The Gifts of the Holy Spirit: - Vital Christianity

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Examples
I Cor. 14:18 Paul is thankful that he speaks in tongues more than all others.
Paul Tuttle, a United Methodist minister and former professor at Fuller Theological Seminary
shares what “private” tongues means to him:
“There are times in my devotional life when I can no longer find words to express my
‘innards.’. . . At that point I allow the Holy Spirit to pray through me in a language
that I did not learn. I struggle with the biblical languages every day . . . I say a language
because I believe it to be a language. My vocabulary is growing. I know enough about
language to be able to identify sentence structure. My ‘unknown’ tongue or prayer
language has periods, comas, and exclamation points. It is a marvelous gift.” 89
It should be pointed out that not all students of spiritual gifts agree that the tongues-gift of
I Corinthians is a real language. Some professional linguists have tape-recorded persons speaking
in tongues and said they found no linguistic structure. Therefore many of them believe they were
“ecstatic utterances.” Whether tongues is ecstatic utterances or known languages the function is
the same: express prayer, praise and worship to God. 90
Harold Bredesen, Pastor of North County Christian Center in San Marcos, California, gives
the function of “private tongues”:
1. “Tongues enables our spirits to communicate directly with God above and beyond the
power of our minds to understand.
2. “Tongues liberates the Spirit of God with us.”
3. “Tongues enable the Spirit to take its place of ascendancy over soul and body.”
4. “Tongues is God’s provision for catharsis, therefore important to our mental health.”
5. “Tongues meets our needs for a whole new language for worship, prayer and praise.” 91
Paul defines the purpose of tongues as a means of addressing God (I Cor. 14:2, 16) and
thereby sets the gift in the context of worship (I Cor. 14:25) as opposed to an enjoyable thrill, an
interesting mystical experience or a means of showing off to others. It was universally accepted
that some people in especially close touch with God would have unusual spiritual endowments.
Trances, ecstatic speech and miraculous powers were generally understood to be evidences of such
spirituality. Because the Corinthians were impressed and fascinated by such so-called supernatural
abilities they played down other gifts that were less spectacular. This is why Paul carefully sets the