Towards the end of last month, my pastor asked me to preach a message at our church. I was already working on ideas for my next blog post and the subject matter I was developing seemed right for a teaching, too. So I edited and refashioned it for a live audience, practiced it and prayed, and finally delivered it at my church on April 18. The full English text is below. I plan to post the full Portuguese text here soon as well once the translation is complete.
Abundance of the Heart
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I’ve been here at this church for almost exactly a year—next week it will be one year. When I first came, I could hardly speak Portuguese at all. I felt excited to be here, but also challenged. I knew it was going to be a lot of work, just to understand what people were saying, let alone to really contribute and become one of the family.
Some people say I’ve learned this language faster than normal. I know that I practice as much as I can and of course I have this wonderful church where I can practice as much as you’ll let me. But God has ways of empowering us to do more than we can do on our own. He elevates our talents to create more beautiful things; He empowers our hearts to be more patient in the middle of tricky situations; He increases our wisdom to figure out the answers to problems. He does this so we can carry out His perfect will in the earth—and so that people can see that He exists and that He is good and that He wants to bless us, all the time.
I actually began to teach myself Portuguese many years ago. On my own, I started to learn a few simple words and listen to language tapes. I didn’t have a plan, I just really wanted to learn the language.
Then, I came back to God—I got saved. I also began to attend a church that was very anointed and of great faith. In that church, I saw just how much God was moving and helping and changing people’s lives, and I wanted that for myself as well. The one thing I saw that was consistent about that change was this: The more that the people of the church gave themselves to getting close to God and to studying His Word, the better their lives became.
At the same time as I was seeing this in that church, I was not making much progress with learning Portuguese. I got frustrated with the articles, the contractions, object pronouns… a, o ,os, as… then do, da, dos, das – and dois, duas – and um, uma, umas, and… te, lhe, se, me… EH!! I felt frustrated with myself and didn’t know how to get past those barriers. I also was reading the Bible and praying more, which started to take up more of my time. As much as I wanted it, I didn’t feel like I could learn Portuguese on my own—and I didn’t see how I could put time into learning that and learning about God. Finally, I decided that I should give up learning Portuguese and just focus on God: reading the Bible, prayer, and learning Scripture.
Mark 10:29-31 There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel’s, But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.
I believe that when we give something up for God, He honors that sacrifice. You came here tonight instead of watching t.v. or doing something else, God honors that. When you sow your seed into this church rather than go buy something for yourself, God honors that. And He will multiply it back to you.
I believe that because I gave up my personal dream to learn Portuguese in order to give Him first place in my life, He was able to not only bless me more at the time, but to multiply the dream back to me since. And ultimately, He even helped me realize that my Portuguese dream was aligned with His will all the time.
Ps 37:4 Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. You see, after I focused on God and the Word for several years, God brought my dream back to me. About three or so years ago, He told me that I needed to learn Portuguese. This was not me asking Him if it was o.k. if I started learning it again—this was Him giving me a commandment, to do something I hadn’t thought of doing in a long time. I will be honest: Out of laziness and a lack of understanding, I didn’t obey for a long time. I had put it off for so long that it had become a very insignificant thing to me—I seemed so busy all the time anyway, how was I going to make time for this? And how would I be any more successful at it than I was the last time?
But I finally made the choice to do it. I decided to stop procrastinating. I decided that if it was God’s willl, then He would provide the means and the time to do it. And once I made that choice, He made it so easy! His anointing and favor were all over my path. He gave me study ideas, like trips to Brazilian stores to translate food labels and the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens to translate those little “Hello My Name Is Tree” badges, and how I could learn numbers by translating the genealogies in the Old Testament. He put Brazilians on the train for me to practice conversations with. And most importantly, He brought me to this church. And then, He could give me even more: He sent me all the way to Brazil! This is truly “exceeding abundantly above all that I could ask or think.”
So between my giving something up that I thought was important, and trusting God to bring it back to me, and then obeying Him when He did, God was able to multiply back to me the gift of learning Portuguese quickly and easily. And He was able to use me in making that second dream come true—that I could go to Brazil—and to use that time to bless, get close to, and bring joy to my Brazilian family, and allow them to get to know more of their American family, too. When I arrived there, they told me how much it blessed them that I could be there. I was surprised and humbled; I thought the dream was just for me, and I never thought it could be a blessing to them, too.
It was the first time I’d been to Brazil in over 25 years. God helped me to plan it, to reach out to my family, to get my paperwork done and to have favor with my bosses so that I could go. Most importantly, Yahweh made it possible for me to have a much easier trip by helping me to learn Portuguese.
The way this has all come to pass gives Him glory. I couldn’t have set this up if I tried. This was His plan coming to pass in a really lovely way. E tambem, posso falar Portuguese muito bem.
So if I am able to speak this language so easily, you might wonder why I am delivering a message in English. First of all, Pastor asked me to. This is part of his vision for the church: that we are multicultural and minister in many languages, not just Portuguese. Second of all, my message is about languages, and I think it is better delivered by Rosalia and I in this way. You will see what I mean.
In the weeks right before my trip, I realized that I had to practice Portuguese as much as possible. I had the feeling that this trip was going to be like one long college exam, and I wanted to at least pass! So I did everything I could think of to practice before I went: Flash cards; forcing my mother to speak Portuguese on the phone with me (this is not natural for us!); spending as much time as possible with the church family in fellowship… everything I could think of. By the time I was getting on the plane, I felt fairly competent. I might not be perfectly fluent, but I would survive.
But when I arrived, I realized that there are things that books and CDs don’t teach you, that time on the phone with your mother or even talking with your church friends doesn’t reveal. I am sure most of you here already appreciate this: The “real world” of being in a foreign land, using their language for the first time, cannot be captured in a book. The only way to really learn it is to go there and be in the middle of it; to throw yourself into the water and see if you can swim.
First of all, everyone has their own personal dialect. NOBODY’s voice sounds like the nice, clean, plain, easy-to-understand voice of the woman on the Learning Language CDs: “Eu sou americano.” “Eu falo portugues.” That woman doesn’t exist! Instead, there are voices that are deeper and more guttural; there’s children’s chirps—I had cousins that talked too quickly for me to understand, on purpose (heh)—and senior’s slurs; there are people who speak reallyreallyreallyquickly; there are accents and sotaques.
My cousin’s husband is from the north, from the interior. He talks like this: “Grumble grumble grumble grumble grumble…” We laughed a lot together, but I never understood a word he said (though my cousin told me later that nobody else in the family understands him, either. Then I didn’t feel so bad).
Then, there are idiosyncrasies, slang, and colloquial expressions. Some of the expressions that I heard really threw me: Sabe? Ne? Nossa! Isso. Viu? I had one aunt who used the word Viu so much I thought I’d go crazy! She would say a sentence and at the end say “Viu? Viu? Viu? Viu? Viu? Viu? Viu?” And when I stood there, totally perplexed, and asked her to repeat herself, she would say the exact same thing, including the “Viu? Viu? Viu? Viu? Viu?….” Of course, I didn’t viu at all…
And why did she always use the word meio instead of seis? It was SO confusing! Sometimes it made me feel like I hadn’t learned Portuguese at all! I’d ask myself, what language did I learn, anyway?
But there was something in particular about those expressions that I wanted to share with you today. It has less to do with what I heard with my ears, and more to do with the heart.
When you suddenly see something really beautiful, what do you Brazilians say? “Que lindo!” How beautiful. I heard that a lot when I was there: at Vila Velha, at the shoe shops in Curitiba, at the beaches of Natal. I know what those two words mean, que and lindo, and I know what it means when you put those two words together. I can even say the phrase myself, “Que lindo!”
But when I suddenly see something beautiful or amazing, that is not the first expression that comes to my mouth. My first reaction is to say something American. “Wow!” “Oh, that’s so beautiful!” or “That’s COOL.”
Matthew 12:34 …. for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.
When Jesus says this, He’s not just talking about words, about what words you choose when you speak. The kind of expression He’s talking about—the kind I am talking about–is not about what is in your head.
When your heart is really full, you don’t think of a word to say, you just utter something. Something, some word or phrase, or even just a noise, comes out of your mouth instinctively.
When I was in Natal, I visited my Tia Dinha. She makes this dish called torta do abacaxi, which I never heard of before. I sat down at her table, she put some torta in a bowl, and I reached out with my spoon to taste it.
Now, when I tasted the torta, do you think I said, “I find the flavors in this food to be truly delightful, don’t you?” No! I said, “MMMMMMM!!!! WOW!!! This is SO GOOD.” Right? (Now, until then my family had been teasing me about liking it so much there that I would never leave Brazil. At that point, I wasn’t sure if I would ever leave that apartment again….)
See, there are some situations wherein we will speak out a response that is so immediate and heartfelt, we don’t even think about it. We don’t choose the words—they are already chosen for us. They are expressions that have been planted deep within us over many, many years, by our families, by our culture.
When I was in Rio, or Natal, with my cousins or friends, and we saw something really wonderful or beautiful, they said, “Que bonito! Que lindo!” And I, I wanted to be like them, to sound like them. I wanted to sound Brazilian, not American (if there’s anything New Yorkers hate, it’s looking like a tourist). So I repeated, “Que lindo!” just like they did.
But what sounded so natural for them sounded strange coming out of my mouth. I was saying the right words, but when I spoke I felt like a parrot, or a child repeating something a grownup just said. Maybe if a cat could bark, the cat would feel the way I did.
What was missing? My heart was as full as theirs; I felt the same way they did: In awe, marveling, in wonder, joyful, happy. And I had the correct words in my head—I just heard them say the same thing! But what I didn’t have in me was the connection between the feelings and the words. I did not say the words because I felt them and believed them to be true, I said them because I knew them in my head and because it seemed like the right thing to do. After all, they said it, and they didn’t look foolish doing so.
For me to truly express myself the way they do—the way you all do—I have to build a bridge where one does not exist. I have to make myself react in the right way. Of course, that feels false—at least, for now it does. I think over time, that reaction would come more naturally if I lived in Brazil for a season and spoke no other language. After all, I already have a little of this: I was in a meeting with my new manager last week. She is from New Jersey, and she is definitely not Brazilian. But as we were meeting, she was asking me if things with a particular client had improved. And I almost answered, “Mais ou menos”—but thank God, I stopped myself just in time.
But beyond this, I must choose to build a Portuguese Reflex into myself, on purpose. It’s not going to happen on its own.
Why is this important? Why do I bring it up here today?
First of all, because the thing I am talking about, this connection between our hearts and our words, has a direct correlation in our spiritual life.
Remember what Jesus said: Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
Thinking back, years ago, in that season when I was learning the Word, and not Portuguese, I spent a lot of time memorizing Scripture (actually, a group of us at my church did this together, as a spiritual exercise). I created lists of verses about specific topics and read them aloud to myself every day. I also learned to pray this way, to “pray the Word”: To repeat those Scriptures out loud during my prayer time, or to read them aloud as if they were prayers.
The more I spoke them, the more I heard them. The more I heard them, the more I believed them. And the more real they became to me.
Romans 10:17 Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. I was building the bridge between the words in my head and the faith in my heart. And soon I came to the point where if I was praying a prayer or even just talking to another believer, if there was a scripture that was needed at that moment, it would be right there in my heart and mouth, ready to be spoken.
What had I done? I had built the heart-mouth bridge. I built my own Word Reflex.
Proverbs 4:23 Keep your heart with all diligence, For out of it spring the issues of life. So now when the need arises, when something amazingly praiseworthy happens, or something hard happens and only the Word can address it or fix it, I have that Word in me. The Word of God—the Life of God—springs out of my mouth at just the right time. I have the sword of the Spirit (Eph 6:17) ready to fight the victory for me.
John 7:38 He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.
What you have planted in your heart is going to bear fruit in the words of your mouth. From that, those words bear fruit in your circumstances and shape your future. If you plant the Word in your heart and speak it out of your mouth, believing, then the power of God—rivers of living water—will move on what you say, and your circumstances will change.
Matt 12:35 35 A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things. You have a choice in what you put in your heart. You have a choice in what comes out of your mouth, and what happens in your life. Jesus said, John 15:7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. By your own words, you have a choice in what you have, in how the world around you is shaped and what your future holds. You have it in your heat and in your mouth.
And it’s not just for you, right? You may be talking to someone else and they have a need, and you’ll have the Word for them. “Oh, I’m starting to feel sick…” “No! By His stripes, you were healed!” “I’m so confused, I don’t know what to do next!” “God’s Word is a lamp unto your feet and a light on your path!” “I lost my job, I don’t know how I’m going to survive…” “God shall supply all your needs according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus!” “I feel so trapped, so stuck…” “Yahweh cuts through the bars of iron and opens the gates of bronze—no prison can hold you!” And these are not things you are saying because you made them up—you are saying what God has already promised. You may have faults, but He is perfect, and He cannot lie, and He will do what He said He will do!
God takes words very seriously, viu? He does not say a single thing, but that He expects it to come to pass. Everything he says is for a purpose. His Word “does not return to Him void But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” (Is 55:11) People are not like that, in general. We say a lot of things without thinking—in fact, in general most people are VERY sloppy in how they talk and the words they use. But this is not how God does it, nor is it what He expects of us. He says “Life and death are in the power of the tongue.” (Proverbs 18:21) Do you believe Him when he says this, or no? If you do, you will be more mindful of the things you say—the words you hear, the expressions you learn; you will consider what has been planted in your heart, and you will do what it takes to change it if it is not aligned with God’s love and His way. You will develop a Word Reflex of your own. And that Word—through the Holy Spirit—will change your life.
This leads to the second reason I bring this up today. There is another scripture that is about “speaking without thinking”:
Romans 8:26 Likewise the Spirit also helps our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.
This scripture goes with another one: 1 Cor 14:15 For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful.
There’s going to come a time in your life when you won’t know how to pray. There’s going to come a time when you have something really urgent to express and request of the Father, but you’ve prayed all the Word you know in Portuguese, or English, or Spanish, or Hindi. You pray it all out, and then what? If you believe God heard you and is answering your prayers, then why keep asking him again and again?
Watch this: I ask my friend Sondra for some chocolate. And she says, “Yes, you can have some tomorrow.” But then I ask her again, “Can I have some chocolate, please? I really need it!” And she answers, “I don’t have any now, you can have some tomorrow.” But then I ask her again: “Please, can I have some chocolate?” “I already told you—tomorrow!” … so, when am I going to finally believe her?
It’s like this with God, too. He knows your needs—He knows how badly I need that chocolate—and He hears your request, and He’s said He will answer it. If you have faith in Him, you must believe He is answering. And so, asking time is over.
And yet you may have an abundance of yearning, or grief, or compassion, or some other burden in your heart that you know you must express to the Father in prayer, but you just don’t know how. You have a heart that is as full as can be, but you don’t have any words to connect it to. In this situation, it is the Holy Spirit Who is there to help you to pray. He does this through the gift of speaking in tongues.
Speaking or praying in tongues is a gift from the Spirit. It allows you to pray “in an unknown tongue,” but you pray out of your spirit. This is a kind of praying where you have the words in your spirit, not your head. And the connection between your words and your heart becomes instead a connection between you and Yahweh.
You have a heart that is full, but you don’t have the words? The Holy Spirit will give you the words. He gives you a heavenly language, and with it you can pray to the Father about whatever is in your heart. You may not understand the words—you probably won’t—but you don’t need to understand what you are saying in order to speak. You just do it, by faith, in faith, believing that He understands what you are saying—and that He is answering.
It took me a long time to receive this gift. That’s a story for another teaching. What is important is that right now, I can pray in tongues. I can actually pray in tongues better than I can in Portuguese! But remember: The Word came first. I learned and loved and believed the Word; then I could pray in the Spirit; then I learned Portuguese.
The Word comes first—you cannot receive this gift of the spirit outside of receiving Jesus as into your heart and life, and He is the Word. But when you do receive Him, you can ask Him for this gift, and He will give it to you. He will empower your spirit and He will strengthen you (“building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit,” Jude 20)—He will empower your prayers. And the things you need will be added unto you.
I think we should pray tonight for this gift. Anyone who doesn’t have this gift and desires it should come forward in faith to receive. This gift is for everyone! It will equip you and empower you in prayer; it will build you up in your spirit; it will draw you closer to the Father than ever before.
You may not know much about this gift—you may find it strange or just confusing, and you may not feel ready to receive it. But if you have a heart that is full and you need prayer and you have no words to pray with, come forward. Anyone here who can pray in the spirit should come forward to the front and help us pray for those who need it.
We’re going to pray this prayer over you and make this request of the Father, and He will give it, and you will be blessed. We are also going to pray for those who have the gift, that they will use it more and that it will equip them. And we are going to pray in the spirit for a few minutes as a congregation, and allow the anointing of the Holy Spirit to build and do His work.
Viu?
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© Andrea Bonifacio and Sondo Saudade 2009-2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Andrea Bonifacio and Sondo Saudade with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
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