On Praying in Tongues
Dear friend,
You told me you've been talking to a Pentecostal who's been explaining speaking in tongues, and that you're wondering whether you should adopt the practice yourself.
You also told me, beautifully, that if Jesus Christ is under a rock, that's where you'll be. You'll look anywhere. I love that about you, and I want to honor that posture by giving you the most honest answer I have right now, not the tidy one.
So here's where I've landed. I want to write this down because it's been sitting at the tip of my brain for a while, and putting it on paper forces me to commit to a view I can be corrected on later.
My Working Theory
Speaking in tongues is most useful for people who have a non-quiet mind.
That's the one-liner. Let me unpack it.
When you pray in a language you don't understand, your intellect has nowhere to go. It can't edit. It can't rehearse. It can't drift to your groceries or your inbox or the conversation you need to have tomorrow. Every ounce of attention is occupied by the sound coming out of your mouth, which means the only thing you're doing is being present with God.
Paul himself acknowledged this dynamic: "For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful" (1 Corinthians 14:14, KJV). The understanding goes offline. The spirit stays engaged.
For a lot of people, that's a gift. Their minds are loud. They've been living in a culture that pipes noise into their attention every waking second, and sitting quietly in prayer feels impossible. They start to pray and five seconds later they're thinking about work. Tongues is a discipline that makes that kind of drift impossible. It's a ritual of sustained attention, and attention is the rarest currency in 2026.
That's not a small thing. If praying in tongues is what lets you actually stay with God for a meaningful stretch, you should do it. I'm not here to talk anyone out of a practice that's visibly producing fruit.
Why I Don't Do It Myself
I'll be transparent: I almost never pray in tongues. I've tried. It doesn't resonate for me, and I think the reason is structural rather than spiritual.
I already have a quiet mind. Not because I was born that way, but because I've spent years deliberately cultivating it. I have quiet time daily. I reflect. I don't keep myself in a permanent state of texting and talking and consuming. When I'm about to get annoyed, I calm down. When I mess up, I apologize. I try to embody the fruits of the Spirit: "love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance" (Galatians 5:22-23, KJV).
That work has done for me what I think tongues does for others. My mind already goes quiet when I pray. I don't need a sonic scaffolding to keep the intellect at bay, because the intellect has already learned to yield.
So when I'm offered tongues as "the way" to commune with the Spirit, it feels like being handed training wheels after I've already learned to ride. Not wrong for the person who needs them. Just not my tool.
The Pharisee Risk
Here's where I want to be honest about the failure mode I see in some Pentecostal circles, and you can take this or leave it.
The whole point of the Reformation critique of Catholic ritualism was that ritual, untethered from living faith, becomes dead weight. It becomes the thing you do to feel religious instead of the thing that brings you closer to God. Jesus was brutal about this with the Pharisees: "But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking" (Matthew 6:7, KJV).
Some Pentecostal communities have, in my observation, recreated exactly the dynamic they were originally protesting against. They'll tell you they don't do empty rituals like the Catholics do. And then they'll insist that if you don't speak in tongues, you haven't truly received the Spirit. That's a ritual. It's a ritual that refuses to call itself one, which is the most dangerous kind.
I want to be very careful here. I'm not saying tongues is a vain repetition. I'm saying the insistence on tongues as a gateway marker can become one. There's a real difference between "this practice helps me commune with God" and "this practice proves I commune with God." The first is humble. The second is performance.
Different Workouts for Different Bodies
The most useful frame I've found is this: Christian traditions are like different workouts for different spiritual body types.
Some people need a pope. They need a benevolent earthly authority to submit to, because the posture of submission is what opens their heart. I don't crave that at all. I'm almost offensively independent, and any structure that requires me to defer to a human hierarchy feels like it blocks rather than channels the Holy Spirit for me.
Some people need liturgy. The rhythm, the repetition, the embodied practice. For them, showing up to the same words week after week is where God meets them.
Some people need charismatic release. Raised hands, loud worship, tongues, prophecy. The body and spirit expressing together, without the filter of careful composure.
And some people, like me, need quiet. Long silences. Walks. Journaling. Direct conversation with God the way you'd talk to your best friend, because that's the relational frame that feels most true to who I am and how He made me.
None of these are better or worse. They're different instruments in an orchestra that's all playing the same symphony. See: A Letter on Denominations and the Holy Spirit for more on how I approach denominational diversity.
So when you ask me whether you should pray in tongues, my real answer is: which spiritual body type are you? Does your mind go quiet easily in prayer, or does it keep pulling you away? Do you need sonic scaffolding to stay present, or does stillness come naturally? The honest self-assessment is more useful than the doctrine.
Where I'm Open to Being Wrong
I want to flag a few places I'm genuinely open to being corrected.
First, I do suspect there are people who can genuinely interpret tongues. Scripture describes it as a real gift (1 Corinthians 12:10), and I'm not going to rule out what I haven't experienced.
Second, I know people whose prayer lives are built around extensive tongues and who produce extraordinary fruit. One of my spiritual mothers prays in tongues two to three hours a day. She's one of the most spiritually potent people I know. Whatever she's doing is working. I'm not going to project my temperament onto her practice.
Third, Paul clearly placed a high value on tongues for himself: "I thank my God, I speak with tongues more than ye all" (1 Corinthians 14:18, KJV). If Paul prioritized it this much, I should hold my skepticism loosely.
So my current position is: I don't need it, I haven't adopted it, but I refuse to judge the people who have. If you experiment with it and find it deepens your walk with God, that's the fruit that matters. If you experiment and it feels hollow, that's data too.
What Actually Got Me Here
I want to close with something practical, because I think this is the thread that really matters.
Whatever practice you adopt, the core question is: am I keeping God first? Am I spending quiet time? Am I reflecting? Am I catching myself when I'm about to sin and course-correcting? Am I apologizing when I mess up? Am I refining myself toward the fruits of the Spirit?
Those are the underlying variables. Tongues can be a vehicle for that work. So can silence. So can liturgy. So can walking around New York praying for strangers, which is a new practice I just started experimenting with myself and which surprised me with how much it shifted my internal state.
The vehicle is negotiable. The destination is not.
You're already searching with the right posture. "If Jesus Christ is under a rock, that's where I'll be." That's the heart of a disciple. Whatever you decide about tongues, don't let anyone convince you that the practice is the proof. The fruit is the proof. "By their fruits ye shall know them" (Matthew 7:20, KJV).
And when June comes and we baptize you with my pastor, we're marking what's already true: you're His, and He's yours. Everything else is instrumentation.
Blessings, Gary
Related: The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit | How Would Jesus Want Us To Worship? | A Letter on Denominations and the Holy Spirit | The Conference of Influences