I read all these posts with great interest. It just shows how diverse God is when He brings experiences to people. It shows that God does not have just one method of filling a person with the Holy Spirit and giving them the gift of tongues. I loved the one about a person thinking he is praying in English and tongues is coming out of his mouth! And then the other one who just started praying in tongues because it started to flow out of him.
From my observations these are the different ways I have seen people receive the gift of tongues:
They have burst forth in tongues as they rose out of the water of baptism.
They started to speak in tongues when hands were laid on them.
Another guy started thinking these strange words in his mind and when he started speaking them out came a fluent language.
Another person I know had a dream of a ticker tape machine and there were words on the tape, so he started speaking them and found he was speaking in tongues.
Another person got so filled with joy that his heart was about to burst and he couldn't find the words to praise God so he just started speaking anything and found he was speaking a fluent language he couldn't understand.
Someone else started trying to put syllables and words together and before long was speaking a fluent language.
Another person copied someone else's tongue, got all tied up trying to speak it and then started speaking a totally different language.
So, although the pathway to tongues was so diverse, the end result is that all these people ended up speaking in tongues.
Here is my experience:
I had been seeking the gift of tongues for three weeks, and I was getting frustrated because nothing was happening. I just didn't whether some type of force was going to take over my voice or what.
Anyhow, I was sitting on my bed reading a book about the baptism in the Spirit when a paragraph of the book suddenly jumped out at me. It said, "Why are you begging and pleading for something I gave you 2000 years ago. Forget about your pride and just accept Him into your life!"
This gave me a shock, but I said, "Lord, I accept the Holy Spirit into my life."
I didn't feel any different, but I started thinking that if I am now filled with the Spirit, I can speak in tongues. I thought, how am I going to do that? All I thought I could do was try and speak, so I started speaking, "Aba, caba, daba, rabu, slavu." It sounded very stilted to me and I felt a bit silly, but I was determined. I read someone in the Scripture that the Spirit would flow out of me as rivers of living water. So I worked on getting that flow going. I kept at it for about half an hour I suppose, and then it got fluent. I started speaking something like:
"kasabrata sikutundo rabadiundai kitakawa sakatatu neemoorundai..." etc.
As I kept going, the language started to flow out of me and I lost the sense of having to make it up because the words were flowing thick and fast, too fast for me to make up. I realised that I was now speaking a fluent language that I was controlling the speech but not the actual words. Now, because I spoke a sentence in tongues in public, as it were, I need to give the interpretation (because the Lord gave me that gift as well).
Here is the interpretation of the sentence I spoke"
"I lift my heart to you because you are a loving, gracious and compassionate Father, whose ears are always open to my prayers, and heart is open to fellowship with me."
Interpretation is not a direct translation. It is a faith interpretation in English that expresses the spirit of what is spoken. Notice that the interpretation is a prayer, because tongues is mostly prayer to God, and the interpretation is the same, except when the speaking in tongues is an intercession for the prophetic word to come forth. Then the interpretation is more like a prophecy.
My experience is unique to me. This is the way that the Lord guided me through to the gift of tongues. I have spoken many different languages since, depending on the nature of my praying.
I have also been used to guide others through to the gift of tongues and have had the joy many times of seeing people start to speak beautiful languages. It always amazes me as people exercise simple faith, the beauty and fluency of the languages that come out.
If you want help to speak in tongues, PM me. I don't want to publicise my method of assisting people, because there are too many who think that God has only one method of bestowing the gift and their comments tend to discourage and confuse people.
Receiving the gift of tongues involves some very simple steps of faith. We do the simple thing and God does the miracle. I have seen this happen time after time.
I hope this has been helpful to you.
