The Journey: Forty Days of Promise
Celebrating the Legacy of African American Christianity
Day Seventeen: From Hellcat to Heaven Saint
Day Seventeen: From Hellcat to Heaven Saint[1]
African American believers rediscovered their pristine identity in Christ. They understood, therefore, that it was their spiritual act of worship to be faithful to that renewed and purified new creation in Christ.
African Americans’ new identity in Christ redefined how they related to others who had sinned against them. Charlie had been enslaved by Mars’ Bill who kept his back constantly sore from whippings. He escaped, joined the “Yanks,” and became a Christian. As a freeman, he met Mar’s Bill again thirty years later.
Recognizing each other, Bill says, “Charlie, do you remember me lacerating your back?”
When Charlie replies, “Yes, Mars,” Bill asks, “Have you forgiven me?”
By now, a large crowd has gathered, for Charlie and Bill are some distance apart and talking loud. After Charlie shouts that he has indeed forgiven his old, cruel master, Bill is chagrined. “How can you forgive me, Charlie?”
I Serve a God of Love
Charlie’s answer is instructive. “What is in me, though, is not in you. I used to drive you to church and peep through the door to see you all worship, but you ain’t right yet, Marster. I love you as though you never hit me a lick, for the God I serve is a God of love . . .”
Old Mars’ Bill then moves toward Charlie, hand held out, tears streaming down his face. “I am sorry for what I did.”
Charlie grants forgiveness. “That’s all right, Marster. I done left the past behind me.”
The Power of Redeeming Love
Charlie then testifies to Christ’s redemptive power.
“I had felt the power of God and tasted his love, and this had killed all the spirit of hate in my heart years before this happened. Whenever a man has been killed dead and made alive in Christ Jesus, he no longer feels like he did when he was a servant of the devil. Sin kills dead, but the spirit of God makes alive. I didn’t know that such a change could be made, for in my younger days I used to be a hellcat.”
From hellcat to heaven saint. From a hateful spirit to Christlike love. That’s the power of our new identity in Christ.
Learning Together from Our Great Cloud of Witnesses
1. African American converts celebrated the new nurture and the new nature. How aware are you of your new relationship to Christ as a son or daughter of the King? How do you apply your spiritual aristocracy to your personal life and relationships?
2. How aware are you of your new identity in Christ as a saint cleansed by God? How do you apply your spiritual nobility in order to overcome sin and to forgive others?
[1]Excerpted, modified from, and quoted from Kellemen and Edwards, Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. Purchase your copy at 40% off for only $10.00 at www.rpmministries.org.
The Journey: Forty Days of Promise
Celebrating the Legacy of African American Christianity
Day Sixteen: Leaping to My Feet
Day Sixteen: Leaping to My Feet[1]
African American conversion accounts splendidly assimilate the “two sides” of reconciliation. First, God’s Spirit hooks in the heart—he loads the conscience with guilt, bringing the sinner to the point of saying, “It’s horrible to sin.”
But the Spirit never leaves us there. He causes sinners to leap to their feet—he lightens the conscience with grace, bringing the sinner to the place of saying, “It’s wonderful to be forgiven!”
Jarena Lee
Jarena Lee’s conversion narrative displays the potency of these twin Gospel themes. Born on February 11, 1783, in Cape May, New Jersey, Lee grew up with parents ignorant of the Gospel. At age 24, she was converted under the preaching ministry of a Presbyterian missionary and of Reverend Richard Allen.
The year is 1804, and Lee undergoes deep conviction as she hears the Presbyterian minister preach from the Psalms. “Lord, I am vile, conceived in sin, born unholy and unclean. Sprung from man, whose guilty fall corrupts the race, and taints us all.”
In response, she writes, “This description of my condition struck me to the heart, and made me feel in some measure, the weight of my sins, and sinful nature. But not knowing how to run immediately to the Lord for help, I was driven of Satan, in the course of a few days, and tempted to destroy myself.”
In fact, Lee senses Satan suggesting to her that she drown herself in a brook near her home, in which there was a deep hole where the waters whirled about among the rocks. Resisting this temptation, her mind reminds tortured. Continuing to search for peace, she finds only doubt.
Grace for Our Disgrace
Experienced soul physicians recognize her symptoms as the result of preaching guilt without grace. Guilt minus grace always equals Satan’s condemning narrative of despair.
The Apostle Paul prescribes his antidote. “Where sin increased, grace increased all the more” (Romans 5:20). Competent ambassadors of reconciliation know that grace is God’s prescription for our disgrace.
An Expert Soul Physician
Reverend Richard Allen was such a man. Attending an afternoon service in which Allen was preaching, Lee perceives in the center of her heart the sin of malice, and she receives the forgiveness of God.
“That instant, it appeared to me as if a garment, which had entirely enveloped my whole person, even to my fingers’ end, split at the crown of my head, and was stripped away from me, passing like a shadow from my sight—when the glory of God seemed to cover me instead.”
Like Adam and Eve in the Garden, God covers Lee’s shameful nakedness with garments purchased in and cleansed by blood. Immediately, she celebrates the wonders of forgiving grace.
“That moment, though hundreds were present, I did leap to my feet and declare that God, for Christ’s sake, had pardoned the sins of my soul. Great was the ecstasy of my mind, for I felt that not only the sin of malice, but all other sins were swept away together.”
Lee and a multitude of other African Americans depicted conversion using the biblical metaphor of rebirth. The result of being born again by forgiving grace was twofold: a new nurture—having a new relationship to God as beloved sons and daughters, and a new nature—having a new identity in Christ as cleansed saints.
Learning Together from Our Great Cloud of Witnesses
1. African American soul physicians understood salvation to be more than a quick praying of a “canned” prayer. What do you think of their view of salvation?
2. African American soul physicians taught that grace super abounds over guilt. In our Gospel presentations today, do we tend to highlight only guilt, only grace, or a “splendid assimilation” of both?
[1]Excerpted, modified from, and quoted from Kellemen and Edwards, Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. Purchase your copy at 40% off for only $10.00 at www.rpmministries.org.
The Journey: Forty Days of Promise
Celebrating the Legacy of African American Christianity
Day Fifteen: Hooked in the Heart
Day Fifteen: Hooked in the Heart[1]
How did African Americans become aware of the horrors of their sin, repent, see the wonders of Christ’s forgiving grace, and believe? One unnamed ex-enslaved person interviewed between 1927-1929 by Andrew Watson, explains it brilliantly.
“Before God can use a man, that man must be hooked in the heart. By this I mean that he has to feel converted. And once God stirs up a man’s pure mind and makes him see the folly of his ways, he is wishing for God to take him and use him.”
God is the Author of conversion, or better, the Fisherman of conversion fishing for men and women. The hook God casts enlightens the eyes, enabling converts to see the foolishness of their sinfulness.
Spiritually Blind: Unaware of My Spiritual Sickness
An African American minister from Tennessee known as Reverend H. offers an unflinching vision of spiritual blindness.
“A sinner is dead, but we who are born of God are live children. No dead child can understand the works of a live one, because he hasn’t had his eyes opened. This nobody can do but God. If God doesn’t open your blinded eyes, cut loose your stammering tongue, unstop your deaf ears, and deliver your soul from death and hell, you are dead and can’t understand the things we do. You got to be dug up, rooted and grounded, and buried in him.”
Reverend H. understands that apart from God’s spiritual laser surgery, sinners fail to perceive the cancer of sin spreading in their hearts.
New Spiritual Eyes
Pastor Peter Randolph, looking back on his conversion experience, further enhances our image of spiritual sightlessness and spiritual eyes.
“The eyes of my mind were open, and I saw things as I never did before. With my mind’s eye, I could see my Redeemer hanging upon the cross for me. I wanted all the other slaves to see him thus, and feel as happy as I did. I used to talk to others, and tell them of the friend they would have in Jesus, and show them by my experience how I was brought to Christ, and felt his love within my heart—and love it was, in God’s adapting himself to my capacity.”
Soul Physicians
In an age when we face the temptation to “water down” the Gospel to make it more “palatable” to “seekers,” we could learn much from Reverend H. and Pastor Randolph. As skillful soul physicians, their diagnosis was insightful and clear. They told themselves and their patients the truth about their spiritual condition. With their diagnosis came their sight-giving prescription. They opened blind eyes to see the Redeemer.
Cataracts removed, sinners saw what a Friend they had in Jesus. They understood that until we admit that we are sinners, we force away the Friend of sinners, for he came to call sinners, not the righteous to repentance. “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick” (Luke 5:31).
Learning Together from Our Great Cloud of Witnesses
1. African American soul physicians taught that sinners were spiritually blind and dead. How can we help seekers to become aware of their spiritual sickness?
2. How can we help seekers to see that they are unable to cure their spiritual sickness?
[1]Excerpted, modified from, and quoted from Kellemen and Edwards, Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. Purchase your copy at 40% off for only $10.00 at www.rpmministries.org.
The Journey: Forty Days of Promise
Celebrating the Legacy of African American Christianity
Day Thirteen: It’s Wonderful to Be Forgiven
Day Thirteen: It’s Wonderful to Be Forgiven[1]
*Continued from Day Twelve . . .
Positioned in front of the firing squad, Chaplain White asks Private Mapps one last time, “Do you feel that Jesus will be with you?”
“Yes,” he replies.
“Do you put all your trust in him?”
“I do,” is his answer.
“Do you believe that you will be saved?”
“I do; for though they may destroy my body, they cannot hurt my soul.”
White then prays this benediction. “Eternal God, the Master of all the living and Judge of all the dead, we commit this our dying comrade into thy hands from whence he came. Now, O my Lord and my God, for thy Son’s sake, receive his soul unto thyself in glory. Forgive, him—forgive, O thou Blessed Jesus, for thou didst die for all mankind, and bid them to come unto thee, and partake of everlasting life. Save him, Lord—save him, for none can save but thee, and thee alone. Amen. Good-by, my brother, good-by.”
The order is now given: “Ready! Aim! Fire!” All earthly life extinguished. Eternal life commences.
White brilliantly, lovingly, and scripturally enlightened Mapps to see that it’s horrible to sin, but wonderful to be forgiven. Skillfully he wove together ancient Scripture and pressing need.
Turning of Heart
Private Mapps’ response to Chaplain White’s death-bed ministry offers one example of how God reconciled an African American to Himself. Through interviews, slave narratives, autobiographies, and letters, we are fortunate to have a multitude of first-hand accounts of personal conversion experiences.
These vivid descriptions help us to understand the literal turning of heart (metanoia—repentance, change of mind), transformation of identity, and reorientation of personhood that occurred at the salvation of African Americans. We have much to learn from them about how to witness to any oppressed, marginalized people, how to explain the need for a Savior, how to encourage repentance, how to offer the grace of forgiveness, and how to explain the changes that occur in one’s nurture and nature at salvation.
Learning Together From Our Great Cloud of Witnesses
1. Like Chaplain White, how can you weave together ancient Scripture and pressing modern needs?
2. What change of mind and heart took place in your life at your point of salvation?
[1]Excerpted, modified from, and quoted from Kellemen and Edwards, Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. Purchase your copy at 40% off for only $10.00 at www.rpmministries.org.
The Journey: Forty Days of Promise
