Sam Storms

I want to make sure no one means to suggest that once a gift is bestowed, we cannot develop, grow, improve, and be instructed on how to use it more effectively. This would apply to virtually all gifts, such as the gift of teaching, evangelism, leadership, giving, or any and every spiritual gift. If Christians can’t be “taught” how to exercise a gift, what are we doing offering courses in homiletics (preaching) in our colleges and seminaries? What are we doing offering seminars on how to more effectively share our faith with non-Christians? And the list could go on.

All praying in tongues is praying in the Spirit, but not all praying in the Spirit is praying in tongues.

praying in tongues is at least included in what it means to pray in the Spirit, this would suggest that one’s prayer language would serve to bolster or strengthen us in our standing firm against Satan’s tactics.

I can say with a measure of confidence that it is a good strategy to employ prayer in tongues when addressing those who are oppressed by the devil or perhaps even demonized.

Rather, the Spirit sovereignly imparts to the believer an ability by which the believer prays or praises in a language he cannot of himself interpret

other words, we know that God’s will is ultimate and decisive, but we also know that one way (perhaps the primary way) in which God accomplishes His will is by stirring and motivating us to preach and pray as the means by which He brings that will into being.

y suspicion is that, all things being equal, if you deeply desire this gift, it is probably (but not certainly) because the Holy Spirit has stirred your heart to seek for it. And He has stirred your heart to seek for it because it is His will to bestow it. So if you long for the gift of tongues, persevere in your prayers. My sense (with no guarantee) is that God will answer you in His time with a satisfying yes.

numberless demoniacs throughout the whole world, and in your city, many of our Christian men exorcising them in the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, have healed and do heal, rendering helpless and driving the possessing devils out of the men, though they could not be cured by all the other exorcists, and those used incantations and drugs.

, seeing that we acknowledge spiritual charismata, or gifts, we too have merited the attainment of the prophetic gift, although coming after John (the Baptist). We have now amongst us a sister whose lot it has been to be favoured with sundry gifts of revelation, which she experiences in the Spirit by ecstatic vision amidst the sacred rites of the Lord’s day in the church: she converses with angels, and sometimes even with the Lord; she both sees and hears mysterious communications; some men’s hearts she understands, and to them who are in need she distributes remedies. . . . After the peop

dismissed at the conclusion of the sacred services, she is in the regular habit of reporting to us whatever things she may have seen in vision (for all her communications are examined with the most scrupulous care, in order that their truth may be probed). .