66 Sermon Illustrations on Africa

I’ve frequently said that our greatest witness as Christians is when we’re caring for the poor, visiting the prisoners, tending the sick. When we take these things seriously, others can’t help but see the power of the Gospel.

Recently, the faithful witness of some Christians in Malawi turned the head of a British journalist and atheist who traveled to Africa before Christmas. Writing in The Times of London online, Matthew Parris said that these Christians not only proved to him that Africa needs God, but also have challenged his atheistic convictions.

After visiting a charity that provides water pumps to rural communities, Parris noticed that many of the organization’s African leaders were strong Christians who gently demonstrated their faith in quiet conversation and action. They reminded him of the Christians he knew when he was a young boy living in Africa with his family.

These Christians, he recalls, were a “different” kind of people whose faith seemed to give them what he describes as a “liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world, [and] a directness in their dealings with others.”

If this isn’t a winsome demonstration of faith, I don’t know what is!

The Christian missionaries Parris met when he returned to Africa in his twenties had a similar impact on him. Wherever missionaries lived, he wrote, “something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to.” They had broken through what he calls “crushing tribal groupthink.” They see themselves as individuals who stand in direct relationship to God — not as subservient subordinates who must kowtow to tyrants like Robert Mugabe.

Parris is sure that Christian faith has something to do with this. And of course he’s right! He says he has “become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone won’t do it. Education and training alone will not do.”

“In Africa,” he writes, “Christianity changes people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. And the rebirth is real. The change is good.”

Parris says that what he’s observed among Christians in Africa “confounds [his] ideological beliefs” and has “embarrassed [his] growing belief that there is no God.”

He had this to say about the Christians he met who were providing water pumps: “Their work was secular, but surely affected by what they were. What they were was, in turn, influenced by a conception of man’s place in the Universe that Christianity had taught.”

Here is an atheist who gets it: Worldview matters! How you see the world, what you believe about where we come from and where we are going, will affect how you live.

When you understand that every human being is made in God’s image, and that God Himself died on a cross for sinners, people will see you ministering to prisoners. They will see you feeding the hungry and clothing the naked.

Or, like Matthew Parris, they may even witness you bringing water pumps to rural villages in Africa. They will see Christ before their eyes.

________

Copyright (c) 2009 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

"Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa's biggest problem - the crushing passivity of the people's mindset" – Matthew Parris

Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it's Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean. I went to see this work.

It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I've been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I've been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.

Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.

I used to avoid this truth by applauding - as you can - the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It's a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.

Background

"But this doesn't fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.

First, then, the observation. We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village. In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers. The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world - a directness in their dealings with others - that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall.

At 24, travelling by land across the continent reinforced this impression. From Algiers to Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Central African Republic, then right through the Congo to Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya, four student friends and I drove our old Land Rover to Nairobi.

We slept under the stars, so it was important as we reached the more populated and lawless parts of the sub-Sahara that every day we find somewhere safe by nightfall. Often near a mission.

Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had not become more deferential towards strangers - in some ways less so - but more open.

This time in Malawi it was the same. I met no missionaries. You do not encounter missionaries in the lobbies of expensive hotels discussing development strategy documents, as you do with the big NGOs. But instead I noticed that a handful of the most impressive African members of the Pump Aid team (largely from Zimbabwe) were, privately, strong Christians. “Privately” because the charity is entirely secular and I never heard any of its team so much as mention religion while working in the villages. But I picked up the Christian references in our conversations. One, I saw, was studying a devotional textbook in the car. One, on Sunday, went off to church at dawn for a two-hour service.

It would suit me to believe that their honesty, diligence and optimism in their work was unconnected with personal faith. Their work was secular, but surely affected by what they were. What they were was, in turn, influenced by a conception of man's place in the Universe that Christianity had taught.

There's long been a fashion among Western academic sociologists for placing tribal value systems within a ring fence, beyond critiques founded in our own culture: “theirs” and therefore best for “them”; authentic and of intrinsically equal worth to ours.

I don't follow this. I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and that it suppresses individuality. People think collectively; first in terms of the community, extended family and tribe. This rural-traditional mindset feeds into the “big man” and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole idea of loyal opposition.

Anxiety - fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things - strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won't take the initiative, won't take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.

How can I, as someone with a foot in both camps, explain? When the philosophical tourist moves from one world view to another he finds - at the very moment of passing into the new - that he loses the language to describe the landscape to the old. But let me try an example: the answer given by Sir Edmund Hillary to the question: Why climb the mountain? “Because it's there,” he said.

To the rural African mind, this is an explanation of why one would not climb the mountain. It's... well, there. Just there. Why interfere? Nothing to be done about it, or with it. Hillary's further explanation - that nobody else had climbed it - would stand as a second reason for passivity.

Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.

Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.

And I'm afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.

Back in 1921, a missionary couple named David and Svea Flood went with their two-year-old son from Sweden to the heart of Africa-to what was then called the Belgian Congo.

They met up with another young Scandinavian couple, the Ericksons, and the four of them sought God for direction. In those days of much tenderness and devotion and sacrifice, they felt led of the Lord to set out from the main mission station and take the gospel to a remote area.

This was a huge step of faith. At the village of N'dolera they were rebuffed by the chief, who would not let them enter his town for fear of alienating the local gods. The two couples opted to go half a mile up the slope and build their own mud huts.

They prayed for a spiritual breakthrough, but there was none. The only contact with the villagers was a young boy, who was allowed to sell them chickens and eggs twice a week. Svea Flood, a tiny woman only four feet, eight inches tall, decided that if this was the only African she could talk to, she would try to lead the boy to Jesus. And in fact, she succeeded. But there were no other encouragements.

Meanwhile, malaria continued to strike one member of the little band after another. In time the Ericksons decided they had had enough suffering and left to return to the central mission station. David and Svea Flood remained near N'dolera to go on alone. Then, of all things, Svea found herself pregnant in the middle of the primitive wilderness. When the time came for her to give birth, the village chief softened enough to allow a midwife to help her. A little girl was born, whom they named Aina. The delivery, however, was exhausting, and Svea Flood was already weak from bouts of malaria. The birth process was a heavy blow to her stamina. She lasted only another seventeen days.

Inside David Flood, something snapped in that moment. He dug a crude grave, buried his twenty-seven-year-old wife, and then took his children back down the mountain to the mission station.

Giving his newborn daughter to the Ericksons, he snarled, "I'm going back to Sweden. I've lost my wife, and I obviously can't take care of this baby. God has ruined my life." With that, he headed for the port, rejecting not only his calling, but God himself.

Within eight months both the Ericksons were stricken with a mysterious malady and died within days of each other. The baby was then turned over to some American missionaries, who adjusted her Swedish name to "Aggie" and eventually brought her back to the United States at age three.

This family loved the little girl and were afraid that if they tried to return to Africa, some legal obstacle might separate her from them. So they decided to stay in their home country and switch from missionary work to pastoral ministry. And that is how Aggie grew up in South Dakota. As a young woman, she attended North Central Bible College in Minneapolis. There she met and married a young man named Dewey Hurst.

Years passed. The Hursts enjoyed a fruitful Ministry. Aggie gave birth first to a daughter, then a son. In time her husband became president of a Christian college in the Seattle area, and Aggie was intrigued to find so much Scandinavian heritage there. One day a Swedish religious magazine appeared in her mailbox. She had no idea who had sent it, and of course she couldn't read the words. But as she turned the pages, all of a sudden a photo stopped her cold.

There in a primitive setting was a grave with a white cross-and on the cross were the words SVEA FLOOD. Aggie jumped in her car and went straight for a college faculty member who, she knew, could translate the article. "What does this say?" she demanded. The instructor summarized the story: It was about missionaries who had come to N'dolera long ago ... the birth of a white baby ... the death of the young mother ... the one little African boy who had been led to Christ ... and how, after the whites had all left, the boy had grown up and finally persuaded the chief to let him build a school in the village. The article said that gradually he won all his students to Christ... the children led their parents to Christ... even the chief had become a Christian. Today there were six hundred Christian believers in that one village.... All because of the sacrifice of David and Svea Flood.

For the Hursts' twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, the college presented them with the gift of a vacation to Sweden. There Aggie sought to find her real father. An old man now, David Flood had remarried, fathered four more children, and generally dissipated his life with alcohol.

He had recently suffered a stroke. Still bitter, he had one rule in his family: "Never mention the name of God-because God took everything from me. After an emotional reunion with her half brothers and half sister, Aggie brought up the subject of seeing her father. The others hesitated. "You can talk to him," they replied, "even though he's very ill now. But you need to know that whenever he hears the name of God, he flies into a rage.

Aggie was not to be deterred. She walked into the squalid apartment, with liquor bottles everywhere, and approached the seventy-three-year-old man lying in a rumpled bed. "Papa" she said tentatively. He turned and began to cry. "Aina," he said. "I never meant to give you away." "It's all right, Papa," she replied, taking him gently in her arms. "God took care of me. The man instantly stiffened. The tears stopped. "God forgot all of us. Our lives have been like this because of him." He turned his face back to the wall.

Aggie stroked his face and then continued, undaunted. "Papa, I've got a little story to tell you, and it's a true one. You didn't go to Africa in vain. Mama didn't die in vain. The little boy you won to the Lord grew up to win that whole village to Jesus Christ. The one seed you planted just kept growing and growing. Today there are six hundred African people serving the Lord because you were faithful to the call of God in your life. ... "Papa, Jesus loves you. He has never hated you. The old man turned back to look into his daughter's eyes. His body relaxed. He began to talk. And by the end of the afternoon, he had come back to the God he had resented for so many decades. Over the next few days, father and daughter enjoyed warm moments together. Aggie and her husband soon had to return to America, and within a few weeks, David Flood had gone into eternity.

A few years later, the Hursts were attending a high-level evangelism conference in London, England, when a report was given from the nation of Zaire (the former Belgian Congo). The superintendent of the national church, representing some 110,000 baptized believers, spoke eloquently of the gospel's spread in his nation. Aggie could not help going to ask him afterward if he had ever heard of David and Svea Flood. "Yes, madam," the man replied in French, his words then being translated into English. "It was Svea Flood who led me to Jesus Christ. I was the boy who brought food to your parents before you were born. In fact, to this day your mother's grave and her memory are honored by all of us." He embraced her in a long, sobbing hug. Then he continued, "You must come to Africa to see, because your mother is the most famous person in our history."

In time that is exactly what Aggie Hurst and her husband did. They were welcomed by cheering throngs of villagers. She even met the man who had been hired by her father many years before to carry her back down the mountain in a hammock-cradle. The most dramatic moment, of course, was when the pastor escorted Aggie to see her mother's white cross for herself. She knelt in the soil to pray and give thanks. Later that day, in the church, the pastor read from John 12:24: "I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds." He then followed with Psalm 126:5: "Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy."

Inside each of us there is the desire to be a better person. Many of us would love to be more like Dr. Elizabeth Holland, a pediatrician from Memphis, Tennessee, who has served as a volunteer doctor for World Vision.

Once she treated patients in the middle of an African civil war, explains writer Robert Kerr. In 1985 she performed one appendectomy in which the “operating room” was a mud hut deep in the jungle of Zaire. The anesthetic was an animal tranquilizer, which ran out in the middle of the operation. Outside, MiG jets were dropping bombs. Every time a bomb hit, dirt from the mud hut fell down on them. She performed a virtual miracle considering the circumstances, and her patient lived.

During the Angolan civil war, Holland routinely saw 400 to 500 patients a day. “I frequently wrapped broken bones in magazines and used banana leafs for slings,” she said. Since food was in short supply, Holland ate a paste made from ground cassava-plant roots. “It tasted like glue,” said Dr. Holland. “The first few days, I thought I would die. But then I got to where it tasted pretty good. Sometimes when it rained we could get a few leaves from the trees to cook it in for variety.”

Across the Angolan border was a minefield that often killed or injured civilians; Holland would retrieve them. She said, “I learned if I got my nose down at ground level and crawled along on my stomach, I could see the mines. So I would make my way across, then throw the injured person over my shoulder and carry them out the same way I had come over.”

Maybe we will never be forced to persevere as Elizabeth Holland has, but each of us can grow in character.

I want to share a story that will communicate what God is doing here on the mission field in Uganda.

It was 10:00 p.m. a few nights ago, when Rev. William came to my door and told me of a young woman just a few blocks away that had given birth to twin babies. The babies had died earlier that morning at the hospital following delivery. Rev. William and his wife were going to go pray with her and he would return and let me know if there was anything that I could do for her in the way of medical care.

He and his wife had been gone approximately 45 minutes when they returned to tell me what had taken place. Rev. William was praising God and thanking Him that this young mother had prayed to receive Christ while he was there at the house praying for her and her family. This young mother was at home with the dead babies because she had no money to give the hospital to prepare the babies for burial or money to be able to spend the night at the hospital. She was taken to the hospital because she was having difficulty with her labor and delivery.

When I asked him where the babies were, he told me that they were wrapped up and laid in a corner of the house and he was not sure what they were going to do with the babies. Rev. William felt that the mother needed to be seen by a nurse to be sure that she was all right. I told him I would be happy to see her and I would like to take her some antibiotics in case of infection and Tylenol for pain or fever. I knew the conditions at the hospital and concerned that she may need some medical treatment.

I grabbed a flashlight and the medication and started out walking down the dark road with the Rev. to the young mother’s home. The path to her house was a narrow dirt path. The night was so still, the smell in the air was that of burning garbage, and the air felt heavy. We walked along without saying a word as I followed close behind Brother William knowing that he knew the path and I would be safe if I followed in his steps. I thought how it related to our walk with God. We would do well to follow close behind Him because he would keep up from danger and harm.

As we approached the door of the house where the mother was living I saw a big pot of porridge cooking over an open fire and a young girl stirring it as it cooked. I entered the small, one room house made of mud and bricks. There was a small candle sitting the floor next to the mattress where the young mother was laying down. Standing against the wall were two young women and two small toddlers laying on the mattress with the mother asleep. One of the visitors that had been sitting on the foot of the mattress stood and asked me if I would sit. I humbly thanked him and took his seat on the mattress. I spoke to the young woman as she sat up to greet me. I placed my hand on her leg and told how sorry I was for her loss.

I knew the babies were wrapped in cloth, and were laying in one of the corners of the small dimly lit room. I did not dare even look, knowing that I would not be able to stand it and would break down and not be of any help or encouragement to the young mother so I kept my eyes fixed on her and the small children sleeping beside her.

I asked her if she was feeling all right and she nodded yes. I told her that I had brought some Tylenol for any pain or fever that she may be having. She thanked me and asked her friends for some water so that she could take the medicine after some convincing from her friends.

I was told that the father had left several days ago to find work and had not returned and they had no idea how to get hold of him to tell him of the death of his babies. I felt my heart drop as I seen the despair on her face not knowing where her husband was and not having any money to bury the babies or buy caskets or even one casket to place them in. I felt that God would have to me to help her with the funds needed to bury her children so I gave her all the money that I had which was 75,000 Uganda shillings which is equal to about $50.00 in American currency. It was going to be enough to buy a plot of ground for a grave, purchase a casket for the babies, and pay for transport to the gravesite in the village where she was born and raised. It was also going to be enough for her to buy some food for her and the children to eat. I knew as a brand new Christian she was overwhelmed at how God had provided for her needs. She lay on her bed weeping and thanking me for the assistance that I had given her. I told her it was from Jesus and was done in his name.

I had offered to have my driver take her to the gravesite the next morning but she said it was too far and she would not want him to have to go that far and refused to allow me to send him for her. I was told that she put the dead babies in a sack and went by taxi to the gravesite. I could not imagine such a thing as traveling in a taxi with my dead babies. I was saddened by the thought but it was what she chose to do. Those situations are far too commonplace here in this impoverished country. God’s ways are not our ways I keep reminding myself of that. I praised Him that even though her babies had died it was that situation that led her to salvation.

God is in control and I find peace in that.

Serving Jesus in Uganda, Janet Morrison

*

Mike McAfee weaves the truck through traffic until it finally rolls to a standstill. It looks like bedlam, but it’s just a typical morning in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

The roads are wet from recent rains with standing water in many places. Along the roadside are street sellers hawking goods from tables piled high with mangoes, avocados, bananas and small pineapples. Other vendors wave goods outside the truck windows. At a newsstand, several men read the headlines of newspapers tacked up on a wooden board.

McAfee eases through impossibly narrow spaces between vehicles and finally turns onto a less congested street. After a few more lane changes and turns, he pulls into Koumassi, an area east of where he and his family live. The Southern Baptist missionary comes to this industrial area at least once a week to visit with Seidou (SAY-doo), a Muslim man who moved to Abidjan from Burkina Faso in 2001. McAfee parks the truck and steps through an entrance leading to a long, narrow way -- almost like an alley but called a foyer. Doors on each side lead into rooms where families live.

Seidou is Bissa, an ethnic group that can be found in northeast Ghana, where he was born, and Burkina Faso, where he grew up. He, like many other West Africans, came to Abidjan for work and has been employed as a security guard, but jobs are difficult to find, he said. As he and McAfee start to visit, speaking in French, Seidou talks about work. He hasn’t been paid in two months, he said.

He and McAfee sit in a small entry room. Three doors open out from this room: one for Seidou’s family’s living quarters, another for his brother Issaka’s family and the third for Issaka’s second wife. As the men visit, five or six children, curious about the foreign visitors, wander in and out of the room. It’s summer and school is on break. McAfee’s daughter, Karis, joined him on this visit, hoping to play with Seidou’s niece Sadia. But Karis discovers that Sadia is now in training in a tailor’s shop so she’s at work today. Sadia won’t be returning to school when her brothers start back in the fall. She started working in the tailor’s shop -- leaving her school education behind -- when she was 11 years old.

It’s all about trying to make a living to support the extended family. When wages don’t come, it impacts the entire family -- not just wife and children but sometimes adult brothers and sisters, cousins, aging parents and others.

Learning the stories

On this visit, Seidou brings out a DVD he recently purchased on the street: “Les Dix Commandements,” a French version of the 1956 Cecil B. DeMille epic film starring Charlton Heston as Moses. Seidou knows McAfee will be interested because usually it’s McAfee who shares Bible stories with him.

Seidou speaks fluent French, but McAfee was able to find “The Jesus Film” in Bissa, his heart language, and show it to him on another visit. Today McAfee uses the film on the television as a jumping off point to discuss biblical truths. He also has worked through the Bible with Seidou, sharing many key stories.

“The way we do evangelism in Africa is we tell stories,” McAfee said. “The Bible is one big story and so we break that down. We tell what we call a ‘resume’ of the Bible called Creation to Christ or Creation to Return. That is our evangelism strategy as we go into these communities that don’t have ... a Christian presence.”

When McAfee tells a story, he asks the listener three key questions afterward:

• What lesson have you learned from this story?

• What are the characteristics of God?

• Is there something that you need to obey?

These questions help McAfee discover what the listener has heard and give him opportunities to reinforce biblical truths.

Storying is a powerful tool in Africa, McAfee says. “In the States, you tell someone, ‘I want to tell you a story,’ and nobody wants to hear. Here you say that and everyone gathers around,” he noted.

McAfee said Seidou knows the stories and has heard clear gospel presentations. It just comes down to a decision. On this day as they talk, Seidou repeats what he has told McAfee in the past.

“Seidou says he’s conflicted because the Koran says that God doesn’t have a child and the Bible says that Jesus is God’s Son,” McAfee said. “He says, ‘I’m watching all these things to try to figure it out.’

“I [told him] it’s a very important decision because if what Jesus says is true, then the only way to have eternal life is through Him.”

Along with the French version of “The Ten Commandments,” the pirated DVD Seidou purchased includes two other films: “In the Beginning,” a 2000 American made-for-television film telling stories from the books of Genesis and Exodus, and “The Message,” a 1977 film made by a Syrian-American director that tells the story of Islam’s origins.

Praying In Jesus’ Name

Seidou has not only heard and discussed New Testament Bible stories but also seen Jesus’ healing power in his home, McAfee said. One day, Issaka was there as McAfee was sharing with Seidou. Issaka told McAfee that he hadn’t been able to work much for the past 12 years because of back problems. McAfee agreed to pray for healing for Issaka’s back, if he could pray in Jesus’ name.

Since Issaka’s back had hurt for 12 years, McAfee started by telling him the story of the woman who bled for 12 years and visited doctors and mystics but found no one who could heal her until she touched Jesus. “I told him that story, and I told him that what Jesus said to her is very important,” McAfee said. “He said, ‘Your faith has healed you.’ And I said, ‘Issaka, it’s going to come down to your faith and who Jesus Christ is.’

“And so Issaka agreed to allow me to pray for him in Jesus’ name. We prayed, and he didn’t get healed immediately.”

But when McAfee came back the next week, Issaka saw him from a distance. “He came running and he said, ‘Pastor, Pastor, you’ve got to pray for me again.’” McAfee asked him why and Issaka told him that he was “half healed.”

“So I said, ‘Well let’s go in the house and we’ll talk about it,’” McAfee recalled. “So we go in the house and we start talking about having faith in Jesus Christ ... and I prayed for him again that he would have faith in Christ and that Christ would heal him. Well again, nothing immediately happened. I went home that day, and I came back the next week. Issaka came running and he said, ‘Pastor! Pastor! Thank you! Thank you! I’m healed!’ and I looked at him and I said, ‘Issaka, you’ve got to remember what I told you two weeks ago that if you were healed that you have to give the glory to Jesus Christ because it would be Jesus Christ that healed you.’ He said, ‘I’ll give the glory to Christ, I’ll give the glory to Christ. I’ll tell everybody it was Jesus that healed me.’

“I would love to tell everybody that Issaka accepted Christ and that Seidou accepted Christ and that the family which was a Muslim family has now all accepted Christ and they’re all going to church, but that’s just not the case,” McAfee said.

“In Africa, it’s so hard for a Muslim to accept Christ. He has to count the cost,” he said. “If Seidou accepts Christ, if Issaka accepts Christ, what is the cost? They might lose their jobs; they might lose their means of support. So he has to count the cost. I know that Seidou is probably counting the cost, and what he decides to do will be after he decides [whether] it’s worth it to follow Christ.”

Revenge fantasies were darkening my heart before I trusted in Jesus.

________

We had heard the distant gunshots for a few weeks. But that morning they were close and seemed to ring out with purpose. I looked to my older brother and the other adults for reassurance. Their eyes were full of anguish and frustration. All we could do was wait.

The “freedom fighters” arrived. By mid-morning we were all lying face down in the house, listening as bullets whizzed through the air. Between bursts of gunfire, our typically bustling neighborhood was eerily silent. In the lull we could hear voices shouting instructions. If they found out my name, they would kill me.

Fantasies of Food

I was born in Liberia, West Africa, where my father served in the Special Security Service of President Samuel Doe (no relation), who had come to power through a violent military coup ten years earlier. His regime suppressed political opposition and rigged elections to stay in power. The “freedom fighters” had come to remove him, starting a war and killing anyone who worked in Doe’s government and anyone from his tribe. This was the situation in Liberia in August 1990. While the world was focused on Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, millions of Liberians were in the middle of a bloodbath.

I was 11. A year earlier I had lost my mother to illness. Now my father’s life was in danger. A few weeks before the rebel soldiers arrived, he had instructed me to go live with my brother, Roosevelt, and his wife. Bewildered and filled with questions, I packed a small bag with a few sets of clothes.

We lived behind rebel lines for three months, the hardest season of my life. The rebels were ruthless, murdering innocent people on the barest of suspicions.

While we hid, we ate one small meal a day, mostly rice and greens. Meat and clean water were scarce. Hope was scarcer. As children, we prefaced every statement about the future with, “If I live through the war, I will . . .” We lived on fantasies of food. We hadn’t been to school in six months.

By November 1990, President Doe had been killed, and peacekeepers were arriving from neighboring countries. The damage seemed beyond repair, and my innocence was irretrievable.

Roosevelt and I left Liberia on a refugee ship bound for neighboring Ghana in early November. Life was just returning to normal when I received word that my father had been killed. He had turned himself in to rebel forces on the promise of freedom for answering questions, and was never seen again.

I was an orphan. Whenever I was by myself, I cried. The war left my heart reeling.

Fantasies of Vengeance

Like many Liberians, Roosevelt and his wife were Christians. We went to church, but I had trouble believing in prayer. I had prayed that my mother wouldn’t die, and she did. I had prayed that my father wouldn’t die, and he did. Now I was scared to pray that my brothers and sister wouldn’t die.

And so my life’s goal changed. I wanted to find the soldier or soldiers who made me an orphan and make them pay. Wartime fantasies of food were replaced by fantasies of vengeance.

Soon, my brother and his wife applied to go to America as refugees, and in 1993 we arrived in Boston. I was both excited and scared. How would I be treated? Would I adjust to the schools, the crime, the cold weather? I had never felt temperatures below 75 degrees.

I started school a few weeks later, a refugee living in my third country. But my time there was marred by chaos, poor grades, and disappointment. I couldn’t focus in classes. In quiet times, during quizzes and tests, and whenever I was alone, my thoughts returned to war.

I daydreamed of revenge. I cried myself to sleep most nights. I was existing but not living.

After barely graduating high school, I enlisted in the U.S. Army with hopes of learning to use a deadly weapon. But about halfway through basic training, I was medically discharged due to a mild heart condition. I came home utterly embarrassed. What had my life become?

Still overcome by grief, I had lost hope for a brighter future. With no connection to God and no real walk with Christ, I had no source of comfort and no sense of purpose.

To make matters worse, Roosevelt — the only family member I knew to be alive — had a sudden heart attack at age 38. He slipped into a coma and was rushed to the hospital.

Alone in our home, I sat paralyzed in the basement, where I slept. Someone else close to me was going to die. I had nowhere to run. For hours I wept in complete darkness.

In that darkness, I turned to God. At first, all I had was one question: “Why?” I listed all the things that I blamed him for: Ma, Pa, the war, separation from family, their suffering, my disappointments — and now my brother, my beloved brother. I blamed God. Why?

I also blamed myself. Guilt overwhelmed me. I had chosen to hold on to the pain of my past and to nurse my desire for vengeance. I realized, in that darkness, that I could keep those fantasies alive, or I could relinquish them once and for all. I begged God to forgive me. I would let go of revenge and rage. I asked God, from the sincerest and deepest part of my heart, to save my brother.

Practicing Forgiveness

Four days later, I got news that Roosevelt would recover. That answered prayer was the first step in my journey to faith.

Still, it took years to trust God completely. As I grew in my faith, my mind — once a desert swept by anger and despair — became fertile ground. Flowers of faith and hope bloomed, though they were sometimes choked by the vicious thorns and weeds of hatred. For years I had comforted myself with the fantasy of killing the man who had killed my father. The roots of that destructive pattern went deep.

It wasn’t until 2008 that I began truly walking the road of forgiveness. I decided that I wanted to take the chance and find my father’s killer. At first I wasn’t sure what I would say. I sat across from an empty chair in my dining room and practiced saying, “I forgive you.” Sometimes, my monologue would get so intense that I would stand up and scream or break down and cry. I questioned my path. Did I really want to meet him this way?

Besides, the chances of finding him were slim to none. He wouldn’t want to be found. But the longer I practiced, the more resolved I became. I decided to travel halfway around the world to offer this man what Jesus offered me.

In 2010, at age 31, almost 20 years after I had left, I made my way back to Liberia. But I did not meet my father’s killer. He had died in the fighting.

Even so, I forgave him.

In that trip, God answered prayers, though not in the way I expected. Even without the fulfillment of my own plans, I could live in peace. I could forgive.

Today, I hope to share this hard-won peace and hope with fellow Liberians, so many of whom suffered greatly during our country’s brutal civil wars. My wife and I plan to run a self-sustaining farm that will support a library and community center. But more important, we’ll strive to bring gospel healing, a way to escape the darkness of Liberia’s violent past — a darkness I know all too well. Because wherever Jesus’ words of forgiveness are spoken, the future is bright with hope.

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Marcus Doe is the author of Catching Ricebirds: A Story of Letting Vengeance Go (Hendrickson Publishers).

You have probably heard of David Livingstone, the great Scottish missionary to Africa. Unfortunately, the secular media and historians have focused on Livingstone as an explorer, rather than what he really was, a missionary with God's heart for the lost.

Sixteen years after his first journey into dark Africa, Livingstone returned to Scotland for a time of rest and speaking engagements. He was asked to speak to the students at the University of Glasgow. If he knew what awaited him he might have declined the invitation.

It was the custom of the undergraduates in those days to heckle speakers that came, and they were well-prepared for this preacher. They had peashooters, toy trumpets, rattles, and noise makers of every description. Livingstone walked out onto the platform with the tread of a man who has walked eleven thousand miles. His left arm hung limply at his side, having been almost ripped from his body by a huge lion. His face was a dark leathery brown from sixteen years in the African sun. It was furrowed with innumerable lines from the bouts of African fever which had racked and emaciated his body; he had been attacked by savages and by the Turks who plied their vicious slave trade. He was half-deaf from rheumatic fever and half-blind from a branch that had slapped him in the eyes in the jungle.

The students stared, and they knew that here was a life that was literally burned out for God. Not a rattle moved, not a foot shuffled. A hush crept over that vast auditorium and they listened in rapt silence as David Livingstone told about his journeys and about the tremendous needs of this vast African population. "Shall I tell you," he asked, "what sustained me in the midst of these toils, hardships, and incredible loneliness? It was a promise, the promise of a gentleman of the most sacred honor; it was this promise, 'Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world'."

Born in Blantyre, Scotland, in 1813, Livingstone had dedicated himself to Christ at an early age. A great missionary to Africa, Robert Moffat, came to Livingstone's town and spoke. He said... "Often, as I have looked to the vast plains of the north, I have sometimes in the morning sun seen the smoke of a thousand villages where no missionary has ever been." Livingstone soon set sail for Africa. He plunged into the jungle from the south and found it impenetrable. After numerous hardships, he finally opened up a way into the interior. A huge lion almost ripped his arm from his body and left him permanently crippled, but also brought a blessing is disguise, for while he was recuperating, Robert Moffat came and brought his beautiful daughter, Mary. For David it was love at first sight. Soon they were married and she shared his zeal and concern for the evangelization of the Dark Continent of Africa. Unfortunately, the months of hardship and toil were too much for Mary. They had watched one of their children die as they had attempted to cross one of the vast deserts of Africa - a burden that had almost crushed Livingstone. Finally, there came the most difficult decision of his life - to send his wife and three remaining children back to England.

How difficult was the burden he was to bear. Perhaps the most cutting of all was the criticism that he had left his wife and children to go rambling about Africa because he really did not love them. His letters tell a far different story: "My dearest Mary, I see no face now to be compared to that sun-burnt one which has so often greeted me with its kind looks.... Gather the children around you and kiss them for me. And tell them that I love them and that I have left them for the love of Jesus, and they must love Him too...."

For five long agonizing years he never saw his wife or his children. Then the time came when, finally, he was going home - home at last! With great expectation and joy he burst into his old home in Blantyre to find it empty. They had just buried his father! And this man who had faced the spears of hostile savages and the roaring of wild beasts without so much as blinking, fell down and wept like a child.

After months of sweet fellowship with his family, his dreams were again haunted by the vision of a thousand villages in the morning sun. So with great agony of heart, he set sail for Africa again. The years passed and, when the children were old enough, Mary wrote that she would be able to come and be with him. For months she sailed upon the ocean and up steaming African rivers, finally to be greeted by her husband, only to be smitten by a grievous African fever. Night after night, day after day, he sat up with his beloved wife and wiped her fevered brow. Slowly she worsened and she breathed her last. Mary was dead. David Livingstone buried her under a huge boabab tree and fell on that mound of dirt, and again he wept. His body was broken? His loved ones were gone; he seemed alone, discouraged. Was he overcome? Listen to the words he wrote in his diary: "My Jesus, my King, my life, my all, I again consecrate my life to Thee! I shall place no value on anything I possess or anything I may do, except in relation to the Kingdom of Christ."

When he arrived at Ujiji, natives stole his food, and worst of all, they stole his medicine chest with the quinine and other medicines to heal those terrible fevers. For Livingstone it was a sentence of death, and he cried out, "O God, you promised to be with me." For five years he had not seen the face of a white man, and now, in the midst of the interior of Africa, he looked up from that prayer and saw a white face walking towards him. It was Henry M. Stanley, who uttered those unforgettable words, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume." Stanley had searched until he found him, brought medicine and wholesome food, and nursed him back to health. For four months Henry Stanley lived in the same hut with Livingstone. Stanley described himself in this way: "I was the biggest swaggering atheist that could be found in all of the world." But Stanley could find no fault in Livingstone's life. His compassion, his earnestness, the quietness with which he went about his work, the sympathy he showed to all about him quickened the sympathy in Stanley's own heart and he said, "Finally, after all these months, Livingstone converted even me to Christ."

Livingstone, however, would not return to civilization, but plunged deeper into Africa; and for him the end was approaching. His diary says, "Lord, help me to finish Thy work this year to Thine honor." And so he did. He came to the place where his strength was completely spent; his feet were lacerated with boils, all his teeth loosened and fell out. He could neither walk not stand; he could not go another step. Livingstone commanded his friends to put him on a stretcher and carry him onward. Deeper and deeper into Africa he plunged on a stretcher. Propped up, he proclaimed the riches of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to all with whom he came into contact. Finally, during a night of prayer, Livingstone passed from this life into the presence of Jesus Christ. Livingstone died on his knees.

He lived his life and he left his life in the presence of Him who said, "Lo, I am with you always." Thirty-nine years he trudged twenty-nine thousand miles upon the face of the continent of Africa. Light shined in the darkness. Two million Africans were brought the Gospel, and the Light continues to shine today.

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Adapted from a pamphlet by Dr. James Kennedy, "The Secret of Commitment"