Acts 1:4 refers to the Holy Spirit as “the Promise of the Father,” a promise that was fulfilled on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured out on the 120 believers who were gathered in that upper room in Jerusalem (see Acts 2:1-4). In Romans 8:23 the apostle Paul mentions the “first-fruits of the Spirit” as the common possession of all believers.
Mosaic Law specified three annual feasts that all Jews were required to observe. The first of these was Passover, which commemorated Israel’s deliverance from slavery in Egypt and therefore represents our salvation. Second was the Feast of Pentecost, followed later in the year by the Feast of Tabernacles (see Exodus 23:16), which celebrated God’s presence among His people and symbolized the end-time harvest of souls that have been saved.
Pentecost, the second of the annual feasts, was also known as the Feast of Firstfruits. In addition to celebrating the beginning of the harvest, the Feast of Pentecost also foreshadowed the coming of the Holy Spirit for the first time. Pentecost occurred 50 days after Passover. Just as Jesus Christ, the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn. 1:29b), died on Passover, the Holy Spirit came 50 days later during Pentecost, signifying the beginning of the great spiritual harvest of souls.
Every person is required to “appear” before God three times: in salvation, in the baptism in the Holy Spirit, and in the final ingathering of souls, thus fulfilling the purpose and meaning of the three feasts: Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles.
Three times in his letters, Paul refers to the Holy Spirit as the “guarantee” or “down payment” of our full spiritual inheritance, which shall be bestowed on us when we get to Heaven. Being filled with the Holy Spirit is the manifestation of our citizenship in God’s Kingdom. In the same way that one nation has ambassadors and embassies in foreign countries, the baptism in the Holy Spirit identifies us as citizens of Heaven while we are on earth. Speaking in tongues is the “native” tongue, the native “language” of Heaven. Every citizen of Heaven should both speak and understand the “native” language of tongues! Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal” (1 Cor. 13:1).
Speaking in tongues is the first and primary biblical manifestation of being baptized in the Holy Spirit:
And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance (Acts 2:2-4).
It is “the voice of the Lord” in the same way that inspired prophetic utterance is.
Psalm 29 is a song about the voice of the Lord that I believe also describes the aspects and effects of speaking in tongues.
Give unto the Lord, O you mighty ones, give unto the Lord glory and strength. Give unto the Lord the glory due to His name; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the God of glory thunders; the Lord is over many waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful: the voice of the Lord is full of majesty. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars, yes, the Lord splinters the cedars of Lebanon. He makes them also skip like a calf, Lebanon and Sirion like a young wild ox. The voice of the Lord divides the flames of fire. The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness; the Lord shakes the Wilderness of Kadesh. The voice of the Lord makes the deer give birth, and strips the forests bare; and in His temple everyone says, “Glory!” The Lord sat enthroned at the Flood, and the Lord sits as King forever. The Lord will give strength to His people; the Lord will bless His people with peace (Psalm 29:1-11).
This psalm begins with a command for us to do two things: give the Lord the glory due His name, and worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Both of these we can obey wonderfully through tongues. As we speak in tongues, pray in tongues, and sing in tongues, we give God the glory due His name. Tongues enables us to praise and glorify God. When we pray in tongues we worship in the particular beauty of the Holy Spirit. Just as Abraham’s servant in Genesis 24 was sent to find a bride for Isaac, the Holy Spirit was sent to identify, prepare, adorn, and beautify the Bride chosen for God’s only Son.
Psalm 29:3-4 provides an apt description of speaking in tongues: “The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the God of glory thunders; the Lord is over many waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful: the voice of the Lord is full of majesty.” Revelation 1:15 describes the voice of Jesus, our resurrected Savior and our Bridegroom, as “the sound of many waters.” Jesus plainly states in John 7:37-38 that for anyone who believes on Him, out of his heart (not mind) rivers of living water would flow. In the very next verse John makes it clear that Jesus was referring to the Holy Spirit.
The manifestation of the Holy Spirit is similar to rivers of water. Jesus said that we would receive power when the Holy Spirit came upon us (see Acts 1:8). When the “water” of the Holy Spirit comes down, God’s voice will be heard. This happened first on the day of Pentecost, where God’s voice was manifested in the believers through speaking in tongues: “They…began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance” (Acts 2:4). Speaking in tongues is the manifestation of the living river of the Holy Sprit coming out of the believer’s spirit and it is powerful!
Verses 5-7 of Psalm 29 describe the power of speaking in tongues: “The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars, yes the Lord splinters the cedars of Lebanon. He makes them also skip like a calf, Lebanon and Sirion like a young wild ox. The voice of the Lord divides the flames of fire.” On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit manifested Himself in “divided tongues of fire” (Acts 2:3). According to the psalmist, the power of speaking or praying in tongues can splinter strong cedars. Trees in Scripture often represent rulers, spiritual or natural. Speaking in tongues breaks the power of even the strongest natural leaders and sends principalities and powers fleeing!
“The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness; the Lord shakes the Wilderness of Kadesh” (Ps. 29:8). Kadesh is the Valley of Eshcol where Joshua and his men went to spy out the land that God had promised to give them. In the wilderness of Kadesh the spies cut down a branch with one cluster of grapes so large that it required two men to carry it back! In Hebrew, the word for “shakes” is hil, the same descriptive word used of David’s dance as he returned the ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem (see 2 Sam. 6): an ecstatic twirling, like a whirlwind in power, turning round and round. Such is the nature and power, but also the spiritual worship, of speaking in tongues. Just as David was so caught up in worship that he cared nothing about his personal appearance or reputation, as we pray in the Spirit, no matter what our circumstances, we are carried into a place of spiritual worship that ushers in the victory of God manifest in the presence of Jesus.
What difficulties are you facing today? What opposition are you encountering in life? Why don’t you start praying in the Spirit right now, enter the realm that King David entered, and start getting the victory?
Speaking in tongues brings forth the fruit of our spiritual promises in God. There will always be those who despise the Holy Spirit. King David’s own wife did! Michal called her husband’s ecstatic spiritual worship a thing of the flesh—unbecoming foolishness for a king! Her carnal opinion did not affect David in the least. Instead, he told her, in effect, “If you didn’t like that, brace yourself because I am only going to get more radical” (see 2 Sam. 6:14-16). Every Christian must choose between obedience to the Holy Spirit or respectability before men.
Psalm 29:9a exclaims, “The voice of the Lord makes the deer give birth, and strips the forests bare.” My wife, Bonnie, had an extraordinary experience of hearing the voice of the Lord during her fourth pregnancy with our son Aaron. Here is the account in her own words:
In 1985 I was pregnant with our fourth child. Early in the pregnancy, I started hemorrhaging, and learned that I had “placenta previa centralis,” a very severe illness of the placenta where it does not attach to the uterus correctly. Our doctor said, “Okay, you just need to go to bed,” and things went from bad to worse. By the time I was 25 weeks pregnant, my water broke and I was in and out of labor all the time, continuing to hemorrhage. At that point the doctor recommended that we have a “D & C.” We did not take their advice because, in our spirits, we heard the Lord say, “Wait.” So we waited. It was a mess, a really terrible mess.
Finally, they were going to take the baby, so I went into the hospital under the care of my doctor. He was a wonderful man, a Sikh, and had delivered all three of our previous children. He had been watching our family for a long time, and we knew that it was time for him to see the reality of our faith, how real Jesus was to us, and all the amazing ways in which He had blessed us.
As they rushed me into surgery for a C-section, the operating room was filled with people. Fourteen people from the neo-natal intensive care unit were on hand to deal with the baby, if it was born alive, and a separate group of people was there to take care of me. I remember that as the anesthesiologist approached me, it appeared in my mind’s eye like a cartoon: a guy with a big needle and a little hat on his head coming toward me to put me to sleep.
At the same time, another man entered the operating room. It was Jesus. His physical form was more like a cloud, but there was a definite silhouette. Even as the anesthesiologist approached, Jesus walked right to the head of the stretcher where I was lying. It was funny because, even though He was behind me, I could still see Him. That is one of the wonderful things about the Lord; He is everywhere, and we will experience God just as though He is right in front of us. As He came in, something came out of Him, something that I call the “voice of God.” It was not a human voice. He did not speak English words. His voice was a powerful force, like water, electricity, lightning, flood, fire, love, creation, all in one—just an indescribable power. His voice was like a sound, but also more than a sound, more than words.
As He spoke, His voice came down my body, and as it hit me, my mouth opened. I pointed at the surgeon, and, without hesitation or thinking it through first, said to him, “I can have this baby naturally.” The doctor looked back at me in amazement. That voice traveled down my body and surrounded whatever was in my womb. Suddenly, there was a soft “pop,” followed by five little “mews” like a baby kitten. When I heard this, I pointed at the doctor and his face turned ashen. He was holding this mass of something in his hands. His eyes were bulging and the whole room went into a flurry. I blurted out, “It’s a boy, isn’t it?” He nodded.
This was beyond impossible, and yet Aaron was born. He was all bruised up. At birth his thigh was the size of my wedding ring. My wedding ring could fit on his little thigh. Aaron’s birth weight was one pound and 3 ounces, but he immediately lost his birth water weight, so his weight dropped to less than one pound. We have pictures of Aaron lying next to a toothbrush, where he and the toothbrush are the same length. He had a staph infection, and blood in his spinal column. His little ears had not even curled up; they were flat flaps of skin on the side of his face. Everything seemed such a disaster that it was hard even to think about it. Here was our newborn son, and every prognosis was that he was going to die.
The voice of the Lord brought about the supernatural birth of our son, who had only been in the womb for five months. Today, Aaron is seventeen years old, healthy, strong, and intelligent. He loves the Lord, does well in school, and is active in his church youth group. All throughout her pregnancy, Bonnie lay in bed for three months and magnified God in her prayer language. Now every time we look at Aaron we know God is real and His mercy is everlasting. We recall how the voice of the Lord came mightily to Bonnie, delivered Aaron, and then completely healed and restored him. Speaking in tongues is one of the weapons of our spiritual warfare, mighty in God for pulling down strongholds and making us triumphant in all circumstances.
“The Lord sat enthroned at the Flood, and the Lord sits as King forever” (Ps. 29:10). This verse refers not to the flood of Noah, but to Moses’ parting of the Red Sea with the rod of authority. Isaiah 59:19b says, “When the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him.” Just as when Moses raised his rod at the Red Sea, and God delivered His people from the army of Pharaoh that was chasing them, so today when the enemy chases the people of God, the Spirit of the Lord will raise a standard against him. For me, this chapter indicates that speaking in tongues enthrones God as King and parts the greatest barrier so we can walk in freedom just as Israel walked through the Red Sea and watched it close over Pharaoh’s warriors and chariots.
The final verse of Psalm 29 promises strength and peace: “The Lord will give strength to His people; The Lord will bless His people with peace” (Ps. 29:11). As His people pray in the Spirit, the Lord gives to them His wholeness and well being. Jude 1:20 encourages us to “[build] yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Spirit.” God created tongues as the supernatural language of Heaven and gave it to us through the baptism in the Holy Spirit that we might have the words and understanding by the Spirit to pray effectively when we do not know how or what to pray with our natural minds.
The “voice of many waters,” the voice of Jesus, is the voice of the Bridegroom. Speaking in tongues is the believer’s bridal language of intimacy with the Bridegroom. In the same manner that a man and wife commune with one another in physical intimacy, through speaking in tongues we commune in spiritual intimacy with Christ our Bridegroom. Speaking or praying to Him in tongues gives expression of our spiritual love for Jesus, love given by the Holy Spirit. Speaking in tongues is an expression of our union, our covenant with Christ. The Holy Spirit enables the Bride of Christ to communicate with Him in His native language, the language not of earth, but of Heaven, the language not of the carnal mind or earthly intellect, but the language of the Spirit, of the heart of God.
John wrote the final revelation of Jesus Christ as he was “in the Spirit,” seeing, experiencing, understanding, and recording spiritual truth. In Rev. 22:16 John hears the Bridegroom speak and declare Himself: “I am the Root and the Off-spring of David, Bright and Morning Star.” In other words, He is about to appear. In response to this revelation, John hears the Spirit and the Bride—the Church on earth—say “Come!” Praying in the Spirit ushers in the appearing of the Lord. In addition, John said, “Let him who hears say ‘come.’ And let him who thirsts come. Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely” (Rev. 22:17b). Speaking in tongues draws the thirsty to Christ and prays in the harvest. Whoever comes to Christ receives the river of the Holy Spirit freely, without measure, without restriction, and without any rebuke.
The apostle Paul said that while he spoke in simple words of earthly language so that an unbeliever might hear and receive the gospel, he thanked God that he spoke in tongues more than all to whom he wrote! (see 1 Cor. 14:18) Paul understood the value of being able to speak the language of God.
Eugene Peterson’s contemporary paraphrase of Scripture called The Message exquisitely captures the power and force of Psalm 29:
Bravo, God, bravo! Gods and all angels shout, “Encore!” In awe before the glory, in awe before God’s visible power. Stand at attention! Dress your best to honor Him! God thunders across the waters, brilliant, His voice and His face, streaming brightness— God, across the flood waters. God’s thunder tympanic, God’s thunder symphonic. God’s thunder smashes cedars, God topples the northern cedars. The mountain ranges skip like spring colts, The high ridges jump like wild kid goats. God’s thunder spits fire. God thunders, the wilderness quakes; He makes the desert of Kadesh shake. God’s thunder sets the oak trees dancing a wild dance, whirling; the pelting rain strips their branches. We fall to our knees—we call out, “Glory!” Above the floodwaters is God’s throne from which His power flows, from which He rules the world. God makes His people strong. God gives His people peace (Psalm 29:1-11 The Message).
Because Paul understood the language of God and its importance, he was one of the most effective people who ever lived. When he met Christ he was changed forever. The Holy Spirit transformed Paul’s life from the inside out. The secret of Paul’s success and effectiveness was, among other things, his understanding of the place and power in his life of the language of the Spirit.