Speaking in Tongues: How I went from being a Cessationist to Receiving Spiritual Gifts

Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.

1 Corinthians 12:7-11

Amongst contemporary Christians, there seems to be a great deal of division about Spiritual Gifts. There is disagreement as to whether God continues to pour out these gifts upon the Church. This discussion tends to focus upon the gift of tongues, where one speaks or sings in a language they do not know to the glory of God. In this blog I will not offer a systematic account of the gift of tongues, nor will I evaluate the arguments surrounding their validity and efficacy. Rather, I want to share how God has blessed me in this area of my life.

When I was a teenager, I was fortunate enough to attend a cell group at St John’s Church of England in Birmingham. Every week we would meet together, a bunch of guys in the same year at school, and we would study the Bible, pray with each other and have a good time. We had some wonderful leaders who were very patient, encouraging and loving in their guidance of us. Often the Thursday night we would meet would be the highlight of my week.

This cell group was part of the youth set up at St John’s. Every year, the youth of St John’s would go away to an event called ‘Soul Survivor’, a festival where young people from all over the UK would come to worship God, receive excellent teacher and open their hearts in response to the grace of the Lord. A notable feature of this event was that many people had their first encounters with the Spirit, with gifts poured out upon the youth. There would be stories of healings, ecstatic experiences, supernatural signs and much more. This tended to have a powerful effect on those who went: for weeks afterwards they would have such a joy in the Lord, having a hunger to receive more of God in their lives, allowing His love and power to rule them.

However, there was at least one dissenting voice in all of this: mine. At that time, my faith was tied very closely to my trust in the power of reason. I loved philosophy (I still do!), and my studies convinced me more and more that the truth about reality could be discovered by thought alone. After a long struggle, I was assured of the veracity of Christianity in part by apologetic arguments, such as the ontological argument and the historical evidence for the resurrection. I believed Christianity was supremely rational (which it is!) and anything that deviated from what I considered provable by reason could not be affirmed.

Consequently, I was sceptical about these claims coming back from Soul Survivor, that people had had supernatural experiences. That is not how the world works, I thought. People may have got healed in Jesus’ day, but people don’t get miraculous healing any more. The apostles may have spoken in tongues, and it may be possible today, but without sufficient evidence this is from God I cannot believe it to be so. Without it being clear this is from God and not just mass hysteria, that it is not the manipulation of people’s emotions and that it does not require the abandonment of rational criteria, there is no basis to put much stock in any of this.

Yet this was not solely an intellectual objection to the gifts of the Spirit being present today. That was how I dressed it up, as a problem for the rational person to face, to work out through philosophical reasoning. However, I wasn’t merely sceptical of the supernatural activity of God, I was positively antagonistic to such power.

I remember how in response to the youth leader encouraging the young people to get booked up for Soul Survivor, I wrote a blog post justifying why I would not be going. It was rather visceral, seeking to decimate the credibility of many of the claims people had to having received spiritual gifts. In a rhetorical flourish, I even made a point of saying that Soul Survivor shared its name with a Rolling Stones song about devil worship. I think this fruitless comment was an expression of my total antipathy to the possibility of God’s miraculous power. Although I gave it lip service, in reality I rejected any conception of God’s salvation and love which went beyond the comfortable life I was living. These strange and unusual phenomena were not commensurable with the implicit Christian naturalism I had embraced: all we need is God’s forgiveness, we are only justified by faith, we don’t need anything more than that. There is a sense in which that is true, in that all we need is found in God and God alone. Yet this anger, this utter contempt for God’s instruments for building up His Church was not out of love, faith or hope, but an utter contempt for the challenging and wonderful grace which God had manifested in these people’s lives.

Before continuing, I want to make sure it is clear that I am not saying that all those who reject spiritual gifts do so for the reasons I did. I am just trying to be truthful to why I abhorred the gifts of the Spirit: their presence did not easily with my conception of God, whose essence was reason, not love. And there wasn’t a chance that I was going to be practicing them.

Let us now jump to third year in university. I had just moved into Edinburgh, living away from home for the first time in my life. I needed to find a new church to attend. Given some people on my course wouldn’t stop talking about a place called Kings Church, I thought I would go along and see what all the fuss was about. After one service I knew why. God was doing wonders in communities lives: they shared in Christ’s joy in the Father, Christ’s love for His people. They celebrated their salvation by grace through faith alone, their sanctification by the love of God, their empowerment in the Spirit. They sought the glory of God and exalted His greatness. Ultimately, for all their faults God had engendered in them, by His love, a love for Him and each other. Whilst in form it was different from where I had gone before, in content this was what I was looking for, a grace filled community. Thus I stayed (and am still there!)

Kings is a charismatic church, which celebrates the gifts of the spirit in corporate and private worship. Thus, one might expect that when a person sang a tongue in one of the first services I attended that I would not have returned. But in those years between St John’s and Kings God had been working in me, and I had begun to recognise that what mattered was not the style of worship but God. God’s love is the precondition of all worship, Christ’s mediation the basis of our salvation, the Spirit the source of new life. He had stirred my heart to be more understanding of these gifts, because he gave me eyes to see that Jesus was present. I may not have been comfortable, and I may have not thought these gifts were for me (they were for the emotional people), but I was happy to stay because God had called me to Kings to receive more of His love.

As I have said, whilst I no longer abhorred the supernatural, I continued to find them challenging (and still do!) and did not believe they were for me. It never entered my sphere of thought that maybe God would want to work these in my life. After all, I was a philosophy and theology student: my life was for ideas, not miracles.

That all changed at the Student Weekend away. Given the teaching at Kings and encouragement to receive spiritual gifts, I had sought tongues and had in private prayed out in heavenly languages. Yet I wasn’t sure if it was authentic or just me pretending to have the gift. By myself, I had no way of telling whether I was just comforting myself or whether this was the power of God.

The weekend’s focus was the power of the Holy Spirit. This covered a whole range of areas, but at its heart we were receiving instruction to trust in God’s deliverance in all situations, and expect God’s activity as a response to prayer. Amazing things happened: people were healed, some confessed Christ for the first time. All were affected with a hunger for the Spirit, and many were filled. In my case, I had had on my heart for a long time the issue of tongues. God had previously called me to share a tongue in corporate worship, but I always said “next time Lord.” I feared the response of others over loving the will of the Lord. And I knew it wasn’t right, but the fear always gripped me. Worship at the weekend away was no different: during worship God put it on my heart to share a tongue. And again, I tried to put it off, running away like Jonah from that God had called me to do in that moment. It was existentially painful.

However, God’s grace conquers all obstacles to His kingdom. And so He gave me Himself, and in doing so I had a new strength. So I went up the front, not by my power but His. And He gave me a song – a heavenly language to sing. I did not know the words in advance: I just knew what to sing. As verification and an encouragement to others, God provided an interpretation, sung out so all could be edified by the Holy Spirit.

Following this, I had such a sense of peace: I knew God was with and for me. Subsequently, I have shared tongues at other student events. But this past Sunday God blessed me again. Whilst having received tongues with other students, who I know and have good friendships with, I had never shared one with the whole church. That was a step to far: what happens if the gift disappears when I get up the front? What happens if it sounds like gobbledygook and ruins people’s time with God? And so, like in the student groups, I always ran away when God wanted me to speak out.

So this Sunday was no different. God had opened my heart to Him, pouring out His grace on the congregation. His love was overwhelming, so satisfying and joyous. At its climax, I asked “Lord, let me offer my life to you. How can I respond?” And in a moments flash, I heard in the depths of my soul “share your tongue”. I went from ecstasy to dread. I asked that he would ask for something else, I pleaded, I grovelled. And my spirit felt empty. I knew my shame: I had just rejected the living God! It pierced me to the core of my existence. In that moment I felt like Peter, denying my Lord out of fear of man.

But the love of God knows no bounds, and God continued to love me then and there. In that assurance, in that rock which is the foundation of all I am, I was given a new power, a new motivation, a new strength to get up and share a tongue. So I did. And by the glory of God, an interpretation was given, encouraging and uplifting us all. It was great to see God using these gifts: the whole room seemed to respond with praise of God! Once again, God had brought me, by His mercy, to speak in tongues, despite my rebellious nature, to His eternal and immortal glory.

I have written this piece not to emphasise that all people should speak in tongues, nor that tongues is a good thing in itself. God’s greatest gift is Himself: this alone is the basis of salvation. It is Jesus, not tongues, which is the ground of our justification and sanctification, it is Him who provides the assurance that we are sons and daughters of God. It is God’s gift of Himself as Father, Son and Spirit which frees us from sin and death, gives us new life and allows us to rest freely and certainly on and in Him.

No, I wrote this piece as a witness to the patience and mercy of God in this one are of my life. As I hope has been made clear, I have vociferously railed against the gift of tongues. Not in the search of righteousness or godliness, but out of a hardened heart. In this, God has demonstrated His grace: He took me, a man who hated the gift of tongues, who would run and deny my Lord, and gave me the gift to glorify Him. This is how our Lord often works: He works in our weaknesses. He takes those who run, those who rebel, people like Jonah and Peter, and through His Spirit transforms them in to people who would do anything to proclaim His name. So it is with me in this case – I was the most unlikely candidate to speak in tongues, to edify and bless others through this gift. But God chose me for this role, so I could be an example to others so others may believe in Him and receive eternal life. His is the glory, the holiness and the praise!

So I hope this encourages you, the reader, in your walk with God. If He can take a man like me who was opposed to the gift of tongues and give them to me, He can take whatever obstacle, sin, pain, suffering, evil in your life and overcome it. He can take you from unbelief to faith, from hatred to love, apathy to hunger, sadness to joy, emptiness to joy. He can take the worst of us and work through it to make something wonderful. And this is most true in our salvation: He takes rebels, who would seek His death, and remakes them to love Him. So take heart in the amazing love of God, which turned a hater of tongues into someone who practices them. And He can do the same in you.