Christians: Do You Believe in Speaking in Tongues?

Firstly, I am one of the Christians who do not subscribe to speaking in tongues anytime anyhow. No I do not believe it when a man of God or a prayer warrior opens his mouth and says; “Let’s speak in tongues” And immediately the whole congregation breaks into it. I will stand there and shake my head in disbelief! I was watching metro TV recently when a man of God was on the TGIF show saying, he is a longstanding man of God but he gets uncomfortable when people speak tongues into a speaker and there is nobody to translate. For him, it must be translated by somebody otherwise it is controversial. Well, that’s his special opinion too which many people will argue and counter. Now let’s talk about my own experience with churches who literally force you to speak in tongues or feel like a devil. I call it the great deception. One fine Sunday I followed a Nigerian friend to his church that he had been inviting me to for awhile. I will leave out the name of the church but believe me, it is a very popular church. My experience with many charismatic churches has been varied but this particularly pertains to speaking in tongues. I loved their praise and worship, sermon and everything else was just really good. So good I made a mental note to go back. Then came the end of the service when they asked new members to stand up. I did… Then after some formalities, they asked us to meet a team in the back of the church. I again followed. They registered us for several classes during the week, spoke to us about being faithful to the church, and then explained why we need to speak in tongues. They said sometimes, we may need to pray about specific situations which we are physically unaware of so God permits our spirit to pray. And our spirit prays about these things in tongues. So our spirit directly speaks to God on our behalf and for unseen things which we do need but we do not know. Hmmph! Lovely explanation. It made much sense to me. But after this explanation we were all told to start praying. We prayed for very long and everybody started praying in tongues. The leader of the group kept shouting; “speak in tongues! Speak in tongues!” so everybody, both new and old started speaking in tongues. Ei Jesus, my tongue did not bring forth this strange language. So they noticed it and assigned me 3 prayer warriors-a woman and two young men. They laid their hands on me and prayed in heavy tongues. Then they said I should open my mouth and speak. “Speak sister, it is in you, do not refuse to let it out, you are blocking it. Open your mouth and let it come out!” All this while, I was utterly confused. I swear to you Jesus did not give me any tongues that day. Maybe I know the wrong Jesus? Because everybody else in the church spoke in tongues that day. Finally, they got tired of waiting for me to speak in tongues and let me go. I run home, never to go back. And since then, regardless of the explanations and observations, my faith in tongues has been seriously weakened. What’s your experience with tongues? Do you speak it, how and why? Do you believe in it?