Week after week John went to church to hear about God, but he always left with a heavy heart. The sermon and the reading of the Scriptures were meaningless to him because they were given in a neighboring language which John couldn’t understand. John wanted to hear God speak to him, but God seemed distant and foreign. His heart ached to know the true and living God.

John had seen a change in some of the village men and women. They had been helping the SIL translators form an alphabet for their language, write books, and teach their people to read. He was glad his children were going to read the language of his forefathers, but he wanted to know the joy and peace that some of these others had experienced.

One night John was sitting around the fire with other men from the village. Darius, one of the men who had been working with the SIL translators, came running over to them carrying in his hand the first three chapters of the book of Mark, written for the first time in his language. “These words are sweet to my insides,” Darius said. “Listen to them.”

As Darius read, John heard the living Word of God for the first time in his own language. His eyes became wide and his heart pounded in his chest. God was speaking to him and they were the sweetest words he had ever heard. John asked Darius to read it again and again, and he listened intently to every word.

When the reading was completed, John stood up and told the other men, “I think we should all go to our own homes now and think hard about these words, for if we stay here and keep talking we will forget what we’ve just heard.” They all agreed and quietly slipped away to their houses to think about the sweet, yet powerful, words of God.

As John walked away from the fire, he knew that he had found the source of joy, peace, and hope for which he had been searching.

– From thepngexperience.wordpress.com