In Revelation 5 we see a great mass of people, from every tongue, tribe, nation, dialect, and culture, praising God from the bottom of their hearts. This is the prophetic word of God, meaning it reflects God’s unchanging purposes and intentions. He cares deeply about making this happen.

And it is actually happening now in the Spirit. There are tons of people now praising God in Farsi. There are people praising Jesus in Spanish, and Chinese all over the place. But what about the ones that are missing, or who are very few. What about people who speak Balochi, Kurdish, Turkish, or Somalian?

Jesus must long to hear those languages that are missing or under-represented around his throne. He must long to hear their unique expressions of joy, and I dare say, even to see their special hand gestures and different facial expressions.

Now we know that the Holy Spirit takes from what is Jesus’ and makes it know to us. (John 16:14-15) And Paul even says that, “we have the mind of Christ.” (1 Cor 2:16) So, if we carry his life and his desires, we can also carry this desire to hear, understand, and communicate in these last few languages. And this is more than just a desire to learn a few words and somehow make ourselves understood. His Spirit longs to understand, feel and naturally respond to all the intricate nuances and emotional colourings of these languages. He wants to speak to the deepest, most unguarded part of the heart… and therefore treasures the heart’s language.

We also can take delight in learning a few words of these precious heart languages. We can be interested in their accents and captivated by their intonation and character. We can enjoy their jokes and playful chatter. We can be driven by Jesus’ love, dilligence, and passion to learn these langauges well.

And then we can watch this love, dilligence and passion melt hearts.

It is an act of Christ’s humility and service to take these languages and cultures seriously and learn how people think and talk, and act. As you move forward with Christ’s love for the people and the language, you will find hearts cracking wide open wherever you go.

It’s interesting that the most unreached people groups are often the ones who will receive you the most warmly when you try to speak their language. They’ll often gleefully embrace you just because you valued them enough to greet them their way. They are delighted to talk to foreigners in their own language. And Christ is delighted to talk to them.

A simple greeting in someone’s heart language can make them crack a smile, lift their head, and change their whole posture. It’s like a button is pressed that makes their faces fill with vigour and energy, and their personalities come out in full force. You see, often people feel they have to push down their linguistic or ethnic identity down to get ahead in life. They may need to learn a new language to climb the economic ladder. They may need to supress their accent to get a good job or hide their heart language to fit in at school. In some religions, they may even have to learn to utter prayers in a foreign tongue to be heard by God.

But Jesus is different than all that. He simply approaches them as they are, without any linguistic barriers or pretenses. Jesus loves their language, with all of its clever expressions and different sounds. And we can love it too, if we have him living inside of us.