Speaking in Tongues: The Evidence, Part 7 of 7
This post isn’t for everyone.
It’s for you.
You know who you are.
Maybe someone told you your prayer language was demonic. That the sounds coming out of your mouth during worship weren’t from God. They were from the enemy. And you believed them. Because they said it with authority, and you were young, or new, or just trusting.
Maybe someone told you the opposite. That if you really had the Holy Spirit, you would have spoken in tongues by now. Everyone else in the room had received it. And the fact that you hadn’t meant something was wrong with you. Something is blocking it. Some hidden sin. Some lack of faith.
Maybe you were at the front of a church. Someone’s hand on your forehead. People around you are shouting. And you felt pressure.
Not the Spirit.
Pressure.
Pressure to perform. To make sounds. To prove something. And when you couldn’t, or wouldn’t, you walked back to your seat feeling like you had failed God in public.
Maybe no one said anything at all.
But the look on their faces said enough.
You felt defective.
Less-than.
Like everyone else had access to something you didn’t. And nobody stopped to ask if you were okay.
I need you to hear something.
That was wrong.
It shouldn’t have happened.
Nothing in Scripture authorizes that kind of treatment. No one has the right to weaponize the Holy Spirit against you. No one has the right to use a gift meant for your comfort as a tool for your shame. And no leader, no matter how sincere they believe they are, gets to decide the timeline of your relationship with God.
The other posts in this series cover the biblical evidence, the history, and the theology. But I haven’t shied away from the hard stuff either. I’ve spent time investigating the abuses. The manipulation that happens in certain charismatic settings: the NAR excesses, the high-pressure altar calls designed to manufacture a response, the exploitation of people looking for a genuine encounter with God.
I’ve seen the damage up close.
People walked away from faith entirely. Not because the gift wasn’t real. Because the people around them weren’t safe.
I take that seriously.
But I want to be careful here. The fact that people misuse something doesn’t tell you whether the thing itself is good.
A kitchen knife can feed your family or draw blood. The problem isn’t the knife. It’s who’s holding it.
Fire can burn your house down. It can also keep you warm on the coldest night of your life.
Same fire. Different hands.
The gift is still good.
Even when the people around it weren’t.
Jesus said something in Luke 11 that I keep coming back to. He’s talking to ordinary people who know what it means to love their kids. And He asks:
“What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:11-13, ESV)
Read that again.
The Father gives good gifts. He wouldn’t hand you a snake. He wouldn’t trick you. He wouldn’t set you up to be humiliated at the front of a church.
That’s not His heart.
If what happened to you felt like a snake, it’s because a human being handed you one and called it God. But that doesn’t mean God doesn’t have something real for you. Something gentle. Something that comes without coercion or countdown or a room full of people staring at you.
I’m not going to pressure you.
There’s no altar call at the end of this post. No countdown. No “repeat after me.” No five-step formula to unlock the gift.
I’ve spent six posts building the case: the history, the scholarship, the biblical text, the science, the theology. That evidence is there if you want it. You can read it on your own time. Check every source. Take as long as you need.
But this post isn’t about evidence.
This post is about you.
If you’ve been hurt by this topic, I’m sorry. Not the kind of sorry that’s trying to get you back to church next Sunday. The kind that just sits with you and doesn’t try to fix anything.
What happened to you mattered.
The confusion was real. The shame was real. Being told that the thing you experienced was evil, or that the thing you couldn’t produce made you broken.
That was real.
And none of it reflects God’s heart for you.
When you’re ready — and only when you’re ready — the promise is still good.
Not because I say so. Because Peter said so, two thousand years ago, standing in Jerusalem with fire over his head: “The promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself” (Acts 2:39).
For all who are far off.
That includes people who walked away because they got burned.
That includes people sitting in the back row with their arms crossed because trust doesn’t come easy anymore.
That includes people reading this on their phone at 2 AM, wondering if God still has something for them.
He does.
No pressure. No performance. Just an open door.
The promise is still good. If He’s called you, it’s for you.
Even after what happened.
Maybe especially after what happened.
This is the final post in the “Speaking in Tongues: The Evidence” series. For the full overview, the free research guide PDF, and links to every post in the series, visit the overview post.
If this series helped you, share it with someone who needs it.
