About the Book
"Amazing Grace" by Watchman Nee is a Christian book that delves into the concept of God's grace and its transformative power in the lives of believers. Nee explores the depths of God's grace and how it can lead individuals to a life of freedom, forgiveness, and spiritual growth. Through powerful examples and personal insights, Nee encourages readers to embrace God's grace and live more fully in His love and mercy.
David Livingstone
"[I am] serving Christ when shooting a buffalo for my men or taking an observation, [even if some] will consider it not sufficiently or even at all missionary."
With four theatrical words, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"âwords journalist Henry Morton Stanley rehearsed in advanceâDavid Livingstone became immortal. Stanley stayed with Livingstone for five months and then went off to England to write his bestseller, How I Found Livingstone. Livingstone, in the meantime, got lost againâin a swamp literally up to his neck. Within a year and a half, he died in a mud hut, kneeling beside his cot in prayer.
Berlin Congress spurs African independent churches
The whole civilized world wept. They gave him a 21-gun salute and a hero's funeral among the saints in Westminster Abbey. "Brought by faithful hands over land and sea," his tombstone reads, "David Livingstone: missionary, traveler, philanthropist. For 30 years his life was spent in an unwearied effort to evangelize the native races, to explore the undiscovered secrets, and to abolish the slave trade." He was Mother Teresa, Neil Armstrong, and Abraham Lincoln rolled into one.
Highway man
At age 25, after a childhood spent working 14 hours a day in a cotton mill, followed by learning in class and on his own, Livingstone was captivated by an appeal for medical missionaries to China. As he trained, however, the door to China was slammed shut by the Opium War. Within six months, he met Robert Moffat, a veteran missionary of southern Africa, who enchanted him with tales of his remote station, glowing in the morning sun with "the smoke of a thousand villages where no missionary had been before."
For ten years, Livingstone tried to be a conventional missionary in southern Africa. He opened a string of stations in "the regions beyond," where he settled down to station life, teaching school and superintending the garden. After four years of bachelor life, he married his "boss's" daughter, Mary Moffat.
From the beginning, Livingstone showed signs of restlessness. After his only convert decided to return to polygamy, Livingstone felt more called than ever to explore. During his first term in South Africa, Livingstone made some of the most prodigiousâand most dangerousâexplorations of the nineteenth century. His object was to open a "Missionary Road"â"God's Highway," he also called itâ1,500 miles north into the interior to bring "Christianity and civilization" to unreached peoples.
Explorer for Christ
On these early journeys, Livingstone's interpersonal quirks were already apparent. He had the singular inability to get along with other Westerners. He fought with missionaries, fellow explorers, assistants, and (later) his brother Charles. He held grudges for years. He had the temperament of a book-reading loner, emotionally inarticulate except when he exploded with Scottish rage. He held little patience for the attitudes of missionaries with "miserably contracted minds" who had absorbed "the colonial mentality" regarding the natives. When Livingstone spoke out against racial intolerance, white Afrikaners tried to drive him out, burning his station and stealing his animals.
He also had problems with the London Missionary Society, who felt that his explorations were distracting him from his missionary work. Throughout his life, however, Livingstone always thought of himself as primarily a missionary, "not a dumpy sort of person with a Bible under his arms, [but someone] serving Christ when shooting a buffalo for my men or taking an observation, [even if some] will consider it not sufficiently or even at all missionary."
Though alienated from the whites, the natives loved his common touch, his rough paternalism, and his curiosity. They also thought he might protect them or supply them with guns. More than most Europeans, Livingstone talked to them with respect, Scottish laird to African chief. Some explorers took as many as 150 porters when they traveled; Livingstone traveled with 30 or fewer.
On an epic, three-year trip from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean (reputedly the first by a European) Livingstone was introduced to the 1,700-mile-long Zambezi. The river was also home to Victoria Falls, Livingstone's most awe-inspiring discovery. The scene was "so lovely," he later wrote, that it "must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight."
Despite its beauty, the Zambezi was a river of human misery. It linked the Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique, the main suppliers of slaves for Brazil, who in turn sold to Cuba and the United States. Though Livingstone was partially driven by a desire to create a British colony, his primary ambition was to expose the slave trade and cut it off at the source. The strongest weapon in this task, he believed, was Christian commercial civilization. He hoped to replace the "inefficient" slave economy with a capitalist economy: buying and selling goods instead of people.
The ill-fated Zambezi expedition
After a brief heroic return to England, Livingstone returned to Africa, this time to navigate 1,000 miles up the Zambezi in a brass-and-mahogany steamboat to establish a mission near Victoria Falls. The boat was state-of-the-art technology but proved too frail for the expedition. It leaked horribly after repeatedly running aground on sandbars.
Livingstone pushed his men beyond human endurance. When they reached a 30-foot waterfall, he waved his hand, as if to wish it away, and said, "That's not supposed to be there." His wife, who had just given birth to her sixth child, died in 1862 beside the river, only one of several lives claimed on the voyage. Two years later, the British government, which had no interest in "forcing steamers up cataracts," recalled Livingstone and his mission party.
A year later, he was on his way back to Africa again, this time leading an expedition sponsored by the Royal Geographical Society and wealthy friends. "I would not consent to go simply as a geographer," he emphasized, but as biographer Tim Jeal wrote, "It would be hard to judge whether the search for the Nile's source or his desire to expose the slave trade was his dominant motive." The source of the Nile was the great geographical puzzle of the day. But more important to Livingstone was the possibility of proving that the Bible was true by tracing the African roots of Judaism and Christianity.
For two years he simply disappeared, without a letter or scrap of information. He reported later that he had been so ill he could not even lift a pen, but he was able to read the Bible straight through four times. Livingstone's disappearance fascinated the public as much as Amelia Earhart's a few generations later.
When American journalist Henry Stanley found Livingstone, the news exploded in England and America. Papers carried special editions devoted to the famous meeting. In August 1872, in precarious health, Livingstone shook Stanley's hand and set out on his final journey.
When Livingstone had arrived in Africa in 1841, it was as exotic as outer space, called the "Dark Continent" and the "White Man's Graveyard." although the Portuguese, Dutch, and English were pushing into the interior, African maps had blank unexplored areasâno roads, no countries, no landmarks. Livingstone helped redraw the maps, exploring what are now a dozen countries, including South Africa, Rwanda, Angola, and the Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire). And he made the West aware of the continuing evil of African slavery, which led to its being eventually outlawed.
I Lay My Life in Your Hands
Down through church history, Christians have referred to the seven statements Jesus spoke from the cross as the âlast wordsâ of Christ. According to tradition, the very last of these last words, which Jesus cried out before giving himself over to death, were these: âFather, into your hands I commit my spiritâ (Luke 23:46). It was a powerful, heartbreaking, poetic moment. God prayed to his God by quoting God-breathed Scripture. The Word of God died with the word of God on his lips. And it was a word of poetry, the first half of Psalm 31:5. Most of those gathered on Golgotha that dark afternoon likely knew these words well. They were nearly a lullaby, a prayer Jewish parents taught their children to pray just before giving themselves over to sleep for the night. So, in Jesusâs cry, they likely heard a dying manâs last prayer of committal before his final âfalling asleep.â And, of course, it was that. But thatâs not all it was. And every Jewish religious leader present would have recognized this if he were paying attention. For these men would have known this psalm of David very well. All of it. They would have known this prayer was uttered by a persecuted king of the Jews, pleading with God for rescue from his enemies. They also would have known it as a declaration of faith-fueled confidence that God would, in fact, deliver him. For when Jesus had recited the first half of Psalm 31:5, they would have been able to finish the second half from memory: âYou have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God.â What Was Jesus Thinking? The most maddening thing for the Jewish rulers had always been trying to get inside Jesusâs head. What was he thinking? Who was he making himself out to be (John 8:53)? âThe Word of God died with the word of God on his lips.â Well, he had finally confirmed their suspicions at his trial: he believed himself to be Israelâs long-awaited Messiah (Matthew 26:63â64). It was true: he really did see himself as âthe son of Davidâ (Matthew 22:41â45). Now here he was, brutalized beyond recognition, quoting David with his last breath â a quote that, in context, seemed to make no sense in this moment: You are my rock and my fortress; and for your nameâs sake you lead me and guide me; you take me out of the net they have hidden for me, for you are my refuge. Into your hand I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God. (Psalm 31:3â5) What had Jesus been thinking? This should have been a moment of utter despair for him. David had prayed, âLet me never be put to shameâ (Psalm 31:1), but there Jesus was, covered in nothing but shame. David had prayed, âIn your righteousness deliver me!â (Psalm 31:1) But Jesus was dying a brutal death. In what possible way could he have believed at that moment that God was his refuge? David proved to be the Lordâs anointed because God had delivered him âout of the netâ of death. David committed his spirit into Godâs hand, and God had been faithful to him by redeeming him. But this so-called âson of Davidâ received no such deliverance, no such redemption. King Who Became a Reproach Yet, as they looked at that wasted body hanging on the cross, with a sign posted above it that read, âThis is Jesus, the King of the Jewsâ (Matthew 27:37), and pondered his final words, might some of them have perceived possible foreshadows of messianic suffering in this song of David? Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eye is wasted from grief; my soul and my body also. For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing; my strength fails because of my iniquity, and my bones waste away. Because of all my adversaries I have become a reproach, especially to my neighbors, and an object of dread to my acquaintances; those who see me in the street flee from me. (Psalm 31:9â11) This psalm recorded a moment when David, the most beloved king of the Jews in Israelâs history, had become a reproach. He had been accused, blamed, censured, charged. He had become an âobject of dreadâ to all who knew him; people had wanted nothing to do with him. He had âbeen forgotten like one who is deadâ; he had âbecome like a broken vesselâ (Psalm 31:12). Had this at all been in Jesusâs mind as he uttered his last prayer? David, of course, hadnât died. God delivered him and honored him. Surely he would do the same, and more, for the Messiah! After Death, Life Yet, there were those haunting words of the prophet Isaiah: âWe esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquitiesâ (Isaiah 53:4â5). Pierced. Crushed. Indeed, It was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. (Isaiah 53:10) It would have been unnerving to recall that Isaiahâs âsuffering servantâ is first âslaughteredâ like a sacrificial lamb (Isaiah 53:7) and then afterward âprolong[s] his days.â After death, life. Not only that, but God himself commends and promises to glorify him for his sacrifice: âBehold, my servant shall act wisely; he shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exaltedâ (Isaiah 52:13). Had Jesus really believed, even as his life drained away, that he was the King of the Jews bearing reproach, the Suffering Servant? Was this woven into the fabric of his final cry? âMy Times Are in Your Handâ This self-understanding would make sense of Jesusâs physically agonizing yet spiritually peaceful resignation to the will of God as he died. Even more, it also would fit with his previous foretelling of his death and resurrection â something these leaders were quite cognizant of at that moment (Matthew 27:62â64). All this again aligned with the childlike faith and hope David had expressed in Psalm 31: I trust in you, O Lord; I say, âYou are my God.â My times are in your hand; rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my persecutors! Make your face shine on your servant; save me in your steadfast love! Oh, how abundant is your goodness, which you have stored up for those who fear you and worked for those who take refuge in you, in the sight of the children of mankind! (Psalm 31:14â16, 19) If any of the Jewish leaders (and others) had been paying careful attention to where Jesusâs words were drawn from, they would have heard more than a desperate manâs prayer before falling into deathly sleep. They also would have heard a faithful manâs expression of trust that his God held all his times in his hands, including that most terrible of times, and that his God had stored up abundant goodness for him, despite how circumstances appeared in the moment. Let Your Heart Take Courage I can only speculate what may have passed through the minds of the Jewish leaders as they heard the very last of Jesusâs last words. But I have no doubt that the words, âFather, into your hands I commit my spirit,â were pregnant with meaning from the entire psalm when the Word cried them out. âGod can be acting most faithfully in the very moments when it appears heâs not being faithful at all.â Which makes Jesusâs quotation of half of Psalm 31:5 the most profound and powerful commentary on this psalm ever made. We now read it through the lens of the crucified and risen Christ. And one crucial dimension we must not miss is this: at that moment of his death, no one but Jesus perceived the faithfulness of God at work. He shows us that God can be acting most faithfully in the very moments when it appears heâs not being faithful at all. We all experience such moments when we must, like Jesus, sit in the first half of Psalm 31:5 (âInto your hand I commit my spiritâ). As we sit, we can lean into the faithfulness of God to keep his word, trusting that he who holds all our times will bring to pass the second half of the verse when the time is right (âYou have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful Godâ). We can also, with David, sing the psalm all the way to the end: Love the Lord, all you his saints! The Lord preserves the faithful but abundantly repays the one who acts in pride. Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord! (Psalm 31:23â24) Article by Jon Bloom
