17. Hearing Thunder

I have found that many of the spiritual gifts are understood to be about the same as magic to the typical Christian, no matter their background or current beliefs.  “God does something miraculous; we don’t understand how; it’s the power of God; it seems to have something to do with saying certain words; it seems to have something to do with fasting; also it has nothing to do with me, it’s all him; it’s a mystery of the Spirit…“  Might as well say, “magic” because functionally there is no difference.  But we don’t wanna sound like witches, yet we don’t understand what we’re witnessing, soooo… we invent a different terminology to cover it.  

Understanding the practical and mechanical aspects of the spiritual gifts helps keep our job as ambassadors from getting derailed.  Imagine how some people hear “discernment of spirits” and think, “yeah, i don’t ever see ghosts flying around, so i guess that gift isn’t relevant to me.”  If we don’t teach correctly… that player’s on the bench.

When it comes to the gift of speaking in tongues, being among the least-understood of gifts, things escalate to like, “World 8 Final Boss: Church Schism!”  So today we’re gonna clear up some mechanics of the gift and dispel some false teachings as well.

First off, let’s collect a bunch of facts from scripture itself, and stay away from, “Well our pastor told us…” stuff that’s often made-up by the Pharisees, err, “seminaries”.

1 Corinthians 13:1, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.”  Some languages are the kind men understand.  Others… the angels understand.  Both teams of angels.  When you’re truly speaking from the Spirit (and we’ll get into how to know the difference real soon) your audience may not be human.  Paul is calling out that you might be telling either holy or fallen angels something – requesting something, issuing an instruction, casting something out, whatever.  According to the Spirit of God who wrote the scriptures, your potential audience is broad.

Next one: Acts 2:4, “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.”  And then 2:11 gives us a secret, “We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.”

This is the flavor of the gift of tongues where men understood, so the Spirit was changing the disciples’ speech into “the tongues of men”.  But to understand why the hearers understood what was said, we need to clarify the purpose of language.

The human mind deals with images first.  Only when it needs to try to broadcast that image to someone else’s brain does language become necessary.  Language is a picture-painting tool.

I speak French fluently, and any of you who speak more than one language will naturally understand the following as I explain.

If someone says, “pomme,” to me, I don’t think, “hmm, mental french dictionary, what does pomme mean in english? apple? okay, got it, now i’m visualizing an apple.”

No, the actual experience is that I hear “pomme” and I picture an apple without translating it into English at all.  Then if you’re standing next to me and ask, “What did that dude just say?” I translate: “uh, the english word for that image in my head is apple,” and reply, “He said ‘apple’.”  If a Spaniard says, “manzana,” to me, the same is true.  I see an apple immediately because I speak Spanish, and that speaker just painted a mental image for me with her language.  The thought process never hits English.

Think about a little 1-year-old who just learned that if they point to something and say, “That!”, you’ll tell him the English word that represents that object.  Then when he’s thinking about that object in the future, he has a word assigned to it and can tell you, “Apple.”  He doesn’t even need to say, “I want”; you fill in the blanks and cut up an apple.

Also, when he points and says, “That!” you wouldn’t start telling him about the day Newton realized that gravity exists because of an apple, because this 1-year-old’s language isn’t even English yet.  He has an undeveloped list of words to operate with, and anything beyond that list is going to be nonsense.  You’d get the same result if you tried to explain Newton in English to a French guy who only speaks French.  There’s no way for you to make him understand the pictures and concepts you’re trying to paint in his mind, so speaking those words would be pointless.  Babble.

Therefore, the imagery starts in your mind – whether it’s a tangible object, or an action like running, or a concept like pain – and then if you want someone else to understand your thought, you start using words appropriate to the listener.  If you did your job correctly, the listener’s thought is, “I can visualize what they just said; I understand.”  Or else they’re going to ask you to explain it differently until it “makes sense”.  “Makes sense,” means, “I can visualize that in my mind.”

Poets make the big bucks (!) because they think of more creative and more accurate ways to paint imagery in your mind.  “Saw the sad shire horses walking home in the sodium light.”  Can you see the color of that sky?  Are the horses trotting around with heads held high?  Oh, they’re walking home cuz they must have finished a work day, so they’re probably dirty and sweaty and their hair’s all tangled?  “Sad”, “home”, and “sodium” do all the heavy lifting that most of us would need sentences to describe.  And what is that lifting?  You painted a mental picture when you read the words.

Now back to Pentecost:  “We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.”

The disciples’ audience wasn't just hearing random words strung into their own language.  Not, “Correct horse staple battery!”  Nor were they hearing a hundred different topics.  One guy wasn’t hearing about how to make gluten-free biscuits while the next was hearing where to get a great deal on olive oil and the next was hearing about Jesus being crucified.  Nope, they all heard the same story and came away with the same picture.  That’s because the disciples themselves were all out in the street with images of “the mighty works of God” in their minds.  Their tongues were wagging to try to paint that picture to anyone who would listen, and the listeners were getting the unified picture.  It was the Spirit who was modifying the speech to make sure the listeners were able to visualize the ideas.  This is a concrete example of, “If I speak in the tongues of men.”

Now… this “tongues of men” thing does happen today.  Compared to the amount of spiritual speaking going on, this is by farrrrr the outlier.  And it’s literally closer to magic than anything, which is why some believers come away with, “Not for me. Too mystical. Never seen it. Weird. Don’t trust it.”  I literally don’t blame you, dude.  If that were all there was to tongues of men and angels – meaning, you’re trying to talk to a foreigner and you have no idea what blabber is coming out of your mouth but that person is like, “Yup, got it” – then you might even say, “Who needs the Holy Spirit? I got Google Translate.”

But the other 99% of tongues is the part that gets thrown out with the bath water, and should not.  Tongues of angels is probably the more useful of the two types, and can change everyone’s life if you can believe in what’s happening when you speak.

“Says who?” you ask.

Mark 16:17, “And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues;”  Is part of our job as ambassadors supposed to be casting out demons?  (I mean, if you’ve read this far I have to assume you agree with me.)  So, yes; critically important.  Why would Jesus list “new tongues” second??  Something that most people think is “like magic” and probably never came across in their life? In this quote, “Lay their hands on the sick and they will recover,” is literally number 5 on his list.  Yikes.  So if you’ve been in the camp of, “Tongues were for the first apostles and not us,” my response would be, “Who exactly did you ‘believe’ when you came to that conclusion?  Cuz... doesn’t sound like it’s the guy who’s talking in that quote there…”

But like I said, it’s easy to throw this out if you think it’s magic!  Nothing against you for being there.  I have more reasons why you’d doubt that this is something for us to do – Lots of ‘em!  Here:

1 Corinthians 12:4 & 10: Now there are varieties of gifts, but of the same Spirit; … to another working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.

It’s one of our favorite passages, right?  Last time we were here for discernment of spirits; now tongues.  Then 1 Cor 12:28 drives the nail in even further (pardon the metaphor) when listing church positions.  “And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues.”  So tongues and their interpretation is both a gift and a church office.  If you’re gonna throw out tongues I guess you better also throw out teachers, huh?

Then Paul continues teaching in 1 Cor 12:30, “Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret?” which is where some might say, “Ya, bro, that’s not for me. Or any of my friends. I only hang out with people who agree with me, so… ‘not all’ speak with tongues and you ain’t gonna find that in this church. Maybe go look in Tibet or something… What? How come you’re always talking about my low self-esteem?”

Next up… even more reasons to be confused.

1 Corinthians 14:5: Now I want you all to speak in tongues, but even more to prophecy. The one who prophesies is greater than the one who speaks in tongues, unless someone interprets, so that the church may be built up.

Like, how are you supposed to know that someone in the room is gonna hear English when you start speaking not-English?  So… better to just not try, right?  You don’t wanna be weird and “unruly” and screw up your chance for pastor to put you on the food pantry ministry, right?

The me-before-understanding-this-lesson would’ve thought, “so, like i have to bring this magic guy to church with me.”  And I’d introduce him, “Hi everybody, I brought my friend who has the gift of interpretation of tongues. Anytime I say ‘shabbada shabbada’ he hears English and has no idea that I really said ‘shabbada shabbada’.  Yeah, like, seriously; just say gibberish to him and he’ll look at you like, ‘Yes, please continue.’ And then you can say, ‘Please repeat what I just said’ and he’ll say, ‘You said that there are two angels standing behind everyone in this building, and I was waiting to see what you were planning to do with them.’  Yeah, he’s a weird dude – but I brought him with so that we can speak in tongues today.”

Obviously that’s not how the gift of speaking in tongues and interpreting tongues is supposed to work.

Enter, French.  Remember, if you tell me, “Je vais t’embrasser,” I get mentally prepped for a kiss without a millisecond spent trying to re-verbalize that experience into English.

• So if minds start with an image…

• And Jesus had speaking in other tongues second on his list…

• And the Spirit of truth causes men to speak in the tongues of angels…

• And we believe him, who sent us out…

• And the purpose of anything spoken anywhere is to copy a mental image to someone else…

Therefore when a tongue of angels is spoken by the Spirit, all the angels understand it – but equally importantly, it should paint a picture in the mind of human hearers by the same Spirit.  Right?  And it does paint those pictures, if you learn how to listen – and it’s easy to learn!

Get this:  The Spirit of truth WANTS everyone to understand what’s being said.  The Helper (same guy) WANTS to help you.  Why?  Cause it’s not about you; it’s “so that the church may be built up.”

The scriptures are not gonna spend a crap-ton of time referencing something useless – or purely selfish.  The Lord Jesus is not gonna waste his breath teaching about something and follow it up with, “Write that down in fifty years. Then later on, tell people that I said it but it’s totally irrelevant. It was magic just for you guys so you could believe God is real.”

Sometimes the Lord speaks, and some understand sentences, while some hear only thunder.

So here’s how tongues and interpretation actually works:

If someone (including yourself) is truly speaking in the Spirit, you ask the Spirit, “What am I supposed to see right now?”  You ask that, whether you’re the one speaking or someone else is speaking.  It’s correct that you may feel like you’re supposed to just let your tongue loose with no idea what’s gonna come out – that is the initial feeling of it – but if you do that mindlessly, you miss the point.  You let loose while mindfully asking, “What do I see while this is happening?” and you will see whatever that thing is.  It might feel like you're telling a story while you watch a movie scene play out.  Might be like you're describing a single picture, like when the Lord asked Jeremiah, “What do you see?” and he’s like, “A boiling pot, facing away from the north.”  There will be something that brings understanding - which the Spirit of truth will teach you.  You might see the pot and then someone else in the group will understand what it means and explain.

I have been around a couple people who will speak in tongues and then say, “And this is the interpretation.”  They describe what they saw when they were speaking.  This is correct.  The church benefits.  Sometimes you will receive the picture and also understand what the Lord means by it.  And it was all triggered by a tongue of angels, not men.  There is no man on earth who would recognize the speech – but the meaning was conveyed to anyone who made the effort to listen: The tongue of angels copies an image into someone’s mind, then that someone translates by describing the image in English.  Sounds almost too simple, right?

I’ve also been around many people who will blurt out something unintelligible and then say, “I feel like someone in the room has an interpretation.”  Also correct; good job being brave.  But because they lack understanding, people are sitting there waiting for someone to jump up and say, “What do you mean, ‘interpretation’? You were just talking about a loaf of bread in English,” and then everyone goes, “Ooooo it’s like magic!” and whips out their phones and starts posting how God is moving in their church.  smh.

Sometimes, I, personally, will have gotten a mental image when the person spoke, so I’ll go up to the front, and explain what I saw.  And even the person who spoke will be looking at me like I’m a weirdo; “Why are you talking about a mental picture? I was speaking in tongues and I’m looking for someone who heard English like magic.”  smh smh.

I’ve even had people do the same, “I feel like someone has an interpretation,” and I received a mental picture; I get up and describe it, and then the person walks it back, “Well I felt like I was talking about a loaf of bread,” to which I’m like wtf were you asking for interpretations for, if you already had it while you spoke?  smh smh smh.

But you will be encouraged when you’re brave enough to speak up with your interpretation and someone else in the group says, “Whoa, I saw the same image and I didn’t know why!”  Then you’ll start to trust it.

Setting all the magical antics aside, this is like any other spiritual gift - you practice it and you move from Born Again toward Grown-Up Again.  Literally, just like when you were building your own dictionary of “That!” things.  Eventually you learned to speak in sentences.  Later, through practice, you learned to speak with mostly-correct grammar and talk about broader concepts.  Then you read Dickens and started learning some advanced vocabulary.  (i know, you didn’t read Dickens. you found cliff’s notes. miss diponzio knew and didn’t care. but santa saw you.)

That natural progression is a reflection of the same spiritual process that exists behind the vanity of all things:  As far as the tongues of angels go, we start as baby babblers and can end up as Dickens if we make the effort to grow up.

Paul instructs us to make an effort while listening, and to grow up in this, as well.  I’ll read you some verses and give you Garrison Translations as we go:

1 Cor 14:7  Now, brothers, if I come to you speaking in tongues, how will I benefit you unless I bring you some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or teaching?

• The point of talking is to transfer information.

14:9-11  So with yourselves, if with your tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is said?  For you will be speaking into the air.  There are doubtless many different languages in the world, and none is without meaning, but if I do not know the meaning of the language, I will be a foreigner to the speaker and the speaker a foreigner to me.

• If you’re not conveying meaning you are wasting your breath.

14:12-13  So with yourselves, since you are eager for manifestations of the Spirit, strive to excel in building up the church.  Therefore, one who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret.

• You understand that this whole thing exists to help the church, so you need to ask for help.

14:14-15  For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful.  What am I to do?  I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also;

• I’m not supposed to be sitting there waiting for magic. I’m supposed to concentrate and use my mind.

• “What am I to do?” truncates the full question, “to fix this problem of a spiritual action hitting a blank stare?” which is then followed by the solution.

Will you just let sounds hit you and bounce off you, or will you engage your mind to find the meaning behind the speech?  It takes effort on your part to understand.  If someone speaks English to you and you make no effort to listen… They finish and look at you for a response and you’re like, “What? I wasn’t paying attention.”  And then you sleep on the couch.  So with tongues of angels, do you want to tell the Lord, “Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention, can you put that into Magic English for me?”

Again: Sometimes the Lord speaks, and some understand sentences, while some hear only thunder.

You’re not supposed to be hearing the Spirit and waiting for an earthly tool to paint pictures in your mind – the tongues of men.  These are tongues of angels – be spiritually minded!  We don’t need the middle-man of fleshly English language.  We can go straight from Spirit to Spirit.

This is literally like when Jesus says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”  Like, some believed in the Son of God because they could touch the flesh part that interceded between the prophesies about him and his actual restoration of man’s dominion.  They could ask him questions and ask him to touch their babies or have mercy on their leprosy.  You and I get to believe without the flesh of a man bridging the gap.  Likewise, we can hear the Spirit and understand the Spirit without the tongue of man bridging the gap.

This whole section of Paul’s writing in 1 Cor 14 is given in a prophetic progression.  It goes from a little child to an adult – just like he describes three verses before chapter fourteen begins.  “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.”  This is “speaking in tongues without meaning,” – babbling.  “When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”  This is, “I will pray with my mind also.”

1 Cor 14:19  Nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue.

• If I don’t engage my mind, and I remain as a child, all the church gets is babble.

Let me explain my “Chapter 14 is prophecy” statement in another way.  End of Chapter 13, in verse 11, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child.”  14:2  “For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God; for no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the Spirit.”  14:4  “The one who speaks in a tongue builds up himself, but the one who prophesies builds up the church.”  It kinda sounds like he’s saying, “So just 86 the whole thing in church, cuz tongues are just for you and God.”  But we’re still in the “When I was a child, I spoke like a child” section of the teaching.  A baby makes sounds that serve no one but himself at first.  The parents hear nothing intelligible but the child is expressing something with sounds of his own.  “But the one who prophesies,” is the one who brings understanding from heaven to earth.  Just like the ones who get past 1-year-old and stop babbling and start conveying meaning to those around them.

Subsequently, the Spirit moves prophetically toward the, “When I became a man” section of the teaching.  Continuing in verse 5, “Now I want you all to speak in tongues, but even more to prophesy.”  Definitely speak in tongues – and not just by yourself but in the church (else the chapter wouldn’t exist) – but not without bringing the message of heaven along with it.  “The one who prophesies is greater than the one who speaks in tongues, unless someone interprets, so that the church may be built up.”  Meaning, the one who interprets tongues is equal to the one who prophesies. The prophetic half of the gift of tongues is the interpretation half – the part that brings understanding to earth from heavenly words.  He expects us to grow from speakers into interpreters, through prayer, asking the Helper for help.

Here’s where, in the prophetic progression of the teaching, we arrive at, “When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”  “I will pray with my mind also.”  “I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue.”  I would rather speak five words as a man than endless babble as a spiritual infant.

Why do you think the Spirit links tongues and prophesy so tightly here?  He’s not linking, “I want you all to heal the sick, and most of all to prophesy.”  All your jobs are done with your tongue, right?  And he’s not saying, “Pick one or the other: tongues or prophecy.”  The lesson is, “Learn not to do one without the other.”

Listen: a secret: We’ve explained prophecy before:

The function of the prophet is to present communication from heaven to the leader (the king, the apostle, the pastor) so they know where to lead the people, right?  We’ve established that the purpose of communication is to copy a mental visualization from one person to another.  Pure prophecy is like the execution of tongues but without the intermediate physical step of speaking the Spirit’s language.  A visualization is shown by heaven and the “listener” sees the visualization and then explains it in the native tongue of the “audience”. (We’re using “listener” for the prophet in this case, and “audience” as the hearer of what the prophet says - the apostle or pastor.)

Hence, the Spirit tightly couples tongues and prophecy in both the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters.  The interpretation half is the prophecy half - which is why Paul is saying “don't do this unless you've learned to listen.”

The purpose of tongues is selfish if you’re a child.  If you learn to grow up, you ask the Helper for help to understand what you hear in the angels’ tongue, you learn to use your mind, and the prophetic vision becomes apparent to you.  Then you can explain the prophecy in the common tongue of the room.  The traditional prophetic function transforms heavenly vision into the tongues of men without speaking the tongues of angels in between.  The two gifts are so similar.  Both are for building up the church by bringing heaven’s mind to our minds.

Side note: I sometimes lament that the Bible is broken up into chapters.  They often do us a disservice.  This is a huge example of that.  Child-to-Man and Babble-tongue-to-Prophetic-tongue have been completely divorced.  The Spirit is tying them together neatly in 1 Cor 14:20, “Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.” But that thought started in 13:11.

In a fashion, pure prophesy from a prophet is like a secret message from God, since no tongue gives away the heavenly meaning until the prophet releases the word to the king.  Up to that moment, the angels have no idea what’s going on; they had no opportunity to hear anything.  This is exactly why Jesus used to tell people not to tell anyone when they figured out that he was the Messiah.  All angels hear the spoken word.  Both teams.  Some things should remain hidden from them, for strategy.

If you’ve ever heard someone teach, “When you speak in tongues, the demons can’t understand cuz your words go directly to God,” that teacher is still in infant mode – verse 2.  Of course all the demons can hear every word you say and of course it’s all meaningful to them because they are also angels.  The Spirit doesn’t list “the tongues of men and angels and secret treehouse language for seven-year-olds between you and the Father.”  That is not biblical, it’s just an invented thought that sounded nice to people who think of this whole thing as magic to begin with.

Maybe you can trust me on my next point.  You may know that I play music regularly in prayer rooms.  Maybe once every four or five months I’ll sing in a tongue of angels.  When I do, I have seen pictures of what I’m singing about and then sing the English version afterward.  In Pasadena, in the very first service I ever played there, I sang in tongues unexpectedly and then saw a vision of a large standing angel moving off of the mountains that tower over Altadena’s northern landscape, and a different huge angel moved in to stand in its place.  I don’t know what the purpose was; it just looked like a chess move to me.

In response you can very legitimately say, “Ah, Garrison is makin’ stuff up,” and I wouldn’t criticize you for it.  I would ask you kindly, “Have you ever seen a picture of anything when you’ve been praying?  When someone else prayed for you?”  However real that is to you, that’s how real this is to me, too.

I can’t list all the times I’ve seen pictures that I feel are given from heaven and understood them through the help of the Spirit.  It’s when you go, “Alright, I’ll bite,” and blurt out the picture to someone, and then they reply, “Holy crap you have no idea how much that means to me!” that you start to trust that at least a portion of this really is the work of the Lord.

Tangentially:  If you haven’t experienced any of this, ask the Spirit to fill you – his own promise is that he wants to do it and will honor your prayer.  Have someone who has been filled with the Spirit lay hands on you and ask that it be transferred, just like we were taught to do in Acts.  You can rely on Jesus’ promise: “Freely you have received, freely give.”  To whom the Spirit has been given, they can readily give it to you.  Before it got watered down, the original function of the church was to fill others with the Holy Spirit, and the evidence of the event was that they would speak of the mighty works of God in tongues of men and angels.

One more critical point from the story of the angels moving out and in on the mountains of Altadena:  This is where the importance of the “angels” part of “the tongues of angels” comes into play.  I am convinced that the unintelligible tongues spoken in the Spirit convey three things:  Imagery to the speaker, possibly imagery to the listener, and definitely meaning to the angels.  Sometimes the holy angels.  Sometimes the fallen angels.  Sometimes the offspring of the disobedient angels.  (another time.)

Do you remember what we taught, way back?  The demons want your tongue. The tongue has greater effect than any of us understand.  That effect has greater purpose than any of us understand.  Anything the tongue says is creating either life or death.  Not just in the earth, but in the heavens as well.  There is no inert speech.  Not a single word.  And lemme throw 1 Corinthians 6:3 into the mix: “Do you not know that we are to judge angels?”  Do you think that’s done in English, or in the tongues of angels?  Uh, huh.

We had better get skilled in speaking in tongues and learning their interpretation.  Jesus listed it second.  Way before healing men, he wanted you to speak to angels.  Does that not sound like him?  Concerned with heaven before he’s concerned with earth?  He is the righteous judge!  Those who believe will be judging angels – as a sign that they believe!

Frick, dudes, let’s please do our jobs.  Not “wait for magic.”

Because of this, we should be speaking in tongues both in church and in our closets.  The angels are moved by them.  And we must speak mindfully - asking the Spirit to reveal the meaning, in both cases.  Do you really wanna be the WWII guy at the 88mm cannon lobbing shells aimlessly toward the enemy lines and going, “Yeah, man, some of these are probably gonna take somethin’ out!” – or maybe is it better to paint a laser on exactly what needs to be blown up by an AGM-114 Hellfire?  Do not be children in your thinking.

Here, I might ask:  Do you go to church to get some work done together in the Spirit?  What is your purpose when you go?  Would it perhaps be more exciting if you knew it was the place you could hit more enemy angelic targets by combining spiritual gifts than if you were home alone?  Are you part of the church that advances the kingdom and pushes through the gates of hell?  Or does your idea of the advancing kingdom equate to “more people came”?  Would the indicators of a spiritual kingdom’s success be measured by taking a census, or in spiritual ways with spiritual gifts?

One more thing about putting your hope in Magic Tongues.  There are many, many, many that I have seen and been around who think that making up babble is spiritual and is equivalent to “the Spirit giving them utterance”.  You can sorta identify it with a little experience.  The worship leader who, every time they’re on stage, arrives at a moment where they say or sing, “Shabbada shabba mol-labba shabbada.”  Like, every time.  No idea of what they might be shabbada-ing.  No expectation of an interpretation.  Like, interpretation doesn’t even enter their minds.  It was, “Look I’m on stage and also look I’m spiritual!  I believe in spiritual things!  I’m Mr. Meeseeks, look at meeee!”  Help these folks.  Teach them.  If you’ve learned anything from 1 Corinthians 14 today, I hope it’s that this is not magic and it’s not mindless.  We have no idea what “Shabbada” is doing in the heavens, but I can 1000% guarantee you it’s doing something.  For all we know it’s the chant that used to be repeated around the altars of Baal or Dagon or Molech.

So what, then?  Here’s what we want:  

ONE:  Do not think that tongues are not for the times we live in.  I have said it before, those who claim that “tongues will cease” to get themselves off the hook from “confusing magic I don’t trust” would have to agree that knowledge has also ceased.  Incorrect.  You’re squarely in “When I was a child” – and far from perfection – if you think tongues and prophecy and knowledge have all ceased for you.

TWO:  Do not think that if someone gets an interpretation of tongues, they magically heard English and are confused about why everyone else is saying, “That person was speaking gibberish.”  Less than 1% of the time this is true; the rest of it is based on you praying with both your spirit and your mind.

THREE:  Practice!  You will be shocked at first, how often you see something.  You won’t trust yourself.  You’ll see imagery and think, “I’m just making this up.”  The practice helps you learn how to sift and trust that a good portion of what you visualize is actually what the Spirit is saying to the church.  Why?  Again: the Spirit wants you to succeed.  The Spirit wants the church to be built up.  The Spirit wants prophecy to exist in the church, and tongues is prophecy with an intermediate step.  The Lord Jesus promised this.  Rely on his promises, not your hope, not your experience, not your self-evaluation.  This has absolutely zero to do with whether you think you’ve been “a good Christian” and absolutely one-hundred percent to do with his promises being true.  He is more concerned with the well-being of the church than your concern about your own personal behavior.  Just participate.  “If you see something, say something.”  (lol who knew that was a prophetic manifestation printed all over the place??)  Please practice.  Find a group who already speaks in tongues.  Teach them this.  Then everyone starts growing away from the mind of a child into the mind of a man.

You cannot understand how grateful I am for you who take the time to read these chapters.

- Garrison