Praying in tongues consistently is not easy. I struggled to pray in tongues consistently, and I also know many believers who have faced the same challenge.
When I talk about praying in tongues consistently, I mean praying in tongues for at least one hour every day.
After a prolonged struggle to pray in tongues consistently, I discovered a secret. This secret made praying in tongues consistently both easy and enjoyable. I couldn’t believe how simple and straightforward the solution was.
The whole time I was struggling, the answer had been plainly described in the Bible. It took the Holy Spirit’s revelation for me to understand it.
Today, I’ll share how I went from struggling to pray in tongues consistently to enjoying praying in tongues daily. Stick around.
The struggle
My struggle to pray in tongues consistently began shortly after I received the gift of praying in tongues. After receiving the gift, I was told that I needed to practice it daily in order to experience its power.
At the time, I didn’t realize how difficult that would be. Unfortunately, the church leader who prayed for me to receive the gift never warned me about the challenges I would face when I returned home.
After receiving the gift, I was excited to practice it. I gathered my courage and prayed in tongues for about ten minutes. The tongues I spoke were very slow and consisted of only a few syllables. I didn’t feel any power, although I wasn’t expecting much. Later that day, I prayed in tongues for another ten minutes.
A few days later, we had another fellowship meeting. During that meeting, we were encouraged to increase our prayer time from a few minutes to thirty minutes. Suddenly, I began to wonder whether I could pray in tongues for that long.
At the time, the thought of praying in tongues for half an hour scared me. I couldn’t imagine how difficult it would be, considering that even ten minutes was already making me sweat.
When I returned home, I tried to reach the thirty-minute mark, but I only managed about twenty minutes. Those twenty minutes felt like an eternity.
The following day, I had no desire to pray in tongues. For the first time, I questioned whether it was worth it.
“Can I really do this every day for the rest of my life?” I wondered. The idea of praying in tongues daily seemed impossible.
While I was still struggling to meet the thirty-minute target, we were encouraged to push our prayer time to one hour. That almost made me give up praying in tongues altogether.
The tongues I was speaking felt dry. I wasn’t even sure whether I had been truly baptized with the gift, yet I was trying to pray in tongues for an hour every day.
On good days, I could manage about forty minutes, but that usually meant I wouldn’t pray in tongues again for another two or three days.
Eventually, I realized I was trapped in a deceptive cycle. If I prayed in tongues for twenty minutes, I could do it every day. But whenever I prayed for forty minutes or an hour, I would need to skip one or two days before praying again.
As a result, the total amount of time I spent praying in tongues each week never really increased.
This was extremely frustrating.
To make matters worse, whenever I asked church leaders how I could become more consistent, I was simply told to push myself harder. Since that advice wasn’t helping, I decided to find my own solution.
Finding a way through
My plan was simple. I would stick to twenty minutes of praying in tongues every day and focus on building consistency. Once the habit was established, I would gradually increase the duration.
Since I was already praying for twenty minutes daily, continuing wasn’t too difficult. The real challenge was that the tongues felt dry and empty. To be honest, I wasn’t enjoying it.
I also had many doubts about the tongues I was speaking. I wished I could receive confirmation that they were genuine, but I didn’t know how.
Even so, I persisted.
A few weeks into my commitment, I got the first glimmer of hope. Although I still wasn’t enjoying the process, I could now pray daily without struggling. I realized that praying in tongues became easier with time.
Before long, I could easily pray for thirty minutes every day without skipping a single day.
While this was encouraging, I knew it wouldn’t be sustainable unless I actually enjoyed praying in tongues. I needed something to make the experience exciting to be able to sustain it long term.
Not knowing how to solve the problem, I decided to pray about it.
“Lord, thank You for the gift of praying in tongues. However, I am not enjoying it. Please help me enjoy it.”
I made that prayer every day before praying in tongues.
Not long afterward, something remarkable happened.
The missing piece
One day, while praying in tongues as usual, I suddenly experienced a level of ease I had never felt before. I couldn’t explain it, but it was very real.
I continued praying to take advantage of the ease I was experiencing. After an hour of praying in tongues, I noticed that I wasn’t feeling fatigued like before.
Something had changed.
Excited, I continued praying even longer. The tongues became louder and bolder. By the end of the session, I had prayed for one hour and twenty minutes.
Not only that, but I had also genuinely enjoyed every moment of it.
Immediately, I knew that the Lord had answered my prayer.
However, one question remained: What had changed that made my tongues very sweet and enjoyable?
I wanted to understand what had changed so I could replicate it and continue enjoying my praying in tongues sessions. Thankfully, the Holy Spirit helped me understand.
The revelation
In Matthew 22:37, Jesus instructs us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind.
That seems straightforward, but there is an important truth connected to it.
In 1 John 4:19, the Bible says, “We love because He first loved us.”
This means that our love for God is a response to His love for us. We can only love Him deeply when we begin to understand how deeply He loves us.
So what does this have to do with praying in tongues consistently?
Well, as human beings, we have a common trait as described in Proverbs 19:22.
‘What a person desires is unfailing love…”
This longing for love is one of the foundations of consistency in everything we do.
When we love something, we willingly invest our time and energy into it. Likewise, when we feel loved by someone, we naturally desire to spend time with them.
The same principle applies to praying in tongues.
Since praying in tongues is communication with God, our desire to engage in it is deeply connected to our love for Him. If our love for God is great, we have no problem spending time in His presence.
When I first started praying in tongues daily, I wasn’t enjoying it because I lacked a deep revelation of God’s love. As a result, I didn’t have a strong desire to spend extended time talking with Him.
Whenever I prayed for forty minutes, I got tired because I felt like I wasn’t receiving much feedback from God. That made praying in tongues feel boring and discouraging.
But when I asked God to help me enjoy praying in tongues, He gave me what I truly needed; He revealed His love to me on a deeper level.
As I began to understand how much He loved me, I became excited to spend time with Him. In the process, my love for Him also grew.
That cycle of receiving God’s love and responding with love gave me the desire and energy to pray in tongues daily with ease.
To this day, the revelation of God’s love and my love for Him is what drives me to pray in tongues daily.
Whenever I experience a deeper awareness of His love, I am naturally drawn to pray in tongues for longer than usual.
Conclusion
Therefore, if you want to be consistent in praying in tongues and truly enjoy it, ask God to reveal His love to you. As He does, your love for Him will grow, and you will find yourself drawn into prayer like never before.
God bless you.