Paul claimed to speak in tongues more than anyone else through spiritual maturity and disciplined use of the gift, not just frequency. The more you exercise tongues, the speaker argues, the greater your spiritual growth becomes, shifting focus from emotional experience toward consistent presence of the Holy Spirit.
How would Paul the Apostle know that he spoke in tongues more than the people he was writing to? I mean, was he observing them on a daily basis? Did he have people spying on them and reporting back to him? No, he was able to see in the Spirit that there was a difference. And he knew that there was a level of maturity and authority. There was a level of spiritual power that comes when you're disciplined in this way, when you're diligent about making use of the gift that God has given to you. And he recognized that he was allowing the Holy Spirit to influence his life life in a way that the others were not. In other words, there was a measurable result that allowed him to observe and say, I speak in tongues more than you all. He could only say that because the gift of tongues can be measured in terms of its effects. Now, this is an astonishing truth, a powerful truth. What does it mean to us? It means that the more you use this gift, the more you're going to mature spiritually, that you're going to see this leveling out now towards less about feelings and more about Where it's less about the power of the Holy Spirit, which is good, and more about the presence of the Holy Spirit. Less about what God can do for you, more about what you can do for God. More about what God wants to do in you.
