Abbey Normal
Senior Member
I've had many chances to see speaking in tongues up close and personal. An uncle would visit us, and pray with us, and while he was praying, he would start speaking in a "language" I'd never heard before. I put language in quotes, because truth to tell, it sounded like no language I'd ever heard. It was more like gibberish. His face would turn all reddish, and he would look ecstatic afterwards. I mean really over-the-top ecstatic.
I really cannot say whether this was a gift of the Spirit, or something much more temporal, but I can say that it seemed weird and unsettling to me, and I always felt like getting further away from him when he got into it. I also never could understand how a man so filled with the Spirit could leave his faithful wife and three kids to marry a third time, and move 2,000 miles away so they could fend for themselves.
I am not saying that these types of gifts are phony; I just don't know. But it seems to me the fruits of the sprirt in Ephesians are much more telling signs that someone is Spirit-filled.
I really cannot say whether this was a gift of the Spirit, or something much more temporal, but I can say that it seemed weird and unsettling to me, and I always felt like getting further away from him when he got into it. I also never could understand how a man so filled with the Spirit could leave his faithful wife and three kids to marry a third time, and move 2,000 miles away so they could fend for themselves.
I am not saying that these types of gifts are phony; I just don't know. But it seems to me the fruits of the sprirt in Ephesians are much more telling signs that someone is Spirit-filled.