Help! I Speak in Tongue Yet I Feel I’m NOT spiritual.
In this article we will continue on the series of what does it mean to be spiritual (part 5) and we will be dealing with the fact that some believers speak-in-tongues why some don’t speak in tongues. Can we pitch our parameters of spirituality on the ability to speak in tongues?
Please, if you haven’t read part 1 – 4, we encourage you to do so to get the full knowledge of spirituality and watch your spiritual life gain momentum.
You can click the link below to read them:
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE SPIRITUAL (PART 1)
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE SPIRITUAL (PART 2)
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE SPIRITUAL (PART 3)
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE SPIRITUAL (PART 4)
SPEAKING IN TONGUES VS. SPIRITUAL GROWTH
Acts 2:4 was the first place in the scripture where we first come in contact with speaking in tongues in the scripture. And it is associated with the coming of the Holy Ghost upon the believers in the scripture.
When the Holy Ghost, one way the apostles were able to knew that indeed what the Lord Jesus Christ promised has come is that everyone of them that where baptism in the Holy Ghost said some utterances that is totally different from the native language.
“And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance” Acts2:4
Speaking in tongues is a sign of your baptism in the Holy Ghost and I strongly believed that all believers who are baptized in the Holy Ghost should and ought to speak in tongues no exception.
As expedient as speaking in tongue is to a believer, it’s so dishearten to see its abuse among young Christians. Who thought your ability to speak in tongues literally means you are spiritual than the others.
You see young men and women in church gatherings, on the street and in the house speaking in tongues at every point in time yet there lifestyle negates what they profess even an unbeliever know this.
What is God’s nature?
When you are born-again what you receive is the seed of God (God’s nature) and not speaking in tongues. You receive the ability to speak in tongues at the point of baptism in the Holy Ghost.
The expression of that which you received at the point of salvation (God’s nature) determines your spirituality or spiritual growth and not the expression of what you received at the point of baptism in the Holy Ghost.
You cannot correctly define God’s nature to be this or that. He is the spirit being (not a spirit being). He so deep than the ocean and higher than the heavens for our understanding but you can know who God is by His attributes.
Love and Holiness are one of the attributes of God. God is love at all times and also Holy at all times. You can’t separate love and holiness from God. I strongly believed (My opinion) if God cease to be love and cease to be holy, He won’t be the person He is again.
As a child of God, one principal way that will point to us that you are indeed a child of God is your expression of love – unto God and unto your neighbors. Jesus called that the Golden commandment.
Elder John summarized it this way in 1 John 3:10 “in this the children of God are manifest and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God neither He that loveth not his brother”
How did the children of God manifest? In righteousness and in love.
Apostle Paul, summarized it this way in 1 Cor. 13:8 “Love never faileth: but whether be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge it shall vanish away”.
What never fails? Only love not even speaking in tongues.
There is an error in my generation where young men and women speak in tongues yet we had pleasure in sin. In my generation, we speak in tongues but our heart is full of evil and desperately wicked, we are rebellious to authority and our lifestyle is that bad that there is no trace of Christ in us. Infact the only thing that will make those around us believe we are Christians is when you carry your bible and say you are going to church.
Most people will even protest, so you go to church yet you are behaving like this. How many times have you nailed Christ again (more than 50 times)? How many times have people mocked the saving grace of Jesus in your life? How many times have you make people around you to form resistance to the gospel just because your lifestyle doesn’t portrait what you said Jesus offers? Yet you claim to speak in tongue.
Have you not seen campus fellowship leaders, youth president, church leaders, ministers and workers behaved in such a way that you begin to ask are they really Christians? Yet you will see someone who just gave his./her life to Christ behave in such a manner that you will say she’s now a Christian.
Spiritual growth is not in the title or spiritual activities but your yieldedness to the nature of God in you.
This is a call unto repentance and back to the foundation of love and holiness. God will always show a lifestyle of holiness and love over the ability to speak in tongues or the anointing to heal the sick.
Let me be blunt, you can speak in tongues all the days of your life yet you will end up in hell (God forbid) because speaking in tongues in only needed in this world and not in heaven, only God’s nature is needed there.
You are not spiritual when you only speak in tongues without living holy…no sir, you are not.
Beloved, let love and righteousness be what you live for. Let them flow out from within that it will be hard to separate them from your lifestyle. Let them be the standard for your day to day activities. Then you will be amazed how pleased God will be with you and how spiritual you will grow.
Am I saying you should speak in tongues?
NO!, I speak in tongues (It’s my practice to speak in tongues at least one hour daily). Even Apostle Paul said he spake in tongue more than the others. The benefit of speaking in tongues cannot be over emphasized that is why we teach about it at all times and encourage people to get baptized with the help of the Holy Ghost. We are only drawing the line where people abuse and misunderstood speaking in tongues to spirituality.
In as much as speaking in tongues is not a parameter to measure spiritual growth but it’s a tool that every believers must possess to aid his/her growth.
Thanks for reading this long; we believe this write up is helpful. Please feel free to comment below and share this write up to your friends and family. It can save a brother/sister.
©Oladimeji Olayinka Joseph
