Praying in Tongues

Dreams from the LORD 2007-2010
22 February 2008

A little over a week ago, I was walking out of Kooskia, Idaho when this lady picked me up. Her name was Fran and she lived in the Kooskia neighborhood. We started talking and she told me that she had been trying to quit cigarettes for quite some time. I asked her if she would like for me to pray with her. She agreed and pulled over by the river and let her dog run around for a while. I put my hand on Fran’s shoulder and began to pray in the Holy Ghost (praying in tongues).

I prayed for a short while and then Fran looked at me and told me that she could pick out some of the words that I was saying. (Since around April of 1989, I have been praying in a French tongue. Before that, I spoke in another tongue.) She told me that it sounded like the French spoken in the Caribbean or in Asia (probably the former French Indonesia). Fran recognized the words: “Father”, “heaven”, “church”, “mother”, “feeding” and maybe a couple of other words. She said that she had studied French for nine years. I told her that I had studied German for two years in high school and one year in college—and that I had never studied French in my life.

I remember I was hitchhiking in Montana a few years ago, and this one guy picked me up and he asked me to pray in the Holy Ghost. He said that he was a French major in college and that he had spent several years in France. He told me that the tongue that I prayed in sounded like the French spoken in the Middle Ages.

Two or three years ago, I was staying in Pomeroy, Washington with a family and I laid my hands on the husband and the son and prayed in the Holy Ghost. The wife had studied French and she said that she heard me say, “it is so, it is so” and, I think, “praise.”

Back in the fall of 1989, I was taking a linguistics class at Iowa State University and there was this young lady from Kuwait in that same class. I asked her what languages she knew and she told me that she new Arabic, English and French. So I told her that I was a Pentecostal Christian (she was probably a Muslim) and that I prayed in tongues. She asked me to pray, and after I had prayed just for a short while, she got this surprised, flabbergasted look on her face.

She looked at me in great wonder and asked, “You don’t know what you are saying?”

I answered, “No.”

She asked again, “You REALLY don’t know what you are saying?”

“No. I really don’t. I have never studied French.”

She kept staring at me in wonder and astonishment.

So I asked her, “Do you know what I am saying?”

With a beautiful smile, she answered, “You are singing to your Father up in the sky.”

We were all (there were several girls and myself) sitting on the floor outside the classroom door waiting for the class to begin. A couple of the girls asked me some questions about praying in tongues. The young lady from Kuwait kept staring at me.

A week or so later, the young lady from Kuwait told me that she went back to her apartment and told her younger sister about my praying in tongues. Her sister was more surprised than she was. I remember telling her to read about tongues in Acts 2: 4 and she told me that she had heard about praying in tongues before she had met me. Maybe the Lord used her to minister to her sister and she didn’t even know it. It seemed like her sister was more interested in tongues than she was. Sometimes that is how the Lord works. The Lord’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts; He can see much farther than we can. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

Acts 2: 1-11: “And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language. And they were all amazed and marveled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galileans? And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born? Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygian, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God.”

The gift of tongues–is it for everyone?