The language challenge

One of the biggest challenges of being a TCK, no matter where you live overseas, is learning language.

Being “Language-d” is that moment when someone asks you a question and you’ve already asked them to repeat it three times and yet you still don’t understand what they're saying, let alone how to respond.

Learning a foreign language can be a huge achievement one day, but then all the sudden it becomes a wall that doesn’t seem to have a ladder to the other side; and it’s humiliating. Sometimes it feels absolutely impossible.

But it’s not.

There are multiple stories in the Bible that talk about God using different languages. In Acts chapter two, God sends a fire down from heaven onto the heads of his followers and suddenly they’re speaking languages they have never spoken before.

“And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.” -Acts 2:4

God gave them the languages they needed to go out and preach the good news of Christ, so that ALL could understand God’s message.

In Revelations it talks about every tribe, nation, and tongue singing songs and praising the Lord. Imagine that. Every single language in the entire world, singing and praising God.

Your effort to learn language is not in vain. God could be having you learn this language so that you can talk to that lady across the street, or the man at the bakery, or that obnoxious kid in your class at school. God might be having you learn this language so that you would have the tools to share with those people and that maybe one day they might be added to the great multitude. Singing and praising God in heaven.

“And this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands.”-Revelation 7:9

GOD IS FAITHFUL.

GOD will give you language. GOD will give you the words to say. GOD will help you understand the question that’s been repeated to you three and a half times.

“Trust in the Lord, and do not lean on your own understanding.” -Proverbs 3:5

Language might not come in the form of rushing wind and fire above our heads, and it might not come immediately. But it does come. I just want to encourage whoever's reading this, that God has a plan for you in whichever language you're learning. Whether it’s Chinese or Arabic or Spanish or Hungarian or a language that you can’t find anywhere outside your country, God will give you language.

And it will come.

~Willow.