To Speak a Language Beyond Words

If you ask any current or former Racer, I’m sure every one of them would tell you about at least one time in which the language barrier was an issue during their time on the field. 

 

I know that for me there have been at least a handful of times which I have had to just laugh at the struggle of trying to communicate with someone who can’t understand English or whose English is too broken to make any sense of. 

 

It’s pretty difficult to share the Word with someone who doesn’t share a single word in common with you. 

 

But—luckily for us—there is a pretty easy way to share Jesus with people despite the fact that they have absolutely no clue what it is that you’re saying to them. 

 

 

I know you probably feel like I talk about love quite a bit in my blogs; but, there is a reason: God is love. 

 

 

So John—a man known as the disciple who Jesus loved—says that if you don’t love then you don’t know God. Stay with me for this because I am about to make a crazy jump in my logic right here: 

 

 

Mind-blowing, right?

 

Now, I know that people have to hear gospel to believe. I’m not trying to ignore that or disregard importance of the vocalization of the gospel. People desperately need to hear the fact that their sins separate them from God but that God himself came down and took the punishment that they deserved for those sins in order that they could have a renewed relationship with that same God.

 

They need to know about the God who loves them that much. 

 

So, while I fully believe that they need to hear about that God—about that Jesus—I also know the reality of not being able to communicate with people on any kind of verbal level. And in those circumstances, we only have one option when it comes to showing them Jesus: love. 

 

I feel like a wise man once said “love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” 

 

Oh wait, that was something that Jesus himself said in John 13:34. And I think he also said “by this people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” one verse later. 

 

The apostle Paul goes on to write in 1 Corinthians 13 that nothing matters if you don’t have love (v. 1-3) and that—of faith, hope, and love—the greatest is love (v. 13). 

 

So just to straighten everything out really quickly, lets run back through this:

 

 

Connect these dots. See that it all points back to love; and, thus, all points back to God.

 

 

It shouldn’t take a foreign language to push you into loving people, though. Love beyond words can—and should—exist in our everyday lives as Christians in America. It doesn’t have to be anything extreme. In fact, I’ve learned that people tend to see Jesus in us best when we show love in the most mundane of ways. Hold the door for that man with his hands full; smile at that kid on the street; help clean up that elderly woman’s yard; share an umbrella with a rain-soaked stranger. All you have to do is show them that you see them; that you care.