A Beautiful Revelation

Growing up, I was curious about God and Jesus. At age eight, in catechism class, I learned to recite the seven sacraments in Latin, but I don’t remember learning about the Holy Spirit.In my senior year of high-school, our vice principal made the entire school watch the “Jesus” movie. At the end of which, few friends and me invited Jesus into our hearts to be Lord and Savior of our lives. A few days afterwards, I got called into the vice principal’s office because he wanted to find out whether I’d begun speaking in tongues. (This was in Nigeria, and things were different back then.) Up until that point, I’d never even heard of speaking in tongues. I remember giving him a confused look to which he responded “Just keep pressing in.” ... whatever that meant.After a gap year of sitting around and gaining weight, my parents finally sent me back to the US to start college. Although I’d been born in Oregon, after we relocated to Nigeria, we were too poor to make frequent visits back to the States so when I stepped off the plane circa the 90’s, I was a complete newbie to the country I had once called home.As a newbie, I longed for the comfort of the familiar as I tried to adjust to my new life. One day, on campus, I walked by two girls speaking in a familiar accent and when I found out they were Nigerians, I practically begged to be their friend. Thankfully, one of the girls was super sweet and Yinka and I quickly became the best of friends.In retrospect, I realize God was knitting our hearts together for a reason. Yinka had become a Christian in her early teens and she was a natural story teller. Anyone who knows me knows I love a good story. Yinka entertained me with stories of crusades, and miracles and deliverances she’d witnessed and all about the “move of the Holy Spirit.” At the time, she was part of a Bible study and I frequenty tagged along and began to absorb a lot of Bible. The topic of speaking in tongues came up one day and I reluctantly let Yinka and her friends pray for me. They prayed for a while but I felt nothing. I continued to attend the Bible studies with Yinka and she and her friends continued to pray for me and I kept feeling nothing. Thankfully, our Bible study friends were patient and I never felt judged for not speaking in tongues. In the meantime, I continued to learn about the Bible.One day, sitting alone in my college room, I decided to ask God for the gift of tongues. I prayed a simple prayer: “God, if tongues are real then I want to experience them.”Acts 2:4 says “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the spirit enabled them."Upon whispering this simple faith-filled prayer, the Lord’s presence filled my room, the spirit enabled ME, and I began to laugh and cry as tongues flowed from my heart and out of my mouth. It was an uneventful, private little life changing moment.Needless to say, I have been a tongue speaker for decades and I now know that my life received a major boost that day in my college room. I think of that day as the day I received a promotion into the mysteries of God.The mysteries of God because speaking in tongues allows me to speak directly to God, and to pray God’s will.1 Corinthians 14:2 says “For anyone who speaks in a tongue[a] does not speak to people but to God. Indeed, no one understands them; they utter mysteries by the Spirit.” (NIV)The mysteries of God because speaking in tongues keeps me tuned to the holy spirit. Speaking in tongues allows me to pray when I don’t know what to pray or even when I don’t want to pray. The holy spirit gives me words to speak when I don’t know what to say, the holy spirit brings me comfort when I’m down, the holy spirit gives me wisdom when I have none, the holy spirit nudges me in the right direction when I’m off course. Speaking in tongues gives me access to the unknown.Romans 8:26 “Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.” (Message Bible)God is so good and I’m so humbled He reveals himself to us in such a beautiful way.I’d love to hear your story of speaking in tongues.XO,~ Kris