Heart Languages

Heart languages  

In 1917, William Cameron Townsend sailed to Guatemala to sell Spanish Bibles. One day, he met a Cakchiquel Indian man (pop. 0.8 million) who said to Townsend in Spanish: “If your God is so great, why doesn’t He speak my language?”

These words transformed Townsend’s perspective and propelled him to spend the next 10 years translating the New Testament into Cakchiquel, and later on to start Wycliffe Bible Translators.

A single heart language

"While the climate for heart-language change is riper now than ever before, what remains constant is that each person has a single, default heart language at any given time." This is the language they most naturally use to understand and to be understood; it is also the language that God desires to use in speaking from His heart to theirs.

As Nelson Mandela said, “If you talk to a man in a language he understands – that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language – that goes to his heart.” The most effective vector The most effective, impactful, and transformational ministry takes place when people receive God’s Word and interact with it in the language that resonates in the core of their being.

Heart langages in the Bible

The Bible clearly illustrates God’s desire to communicate intimately with His creation using the language each person clearly understands in the depths of his or her heart:

“. . . the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? . . . We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God’” (Acts 2:6-11, ESV).

In the last book of the Bible, we find a passage that vividly paints the picture of how the heart of God communicates to the heart of man: “. . . a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands” (Rev. 7:9, ESV).

The vision to see the gospel communicated and lived out in North Africa's Heart langages motivates us