Tongues-speakers today are proudly disengaging their minds when they use the claimed gift: they have no idea what they are saying, if anything, and neither does anyone else. The practise of being “slain in the Spirit” similarly seeks to vacate the mind and “let the Spirit take over”, causing people to apparently pass out on the floor and lay there – once they’ve adjusted their clothing – sometimes for hours, in what appears to be a comatose state.
True, Peter “fell into a trance” one day sometime after Pentecost. However, his mind remained engaged and both he and the Lord spoke and conversed in everyday language, not in an unintelligible tongue:
“Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.” The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean” (Acts 10:14-15).
DISOBEYING THE COMMAND TO LOVE GOD
One problem with what we see today is that believers are disobeying a commandment of Jesus. When someone asked Jesus what the greatest commandment is, he answered:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30).
We are to love God with all our minds. Why then would we intentionally disengage our minds and yet claim to be engaged in a higher form of worship? Praying or worshipping without our minds is actually a lesser and inferior form of worship. Perhaps that’s why Paul told the Corinthian church this;
“For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my understanding; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my understanding” (1 Corinthians 14:14-15).
NO SENSE = NONSENSE
Praying in an unrecognized language or no real language at all produces no fruit: none. Failure to be understood, says Paul, is a negative – not a good thing. If nobody understands what you’re saying, and if even you don’t understand what you’re saying, you are accomplishing nothing whatsoever, not even in the heavenlies. You may get a tingly warm feeling for yourself, but you are just “speaking into the air”:
“So it is with you. Unless you speak intelligible words with your tongue, how will anyone know what you are saying? You will just be speaking into the air” (1 Corinthians 14:9).
In this case, nobody is being helped, freed, instructed, built up or encouraged.
Paul attempts to straighten out the Corinthians on their wild and uncontrolled use of tongues. What they were doing was a bad witness to the world, and was also failing to use the mind that the Lord has given for that purpose:
“So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and inquirers or unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind?” (1 Corinthians 14:23).
WHEN THE SPIRIT INTERCEDES
A passage of Scripture commonly cited in the practice of speaking in tongues today, and particularly praying in tongues, is found in Paul’s letter to the Romans:
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God (Romans 8:26-27).
A CLASS STRUCTURE?
If tongues speakers are correct to invoke this passage as a defence for the practise of praying in tongues, it means they are blessed above all believers, because the Holy Spirit is praying for them while He is not praying for the rest of us. It means there is a class structure in the Church determined by which gift you claim to have, and it means the Holy Spirit of God favours some people over others. Tongues speakers protest that no, they don’t think they are any better than anyone else, but they are contradicting themselves. According to them the gift makes their prayers more powerful, it aids in healing and spiritual warfare, and it gives them more influence in the spiritual world than those without tongues. Why would they do it and look down on others who don’t if it doesn’t make them any better: what would be the point?
WORDLESS GROANS
First, notice in our Romans passage that tongues were/are/should be uttered in “words”, because that’s how our Bible describes tongues:
“But in the church I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue” (1 Corinthians 14:19).
Now look at the second part of verse 26 of our featured text, as quoted in the above NIV version:
“… the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans”.
Here’s the same phrase in the KJV:
“… the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered”.
It’s not possible to audibly pray without words and without utterance: try it. Therefore Paul is saying in this passage that what the Spirit does for us is wordless and without audible utterance: without sound. It’s devoid of tongues or any spoken expression on our part. The Holy Spirit doesn’t pray through our mouths or in groans or any sounds at all, but in our hearts and our inner being, to the Father who is also in every true believer. No “tongues” are necessary.
This means that the Spirit prays for all of us who name the name of Christ, not just for those who claim to have a certain gift. Paul says in verse 27 that the Spirit prays for “God’s people”. He doesn’t pray only for “some of God’s people”:
the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God
When we’re deeply moved, challenged, in despair or confused, and unable to pray coherently, the Spirit prays to the Father on our behalf. That’s the message Paul has for us in this passage of Scripture.
I’ve answered more claims of tongues speakers in relation to prayer in other posts. I include some links below:
Fuel for Faith, Food for Thought 