Speaking in tongues is hindered by lack of faith, a poor prayer life and pride. To overcome these speaking in tongues hindrances, you need to build your faith, improve your prayer life and humble yourself. Believers who maintain spiritual discipline find it easy to overcome the hindrances.
I will explain in detail how each of the factors I have mentioned above hinders speaking in tongues and what you need to do to enjoy speaking in tongues.
Hindrances to Speaking in Tongues
1. Lack of Faith
The Bible is very clear that it is impossible to please God without faith. Having faith is the foundation of every interaction with God. Speaking in tongues is no exception.
Faith has two aspects to it; the word and the deed. Speaking in tongues must be done in faith. A believer must know what speaking in tongues is and must have faith to act on the knowledge he has.
For believers who struggle to speak in tongues, they usually lack in word, deed or both. Some believers know that speaking in tongues is a gift of the Holy Spirit but they have never taken any action to get the gift.
It is clear from the word of God that those who ask receive, those who seek find and those who knock the door shall be opened to them. If a believer has knowledge about the gift of speaking in tongues but has never asked for it, why should he receive it?
Other believers use their own strength to come up with words hoping that they will receive the gift of praying in tongues yet they do not have knowledge of the gift.
God gives out the gift of speaking in tongues to those who are upright in their character. If there are fundamental aspects of your relationship with God that are not in order, God will prefer to help you sort out those issues first before giving you the gift of speaking in tongues.
This means that unless a believer has achieved a level of faith that is pleasing to God, it is impossible to receive the gift of speaking in tongues.
2. A Poor Prayer Life
Praying is a skill. Speaking in tongues is a gift that refines the skill of prayer. If someone has not built his prayer life, there is no need for God to refine it.
Some people assume that speaking in tongues is a substitute of the usual prayers made in understanding. That is not the case. Praying in tongues is a gift that refines prayer.
In other words, if you don’t have a healthy prayer life, there is nothing for God to refine. If you have no desire to pray, getting the gift to speak in tongues won’t add much value to you.
The ability to pray in the spirit is given to believers who have invested their time and energy in praying. When God sees your desire in the ministry of prayer, He helps you by giving you a gift that makes praying easy and efficient.
A poor prayer life is a hindrance to the gift of speaking in tongues.
3. Pride
Pride is a big hindrance to the gift of praying in tongues. The Bible tells us that God resists the proud. Since speaking in tongues is a gift from God, if you have pride, how will you get it?
Pride comes in the form of feeling you can do it without speaking in tongues. Pride also makes people feel speaking in tongues is foolish.
On the day of Pentecost, those who accused the disciples of being drunk in the morning were full of pride. Their pride could not let them discern that whatever was happening was the doing of God.
Since speaking in tongues is hard to understand, some people rule it out as gibberish. There is no way you will receive a gift you consider to be gibberish. Why should God give you gibberish?
God chose the gift of praying in the spirit to sound gibberish to test the hearts of people. Any little pride in the heart will cause a person to disassociate with the gift.
Since speaking in tongues is hard to understand, it takes humility for someone to receive the gift. Pride will not allow anyone to speak things he does not understand.
The desire to appear calm and collected is a form of pride that if it is not contained, it can hinder the gift of speaking in tongues.
There are times when speaking in tongues looks very chaotic. Decently dressed believers fall on the ground under the influence of the Holy Spirit.
If a believer values being tidy over being used by the Holy Spirit, the tidiness becomes pride.
For people who are intelligent and want to think through speaking in tongues, God takes it as pride if the person’s thinking is valued more than his love for God.
To have any fruitful dealing with God, every little pride must be kicked out of your heart.
Dealing with Hindrances to Speaking in Tongues
Hindrances to speaking in tongues are in the nature of man. We are not born with faith. Praying is not usually fun. Pride is our natural inclination.
Despite these hindrances not being entirely our fault, if we don’t come up with mechanisms to deal with them, God will hold us accountable.
There is not a single believer who is exempted.
Therefore, invest your time in gathering knowledge from the word of God. The knowledge you get from the word of God will help you build your faith when you act upon it.
The more you know God, the easier it becomes to have successful deals with Him. Receiving the gift of speaking in tongues is only one of the many successful deals you will have.
Treat praying as work. Do it even when you don’t feel like. God will test your commitment to prayer based on the amount of effort you put in.
Lastly, accept that God’s ways are not your ways. What may seem foolish and pointless to man may be of great value in the eyes of God.
It is only those who allow God to have His way that have a chance to enjoy the gifts that God has to offer. Be willing to be despised because of God’s word.
Speaking in tongues will put you in uncomfortable situations. Your friends and family may call you names. You may be accused of being in a satanic cult and much more.
But it is only after you accept to suffer this kind of pain that God will see you fit to receive the gift of speaking in tongues.
The gift of speaking in tongues is sweet and well worth the pain and sacrifice that one is needed to go through to have it.
Pursue it!