August/September 2001

By Jean LeStourgeon

DAVID LIVINGSTONE
Africa's Trailblazer
By Janet and Geoff Benge

One of the questions asked during the Q&A time at last year's Ligonier conference on Missions was, "How does one grow to love God who is Spirit?" Aside from the expected answer, which was to immerse yourself in the word of God and prayer, John Piper went on to suggest that people read "great Christian biographies."

Well, the idea struck me then but it was not until I began preparing this edition of ChristianDisicpleship.com that I decided to follow through on his suggestion. Although this edition of David Livingstone's biography, published by YWAM, is geared toward younger audiences, I still enjoyed it and found the details of Livingstone's life challenging on several levels.

I was amazed at the incredible drive and fortitude that David Livingstone possessed even as a young child. He grew up in a one-room apartment in Blantyre, Scotland in a Christian family of seven. At the age of 10 years old he began working 14 hours a day in a cotton mill and then went to school from 8:00 to 10:00 each evening. In his early teens he won a Bible by memorizing and reciting all of Psalm 119. He was so determined to go to college that he saved a pittance out of the 1 pound per month that he earned at the cotton mill from which he helped to pay for rent, food, clothes and education for his younger siblings. When he was 23 years old, after three years of saving, he had finally saved enough money to go to medical school at Anderson College in Glasgow. In fact, Livingstone's first expedition, so to speak, his first trip outside of his home town, occurred when he and his father walked the 8 miles from Blantyre to Glasgow, carrying all of David's necessities for college life.

Livingstone's drive and perseverance propelled him to achieve his dream of becoming a missionary. Originally he felt the call to be a medical missionary to China. But once he went to London for further training with the London Missionary Society the door to China was closed and he felt God redirecting him to Africa.

I was also amazed by the difficult family decisions that Christians are sometimes faced with, especially when they feel the call of God on their lives to such difficult life work as being a medical missionary to peoples in uncharted territories of the world. It seems apparent that David Livingstone was fashioned by God to be an explorer and missionary in Africa. He had a passion and aptitude that suited him tremendously for the nature of this work in Africa. He was driven to bring the gospel to those tribes in the interior of Africa where no missionaries had gone before. He was never content to remain on the coastal areas where there were already many missionaries and life was more comfortable. He also had an aptitude for the many languages and dialects of the natives that he encountered along the way. He had a desire to see slave trading put to an end and believed that his work in opening up new trade routes across Africa would help accomplish that goal. David Livingstone and Africa seemed to go together like a bird in the bush. Yet there is no doubt that his family suffered many hardships and even death because of the work that he felt called to in Africa. Of course, we will never know the blessings they might have missed had he chosen to abandon the call for a more comfortable lifestyle for himself and his family.

A final area in which I was challenged by this biography was missionary relationships. The author of this biography noted some personal conflicts that arose between Livingstone and some other of the missionaries in Africa that he worked with. This was a reminder that the call to the mission field does not mean that the only hardships one will encounter will be with the conditions and with the unconverted, but in fact some of the most difficult trials missionaries face are amongst themselves. This somewhat dispels the myth that those who are called to the mission field have attained a higher than average level of sanctification and are even possibly approaching sainthood. They too are sinners saved by grace and are being used by God, in all their weakness, for His glory.

It was Livingstone's drive, perseverance, and passion for exploration and for spreading the gospel to unknown peoples that resulted in him becoming one of the world's most renowned explorers. He battled tremendous spiritual, financial, physical, and emotional hardship throughout his life but by all appearances he persevered in the faith to the end. Livingstone's life is a beautiful example of the perseverance of the saints that John Piper speaks of whereby God sustains His missionary saints through difficulties, trials, suffering and hardships so that they will continue to trust in and serve Him. God Himself causes us to keep believing in the gospel, in order that the gospel will continue to be preached (Romans 8:35-39, 2 Corinthians 4:7-12).

David Livingston died in Africa in 1873 at the age of 60 years old. His African friends knew that Livingstone was "a very, very, big man!" and so they prepared his body and carried it for 8 months across Africa to the British authorities who then transported it back to London where he was buried in Westminster Abbey. The inscription on his grave was taken from a letter he had written to a friend about his most passionate subject, the end of slave trading: "All I can say in my solitude is may heaven's rich blessings come down on everyone - American, English, Turk - who will help to heal this open sore of the world."

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