Prior Book | Prior Chapter | Prior Verse | Next Verse | Next Chapter | Next Book | Viewing NASB and Amplified 2015 | |
NASB | Acts 2:4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Acts 2:4 And they were all filled [that is, diffused throughout their being] with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues (different languages), as the Spirit was giving them the ability to speak out [clearly and appropriately]. |
Subject: what is the importance of tongues? |
Bible Note: 1-2steve As I said and I think you exhibit we need to be a little less dogmatic. I personally hold to a prayer language but I do so with serious reservations. When I first experienced it I found I could pray for hours in my prayer language. I equated quantity with quality. I began to mediate on what I was doing and found I have my mind and heart were not in the right place. I was doing something but it wasn't meaningful prayer as my mind was off in never never land. Having been around Pentecostals almost all my adult life I believe that this is the norm in most cases. People were using their prayer language to fill in the time while their minds were wandering on other things. They have nothing to pray about so they just use their prayer language and fill/spend time. I got very concerned about this and what I believed to be genuine prayer language. I began to pray that God through His Holy Spirit would show me exactly how this was to function. You may or may not agree with my understanding but I will present here anyhow. Christians first need to learn to pray in the knowing. I'm not talking about now I lay me down to sleep prayer but rather effective fervent pray that avails much. James 5:16. This kind of prayer does not come easily or readily but requires discipline, many hours on your knees and sacrifice on our part. This will be the type of prayer that will become predominate in you prayer life. Effective conscious fervent prayer that is prayed both in your language and with your full understanding. After the person has mastered effective fervent prayer then they can seek a pray language. As God through the Holy Spirit gives this, you learn your mind is still deep in prayer but you mouth is speaking out the words in a tongue foreign to you. You don't know what is being said by you do know the subject and general thrust of the petition being sent before the Lord. The third thing that must be learned is once you have a prayer language is that you haven't 'arrived'. All that has happened is your prayers have taken on another level but you as a person haven't become more holy, more spiritual or righteous. You have just learned another way to effectively communicate with the God. As I said at the beginning there is more abuse than genuine manifestations of the Holy Spirit present today. People want the gifts (benefits) without the work. They have learned a false manifestation and because they are not where they need to be spiritually they are deceived into believing they have the genuine. Now we can argue all day over the point of whether there is a prayer language or not but I think it would be far more productive to learn to pray effective fervent prayers and let the Holy Spirit teach us the rest. I wonder how many can honestly say they can pray and know that they know they have touched the very heart of God and that because of this God has responded? I think very few. I wonder how many have prayed through a situation in their life until they heard God’s response as Paul did when he prayed to God about the thorn in his flesh. Did you ever wonder why we argue over that thorn is Paul’s flesh and what it may have been and forget all about being able to pray until we receive an answer? Before we dogmatically state there is or isn’t a prayer language (tongues of angels) let us first learn to pray. EdB |