God, of course, can speak and understand every human language on earth. No matter what country you live in, or what culture you are a part of, God speaks and understands your language. Yet, for some reason, He felt it was necessary to bring the language of heaven down here on this planet.
The ability to speak in tongues somehow connects us to our Father in heaven in a special way. It's another sign, like the tongues of fire the precious Holy Spirit is really inside of us.
As Christians, we are citizens of heaven. As God's children, heaven is the "culture" we belong to, and tongues is the language of that culture. It's the language of our spirits.
There are several very special purposes for speaking in tongues. Many times we want to pray about something very important to us, but we run out of things to say in our own human language.
Or we may not know how to pray about a certain situation. It may be too complicated for little kids to understand, or we may not have all the information about it and have no idea how to ask God to take care of it.
It's then we can begin praying in our heavenly prayer language, and God begins to fill our mouths with just the right words for the situation. We may not know how to pray correctly, but He does.
When we pray in tongues we are praying perfect prayers. What's so odd about this language is we can speak it very fluently (or easily) but we can't understand it all. It's amazing and miraculous! It's another heavenly mystery!
Even though our mouths can speak it, our minds have no idea what we're saying. God designed it this way on purpose. Many times we think we know how we should pray about a situation, when from God's heavenly viewpoint what we're saying is not right.
When we allow Him to pray through us by using our prayer languages, we never have to worry about praying incorrectly. When the Holy Spirit prays through us, it's always a perfect prayer.
In the same way, when we are praising and worshipping God, there are times we can only go so far in our earthly language. Our hearts are still full, and we've said everything to Him we can think of. When this happens, we can switch over to praising and worshipping Him in tongues, and keep going till our hearts are satisfied.
We can pray or worship in our prayer languages anytime and anyplace we feel led to. Whether you're at church or riding your bike, or at school or play, it's there when you need it.
Excerpt permission granted by Kids In Ministry International