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Gifts of Speech

On different occasions, the Holy Spirit gives members of the body of Christ special ability to communicate specific revelation from God. These are gifts of supernatural empowerment that involve our speech. They include the following:

• Gift of Prophecy
• Gift of Tongues
• Gift of Interpreting Tounges

The Issue of Tongues

There is a great amount of controversy among Christians today over the idea of speaking in tongues. This was a difficult issue for the early Church too. In 1 Corinthians 12:30 Paul asks some New Testament believers a rhetorical question: does everyone speak in tongues? His answer is no they don't. And yet we look in the book of Acts and find that all believers spoke in tongues when they were baptized in the Holy Spirit. And we see the same phenomenon occurring today as Christians' experience the baptism of the Holy Spirit. They are all given ability to speaking in tongues. Does this mean that Paul was wrong about all believers not speaking in tongues?

Paul seems to give conflicting views on this issue (1 Cor.l2:30; 1 Cor. 14:5) unless you consider the possibility that two kinds of tongues are being described in Scripture. The first one being the gift of tongues, which like other spiritual charisma, is a temporary supernatural empowerment of the Holy Spirit. And the second tongue being a personal prayer language that comes as a result of being baptized in the Holy Spirit.

There are a number of good reasons to believe that Paul is talking about two different kinds of tongues in the New Testament. First, conflicting statements are made regarding the essential purpose of speaking in tongues. In 1 Corinthians 12:7 it states that spiritual gifts (including the gift of speaking in tongues) are given to a believer for the benefit of someone else. That is, tongues are a gift that comes from the Holy Spirit, moves through the speech of a believer as a gift from God for another person. Its purpose is public ministry.

However, in 1 Corinthians 14:2-3 Paul says that he speaks in tongues to God for his own self-edification, not for the benefit of anyone else. In other words, tongues are initiating in him and going to God in the form of prayer. It is not public ministry but a private experience between him and God. This contradicts his purpose for tongues in chapter 12 unless he is describing two different kinds of phenomenon.

Additionally, Scripture gives a conflicting account over what tongues demonstrate or evidence. In the book of Acts speaking in tongues acted as initial evidence of someone receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:4-13; 10:45-46; 19:1-6). For instance, in Acts 10:44-47 Peter realizes that Cornelius has been filled with the Holy Spirit because he is speaking in an unknown tongue. But in the ministries of Jesus (John 3:2), Peter (Acts 3:1-10) and Paul (Acts 28:1-10), spiritual gifts (the gift of tongues being one of them) are given to evidence God's work and message to other people. If there were two kinds of tongues, one a personal prayer language, and the other a spiritual charisma, then their demonstrations would indeed be different.

The Value of a Personal Prayer Language

The benefit of tongues as spiritual charisma is easy to understand. This type of speech is a supernatural demonstration of God's power that can be verified by the hearer(s) (Acts 2:1-8) and greatly impact the lives of those who witness it happen. But what value is there by speaking in tongues to oneself and to God? Paul provides several excellent reasons for doing so:

Personal Edification (1 Cor. 14:4) - Tongues build up our spiritual awareness and make us more sensitive to what the Holy Spirit is doing. It quiets our thoughts and helps us to focus on the Lord.

Spiritual Warfare (1 Cor. 14:14) - Tongues enable us to pray against the enemy in ways our natural understanding cannot do because it is unable to see what is spiritually going on.

Intercessory Prayer ( Rom. 8:27) - Tongues provide a way for the Holy Spirit to intercede directly through us according to God's will. This can bring about significant results in prayer because the Lord is directly the very shape of what we are saying.

Praise and Worship (Acts 2:11) - Tongues enable us to express the inexpressible in our worship and praise of God.