Recker's World
Reason 12
I can still speak in tongues
It was at a family camp when I first learnt about “baptism in the holy spirit” and speaking in tongues. At the children’s program, we were offered this opportunity and we were prayed for and instructed just to start talking in a made-up language, so I started speaking gobbledegook.
‘YES! That’s it, you’re speaking in tongues!’
‘But… but I’m just making it up.’
‘No, it’s speaking in tongues. You’re doing it!’
For me it was WOW, I’m speaking in tongues so I eagerly reported to my parents later that evening, ‘I can speak in tongues!’
Mum, not being the Pentecostal type, said to me, ‘Go on then, speak in tongues.’
So I started in the same manner I had done earlier.
‘That’s just gobbledegook!’ she scoffed.
Oh how heart-breaking that was to think I had received the gift of tongues, but it wasn’t really the case at all.
Several years later, I was once again led to believe that my gobbledegook was in fact a real Holy Spirit language and that it didn’t matter what sounds came out of your mouth. It was what the Holy Spirit expressed through those silly sounds that mattered. My Uncle told me how he would walk along the street with a friend praying in tongues and nobody would ever give him a second look because they figured he was just speaking in a foreign language!
I remember my father and another church friend attempting to translate the standard Christian gobbledegook one day.
I think my father completely missed the point of it.
Another thing I learnt about speaking in tongues was that the more you practised this gobbledegook, the more impressive it sounded. So yes, I could speak in tongues and I still can even to this day. Funny that.