I would that ye all spake with tongues…1 Cor 14:5 KJV
Fifty-two years ago tonight I spoke in tongues for the first time!
In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. 1 Thess 5:1 KJV
Before we get into tongues and miracles, I want to share what I wrote to the intercessors about celebrations:
‘Wednesday will be my fifty second anniversary of when I spoke in tongues (yes, even as a one-year-old…
!). I’m writing a special LW article for the occasion, bless God forever! When did you first speak in tongues? If you don’t know the exact date, pick a date that seems closest to it and celebrate that every year. The point is to celebrate what God has given you, honoring Him and acknowledging all that He has done. If you’re ordained, you ought to celebrate your ordination date. Birthdays, wedding anniversaries, graduations, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Resurrection Sunday, Pentecost, the day you got born again, all should be celebrations and thankgivings with parties and festivities, reflecting on all God has done with joy and happiness. You might want to celebrate when you got healed, especially if it was a big battle. Be intentional about joy, and celebrate continually all God has done in your life…’
Recently I heard a testimony of a man who came to prove tongues was wrong. My friend Aloysious was doing his second World Revival Conference in 2005 in Kabale Uganda, the wellhead of the 1930’s Anglican Revival. This man came to the 6000+ strong conference and heard a preacher named Kevin Porter. He got filled with the Holy Spirit, fell under the anointing for fourteen hours, and when he arose was inspired to write a book about the Holy Spirit, with this testimony in its introduction. Hallelujah!
I don’t know how many people I have led into tongues. I think I stopped counting after nine thousand, crowds of dear ones and individuals. There was the pastor in Ghana who waited thirty-five years to get filled, and the 2000+ who got filled in the church in Kigali, and the Rwandese pastor who had laid hands on hundreds who had gotten filled, but he himself had never been. After about fifteen minutes he was filled!
And then there was the guy who had come to Kampala to a Spirit-filled Bible school to get filled. In four years at the school, he had never been filled. I met him in a baggage managers office at Entebbe. I had flown into Entebbe to meet the saints, but my luggage had not flown with me. After four days, my luggage arrived, and they told me to come pick it up. I just happened to be in the office when this man appeared and told his story of never having received. I said, “Today is your day!” And it was! Then there was the aide-de-camp, a Colonel in the Benin army, to my friend General Amoussou, who got filled in their Washington DC office after Carl and I had had lunch with them at the Army – Navy Club.
When I first got filled – December 6, 1971 – I spoke in tongues a lot, and miracles followed. One time I needed an address to the ministry office to send in an offering, an address that I did not have. This was well before the Internet and Google. I sat down, closed my eyes, and said, “Lord, what is the address?” Presently I saw in my spirit an envelope with the exact address on it. I opened my eyes, wrote the address on a real envelope, and mailed in my offering. A few days later I got a thank you note from the office, my offering having successfully arrived. Bless God forever!
Three years after getting filled at the tender age of sixteen, I, a California boy, was running around Nebraska teaching classes and planting house churches. Nebraska was cold and snowy in the winter! One time my car, with four bald tires, slipped on the ice and went off a cliff. I bounced down the mountain, somehow avoiding trees and rocks that would flip me over and crush the car. Soon a wrecker truck appeared at the cliff, a steel cable was lowered to me, and I was pulled up the mountain. When we cleaned out the tailpipe, the car started up like nothing happened, and I finished my journey, staying well away from ice and cliffs. JESUS!
My Bible school managed to quench the Spirit in my life, and miracles became less frequent as I spoke in tongues less. My school was training me to be a mid to upper-level manager in the organization rather than be a man of God. The Lord tried to use my friend Pat to revive me, as he came to visit me in the college and related how he was praying in tongues for hours and seeing miracles. Pat is a miracle working evangelist, and could have helped me, but it wouldn’t be until some years later that I recovered the joy of prayer in the Spirit. And this time, miracles would come by the thousands…
I will always thank my friend Dale who set up a pastors retreat in Bedford VA in March of 1995. The Spirit of God was moving in Toronto Canada. I like to say that I never went to Toronto but Toronto came to us. I got refilled with the Spirit! All we wanted to do was pray in tongues for hours. Quite a lot of religion, as you can imagine, gotten broken off me at that time (more would get broken off in 1999). We got in a plane to come home but we probably could have flown home on the wings of the Spirit. As soon as I came home, prayer became my passion.
I would go out to pray at night in the hills above Palmdale. I’d stop at the McDonalds for coffee and then go up to my prayer spot, overlooking the lights of the Antelope Valley. There I would meet God! At night, in the early morning, after work you could find me there, praying and rejoicing in the months before we would finally go on our first trip to Kenya. Truly March in Bedford was preparing us for October in Nairobi…and for us to go into fulltime ministry the next July!
Over the years through our intern training we developed effective teachers of the gifts of the Spirit. One goal was to raise the 40% rate of people getting filled when they come to receive the Holy Spirit to 100%. How would you feel if you came to God to receive and didn’t receive? I’d be devastated. Its really the minister’s fault when people come to receive and don’t, because Jesus freely gives the HS to all, and the minister is supposed to know what he is doing!
Our Ugandan team of intern grads has helped over two thousand Anglican priests to be filled with the HS in a several year project. God surrounds me with people who are better than me!
One time the team and I were ministering to about three hundred Anglicans in a small town in southwest Uganda. Now in Uganda, like many African nations, the people may speak 40-50 different languages depending on their tribe and where they live. As the whole group began to speak in tongues, Bishop Steven, who is from northeastern Uganda, maybe five hundred miles away, heard a young village girl speak in his native language. What did she say, you ask? I had the Bishop write it down for me. “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel. I have come into your midst to do great things. I am pouring out My Spirit upon you all.” Indeed, this was happening! This was NOT interpretation of tongues. He heard these words in his own native language just like on Pentecost. When he came back to her, he heard her praying ‘Lord, help me’ ‘Lord guide me’ ‘You are rock and my deliverer.’ Simple prayers given by the Spirit, as He enabled her. Afterwards, as a test, he came up to her and spoke to her in his native language. She was completely confused because she did not know that language, but when she got filled, she spoke in it. JESUS!
Our friend Aloysious commanded his whole church to speak in tongues an hour a day for a whole year after hearing a certain preacher preach. Towards the end of the year a three and a half year healing revival broke out in their midst. During the healing revival, when even the local hospitals were sending people to the church, I came to visit them. In his office was a Catholic mother with a baby who had never moved its lower body. I just picked the baby up and instantly its legs became strong! He didn’t even wait for me to say, “In the name of Jesus…” Another woman who hadn’t spoken in ten years spoke that day. JESUS!
One time Michael called, and in the course of our conversation, he told me of a young man in his church who had died. I said, “Lets raise him!” He said ok, and as the Spirit of God fell on us we prayed in the Spirit and commanded him to live. A few weeks later he sent me this text: ‘Did I tell you that the young boy I had told you some weeks ago who they had told us had died in Kampala, and you said we should pray for him to resurrect, he indeed was reported alive in the hospital after that. God is glorious and He does great things!!!’
I could go on and on, but let me finish with the testimony of what happened fifty-two years ago tonight…
I had just gotten my drivers license after several attempts as a young sixteen-year-old. I would drive my parent’s car to the grocery store at night to get milk and eggs for breakfast the next day. One night as I was driving, I looked up at the full moon and said, “God, if You’re really up there, I want You to show me how You want me to live.” (One time, I was preaching in Atlanta by a lakeside and I was telling this story. Just as I said the words ‘God, if You are really up there…’ then thunder rumbled over our heads and the crowd went ‘Ohhhhh…’ It was a JESUS moment!) I had been raised Catholic, and probably got born again at my first holy communion because I walked out of the church knowing I loved Jesus. Shortly after that I met Debbie…
Debbie was an upperclassman at Alameda High School where I was a sophomore, and she worked at Jonathan’s sandwich shop. Jonathan’s was a great place to hang out because they had live music on the weekends. I met her there about midnight on Friday night December 3rd. She invited me to come to a small house church of high school kids on Monday night the 6th at Mike and Lynne Roberts apartment in Alameda.
For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. 2 Tim 1:7 KJV
I arrived at Debbies house on the 6th and we walked over to the Robert’s apartment. There I met Jerry and a bunch of people. Jerry shared that night about the Holy Spirit. The first verse he read was 2 Timothy 1:7 which was spoken just to me. Afterwards, Debbie came up to me and said, “Do you want to get filled with the Holy Spirit?” I said, “Uhhh…maybe next week!” She said, “No, come with me.” Jerry and Debbie took me in the bedroom and prayed with me, and I spoke a few words. Instantly, I felt like I was three feet off the ground! My life was changed forever…
Thank you for celebrating with me! We can be intentional about joy. We have so much to celebrate and be thankful for, to remember God’s successes and to celebrate His victories in us and for us. Make celebration a lifestyle, dear one. Love you!
Remember dear ones, we must be about our Father’s business…