Half My Congregation Prays In Another Language

They start, and you stand there with your eyes closed and your hands open and you are outside it.

It happens most weeks. Somebody begins to pray in the other language, and then two or three more join, and the room goes somewhere, and you can hear that it has gone somewhere because you have been in that building long enough to know what the sound of it means.

And you are in the room and not in the prayer.

You say amen in the right places. You are not pretending, exactly. You mean every amen. But you are agreeing with a shape rather than with words, and there is a particular loneliness in doing that in a place you serve.

I want to say the true thing before anything useful.

You are being generous every single week about something that costs you, and nobody in that room knows it costs you anything.

So I am not going to tell you that God hears every language. He does, and you have preached it yourself, and it is not the thing that is missing. What is missing is that you would like to be in the room with them rather than beside them, and that is a want rather than a doctrine, and it does not get fixed by being told a true thing you already know.

God is no respecter of persons

There is a moment in Acts where a man realizes something in the middle of a room full of people he had been keeping at a distance.

Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons. (Acts 10:34, King James Version)

Of a truth I perceive.

Now the first thing to notice is that this is a realization rather than a doctrine being taught. Peter had known the theology his whole life. He says perceive, which is the word for something that has finally arrived somewhere other than the head, and he says it standing in a room he would not previously have entered.

You have known this as a doctrine for years and are being moved toward perceiving it, and a thing known in the head has never once been the same as a thing perceived in a room. Acts 10:34 has a man say perceive rather than believe, and the Holy Spirit is the one standing with a woman in a room with her eyes closed.

Now stay on what he actually did before he said it, because the verse names it.

Peter opened his mouth. That is not filler and the writer did not need it. It is there because the whole chapter has been about a man being moved out of a position, and the opening of the mouth is the physical act at the end of the moving.

You have a mouth that has not yet been opened in that room, and a realization has never once arrived in somebody who kept standing in the same place. The Holy Spirit is the one who moved a man into a house he would not have entered, and Acts 10:34 makes the opening of the mouth the thing that happens at the end of it.

And here is the third thing, which is what no respecter of persons actually means.

It means God does not weigh people by their category. It is not a statement about languages, although it covers them. It is a statement about God refusing to sort people by the group they are in, which cuts both ways in your room.

They are not further in than you because they pray in that language. And you are not further in than them because you lead. Neither of those rankings exists.

You have never once been further out than anybody in that room, and a language has never once been a category God sorts by. Acts 10:34 removes the sorting entirely rather than adjusting it, and the Spirit of God is the one in a room where two languages go up at once.

Praying with them is a smaller ask than you think

Here is the practical half, and it starts with what you actually want.

You do not want to be fluent in their prayers. That is worth separating out, because this has been quietly priced as a thing that would take three years.

What you want is to be inside it. To be praying the same thing at the same time rather than agreeing with a sound, and that requires about twelve words rather than a language.

Twelve. The words that turn up in every prayer in every language: father, thank you, help, please, yes, come, name, holy, we ask, together, and the word for amen that they use, which is probably not the one you say.

You have been pricing a three year project when the actual need is about twelve words, and a prayer has never once required a vocabulary to be joined. The Spirit of God is the one with a woman who has been saying amen to a shape, and Acts 10:34 removes the sorting rather than asking anybody to climb.

Now here is the thing about those twelve words that makes them different from ordinary vocabulary.

They repeat constantly. Prayer is the most repetitive speech there is in any language, and the same words come round every forty seconds, so twelve words gets you an enormous proportion of what is actually being said in that room.

You will not follow the specifics. You will know what is being asked for and who is being addressed, and that is the difference between standing beside a prayer and standing in it.

You have twelve words between you and the inside of that room, and a handful of repeated words has never once been a small holding in a prayer. Acts 10:34 has a man perceive something while standing in a room rather than while studying, and the Holy Spirit is the one who knows what is being asked for in both languages at once.

And here is the thing about asking one of them to teach you, said plainly, because that is the part you have been avoiding.

It would not put you down in their eyes. It is the opposite and you know it in every other context. A leader who asks an eighty year old woman to teach her the words for prayer has done something that will be talked about in that family for years, and not as a weakness.

You have been protecting a standing that asking would have raised.

You are able to ask somebody older to teach you twelve words, and asking has never once cost a leader anything in the room she serves. The Spirit of God is the one who moves a woman to ask one of the older ones after the service, and the written word has a man perceive the truth only once he is standing somewhere new.

Ask one of them for the words

So here is the assignment, and it happens after a service rather than during one.

Say one prepared sentence to that person, and let the rest of it be in English.

Pick one of the older ones. The one who prays most often, or whichever one is warmest. After the service, on her own, not in front of the group.

Ask her to teach you the words she uses when she prays. Say it in English. That is allowed and it is the right call.

You have one person to ask and one question to ask her, and asking for the words of a prayer has never once been an imposition on the one who prays it. Acts 10:34 has a man open his mouth in a room he had kept himself out of, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a woman standing in a hall after everybody else has gone.

And here is the prepared sentence, which is the part that goes in their language.

Learn the word for father and the word for thank you, and say those two to her when she has taught them to you.

Two words, out loud, badly, to the woman who gave them to you. That is the whole prepared sentence and everything either side of it can be in English.

Because what you are after is not a performance. It is the first time those two words have ever been in your mouth, and she will be the one who put them there, and that is a thing between two women that no amount of study alone could produce. Then stop, because two words is the assignment and the rest of the conversation is allowed to be in English.

You have two words to say out loud to the woman who taught them to you, and a word given and handed straight back has never once been a small exchange. The Spirit of God is the one in a hall where an old woman taught a leader how to say father, and Acts 10:34 refuses to sort anybody by the group they came from.