Imagine the scene.
A church of 300 people or so gathered for a service and our team is leading the ministry time after the preaching.
It’s hot. There is no air conditioning.
The worship song set had lasted nearly 90 minutes of up tempo worship music that had many people dancing and jumping for nearly the whole time. . .
I was tired
We had been ministering for several days already.
Add the mental exhaustion from
- days of cross cultural communication,
- teaching in a second language,
- and a persistant head cold,
- on top of back to back weeks of international travel and ministry
meant that my body was reaching a functional limit of strength.
By the time the service was moving into the most intense part – personal prayer ministry – I was wiped out.
Stumbling in Prayer Ministry
We had assembled several ministry teams from local church members and spent time going over ministry guidelines.
But the demand for ministry was greater than the number of our teams so we got personally involved as well.
I paired up with another team member to start prayer ministry. She was fluent in Spanish, but when it comes to healing prayer, we both found we were stuck with not knowing words for interior body parts.
For example:
- gall bladder,
- kidney,
- spleen,
- bladder, etc.
Those don’t usually come up in an evangelism conference.
People were seeking physical healing for interior infirmities, for body organs we didn’t recognize Spanish names for. . .
On top my exhaustion, now add the stress of language confusion. .
Not all prayer was for physical healing
- One man’s store had been robbed. He wanted justice and the return of his musical equipment.
- Another one wanted faith to believe their prodigal child would come home.
- Another was wanting God to provide a job.
Committing theological mistakes in another language.
One man in particular was a husband wanting prayer for an aspect of his marriage. After hearing his story, I launched into prayer.
This is where exhaustion overpowered the ability to pray clearly in a second language.
Even after 5 years, I still mentally translate some things in my head before speaking, though it is getting less and less. I’ve not yet made that switch to thinking in a second language.
I’m in that in between mode where some phrases mentally form in Spanish and some phrases mentally form in English. In my tiredness, the fine filters that keep everything straight were no longer in place.
I meant to pray:
Thank you Lord for this man’s wife.
Instead, I prayed
Thank you Lord for your wife.
It went on. Nearly every reference that should have been “her” (3rd person pronoun) came out “you” (2nd person pronoun). . . I didn’t catch it. My prayer partner did and graciously informed me of this a little later.
It’s really easy to commit theological errors in a second language when one is tired and exhausted.
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