Often I find myself ministering to and encouraging other missionaries, pastors, and other believers or church groups more than evangelizing. This is largely due to the short term nature of my callings – I can build on what’s there in a short time, but to build a whole new foundation takes more than what I’m usually able to do. Not always, but usually. I started feeling God’s nudgings to a deeper calling in this last January and voiced it as God calling me to help heal the church, strengthening what’s there and enabling others to reach out more effectively. In that vein, today I want to tackle most divisive subject I come across, in nearly every nation, because it’s something we’ve let come between so many of us when it’s actually laid out very clearly. It’s speaking in tongues, and often comes hand in hand as an issue with prophesy. This has divided North American churches a lot, and I’m seeing the same thing happen here in China right now. It frustrates me. God hands out a gift by which we can strengthen our spirits, an amazing way in which to worship Him, and while half of us start calling people crazy for accepting it and using it, the other half call the first half spiritually dead! I’ll lay it out as I see it, just so you know where I’m coming from, but defining how this should be viewed isn’t the point of my blog – I’ll get to what that is in a minute.
Before anyone goes labeling me, let me say that I (sadly) do not come
from a church that practices or teaches on things like prophesying and/or speaking in tongues. We’re a work in progress, like any other congregation. Once I
started seeing how God works in people that don’t have our
preconceptions of how God works I saw that many of us (on both sides of the argument) were missing things in our relationships with God. Today, I have yet to speak in tongues myself, but I expect it to happen, and for the last two years I’ve prophesied whenever given the opportunity.
But before all that I had to wrestle with what God’s word says on the subject, since I always naturally lean to the intellectual and logical side of faith. I’m a cynic first, what can I say. What I found is that it all boils down to one simple verse: He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church. Everything else that’s said on the subject breaks down that verse into everyday actions or defines differences between preaching in tongues and praying in tongues, but that right there is the heart of what the bible teaches on it. To deny the existence of these gifts is to deny scripture cause it’s all over the place in there, and nowhere does it say these gifts stopped being given to believers. So, speaking in tongues is something by which we can worship God, and it is a practice that builds us up, strengthening us for God’s purposes. What I want to explore is, since it’s so clearly laid out and given as an amazingly good thing, why does it divide us?
from a church that practices or teaches on things like prophesying and/or speaking in tongues. We’re a work in progress, like any other congregation. Once I
started seeing how God works in people that don’t have our
preconceptions of how God works I saw that many of us (on both sides of the argument) were missing things in our relationships with God. Today, I have yet to speak in tongues myself, but I expect it to happen, and for the last two years I’ve prophesied whenever given the opportunity.
But before all that I had to wrestle with what God’s word says on the subject, since I always naturally lean to the intellectual and logical side of faith. I’m a cynic first, what can I say. What I found is that it all boils down to one simple verse: He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church. Everything else that’s said on the subject breaks down that verse into everyday actions or defines differences between preaching in tongues and praying in tongues, but that right there is the heart of what the bible teaches on it. To deny the existence of these gifts is to deny scripture cause it’s all over the place in there, and nowhere does it say these gifts stopped being given to believers. So, speaking in tongues is something by which we can worship God, and it is a practice that builds us up, strengthening us for God’s purposes. What I want to explore is, since it’s so clearly laid out and given as an amazingly good thing, why does it divide us?
When I was going into Morocco my first time I was going to be filming stock footage for our outreach television programs. When choosing what equipment to bring, I was advised that most North Africans think in boxes and to not take anything that would put me in a questionable box. This meant that using a tripod looked professional and using one meant being asked for filming permits, work visas, etc., while without it I’d be taken as a tourist. Even though amateurs often use things like tripods, larger cameras, microphones, or special lenses, any one of these would be from the wrong box to a Moroccan so I had to make do to avoid attention (using our van as a tripod instead). I thought about that a lot, and you know what? We all do this. We have different definitions of which box means what, but we all have them. And the sad part is we’ve all got a nice neat one where God fits. We either want to know what to expect and build a box, or we think we know what to expect and have a box. We either think that crazy isn’t of God, or if we’re the crazy ones then somber isn’t of God. All it is in the end is a box, a limitation on what we believe God capable of because we’re not comfortable with a God who does these ‘other’ things. The tongues issue is merely an indicator of where our hearts are. We want predictable even if what we can predict is that it will be unpredictable, and as soon as we put up our little box of what or who God isand what He does, those that have a different box for God are quickly
viewed as anything from merely tolerated to outright ungodly. This is the division that is killing us, world wide, for when we don’t whole heartedly support one another, when we look down on one another like this, the world sees it and rightly wants nothing to do with us. We are divided on this because we can’t accept that other peoples worship is as acceptable to God as our own, and that God works in ways we haven’t seen or experienced ourselves.
I’d never noticed this verse in Mark 9:24 before reading it a couple months ago, and it’s been stuck in my head since: ‘Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed “I do believe; help me with my unbelief!”‘ I found it odd, claiming belief but asking for help with his unbelief, and had to think for a minute before I got it. See, I believe in God. You can sooner convince me I could not eat for a year and never feel hungry (I need to at least snack every few hours or my stomach mutinies) than convince me God isn’t the God of the bible and that every word He’s spoken is truth. Yet I do things contrary to that belief, like being uncertain of whether speaking in tongues is real, or that the word I’m speaking for someone is truly from God. He’s saying, ‘I believe this far, Lord; help me believe farther.’ May this be our prayer as churches, that our different boxes would push us to seek more from God and each other and not divide us, that we would ask God to DESTROY those boxes we have Him in by simply not fitting into it any longer.
And we do have Him in a box. Even if that box is bigger than most of the other boxes we see out there, He’s in a very small confining box for each of us when compared to what He really is. Are we willing to admit to our brothers from the church down the road that we’ve looked down on how they worship and ask them to teach us? Are we brave enough to really seek Him and step up to the responsibilities that come with knowing a God such as this? Can we ask for help with our unbelief?
Lord, I do believe. Please, please, help me with my unbelief.
