My Unusual Experience

So often I find myself trying to communicate, by searching for the right word.

I know what I want to say. But it is a knowing without words.

Language is just my tool to convey to another person the meaning that is in my heart.

And the language is inadequate.

I’ve heard peoples’ descriptions of heavens. And they all lament about the same thing. That their words don’t do justice to the glory that they have seen, the colours, the beauty, the incredible atmosphere.

This is true of so many things here on earth. How do you convey the depth of feeling that stirs up in your soul. How do you represent it digitally or on paper. It feels like a farce in some ways. A two-dimension version of something that is beyond even 3-D.

God gave me a language many years ago, when I was 16 years old. I was praying ‘in tongues’ in my bedroom — a Pentecostal practice that I had stepped into, while growing up in my ministry parents’ home. But this time was different — I started praying ‘in tongues’ with variations, inflections and intonation that sounded exactly like I was speaking a real language, instead of the usual monotonous drone that I used to utter.

Of course I had no idea in my mind what I was actually saying, but I’ll never forget how it was accompanied with a power and authority that was beyond my age and maturity. It was shocking to me in it’s boldness and difference to anything I had ever experienced. I didn’t want it to stop.

I prayed like this for quite some time. Knowing that it was accomplishing something significant, but having no idea in my human mind of the actual content. But the lack of awareness didn’t matter. My spirit was electrified. It felt like I was operating exactly how I was meant to, with God in me. The sense of rightness was without apology.

I am so grateful for this experience, that confirmed to me personally the validity of this God given gift. Without it I would have wondered at the monotony and powerlessness of so many ‘speaking in tongues’ prayers that I had heard over the years.

I often contemplate the brilliance of God in coming up with this ‘tongues’ strategy — a way for human beings to bypass the constraints of human language — and to communicate to the heart of God with words of heavenly origin. A fruit of the empowerment of his spirit.

This strategy is beyond my comprehension really. But I don’t need to understand everything about God. He wouldn’t be God if I could. I just trust and dive in with him.

Something else about God on this theme that I find fascinating… He often speaks to me in my heart. And I know what he has communicated. But I don’t have the words for it. I have to try to put it in words if I want to tell someone else. But my heart knows it.

I suspect and I have heard it will be like this in heaven. Language without words — just knowledge of what is in others’ hearts. It will be so much fuller and richer. And thankfully in that place there will be nothing we would need to hide.