Trust Not In Fluent Lips

“Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?”

– Galatians 3:3

For new missionaries, the realm of language learning is a battlefield.

Never mind the funny mistakes one makes (E.g. You try telling your students that you’re proud of them, and instead tell them that you’re pregnant…), on a regular basis, one can go from being elated at having had understood everything in a foreign language church service in the morning, to despair at the lack of any progress at all by evening with a couple of corrections… in every sentence… from a local friend. From having a week where the words come quickly to mind, to a week where you can barely remember how to say your name!

I’m constantly told by locals that “Dónal, your language is more accurate than our sister (Dee), but you speak our language like a foreigner, and she speaks it like a native!” They really know how to encourage a guy in his work here. It is an undulating path of encouragement and despair which the new worker must tread.

But maybe that’s a good thing. It forces us to recall where the power lies.

One morning this week I was convicted in prayer. I so desperately want to speak better, to be able to share deeply with those around me. A lot of which is a noble and motivating desire. But the Spirit revealed some other hidden fault lines. My reasoning was beginning to sound like, “If I can just speak the language better, then I can be more useful.”

As someone who, in Ireland, would do a lot of preaching/teaching, so much of my investment was therefore in speaking and the careful use of words. I regularly ministered the Word to people by my words. Being such a big part of my life, it is perhaps unsurprising that it would be easy to rely on those words as the supposed keystone to ministry of the Word.

But of course, that’s just not true. The most eloquent orator, and the most stuttering servant, have no more true power in their words than the other. The only power in any ministry, including the ministry of the Word, is in the presence of the Holy Spirit. In fact, in challenging the “Super-Apostles” in Corinth, Paul himself uses his lack of eloquence in preaching as an example of where he draws his power from, as he goes on to boast in his weakness in order to prove that his ministry is not from the flesh, unlike theirs. (2 Cor 11)

Now, for me, unable in this foreign culture to rely on that broken reed – my own words – the weight of Galatians 3:3 fell heavy upon me. This is the natural human tendency. We drift into relying on faulty tools… ourselves. Whether through failure to remind ourselves of the Lord’s work, unbelief that God will come through for us, or just the foolish old man voicing his opinion into those decisions, we are on regular occasions, the Galatians.

If this is how I felt about my language, then how often, even in English, have I failed to entreat the Spirit for help, thinking that the power was in my words that I have spoken. And I prayed that the Lord show me other areas of life where the same misplaced dependence lives. That chilling statement from 2 Chronicles 26 came to my mind, and I shuddered, praying that by God’s grace I would turn back from the error of the Galatians and Uzziah.

“And his fame spread far, for he was marvelously helped, till he was strong.

But when he was strong, he grew proud, to his destruction.”

– 2 Chronicles 26: 15-16

Thankful that the Lord grants repentance, I rose from my knees and opened George Müller’s Autobiography to continue my re-read through it. Here was a man who lived in dependence upon God and saw such wonderful works done as he presented himself as a ready vessel. And yet, though a giant of the faith, this German immigrant struggled with the same problem as me, stumbling through another language. As I read, I was soundly convinced again that what we need is not better skill, more resources, or any other fleshly power. Our need is greater dependence on the Spirit of God to take weak vessels, who can boast in their weakness, that the power of Christ might be displayed in them.

“In the evening, Monday, I preached for Brother Craik, at Shaldon, in the presence of three ministers, none of whom liked the sermon; yet it pleased God, through it, to bring to the knowledge of his dear Son a young woman. How differently does the Lord judge from man! Here was a particular opportunity for the Lord to get glory to himself. A foreigner was the preacher, with great natural obstacles in the way, for he was not able to speak English with fluency; but he had a desire to serve God, and was by this time also brought into such a state of heart as to desire that God alone should have the glory, if any good were done through his instrumentality.”*

How easy it would have been for Müller to complain at his lack of fluent English, as if prowess in preaching came through great oratory. Yet he simply offered himself up to God as a willing vessel, and therein lay the power.

I can name a few people whom I know and love (3 in particular). If you were to compare their preaching to the qualities and methods laid out in most books written on preaching, they would barely be adequate preachers. Yet I have seen rooms held in complete silence and anticipation when they have spoken. I have seen and known (and been one of!) many people who have been utterly changed by these men’s lives, and preaching, unorthodox as they were in oratory. What’s their secret? They are men of deep, abiding prayer like nobody else I know. I aspire to walk in their footsteps… or rather, to kneel in their knee prints.

Let us determine today that we would rather have worn-out knees than eloquent tongues, hands lifted in holy prayer than multitudes of tools at the ready, heads bowed in humility rather than standing tall on our own foundation. The work was, is, and ever will be of the Spirit, as surely as it was with the uneducated fishermen who had clearly been with Jesus, as it was with a stuttering immigrant in 19th Century England, and by God’s grace, as it will be with each one of us as we surrender ourselves to the work that God has for us.

And for any others who are language learning, or struggling with any supposed deficiency in ministry, let this other story from George Müller encourage you, that not only can he use you despite your deficiencies… he can even use those deficiencies themselves!

“This evening brother Craik and I took tea with a family of whom five had been brought to the knowledge of the Lord through our instrumentality. As an encouragement to brethren who may desire to preach the gospel in a language not their own, I would mention that the first member of this family who was converted came merely out of curiosity to hear my foreign accent, some words having been mentioned to her which I did not pronounce properly.”*

*Müller, George. The Autobiography of George Müller. Gideon House Books.