In Reply to: Re: adventures in prayer: a true story of deliverance posted by MG on August 10, 2004 at 04:28:07:
The Desperate Prayer Letter must have been after my time, but I remember doing that type of prayer in TF. Well, maybe not the weeping part, but the tongues part, yes.
I've never completely understood the business of speaking in tongues, but since I got that gift in TF, I can pretty much do it at will. When I do it at will, it's not necessarily because I want to pray or because I feel "overcome" by the Spirit. According to the charismatic practice, speaking in tongues is something you do in during group prayer for the edification of the community. That's not the situation when I decide to speak in tongues at will.
For me, speaking in tongues is a psychological coping mechanism. About the only time I do it (very rarely) is when I'm alone in the car and feeling really anxious or uptight about traffic conditions. So it's a stress reliever.
I've had a conversation about this with someone who identifies himself as an agnostic and who has absolutely no experience with charismatic prayer groups. Anyway, he claims he can speak in tongues, and I asked him to show me, and by golly, it sounded authentic. Actually, it sounded more like a true language than a so much of the "beshondo-holla" that characterizes a lot of charistmatic prayer groups.
So I asked the agnostic what he thought was going on, but mainly, how he discovered this ability to speak in an unknown tongue, and he said he was practicing his singing drunk one night when he just cut loose. This person is a professional musician, and it turns out that being able to make up words and loose vocalizations while performing comes in pretty handy, because it's not uncommon to forget whole lines in songs when you're doing a show.