‘This Will Surprise a Lot of the Audience’ Max Lucado Says He Started Praying in Tongues For The First Time At Age 64

Author Max Lucado says he’s now a tongue speaker, revealing that three years ago, at 64, he acquired a heavenly language after praying about it for a couple of weeks.

We last wrote about Lucado, who pastors Oak Hills Church in San Antonio, Texas, after he argued ‘Faithful People May Disagree About What The Bible Says About Homosexuality. In an interview with Ed Stetzer for the Church Leaders podcast, he explains:

Lucado: “A significant gift came my way, and this will surprise a lot of the audience, it already has. It sure surprised our church. But you know, when I was 64 on a July morning, as I was praying, I began praying in tongues.

I had not done anything different, except I came across the passage where the Apostle Paul said, ‘Eagerly desire the spiritual gifts’…I said ‘Lord is there any other gift you desire for me?’ And I prayed that every morning for two or three weeks. And then one morning, early in the morning, I began praying in a heavenly language.”

Again, I had been taught those languages were discontinued and I really am not raising this topic so somebody can send me an email okay I’m really not.”

Stetzer: “Yeah. The restoration herald is writing an article right now.”

Lucado: ‘You know I get it and… I’m not advocating one way or the other. But I will say, that it is just a tender moment every morning when I enjoy it.”

Stetzer: “So you regularly now pray in tongues as part of your prayer time?”

Lucado: “Yes sir, yes.”

The use of a so-called ‘Private Prayer Language’ is diametrically opposed to scripture and opposes the conviction he intends to uphold. While we know that speaking in tongues, in and of itself, is described in scripture, we do know that scripture never condoned an unintelligible form of babbling. John MacArthur had this to say about the biblical use of tongues in the early church:

The Gift of Tongues was a divinely bestowed supernatural ability to speak in a human language that had not been learned by the one speaking. According to the Apostle Paul, when believers exercised the gift of tongues in church, they were to speak one at a time, and only two or three were to speak in a given service (1 Cor. 14:27). Furthermore, when tongues were spoken in the church, they were to be interpreted by someone with the gift of interpretation so that the others might be edified by the God-given message (1 Cor. 14:5, 13, 27). In this way, tongues did not serve as a private prayer language, but rather “like all spiritual gifts” as a means by which one might serve and edify the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:7; 1 Pet. 4:10).

Some who defend the use of a private prayer language will argue that the language is unintelligible in order to communicate with God in a way that only God can understand. They suggest Satan and his demons can’t, and therefore cannot use our weaknesses against us. The idea is pure nonsense and remains one of the more bizarre speculations of the charismatic movement.

Many who favor the practice defend it based on their personal experiences, but speaking in tongues is a learned behavior, both consciously and subconsciously, and its experience can be emotional, based on the mind and body’s natural reactions to “new things.” The truth is, this babbling use of a Private Prayer Language is a contemporary invention popularized by the modern charismatic movement and has no basis in scripture or church history, and the fact that many cults and false religions also use the practice of speaking in tongues and claim personal experience with the Holy Spirit doesn’t help them any either.

The claim that Paul taught a Private Prayer Language is a manufactured idea based on conjecture. Acts Chapter 2 shows the apostles having the ability to teach in foreign languages as part of their preaching ministry. Still, it does not offer this as an indecipherable driveling that nobody but God understood. First Corinthians 14 is probably the most cited verse in defense of the use of a personal prayer language, but this verse, when understood in context, has nothing to do with the modern-day gibbering we hear from Pentecostal cults, charismatics, and sadly some who are creeping their way into orthodox Christianity. Verses 13-17 reveal that even this “praying in tongues” was to be interpreted. Therefore it could be used to edify and illuminate the body of Christ.

Therefore, one who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret. For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful. What am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also; I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also. Otherwise, if you give thanks with your spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say “Amen” to your thanksgiving when he does not know what you are saying? For you may be giving thanks well enough, but the other person is not being built up. (1 Corinthians 14:13-17 ESV)

The private use of this gifting is never condoned – and neither is it seen in all of Scripture. We don’t know what Lucado thinks is happening, but it’s not the Holy Spirit.

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