One thing that has been apparent to me has been the importance of and need for a good translator.
Coming into this month, we didn’t even think we would have a translator, but when we got here we were blessed to have a woman in our church (perhaps the only person for miles) who can understand and speak a lot of English, because she spend some time in the States for a surgery she needed from an accident that happened when she was a little girl. She has been such a blessing and an aid. She has been our mouthpiece, a mouthpiece of God for the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
However, since she doesn’t know English completely, and her understanding of the Bible is not fully developed, there have been a few minor problems along the way.
- Sometimes, she might not know or understand how we are staying something, so we have to speak in more simple terms.
- Sometimes, we say a phrase in English, but she needs a complete sentence to understand how to phrase it is Spanish; sometimes a whole sentence or thought is too long for her to remember and translate.
- Sometimes when she does not understand what we are saying, when she herself does not understand the concept or idea that we are trying to convey, instead of just trusting us and translating our words for us as we say them, she will either have to stop and ask us to explain to her what we mean in order for her to understand and agree with it before she will translate it for us, or she will just translate something else that makes more sense to her where she is at in her own understanding, or she will just not translate anything at all.
I have found that this is very illustrative of our own relation and understanding of God.
- Oftentimes, we are just too simple to understand the complexity of God and how He speaks, the truth that He conveys. God often has to make things much more simple for us to understand and accept and communitate to others.
- Other times, God teaches us something, but the complexity of His truth is just so much that we forget facets of what He’s said, truth that He’s spoken into our lives, so He has to speak it again into our lives. Or other times he gives us a truth to hold on to, but it’s just too big and lofty for us to understand, so He has to break it down into smaller bite-sized chucks for us to be able to swallow.
- Oftentimes, God gives us a word to speak to someone, or a truth to convey, but we don’t fully understand it. Maybe we don’t trust God enough with His own Words, so we try to say something that makes sense to us, but that’s not what God said. Or maybe we just stop in our tracks and don’t obey Him, so He has to stop and take time with us to explain more fully so then we can move forward in our walk with Him (instead of just taking Him at His Word and walking in faith and obedience).
Whatever the case, whether it’s a matter of accepting, living, and conveying truths from God; whether it is in relation to prophecy, words of knowledge, speaking in tongue and interpretation; or whether it is just simply obeying and doing that which God calls and asks us to, we all do the same thing with God in lives. We just have to learn to know God, to hear and know His Voice (which is a promise in Scripture from Jesus Himself), to trust Him, and to just do what He says.
