at weddings, you know, all about love.
But it starts off, doesn't it, If I speak in the tongues of men
or of angels, but don't have love, I'm like a resounding gong
or a clanging cymbal. And so it may be, I don't know.
I, I, I read it recently and I was like, that would make sense
that Paul is giving two different types of this gift of
speaking in tongues, right? I'm speaking in the men in the
the language of men, IE German or Chinese or whatever, or I'm
speaking in the language of angels.
I'm speaking an unknown language and maybe that's the helpful way
to think of it, but don't worry if it isn't.
I vividly remember the first time I met anyone who's who's
prayed in tongues. It was my best friend and he
just said to me one day when I was a teenager, Oh by the way,
I've started praying in tongues. And if I'm honest, I thought you
poor chap, you know, but because my only experience of people
speaking in tongues was like episodes of Inspector Morse, you
know, where, where some people have no idea in this room what
Inspector Morse is, which is a very funny thing.
But, you know, people who are basically criminally insane
suddenly find themselves in a trance like state and they start
speaking in tongues on TV. That's, that's basically my own
experience. And so I said to my friend what
you would have said if you were there, you would have said, go
on then show me. And so he did.
And really in that moment, I, I knew two things.
I knew number one, my best friend is not criminally insane.
And #2 I think that's the Lord. And so I, I don't know, I don't,
I don't wanna assume where everyone in this room or in
Hemel or Hatfield or, or indeed online is, is at with this whole
thing. But it might surprise you to
know that this whole idea of praying in tongues is not
something that is extraordinarily rare or like
just for the lunatic fringe. This is something that literally
hundreds of millions of Christians around the world
would consider a beautiful and commonplace part of their
spiritual experience and spiritual life.
And So what I want to do is, is spend some time this morning
thinking about what that might look like for each one of us.
And it may be that for lots of us in this church already, you
already pray in tongues, but it may be that there's a whole
bunch of us for whom that's not been our experience.
And so I want to kind of really unpack it and look at that
today. And so that's what, as I said,
we're going to look at one Corinthians chapter 14 and say,
if you've got your Bible with you still, we're going to read
from verse one. It says this follow the way of
love and eagerly desire gifts of the Spirit, especially prophecy.
For anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to people,
but to God. Indeed, no one understands them.
They utter mysteries by the Spirit.
But the one who prophesized speaks to people for their
strengthening, encouragement and comfort.
Anyone who speaks in a tongue edifies themselves by the one
who prophesized edifies the church.
I would like every one of you to speak in tongues, but I would
rather have you prophecy the one who prophesizes greater than the
one who speaks in tongues, unless someone interprets it so
that the church may be edified. And then for the sake of time,
we'll just skip forward to verse 13.
For this reason, the one who speaks in a tongue should pray
that they may interpret what they say.
For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is
unfruitful. So what shall I do?
I'll pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my
understanding. I'll sing with my spirit, but
I'll also sing with my understanding.
Otherwise, when you're praising God in the Spirit, how can
someone else who is now put in the position of an Enquirer say
Amen to your Thanksgiving since they don't know what you're
saying? You're giving thanks well
enough, but no one is edified. I thank God that I speak in
tongues more than all of you in the church.
I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct
others than 10,000 words in a tongue.
And that's a bit more scripture for us this morning.
So let's just try and lay some foundations first of all and ask
the question like, what can we say that the gift of tongues
isn't? What isn't the gift of tongues?
And first of all, I would want to say praying in tongues
doesn't make you a superior Christian, Karen and IA, while
ago we got new phones, we got the Google Pixel 7 phone and we
were so excited with it for about the first few weeks.
And it was like, wow, this is amazing.
The battery lasts forever and the cameras are really great and
all those kinds of things. And then a friend of mine walks
into the office and he's like, I've got a new phone.
I was like, what is it? He said it's a Google Pixel 8.
I'm like, oh, suddenly I'm feeling like what I've got isn't
quite as good as what you've got.
And some people I know worship Apple.
And if you do, you'll be saying, well, it's never going to be as
good as what I've got. And I, I totally get that.
But the, the point is, you know, so often in life we can feel
like we're kind of like second class.
What I got isn't as good as what you got, especially when it
comes to faith. For some reason, it's like, I
feel like, gosh, is everyone else finding this easier than I
am or, or did everyone else get more of a, an empowerment from
God in some particular area? Because this is like hard and I
don't feel like my gifts are quite as impressive as your
gifts. And it can so often feel like
that. And yet the Bible, especially
the Apostle Paul is so often wanted to say to us, hey,
listen, there is actually no such thing as a second class
Christian, right? So, so it doesn't matter, Paul
says, whether you're Jew or Greek, whether you're slave or
free, whether you're male or female, it doesn't matter.
You know, you're loved, you're accepted, you're approved of.
There's no such thing as a second class Christian.
In fact, Paul's always trying to fight against Gnosticism.
The idea that what I've got is like a secret key that you
haven't got, or I've got a secret knowledge or a secret
secret experience that is that you haven't got Paul's like
that's absolute nonsense. And especially when it comes to
the gift of tongues, if you start to think about it, you
know there are a number of different lists of gifts of the
Spirit throughout the Scriptures and, and for example, in
Ephesians chapter 4 or Romans 12, the gift of tongues isn't
even mentioned in the list. And then in One Corinthians
chapter 12, you have these two other lists of spiritual gifts,
and the gift of tongues comes right at the end.
So it comes after the gift of faith and the gift of healing
and the gift of helping people and all these kinds of things.
And then the gift of tongues comes right at the end.
So I think what Paul would want to say to us is do not get hung
up over the gift of tongues. Just just don't get stressed
because it's not going to make you superior if you have it, and
it's not going to make you inferior if you don't have it.
There are all kinds of gifts and we should be desiring them all.
That's the first thing. The second thing is praying in
tongues. And this is a bit controversial.
So I'm I'm I'm just gonna say what I see in the text and then
leave this to your discretion and, and how you read the
scriptures. I don't think the Bible would
say that the gift of tongues is for everyone.
At the end of 1 Corinthians, I had some there's an intake of
breath. Then I'm excited about that.
At the end of 1 Corinthians chapter 12, the apostle Paul is
asking a whole series of rhetorical questions.
And so, for example, he says, is everyone an apostle?
Now you tell me, what's the answer to that?
The answer's no. Clearly, not everyone is an is
an apostle. He says, is everyone a prophet?
The answer is no. Is everyone a teacher?
Do all work miracles? Do all have have gifts of
healing? And so he's expecting
rhetorically the answer to be no, no, no, no, no all the time.
And his last one is do all speak in tongues.
And so I think he would expect us to say, well, no, not
everyone. However, I think from the tone
of his teaching on the gift of tongues and, and the context, I
think we would expect the gift of praying in tongues to be an
extremely common gift. You know, it's not like he's
saying, well, if you go to the foothills of Kilimanjaro on a,
you know, the third Tuesday in September on a leap year and,
and you know, you, you look really carefully.
There's a hermit there who speaks in tongues once every
20-7 years or something. You know, I just don't think
that's the context. You're not expecting that.
Instead, he in the context of his teaching on the gift of
tongues, he's like, oh, you should be eagerly desiring the
spiritual gifts. He says that twice.
And then in one Corinthians 14, verse five, he says, I'd like it
if every single one of you was to speak in tongues.
So I think praying in tongues is something that that we would
expect would be super common. And I'm sure I'm not going to do
that. But if I was to ask for a show
of hands, I know that lots of people in the room today would
put their hands up. The last thing I want to say
about what praying in tongues isn't is it's not from the other
place, by which I mean, you know, the place where you can
smell sulfur really strongly and it's hot under foot.
I I, and, and for some of you are like, why would you even say
that? And the reason I'm saying that
is because some of you in this room will have been taught that
or you need to be super careful with the gift of tongues because
it comes from the devil or it's demonic or you're just not sure
if it is or it isn't. And so you just want to stay
clear of it just to be on the safe side, you know?
Do you? The things that the gift of
tongues isn't. What is the gift of praying in
tongues? Well, the first thing is it's
prayer that's directed towards God.
We're praying in tongues towards the Lord.
Verse 2 for anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to
people, but to God. And then later on in verses 13
to 17, he uses all these other little phrases that are
interchangeable with the idea of praying in tongues.
So he talks about praying with my spirit, singing with my
Spirit, praising God with your spirit.
So it's really, really clear that praying in tongues, the
gift of tongues is an upward is a vertical gift, right?
And it's going up the way. So the gift of prophecy is God
speaking to us, and the gift of tongues is US speaking to God
with the language that He's given to us.
OK, so it's prayer directed towards God.
Secondly, it's in a language not learned or understood by the
speaker. The average human being has
about 35,000 words in their vocabulary, apparently.
And so as I'm standing here, I'm just kind of selecting some from
my memory banks, right? I'm just like choosing words,
picking them off the shelf and out they come out of my mouth.
That's mostly how we speak in in human terms.
And if if I was speaking French now, then you would know a
couple of things. First of all, the modern
languages aren't my thing. And, and secondly, you'd know
that at some point in my life I've been to a French lesson and
I've learnt French. You, you know, like which
probably most of the people in this room have.
I know there's some people from the Congo in this church.
And so I, I'm not going to murder French in front of you
this morning, but that's generally speaking how language
works. But it's clear from this text
that that that's not how the gift of tongues works, right?
I'm not using words or sentences or phrases that I've already
been taught or I, I learnt. In fact, even the speaker, Paul
says should pray for an interpretation so that they
might know what it is that they're saying.
It says that in verse 13. For this reason, the one who
speaks in a tongue should pray that they may interpret what
they say. And so mostly I don't understand
what I'm praying or saying when I'm praying in tongues.
And that's because #3 it's prayer with your spirit and not
with your mind. It's prayer with your spirit and
not with your mind. Verse 14.
For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is
unfruitful. So it's not the kind of prayer
that we might have prayed earlier on in the service where
where, you know, Taryn is choosing words and she's praying
and all those kinds of things and she's in control.
This is a different kind of thing.
I'm praying with my spirit, spirit to spirit.
It's, it's kind of an uncomfortable thing, isn't it?
We, we in particularly in the modern Western world, we like to
be in control. Dare I say, we may even be
control freaks. You know, we like to have
control. And so I want to understand and
I want to know. And I, but actually praying in
tongues is not like that. It's I'm praying with my spirit,
but my mind doesn't know what it is that I'm praying #4 it's
mostly not understood by the people around you either.
The whole of Paul's argument here is it's like if a visitor
was to come in when people are speaking in tongues, the visitor
has no idea what's been said. And that's why he says, I'd
rather that you speak five intelligible words than 10,000
in a tongue. And that's because what's
happening in this church is that they're just speaking in tongues
the whole service. And they like coming in morning,
everyone great to see you, you know?
And then off they go. I'm not going to do it now and
then. And then thanks very much for
coming at the end. And the visitors are like, now
I've got nothing. And Paul's like, please don't do
that because they didn't understand.
Nobody understands what's being said when they're speaking in
tongues #5 it's under our control.
Verse 27. If anyone speaks in a tongue 2
or at the most 3 should speak one at a time, and someone must
interpret. If there's no interpreter, the
speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and
to God. Do you, do you see?
It's like, this is under our control.
This is, there's an order to this.
I can choose to speak and I can choose to not speak.
You know, 2 or at the most three can choose to speak.
And then at the end of that, I'm like, no, OK, we're done.
I'm not going to speak. So this isn't like the Holy
Spirit comes on me. I'm, I'm like in a trance and
like episodes of Inspector Morse and suddenly I'm just like
babbling away and I can't stop myself.
That doesn't seem to be the thing.
It's under our control. It's actually quite an important
thing if you're thinking through as a, as a Christian who doesn't
yet speak in tongues and you're thinking, I think I was just
expecting it to happen to me. And it's like, no, no, you have
to actually use your lips and your tongue and your teeth.
You know, when Peter was walking on the water, he's standing in
the boat. He says to Jesus, tell me to
come and I'll come. And Jesus says come.
And so you can imagine Peter just standing in the boat
saying, no, I thought it was going to happen, but it turns
out it's not happened to me. So I'm not walking on waters
today. That's not what happens, is it?
He's like, he has to use his walking apparatus.
He has to use his ankles and his feet and his toes and his thighs
and stuff. He has to walk.
He has to make a choice to walk. And it's the same with speaking
in tongues, with praying in tongues.
I have to make a choice. It's under my control.
I'm using my talking apparatus and I'm choosing to do it.
And lastly, verse 18 is mostly for personal use.
Paul says that he speaks in tongues more than anybody.
But in the church, I'd rather we speak five intelligible words
than 10,000 in a tongue. In other words, it's like an
iceberg. You know, you can see he's, he's
opening up the window onto his own life and he's saying, well,
in my life, what I do is I speak in tongues more than anyone.
I speak in tongues all the time when I'm on my own, but when I'm
in the church, I'm going to do it less often.
And so this is like a devotional thing is for me is between me
and the Lord. And so actually, I think for
many of us, the Apostle Paul this morning is laying down a
challenge, which is if you speak in tongues, like is the bottom
part of the iceberg really big? You know, like, is the gift of
tongues something that you occasionally might do in church,
but at home it's like, not so much, is it, is it like the, the
pullover that your granny gave you 2 Christmases ago that kind
of stays in the back of the wardrobe and you keep forgetting
is there or, or is it a pullover that you wear all the time?
I think it's a real challenge for us as a devotional,
beautiful, strengthening, encouraging tool that the Lord
has given us to build us up from the inside out.
Are we making use of the tool that He's given us, if indeed He
has? And so finally, just coming into
land, let me ask this question. Why on earth would I want to
speak in tongues? Why would I want to pray in
tongues? Firstly, because speaking in
tongues builds you up, he says verse 4.
Anyone who speaks in a tongue edifies themselves.
We don't really use that word anymore, do we?
Anything edified this morning? Very edified, thank you very
much. We don't.
We don't really use that word. But the word edified, it's a
construction word. It means I'm being built up, I'm
being reconstructed. And the truth is, it's really
easy to feel low in life, isn't it?
Or to feel like life is gradually dismantling me or
deconstructing me. I feel less together as a person
over the course of a week. And so a beautiful gift that
might reconstruct me is a huge thing.
When I was 22, I was on a youth weekend not very far from here
and I received the news that my dad had died.
And I just have this incredibly precious memory of walking the
half an hour or so towards my parents home where I was knew I
was going to see my mum and just crying out to the Lord saying
Lord, you've got to strengthen me.
I need, I need strength for everything that's to come.
And I just remember praying for a while and then finding myself
praying in tongues to the Lord and feeling like this, almost
like liquid courage and liquid comfort was kind of being poured
into the core of who I am. And I'll never forget that.
Get that? The precious nature of what the
gift of tongues did for me in that moment to who like in in
this incredibly, this amazing moment of opportunity that we
have as believers in this country with God moving by his
Spirit in just the most remarkable way where we've never
known an opportunity for the gospel like we know right now.
If the gift of tongues is available to you, now would be a
really good time to use it. And finally, why would I want
it? Because it adds a new dimension
to my prayer life. I'm getting that from Romans 8.
But we don't. I encourage you to look at that
afterwards. Wayne Grudem, in his book
Systematic Theology, he summarises those verses like
this. The Holy Spirit assists our
prayers by taking our groans and making them into effective
prayer. And that would be the testimony
of so many people in this room that you've often been in a
situation where you're like, I don't know what to pray, right?
You hear about someone who's been in a car accident.
You're like, I don't know what to pray.
Or, or you, you hear about a situation that's happening in
the world and you're like, I just don't have the words to
express what I should be expressing to the Lord right
now. What an amazing thing that the
Holy Spirit would give you some words that even you don't
understand, but somehow God hears the groans of our hearts
and make them into effective prayer.
So what an amazing thing. And So what we're going to do
this morning, just obviously time's running short, but we do
want to pray for some people this morning.
And just so you know, we're not going to put you on the spot.
We're not going to say, right? We're going to pray for a few
minutes and then off you go. We're not we're not going to do
that. If if you want to do that,
that's great. But we, we do just want to pray
for you. Let me just say this, you know,
if if I had 10 people at the front of the church here and I
said, just give us your experience of beginning to speak
in tongues for the first time, we would get 10 different
experiences, right? So, so for some people, they'll
say, well, I just felt like my mouth was kind of pregnant and I
just kind of needed to speak. And when I did, I found myself
speaking in tongues. For other people, they might
say, no, it was just an act of faith.
I just, I just needed to start speaking and then see what would
happen for others of us. It might be in worship, you
might find yourself singing and, and praying out loud in worship
and suddenly you find yourself speaking in tongues.
For me personally, I've been so frustrated for years at not
having the gifted tongues. And you know, I was driving
myself crazy with it and I was asking the Lord over and over
again. And then one time I was walking
from the train station to my house and I was praying about a
particular thing and I just kind of slipped into it.
But I would strongly, you know, the Bible says eagerly desire
spiritual gifts. And so if you don't have the
gifted tongues or you're not sure if you do or you haven't
received it thus far, I would strongly, I think the Bible
would strongly encourage you to seek the Lord in that regard.
And so we're going to say goodbye to us, other sites and
the online community. God bless you.
Have an amazing week and the rest of us are going to stand.