Ever wonder how God could possibly communicate with all the different languages spoken in the world? It turns out, He has help.  As of September 2020 the full Bible has been translated into 704 languages, the New Testament has been translated into an additional 1,551 languages. Over the centuries, human agents of God have been hard at work spreading the word.

So, does God speak all those languages? Does He understand prayers recited in all those languages?

The answer is quite simply – yes.

In our efforts to communicate with other cultures, other nationalities, and other tribes, we struggle to translate by finding words in each language that refer to the same object or action. Quite often, we find that a direct word-to-word match is not possible, because multiple words in each language might represent the same idea, but with a twist.

Sanskrit, a classical language that has influenced modern South and Southeast Asian languages, has 96 words for love. Each word represents a different subject, circumstance, or type of love. And that alone is the key to understanding God’s native tongue.

God’s native tongue does not involve words, or spelling, or accent, or emphasis. God’s language, and the foundation of all languages, is an image or interpretation of abstract concepts or actions.

If we reflect on our own mastery of our native language, we will recognize that we learned to associate a word with a particular image or action. We learn that “chair” represents a particular type of furniture. We learn that “come” and “go” represent movement, but one toward us and the other moving away. Over a period of time, we learn what seems like an immense collection of various methods of expressing a thought.

If we analyze each word in our vocabulary, we will find that they all represent an image, an action, or even an abstract idea.

And that is how we communicate with God. If we say a prayer, every word of that prayer can be linked to a thought that exists in every other language. Those thoughts, regardless of what label we put upon them, are universal.

If we expect to hear from God, we need to receive His message in the same fashion. While we are busy listening for that booming voice from the heavens, we are missing out on the subtle messages that are directed to us every day.

Those moments when we feel guilt or shame for bad behavior, or compassion for an innocent animal which has been abused, or sympathy for someone’s misfortune – that is the voice of God, speaking to us in his native language – speaking, not to our ears, but to that underused organ, our conscience.