Speaking God’s Language

In September of 1999, after almost ten months travelling to Mars, the Mars Climate Orbiter burnt up in the Martian atmosphere and broke into pieces. On a day when NASA engineers were expecting to celebrate an amazing achievement, the reality turned out to be completely different, but how? The Mars Climate Orbiter, built at a cost of $125 million, was a 638-kilogram robotic space probe launched by NASA on the 11 December 1998, to study the Martian climate, Martian atmosphere, and surface changes amongst other things.

However, the navigation team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) used the metric system in its calculations, while Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Denver, Colorado, which designed and built the spacecraft, provided crucial acceleration data in the English system of inches, feet, and pounds. Despite both being in the USA they failed to communicate effectively. In a sense, the spacecraft was lost in translation.

We all know that it is vital that we learn to communicate effectively.  To do so we need to speak and understand the same language. The same goes for us communicating with God. We can easily think that because God speaks every language in the world, we must be able to speak to Him in a way He can understand. Whilst that is true, we often fail to understand the language God really wants to communicate to us in.

I read a book in which the writer proposes that there are five ways in which people express and receive love, which he calls love languages. Knowing your spouse’s love language and then seeking to intentionally communicate to your spouse in that language increases relationship happiness and satisfaction. I certainly found it helpful to me (and hopefully to my wife too!).

God also has a love language. But what is it?  We naturally think along the lines of praise and worship, prayer, fasting, and giving. While all that is true and positive, it isn’t how Jesus said we should demonstrate our love to God. “Those who accept my commandments and obey them are the ones who love me” (John 14:21).

I suggest that God’s love language is obedience. If we have understood the love and grace that He pours upon us, His beloved and chosen ones, and the knowledge of His great love for us has transformed our hearts, then the way to communicate that to Him is through obedience to Him and His word. God’s response to that loving obedience is both very clear and powerful, ‘Jesus replied, “All who love me will do what I say. My Father will love them, and we will come and make our home with each of them. Anyone who doesn’t love me will not obey me”’ (John 14:23-24).