What a shock! You get off the ship and you suddenly realize you cannot understand anybody! We were getting our first taste of a new and different language. The months that followed were filled with memorizing vocabulary words, verb conjugations, sentence structure, grammatical nuances, and strange, twisted idioms. We would read the same story over and over again, until it would begin to make a little sense. We would repeat the same responses to the same questions, until our tongues had learned to twist around in the proper fashion, to give the stammering sounds that we made some degree of similarity to the sounds that effortlessly flowed from the tongue of our Chilean teacher.

After months of agonizing repetitions aimed at engraving words and phrases on our brain, we began to catch pieces of the conversation aimed at us. After years of continued study and usage, we began to think as the Chilean thinks and to know what he was saying and why he was saying it.

However, there is a parallel. Years before, while on the Naval Training Base in Corpus Christi, Texas, I heard the gospel and trusted Christ as my Savior. The next day, a fellow sailor shoved a little pack of Scripture memory verses into my hand and said, “Here, memorize these. I will check on you now and then to see how you are doing.” There were 36 little cards in the folder with one or two verses on each card, plus the reference and the main thought of the verses. I had already started to devour the contents of the little New Testament given to me. It was to me a new book and I reveled in the miracle that now I could, to some degree, understand what before had made no sense at all. But, this memorization and repetition was work.

My sailor buddy, however, was persistent and I finally mastered the 36 memory cards, only to have him put another little packet in my hand. And a few weeks later, another packet. Now I had 108 memory cards mastered and I discovered that I was becoming able to relate portions of Scripture in my reading time to other portions I had memorized, and that one portion helped to understand the other. I was learning God’s language and beginning to understand His ways through His Word. It was as Peter promised in Romans 12:2, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

Without those months and years of memorizing Spanish, I would still be dependent on others to tell me what was said and what was meant. Without those years of memorizing and meditating on Scripture, I would still be dependent on others to tell me what a verse says and how it relates to other verses. In the book of Hebrews we read of people like that: “For, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food.” (Hebrews 5:12)

Learning God’s language is to learn how God thinks. Although it is a lot of hard work, the dividends are great and the rewards are priceless as the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to the rich instruction of His Word.

Listen to "Realizing Our Full Potential" for additional help toward learning how God thinks.