Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Sunday School Take-Over by Jenna Vick Silliman



I was raised in a Catholic family that went to mass on Easter and Christmas, so Sunday school was not part of my life. I became a Christian when I was 16 through the youth group called Young Life. Though I have attended church all these years, I never experienced Sunday school very much. However, around 1989 I my husband Cliff and I visited a little church that had a Sunday school class with a book study going on about living life full of the Holy Spirit. The chapter mentioned speaking in tongues. The teacher asked if anyone in the class spoke in tongues. Cliff and I raised our hands. The teacher asked Cliff to tell the class about it. Cliff spoke for the whole hour with a full discourse with Scriptures from the book of Acts on being baptized in the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues and he shared his Jesus People days story and what happened to him. At one point Cliff asked me to share how I received the gift of tongues, so I gave my testimony as a part of the class too. (Note: For my testimony on receiving the gift of tongues, here is the link:  http://thedanceoflifewithjenna.blogspot.com/2012/09/more-of-holy-spirit-filled-life.html  ) We didn’t plan on a Sunday School Take-over—it just happened. Hahaha! 
My husband and I both enjoyed remembering that day over twenty years ago. That is our favorite Sunday school class memory, but a runner up would be another week in the same class when the pastor’s wife shared about speaking in tongues while she was in Israel and someone recognized the language she was speaking and wrote down the interpretation for her. She still had the ragged scrap of paper and read it to us. It was a beautiful prayer and it was also speaking of our glorious love relationship with the Lord Jesus.
To me the best part of any class, book, or lecture is the stories people tell about what happened to them. I have found that testimonies, or stories of real lives, are extremely powerful, moving, and life giving. They are also memorable!

1 comment:

Linda Maynard said...

Jennna
You are a hoot!
I can remember trying to explain tongues to my husband, only thing, I was not that grounded in the word yet. I tried to explain tongues with human reasoning and of course it seemed crazy to him. eventually received the gift in his own, driving in his car.
It is a gift that i ue more and more and I am grateful for it.
I heard a similar story of a Jewish man, going to Israel, with his family to live. A person , next to him was speaking in tongues and spoke his native language perfectly.
Sometimes I know myself, I feel like I am talking in an Asian languge,...maaybe Chinese.( who knows)
Serving God is fun!
Linda