Paul said you pray in tongues to edify yourself: "He that speaketh in an unknown tongue edifieth himself" (1 Cor. 14:4). To "edify" means to build yourself up. Speaking in tongues builds you up to the point that you can believe God instead of circumstances.
Circumstances don't have anything to do with God. He will remove circumstances if you'll just believe Him.
The way you believe is the way you talk. What you believe comes out of your innermost being. The words you speak come from your heart—your inner man. The words you speak show the exact shape that your inner man is in.
You are what you say, and you will never be anything else. The condition of your personal life today is a result of what you said yesterday.
However, there is complete victory for you if you will read the Bible and believe it—believe that those words came out of the mouth of God for you! If you fight and wrestle with what God says, you will miss out on what He wants for your life.
If you never speak in tongues, Jesus will still love you. You can go to heaven and never speak in tongues. To go to heaven, as you know, all you have to do is be born again by the Spirit of God.
Some may ask, "Well, then, what good is speaking in tongues? Why should I want to speak in some language I don't understand?"
When you pray, do you pray to yourself? No! You pray to God.
The Bible says, "For he that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God" (1 Cor. 14:2). By speaking in tongues, you speak directly to God, bypassing all human reasoning.
Speaking in tongues gives you the power to believe the Bible. Unless you have faith, you can't believe what the Bible says and you won't do what it says.
But any born-again Christian should certainly want to do what the Bible says, and that's why you should speak in tongues.
Excerpt permission granted by Harrison House Publishers