His Heart Stayed In Africa - The David Livingstone Story

In this episode of LEV 3:16: Stories of Courage. Legacies of Faith., discover the incredible true story of David Livingstone, the missionary explorer whose heart never left Africa. From his humble beginnings in Scotland to his groundbreaking journeys across the African continent, Livingstone dedicated his life to sharing the Gospel, fighting the slave trade, and bringing hope to people who had never heard the name of Jesus. Follow his remarkable adventures, including surviving a lion attack, discovering Victoria Falls, enduring years of hardship in the African wilderness, and the legendary meeting with Henry Stanley that gave the world the famous words, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” Learn why, when he died, his African companions buried his heart beneath an African tree before sending his body home to England. This inspiring Christian history story is a powerful example of faith in action, missionary courage, sacrificial service, and unwavering devotion to God's calling. If you enjoy missionary biographies, Christian heroes, church history, and stories of faith that changed the world, this episode is for you.

Transcript

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Hi and welcome to Leviticus 316. I'm your host Annette. Imagine disappearing in the heart of Africa. The world stops hearing from you. They don't get any letters, no phone calls, there's no nobody hears from you. Months go by and then years go by. Your family gets worried. Everybody thinks they died after years have gone by. And they say, Dr. Livingston, I presume? That's exactly what happened to David Livingston, and that's the story we're gonna talk about today. Okay, David Livingston's story begins in Blantyre, Scotland in March 19th, 1813. It was a small mill town. He lived in poverty. When he was only 10 years old, he started working 14-hour shifts in a m a cotton mill. And so he was working long, long hours working in a cotton mill. He didn't go to school. He had to teach himself. So when he got home from school, he would read. He would read everything he could get his hands on. One of his favorite things to read was science, but he also studied Latin. He taught himself Latin. He and he was uh most most kids that are 10 and 11 and 12 years old, they're interested in things like the way things work, uh, they're interested in worldly things, but he was interested in Jesus Christ. And one of his favorite things to read about was missionary biographies. He loved to learn about missionaries, and his hero missionary was a man named Robert Mofat. Robert Moffat was a missionary at that time in southern Africa, and so he wanted to read about everything he could find about Robert Mofat. One of the things Robert Mofat told about was that there were vast regions in Africa where nobody had heard the gospel of Jesus Christ at all. Large, large areas of land, large groups of people that had never heard about Jesus. And that stirred David Livingston's heart. One of the quotes of Robert Mofat is the smoke of a thousand villages where no missionary had ever been. And so that just made David Livingston know for sure that that was where God was calling him. So he trained two ways. He trained as a physician and as a minister because he believed that people needed both. They needed doctors to heal their bodies and they needed ministers to heal their souls. He arrived in Africa, Southern Africa, in 1841. He discovered that missionary work was far more difficult than he had ever imagined. The climate was very difficult, travel was very difficult, and there was disease even more than he had ever imagined. There were diseases that he didn't even know about. But even despite all of those things, he fell in love with Africa and not just the way that the animals were unique, not just the way the land was exotic, but he fell in love with the people of Africa. That changed his whole life. He learned the local languages. He didn't just learn one trade language, he learned their tribal languages. So he could speak their languages from tribe to tribe to tribe, which was unique. He listened to the stories that they told. He would sit and listen to them for hours, and he built relationships with the people. He believed every person was created in the image of God. No matter what your skin color, no matter where you came from, you were created in the image of God. And because of that, the East African slave trade, which was going on at that time, was just a horror to him. In 1845, he married Mary Moffat. Um Robert Moffat? Mary Moffat, I might have said her name wrong. She is the daughter of Robert Moffat. Robert was his hero and she was his daughter. They had a beautiful relationship. They were committed to missions, but it was also trying because they had long times where they were apart while he was journeying and exploring and doing his expeditions and where she didn't know where he was. One day he was helping protect a village from lions that had been attacking the village, the animals and the livestock and the people, and he was trying to help protect the people from these lions. Well, he was attacked by a very massive lion himself. He was attacked, and uh he when the lion was charging, he shot it, but it kept charging anyway. It attacked him to the ground and was mauling him. And other nationals, African nationals, locals, got got the lion off of him and killed the lion, but the lion was able to the lion crushed his shoulder and crushed his left arm, so much so that he was completely disabled in that arm the rest of his life. It never healed. His goal in life and in Africa as a missionary and an explorer was to tell people about Jesus. So he he did these expeditions, he made maps, he was a doctor, but his one goal was to tell people about Jesus, and that required him to go further and further inland, more than most missionaries had ever gone before. He began doing journey after journey into the uh inland of Africa. He went through deserts, he went through swamps, he faced wild animals, he just kept on going and he made maps. He mapped from the southern Africa from the west to the east and back again. Thousands, thousands of miles. He wanted to help end the devastating effects of the East African slave trade. I mentioned that. He just he felt it was destroying communities across the continent. He made discoveries that captured worldwide attention, and but his deepest desire was sharing Jesus and exposing the horrors of slavery. He believed that the gospel should travel inland and not stay around the outside edges of Africa, which is where it had been staying up till this point. So he just began unprecedented journeys. In 1852, he did the eight greatest expedition of the 19th century, and that was mapping across South Africa the thousands of miles. He is quoted as saying, I am immortal until my work is accomplished. Now that was not arrogance, that was him trusting God's purpose for his life. In 1855, he came upon these beautiful waterfalls. The waterfalls, the locals called it smoke that thunders. It was he named it Victoria Falls after Queen Victoria. It was millions, if you can imagine, millions of gallons of water plunging over the cliffs and clouds of mist rising in the air. It could be seen for miles. That's Victoria Falls. It's just breathtaking. The new discovery spread throughout Europe and it made him famous. Everybody wanted to know more about this David Livingston, who was exploring and doing expeditions in Africa and mapping it out. But fame was not his goal, it wasn't his destination. Africa was, and sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. In his travels, the slave trade is what just broke his heart. He would see chained men and women and children, villages destroyed, families ripped apart. He just felt like the humans were treated poorly, just inhumane. It was horrifying to him. He kept journals everywhere he went, and these journals that he kept were eyewitness accounts of how horrible the slave trade was. He believed that the gospel of Jesus Christ demanded that Christians take action against the slave trade. So he spoke publicly against it. His reports stirred international opposition to the East African slave trade. He was not simply exploring Africa, he was fighting for her people. Now he ventured deeper and deeper always into Africa. But then suddenly his letters stopped. People stopped hearing from him. Weeks went by, and then months went by, and then years went by, and nobody heard from David Livingston. They thought he had died. His family didn't know where he was, nobody knew where he was. He just simply vanished. Well, he was still there. He was continuing his work, he was exploring, he was documenting, he was sharing the gospel, he was trusting God. In 1871, a newspaper had a journalist named Henry Morton Stanley, and they decided to send Mr. Stanley to Africa to find David Livingston. If he was still alive, they decided to find him. Started on the east coast of Africa, between Kenya, Tanzania, that area, and started going inland looking for David Livingston. Well, it took him a long time walking with a group of people. Eventually he got to the village of Ujiji, and that's near Lake Tanganika. That's where he walked out of the wilderness, and there was an older man, European man, standing with a bunch of uh local African men and women, children, and they were all in this village together, and so the only European man for many, many thousand hundreds, hundreds, maybe a thousand miles, anyway, the only European man standing there, and so he says, Dr. Livingston, I presume it had to be famous line, and that's where it comes from. Dr. Livingston, David Livingston, even in his 60s, he didn't slow down. He kept pushing because he felt like more needed to be discovered, more needed to be documented, more people needed to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ further inland. He wanted to go deeper, he wanted to discover where the Nile River started, for one thing. So he kept pushing. He tr struggled with malaria, he struggled with dysentery, and I know something about both of those. He was exhausted and he was in chronic pain, carried on his journeys, and his friends said that sometimes his determination seemed supernatural. He just kept on going. In 1873, his health began failing. And in May 1st, 1873, he was in present-day Zambia. He passed away. Um, his African companions found him. He was in his uh room where he was staying, and he was kneeling beside his bed when he passed away. If you can imagine that, I can't I can't even imagine walking into a room and to pass away, kneeling beside your bed, praying. That's what he was doing when he passed away. Speaking to the Lord. He had finished his race. Before sending his listen to this, before sending his body back to England, his African companions decided that his heart was African and needed to stay in Africa. So they cut his heart out of his body and they buried it beneath a tree. Now that might sound a little horrific, but that's exactly what they did in the 1800s. They buried his heart under a tree. They sent his body back, and his body is buried in Westminster Abbey in London, but not with his heart. His heart's buried in Africa because they said his heart was African. Today we remember David Livingston as an explorer, as a map maker, as a pioneer, as a missionary. No matter what, he followed God's call wherever it led, and he endured hardship without giving up. He said, I will go anywhere, provided it before. That's a good attitude. Now here's my question for you and me. What has he called you to do that feels difficult? It might be sharing the gospel that's very hard for some people. It might be serving somebody that can't really pay you back or help you. It might be a ministry that feels uncomfortable. It might be something else completely different that is unique to you. David Livingston didn't change the world because his life was easy. He changed the world because he was willing to obey God even when it wasn't easy. Now his body rests in London, but his heart is in Africa, literally. Where is your heart today? To read more about David Livingston, we have the explorer and missionary, David Livingston. We also have his autobiography, Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa. He wrote that himself. Links to these are in the description. Of course, if you like this, please like it, share it, comment, subscribe, keep it going. Keep following Jesus wherever he leads you. And I'll see you next week. In the meantime, have a good week and God bless you.