How Do I Pray in Tongues? Discover Orthodox Insights

If you ask five different Christians how to pray in tongues, you will probably get five different answers. One will hand you a technique: relax your throat, open your mouth, let the syllables come. Another will tell you it happened to her unexpectedly, during worship, with no method at all. A third, coming from an Orthodox or Catholic background, might look at you with gentle confusion and ask why you think this is the measure of a real prayer life in the first place. In my years of serving as an Orthodox priest since 2013, I have often met sincere Christians who fear they are missing something because they do not pray in tongues. They assume the problem is technique. In my experience, the real question underneath is almost never "how," but "am I enough for God without this."

I was raised Catholic and came to Orthodoxy as an adult, so I know what it is to sit between traditions and wonder which account of the Christian life is the true one. What strikes me about the question "how do I pray in tongues" is that it already assumes an answer to a much bigger question: whether tongues is something every believer should expect, pursue, or learn. Scripture does not assume that, and neither does the Church I serve. What I wish to share with you here is not a method, but a map, so you can see where your question actually sits within the much wider landscape of Christian prayer.

✏️ By Father Victor Meshko | 📅 Updated: October 2026 | ⏱️ 19 min read

Quick Answer: The Orthodox Church does not teach a technique for producing tongues; it teaches believers to pray in the Holy Spirit through Christ in the sacramental and liturgical life of the Church, and Scripture itself, in 1 Corinthians 12:27-30, makes clear that not every Christian speaks in tongues.

In This Article:

• What does the Bible say about speaking and praying in tongues?
• What causes a person to speak in tongues?
• What is the Orthodox understanding of praying in the Spirit?
• Does the Orthodox Church practice speaking in tongues today?
• What is the difference between praying in tongues and praying according to God's will?
• What are the true spiritual fruits of a life of prayer?
• How can Orthodox Christians cultivate deep, Spirit-filled prayer?
• Father Victor's Perspective
• Common Misconceptions About Praying in Tongues

TL;DR: Key Takeaways

• Orthodoxy does not teach a method for manufacturing tongues; it is not a universal requirement for salvation or spiritual maturity.
• Praying in the Spirit, biblically and liturgically, is far broader than glossolalia: it includes the Lord's Prayer, the Psalms, the Jesus Prayer, repentance, and the Divine Liturgy.
• If you feel pressured or fearful about not speaking in tongues, the Orthodox response is to seek a priest's guidance rather than to self-diagnose or chase an experience.
• No reliable Orthodox-specific statistic on tongues was found in current research, and even among Pentecostals the practice is far from universal.

What does the Bible say about speaking and praying in tongues?

Scripture describes more than one thing under this heading. At Pentecost, the apostles spoke in languages understood by pilgrims from many nations, a missionary sign of proclamation, not a private prayer language (Acts 2:1-13). Later, writing to the church in Corinth, St. Paul treats tongues as one spiritual gift among several, governed by order, love, and the good of the whole community (1 Corinthians 14:1-40).

These are not identical phenomena, and conflating them is, in my judgment, one of the most common errors in popular teaching on this subject. At Pentecost, the hearers understood what was said in their own tongues; it was intelligible speech given for witness. In Corinth, St. Paul is correcting a congregation that had let an unintelligible gift become a source of disorder and pride, insisting that anything spoken publicly be interpreted "so that the church may be edified" (1 Corinthians 14, broadly summarized). The emphasis in both cases falls on building up others, not on private religious feeling.

St. Paul is also the one who gives us the clearest biblical corrective to the assumption that every Christian must speak in tongues. In a series of rhetorical questions about the gifts distributed in the Body of Christ, he asks whether all are apostles, all prophets, all teachers, and whether all speak in tongues, a question whose form expects the answer "no" (1 Corinthians 12:27-30). Spiritual gifts, St. Paul writes just before this, are given "as the Spirit wills," not according to a formula anyone can trigger (1 Corinthians 12:4-11).

St. Paul also tells the Ephesians to “Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints;” (Ephesians 6:18, KJV), and this phrase is wider than any one manifestation. Praying "in the Spirit" in the New Testament includes groaning prayer in weakness (Romans 8:26-27), intercession, thanksgiving, and the ordinary practice of asking according to God's will. None of these texts give instructions for self-induced glossolalia. That silence is itself theologically significant.

What causes a person to speak in tongues?

Christian traditions answer this question differently, and an honest article should say so plainly rather than pretending there is one settled view. Pentecostal and charismatic Christians often understand tongues as a gift that accompanies "baptism in the Holy Spirit," activated through faith and yielded speech. Orthodoxy does not share that framework.

As both a priest and a student of theology and psychology, I have found that many questions about tongues are really questions about assurance, belonging, and how to recognize the work of the Holy Spirit. A person's lips can move in unfamiliar syllables for several reasons: genuine spiritual gift, intense emotional release, group expectation and suggestion, or a combination of these. A psychologically informed Orthodox perspective can hold all of this honestly: unusual vocal prayer may arise from expectation, group dynamics, emotional release, or a real spiritual event, and the Church's measured response is to test it, not to immediately celebrate or immediately condemn it.

I think of a man who once came to me after attending a prayer meeting outside our parish. He had begun making sounds he did not understand and did not know whether to trust the experience or fear it. His question was direct: how do I know if what happened was from God, from emotion, or from suggestion? I pointed him to St. Paul's counsel to the Thessalonians, who writes to "quench not the Spirit," yet also to "test everything, hold fast what is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:19-22), and to St. John's warning to “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.” (1 John 4:1, KJV). Instead of interpreting the event hastily, he learned to bring it to confession, to keep praying ordinary prayers, and to judge the matter over time by its fruit rather than by its intensity.

What most online material about praying in tongues misses is that, in actual pastoral care, the deeper issue is rarely technique. It is usually spiritual insecurity: people want to know whether God accepts them, whether they are somehow deficient, or whether they are resisting grace. A priest learns that the healing response is not to coach someone toward producing syllables, but to invite them into the Church's life, to test experiences with patience, and to let ordinary prayer mature the heart over years, not minutes.

What is the Orthodox understanding of praying in the Spirit?

In our tradition, praying in the Spirit means prayer enabled by the Holy Spirit's grace, offered through Christ, and lived within the sacramental community of the Church. It is not primarily a technique for producing a sensation; it is communion with God that gradually reshapes the one who prays. Read more: How to Pray in Tongues: What You Need to Know.

This is broader than glossolalia and includes things an Orthodox Christian does every day: the Lord's Prayer, the Psalms, thanksgiving, confession, intercession for the world, and the quiet repetition of the Jesus Prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." When I studied the works of St. Gregory of Sinai, the fourteenth-century hesychast who revived this prayer tradition on Mount Athos, I was struck by his insistence that prayer is not something we manufacture by our own effort. "The mind cannot direct itself," he writes, "unless it is itself directed by the Spirit." Prayer, in his words, is not something we produce; it is God Himself, working in us, "who brings about all things in all" (from his Chapters, acrostic collection). That is a strikingly different picture from a technique you learn in a weekend. Gregory also teaches that the Jesus Prayer is not meditation on events in Christ's life but a discipline that gathers a scattered mind into the heart, uniting a fractured attention into a single, simple act of remembrance. He connects this scattering to the Fall itself: Adam's sin broke the original unity of human memory, and the unceasing invocation of the Lord's name is how that wholeness is gradually restored. There is nothing here about producing unusual speech. The goal is stillness, attentiveness, and union, not novelty.

St. Basil the Great makes a similar point from a different angle. In his treatise On the Holy Spirit, he writes that through the Spirit "we are restored to paradise, we ascend to the kingdom of heaven, we return to the adoption of sons" (On the Holy Spirit, chapter 15). Notice what Basil names as the Spirit's work: restoration, adoption, communion with God. Not one dramatic manifestation, but the whole shape of a transformed life.

Does the Orthodox Church practice speaking in tongues today?

There is no single Orthodox decree declaring every report of tongues genuine or false, but the Church does not make speaking in tongues a normal part of worship, initiation, or spiritual maturity. The ordinary Orthodox pattern runs through Baptism, Chrismation, the Eucharist, and a disciplined life of prayer.

Chrismation, the sacramental anointing with holy chrism that follows Baptism, is how an Orthodox Christian is sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit, not a separate "second baptism" sought later in life through an emotional experience. The Spirit is received at the beginning of Christian life and then lived out, slowly, through confession, Communion, fasting, almsgiving, and ordinary faithfulness. As St. John Chrysostom observes in his Homilies on First Corinthians, some passages about spiritual gifts had already become obscure by his own time in the fourth century, "produced by our ignorance of the facts referred to and by their cessation," since the exact phenomena described by St. Paul were no longer common even then. That is a sobering admission from someone writing barely three centuries after Pentecost, and it should make us cautious about confident modern claims to have recovered exactly what the Corinthians experienced.

Chrysostom also insists, in his homilies on 1 Corinthians 14, that "the obscure is not useful" for the gathered Church. This is why Orthodox worship favors intelligible, ordered, communal prayer: the Divine Liturgy, sung in a language the people understand, structured around Scripture, hymnography, and the epiclesis calling down the Holy Spirit on the gifts. This is where Orthodox Christianity offers something distinctive: structure is not the absence of the Spirit but its ordinary dwelling place.

How Christians Approach Praying in Tongues

[COMPARISON_TABLE]

I say this with real respect for Christians who hold the Pentecostal and charismatic view. According to Pew Research Center's Spirit and Power survey, even within that tradition the practice is far from universal: 49% of Pentecostals surveyed in the United States, 50% in Brazil, 41% in South Africa, and 54% in India said they never speak or pray in tongues. That is a useful corrective to any claim, from any tradition, that this experience is the standard mark of a Spirit-filled believer.

What is the difference between praying in tongues and praying according to God's will?

Praying according to God's will is not defined by whether speech is intelligible or unintelligible; it is defined by conformity to Christ. A person can speak fluently in tongues and still lack love, patience, or humility, and St. Paul says so directly when he places love above every gift, including tongues (1 Corinthians 13).

This distinction matters pastorally because it removes the pressure to treat one spiritual phenomenon as proof of divine favor. Praying according to God's will looks like asking for His kingdom before our own comfort, submitting personal desire the way Christ did in Gethsemane, remaining in love even when prayer feels dry, and testing spiritual claims rather than accepting them uncritically (1 Thessalonians 5:19-22). None of that requires an unusual utterance. All of it requires honesty before God.

I sometimes wonder whether the real anxiety behind "how do I pray in tongues" is a fear that ordinary prayer, the kind most of us actually live with, simply is not enough. I understand that fear. I do not think Scripture supports it.

What are the true spiritual fruits of a life of prayer?

The true fruits of prayer are love, peace, humility, patience, self-control, and a deepening union with Christ, not the drama of any single experience. Galatians 5:22-23 names these fruits explicitly, and the Fathers consistently measure spiritual progress by them rather than by intensity of feeling. Read more: What the Bible Says About Praying in Tongues Revealed.

As St. Seraphim of Sarov teaches in his conversation with Motovilov on the acquisition of the Holy Spirit, the true goal of the Christian life is not a particular sign but "the acquisition of the Holy Spirit," known above all by peace and sanctification radiating from a transformed person. St. John Climacus, in The Ladder of Divine Ascent, makes a related point when he teaches that perseverance and humility matter more than chasing unusual spiritual states; falling and rising again, patiently, is itself a form of spiritual seriousness that counts for more than any single peak experience.

In my research on the history of monasticism on Mount Athos, I was struck by how often the sources describe the Holy Mountain's deepest teaching in the simplest terms: tears of repentance that carry their own joy. Not ecstatic speech, not spectacular signs, but a humble heart that weeps for its sins and is comforted. That, more than anything dramatic, is what the tradition treats as evidence of the Spirit at work.

How can Orthodox Christians cultivate deep, Spirit-filled prayer?

Orthodox Christians cultivate Spirit-filled prayer through ordinary, repeated faithfulness: a daily prayer rule, the Jesus Prayer, attentive participation in the Divine Liturgy, regular confession, fasting, and spiritual guidance from a priest. There is no shortcut and, honestly, I would distrust anyone who offered one.

A simple starting rule looks something like this:

• Morning and evening prayers from an Orthodox prayer book, said slowly rather than rushed
• The Jesus Prayer repeated quietly through the day, especially during ordinary tasks
• Reading a portion of the Psalms or the Gospels, even briefly, with attention rather than haste
• Regular confession, bringing specific sins rather than vague feelings of guilt
• Attending the Divine Liturgy as often as your life allows, and receiving Holy Communion with preparation

In my parish in Munich, I have watched this slow rhythm do what no single dramatic experience could: it forms people over years into patient, humble, forgiving human beings. That is the real evidence of the Holy Spirit's work.

Father Victor's Perspective

If I can offer one thing that I think gets lost in most discussions of this topic, it is this: the deeper Christian question is not how to produce a gift, but how to become the kind of person who could safely receive any gift at all without pride or confusion. A technique that promises tongues in a weekend treats the gift as a product. The ascetical tradition I serve treats readiness of heart, humility, and discernment as the real work, and whatever gifts follow, follow from that.

There is also something here about love that I think is genuinely overlooked. We tend to assume that spontaneous, ecstatic speech is more spiritual than ordered, intelligible prayer. I would put it the other way. To pray in a way that truly builds up the Church, prayer that others can understand, join, and be strengthened by, is not a lesser form of spirituality. It may, in fact, better reveal the mind of Christ in communal worship, because it is aimed outward, at love of neighbor, rather than inward, at private experience.

And finally, as someone trained in both theology and psychology, I think the most honest posture toward unusual prayer phenomena is neither panic nor instant celebration. Expectation, group dynamics, genuine grace, and emotional release can all produce similar outward signs. The Church's answer has never been to mock such experiences or to canonize them automatically. It has been to test them patiently, in community, under the guidance of someone who knows you, over time.

Common Misconceptions About Praying in Tongues

"Every real Christian must speak in tongues." Orthodoxy reads 1 Corinthians 12:27-30 as clear evidence that spiritual gifts differ among believers, and that not all speak in tongues. This belief is common and sincerely held in parts of Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity, where tongues is taught as initial evidence of Spirit baptism. I respect that conviction while noting that St. Paul's own rhetorical questions leave real room for diversity within one Body.

"You should start making syllables by faith until the gift develops." Orthodoxy does not teach a vocal exercise for producing a spiritual gift. Online teaching often uses practical, coaching-style language that treats tongues as a learnable skill. I would say gently that a practiced habit and a God-given gift are not necessarily the same thing, and conflating them can create real anxiety.

"Praying in the Spirit always means praying in tongues." Scripture's language is wider than that. Praying in the Spirit includes the Lord's Prayer, the Psalms, repentance, liturgical prayer, silent prayer, and the Jesus Prayer. Popular preaching often narrows a broad biblical phrase to one debated practice; Orthodoxy keeps the fuller horizon. See also: How to Pray According to the Bible: True Guidance.

"If an experience is intense or involuntary, it must be from God." The Church tests experiences by their fruits: love, peace, humility, truth, self-control. Modern religious culture often assumes intensity equals authenticity. Emotional experiences can be meaningful without being automatically sanctified by their intensity.

"Unintelligible speech must be demonic." This overcorrection is just as mistaken as the opposite error. Orthodoxy rejects panic in either direction. Not every unusual experience is holy, but neither should it be condemned without patient, personal discernment.

"Orthodox prayer is only formal recitation and lacks the Holy Spirit." Orthodox worship is thoroughly centered on the Holy Spirit, present at Pentecost, in Chrismation, in the epiclesis of the Eucharist, and in the whole life of repentance and prayer. Structure, rightly understood, protects the heart rather than suffocating it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the rules for speaking in tongues?

St. Paul gives specific rules for public worship in 1 Corinthians 14: tongues spoken aloud in the assembly require interpretation, no more than a few should speak in turn, and everything must be done "decently and in order" for the building up of the whole church. Orthodoxy applies the deeper principle broadly: anything offered in worship should edify the community, not center attention on an individual's private experience.

How do I know if I am really speaking in tongues?

From an Orthodox standpoint, the better question is not whether a particular sound qualifies, but whether the experience bears lasting fruit: humility, love, peace, and a deeper life of repentance and prayer. I would encourage anyone wondering this to bring the experience to a priest for discernment rather than trying to verify it alone, since self-diagnosis in matters like this tends to mislead.

Can I speak in tongues whenever I want?

The New Testament presents spiritual gifts as given "as the Spirit wills" (1 Corinthians 12:4-11), not as something summoned on command. Orthodoxy does not teach that any gift can be triggered at will, and I would be cautious of any teaching that promises you can.

What to say when speaking in tongues?

Orthodoxy does not provide a script or method for producing tongues, because it does not treat this as a technique to be learned. If you are drawn to deeper prayer, I would point you instead toward words the Church already gives us: the Lord's Prayer, the Psalms, and the Jesus Prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner," repeated slowly and attentively.

If I do not pray in tongues, has God rejected me?

No. Scripture itself, in 1 Corinthians 12:27-30, assumes that not every believer speaks in tongues, so it cannot be a test of whether God has accepted you. I find this deeply encouraging, and I have watched anxious seekers in my own parish find real peace once they understand that the measure of spiritual life is love and faithfulness, not a particular manifestation.

About the Author

Father Victor Meshko is an Orthodox priest of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad serving at the Cathedral of the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia in Munich. Ordained to the priesthood in 2013, he holds multiple degrees in philosophy, theology, and psychology, including a Doctorate in Theology from LMU Munich's Institute for Orthodox Theology, and is the published author of the book Erzbischof Filaret (Gumilevskij) von Cernigov und Nezin. At Find to God, he brings together patristic scholarship, pastoral care, and lived parish experience to answer seekers with both clarity and compassion.

Researched and written by Father Victor Meshko. AI tools were used during the research process.