A Most Unlikely Tongues Speaker Part II

So early in the next week after we attended Grace Baptist in Singapore and discovered Lawrence had left, I asked our leadership if we could attend the new church Lawrence had recently planted. Our Mission granted us permission and we along with another couple preparing to be missionaries in the Philippines joined us the next Sunday in attending FCBC. By then the church had grown to somewhere around 800 people. We loved the worship, and Lawrence preached a solid expository Biblically based sermon. The big difference from what we were used to was he had a time of prayer for healing of the sick down front at the end of the service. But there was nothing out of order that we noticed (and we would have noticed it).

I don’t remember how or when I first connected with Lawrence (most likely after that service). But we soon were together face to face and I began my barrage of questions and reminders of all he used to so passionately teach about the Holy Spirit, spiritual gifts, etc. He patiently responded, walking me through the Scriptures and sharing with me his journey for as much time as our first meeting allowed. Then we met again for more of the same. In no way by the end of my time in Singapore and after attending FCBC for those 8 or 9 Sundays did I want to speak in tongues. But I was beginning to take a hard second look at the New Testament and all it taught about these things.

So we were soon on the way to Hong Kong, greatly looking forward to meeting our team of 20 plus missionaries with OMF, having no idea that many of them were baptized with the Holy Spirit and were practicing the gifts and practices I used to think had ceased. This reality gradually unfolded as we got to know this diverse group from the U.S., Great Britain, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Africa, etc.

I may get the chronology wrong, but these are the major things I remember about those pivotal four years in Hong Kong. First, some time we think towards the end of our first year or perhaps in our second year some Westerners and Chinese folk put together a conference in Kowloon, H.K. with Jack Deere (former Hebrew professor at Dallas Seminary/DTS) and a Vineyard leader or two to help all of us to grow in the fullness of the Holy Spirit and the effective exercise of all the gifts. Jack had been my Hebrew professor for a short period and I had been in his office once (3-4 years previous). So I walked up to greet him afterwards and that started a relationship that helped me greatly over the next four to five years. I don’t remember who all the speakers were but I remember being stirred by both the worship and the teachings. One interesting thing happened in that first session. A British lady named Jackie Pullinger walked in with a handful of Chinese people and sat on the front row, and unlike a lot of us sitting on rows more in the middle or back of this large auditorium, she and they worshipped with passion, raising their hands, seeming to not care that some of us might be watching them. My wife was one of the ones who noticed them, and she told me later she longed to worship with that kind of freedom and passion that Jackie expressed/experienced regardless of who might be watching.

Then not too long after this we were able to take our first of two mandated three week vacations and we chose to go to a missionary vacation home/resort in Huahin, Thailand. We knew nothing about it nor did we know anyone who would be there. It was not an OMF run resort and thus was for any Christian worker from anywhere in Asia. Well it turned out there was a Southern Baptist couple from Hong Kong there and a Mennonite couple from Hong Kong there, both of whom were now practicing charismatics and both connected to this Jackie Pullinger lady. Early on in our time there at Huahin Anne was in our room putting Joshua to bed and I was reading in the lobby. I got in a conversation with two missionary men. Towards the end of our conversation they asked if they could pray for me for more of the Holy Spirit. Inwardly I scorned at their weak theology (thinking that you either have the Holy Spirit or you don’t. If you have Him you can’t have more of Him, etc.), but I allowed them to pray for me. Nothing earth shaking happened, but my defenses were slowly lowering or weakening and my sense of need and hunger for more was growing. And my mind was in constant motion – wrestling constantly with theological notions I had once held dear.

My wife was very curious about Jackie Pullinger, having heard of some of the fruit of her ministry, and someone while there loaned her Jackie’s first book “Chasing the Dragon”. She read it every chance she got and began to ask God privately for the anointing and passion and fullness that Jackie walked in. (BTW – if you are not familiar with her ministry in Hong Kong and beyond, it would be well worth your time to learn about her and her decades of amazing ministry in Hong Kong and throughout Asia).

While I was not aspiring to speak in tongues, one of the most significant changes I began to undergo around this time was seeing the four Gospels and the book of Acts no longer as mere history books, but as manuals that I could follow and practice as I meditated on Jesus’s example and the example of the apostles and disciples in Acts. Surely one of the most tragic fruits of the cessationist theory is that there is no hope or expectation that we will actually “…walk in the same manner as He walked” (I John 2:6) nor that we could actually truly be imitators of Paul as he was of Christ (I Cor. 11:1).

So for our first two years we lived in a village comprised of three story buildings up the side of a mountain. We lived on the ground floor and our neighbor next door was a young Chinese family, who after our first year or so had a baby boy. He in his first year of life caught very serious pneumonia and was in the hospital. We felt led to go visit him, and were shocked at how many tubes and wires were in his small little body. He was struggling for his life and his Mom told us he would be in the hospital a long time. We didn’t lay hands on him but promised to pray for him and I think said some kind of a short prayer for him in the room. Our compassion was significant but our faith was weak. Well it was either the next day or two days later her mother came bounding up the long steps to our building and we were outside and she said in excitement, “My son was healed and he will be coming home tomorrow and we are going to become Catholics!”. (They thought we were Catholics turns out).

The Bible was coming alive to me in wonderful ways. But I wasn’t speaking in tongues yet and I still had lots of questions. My wife heard about a Bible study that was going to be held in the flat/apartment of the Mennonite couple we got to know in Thailand. Jackie Pullinger was going to lead it along with a guy named Mike Polk, who was working with her for a time – loaned from one of the Vineyard churches in So. CA pastored by Bob Fulton. This Bible study of sorts was open and designed for people like me who were missionaries with groups that weren’t overly supportive of their missionaries pursuing the fullness of the Holy Spirit and the gifts like tongues, prophecy, healing, etc.

By this time we were living out in Tuen Mun close to the China border and I was very busy in ministry. I would have to take several forms of public transportation to get to this and thus did not want to mess with it.  Anne couldn’t attend because of caring for Joshua, but she strongly encouraged me to go and I finally said, “OK I’ll try it.” I don’t know how many weeks I went but I went every week. There were about 12 of us missionary types from a variety of agencies. We would begin our time in worship (someone played guitar). Then Jackie would walk us through I Corinthians chapters 12 and 14 mainly. Now I had a four year Master’s in Theology degree, and we had studied I Corinthians in one of my Greek classes, and Jackie was a woman and had not gone to Bible School or Seminary. So I’m just being honest, this initially was a stretch for me. But week after week the Holy Spirit used her to help me see things that I just could not see before in those chapters (largely because of the cessationist grid I had allowed to develop in my brain). Then at the end of every session - ministry time would kick in and even though there were around 12 of us needy missionaries, Mike Polk would make a bee line for me every time and begin to pray for me. In at least the first two weeks he did not pray that I would speak in tongues. Rather he went after things he discerned by the power of the Spirit that were hindering me like: intimidation, fear of man, inhibition, control, pride, scorn, etc.

Eventually I realized I was one of those “ungifted” folk that I Cor. 14 speaks of. And Jackie was a great example of how revelation of truth often comes from obedience more than it does from academics and Bible study methods.

My hunger for all the Holy Spirit wants to impart to us Jesus disciples began to grow by the day and sometime in those weeks I began to pray in tongues. Few spiritual disciplines or practices have impacted my life and ministry more than praying in tongues. Next time I am going to deal with the Scriptural principles that helped me get over my issues and that have helped me grow in the fullness of the Holy Spirit since those pivotal days in Hong Kong (and Singapore and Thailand).