Humbling Experiences...

Paul speaking to the Corinthians, gives them a little history lesson regarding the mistakes the Israelites made in the past, telling them they became proud to the point of challenging God in their sins. He says in 1 Cor 10:12

"Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall."

It comes as a somber reminder how "pride" can sneak in little by little on you and sooner or later you feel pretty "proud" of what you can do.

Most of you know I speak 5 languages. So, I thought I spoke my languages pretty well. I could say "I can carry on a conversation in those languages fluently" hanging around with people who mainly speak English most of the time. However reality was a little different.

The past two weeks was quite an experience in my LACK of fluency in the languages I spoke. First, I was able to speak in Japanese to a REALLY fluent Korean-Japanese person (job is translating Korean Drama into Japanese), and my pronunciation was less than stellar, to say the least, as the person was continuously helping me along, haha.

Second, speaking to a Korean only speaker, I was having trouble coming up with vocabulary words to explain things because some words I would say in English and the other person would have no idea what it meant. And comedy ensued as I gestured and hunted for ways to explain in Korean.

Third, attending the Spanish School of Ministry and being around native speakers and trying to speak my Argentinian Castellano which I hadn't used regularly for 20 years stumbling with vocabulary and stuttering along as I spoke Spanglish (or would that be Enpanish? hmm... sounds like Enpanadas... I'm hungry now...)

Fourth, yesterday I was able to attend a Bible Study group of Korean-Brazilians and guess what? They greeted me in Portuguese and they ALL spoke REALLY fluently and I was so shocked... I guess I hadn't thought that everything would be in Portuguese, even the worship, and message, and prayers... and there I was adding English and Korean words as I spoke my broken Portuguese.

Not to mention that I'm reminded every week of how I butcher the U.S. Language when I speak in front of my church, creating new pronunciations of common words and constantly pronouncing God as Gad...

Yeah, I should compare myself with better speakers to constantly improve the languages I speak instead of just saying that I am fluent, because if you dropped me off in any of those countries, I bet my language skills would not be defined as FLUENT.

So, in the same vein, let us consider ourselves, so we may stay humble and never go down the path of getting too proud of ourselves that we end up challenging God in our mistakes.