They spoke as the Holy Ghost gave them utterance, and it says people could understand some of them speaking. They spoke in our tongues the wonderful works of God, so clearly it was a dramatic experience, because people said hey, it looks like they've been drinking wine. Oh, they're full of joy and laughing, and filled with the Holy Ghost. There are other examples in the Bible of the same thing. Acts, Chapter 10, the Holy Ghost falls upon the Gentiles, first sign, they began to speak in tongues. Acts, Chapter 19, Paul goes to a group of believers that have been baptised in the Holy Spirit, haven't even heard. So he taught them, laid hands on them, they were filled with the spirit, began to speak in tongues, and to move in the gifts of the spirit - so clearly in scripture we see this encounter with the Holy Spirit, the filling up, the overflow with tongues.
So what about the gift of tongues? Let me give you a couple of things on it, then we'll talk about receiving quickly, and get you a chance to receive. So in reading in 1 Corinthians, Chapter 14, Verse 14: If I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit is praying, my understanding is unfruitful, but my spirit is praying. So there is a part of you, your spirit man that can feel, sense, smell, experience, see, hear, also speak. Your spirit is speaking, and you're speaking the language that God gives you, so it's not coming from your mind, where you're thinking what you're saying. It's a flow from inside. It says when we speak in tongues, it says that we are speaking, and it builds up our spirit man - so I don't want to go into a long teaching on tongues. It's a whole teaching around itself, but the gift of tongues primarily is a communication flow with the Holy Spirit, to enable you to pray, to praise, to pray when you don't know what to pray, and it builds your spirit man.
Have a think about this. When I went to Asia, whenever I go to Asia I'm in a totally new culture, and one of the things about the culture, it has it's own language. If I don't know the language of the culture, it's difficult to operate in that culture. Everything is unfamiliar, so one of the first things they give me when I get there is an interpreter, someone to help me with the language. The language is important to living and experiencing the culture properly. In fact if I've got no one who helps with the language, I can't even do anything there, so just taking it from a natural level, flowing in another culture is highly difficult and ineffective if you have no one to help you with the language. So the same thing, the realm of the spirit is not the same as the natural realm. The real of the spirit is much more intense, and so we need a language to express in that realm.
When God speaks to you - most of you know computers I suppose - when God speaks to you, it's like if you've ever in your computer received a zip file. A zip file, you just download it, there it is, you've got a zip file. Now when you unzip it, there's just all this information in the zip file, so when you receive from God you can receive a download really quickly, but as it takes time, and when it opens up there's so much in it. Praying in tongues is a vital part of helping us engage in the realm of the spirit, so how do we receive? We receive very, very simply. The Bible says in Mark 11, when you stand praying for whatever you desire, you must really want to be filled with the Holy Ghost. Number two, when you desire, when you pray, you've got to ask God - we've got to come specifically saying God, this is what I want. Three, we must believe that we receive it: whatsoever things you desire, when you pray, believe you receive it, and then following that, you will have it.
So when you pray, there has to be the believing I will receive it. If I come saying well let's just give it a go and see what it'll do, that's not believing. That's waiting until you see, then you believe. So I need to know from the Bible, and from hunger in my heart, this is for me, and I come to Him saying: God, I just want to be filled with the Holy Ghost. I'm yielding and surrendering to you. Now what would stop you flowing in the spirit, and flowing in that expression of tongues? There's probably several things. One would be if you're locked up in the occult, or if there are occult bondages that have never been freed. That is a problem and a block for flowing in the things of the spirit. We assume that that is not true for most of you here today if not all, so then there are two other things that come to mind immediately.