The Language Of God

It is interesting how we have mother tongues and no father tongues. I guess this is because mothers tend to be better communicators with their children more than the fathers. It could also be because mothers are better nurturers than fathers. But those are just my observations.

Language is a system of communication used by a particular tribe, country or a community. There are four basic language skills. These are listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. Language is a vital part of human connection. It carries with it much more than the words. It is part of a person. Once you learn a language, it gets coded inside of you.

Think about something like sign language. Even though it does not have sounds to utter, the sign formation becomes part of the person learning the language. We also hear of things like love language. This is explained as the means through which a human is able to express and receive love. When two people, who have internalized the reality of a language meet, they are able to have a better connection. It becomes easier to be part of another human being because of a shared language. Language breaks barriers.

There is a Kenyan joke that says if you only pray in English and have never found yourself praying in your mother tongue, then you have not experienced much trouble. Have you ever thought about the language of God? Yes, we know God is all knowing, meaning He can hear, speak, read and write any language, but does He have His native language?

Due to colonialization in Africa, some people think God is white. There is a deep misconstrusion of who God is based on the person who introduced God to a people. But God is bigger than our human construction.

If you read Genesis 1 on the issue of creation, God spoke things into being. What language was that? The language of God is more than the human language. The language of God is Divine Energy that has Creative Power. He speaks and it’s done. He writes and it’s alive.

In Hebrew 4:12, God says in His word, 12 For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. NIV

The language of God is also His nature. It is who He is. The Bible says in John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This means a lot. It indicates that God is His word. Therefore, if we want to talk to God, if we want to hear from God, if we want to know God then we have to learn His language through the Word.

Just the same way you cannot speak, hear, write or read a language you don’t know. You cannot engage God deeply as a human until you know Him. And if God is His word, then it means, to get to know God we have to learn His word. This requires every believer to interact with the word of God as a doorway into understanding God. This is how we get to build a connection with Him.

Knowing the Word of God is not just knowing the stories in the Bible. It is about having a dynamic flow of divine energy inside of a human, that creates the reality of God in us. The experience with the word of God should shape our temperaments, our perceptions, our attitudes, our thinking structure and our sight of things.

God says in Isaiah 55:8-9 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. 9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. This means there is a gap human beings must bridge to come closer to God. How does God think? How does God move? Understanding God’s word is understanding Him and there is no better place of coming closer to God than through His word.

Again, if I picked a Spanish book (I don’t know Spanish), and I started reading without understanding the basics of that language, my reading activity would be in vain. Yet one of the fastest ways of learning a language is living among a people who speak the language and speaking it out more often. This means we have to live among those who know God and keep talking and engaging with Him, as a means of accelerating our knowledge of God.

When learning a language, there is a basic requirement of understanding the alphabets of that language. Phonetics and how words are constructed are useful to gain comprehension of said language. This means that we have to move beyond just reading and listening to the Word of God, to studying it. We have to invest time and resources to research, be taught and understand who God is as we scratch deeper than the surface.

They call earth Mother Nature meaning all human languages are our mother tongues. It is time we also embraced our ‘father tongue’ and enjoyed the full benefits of the relationship with our Heavenly Father.