Peacemaker Conference Friday AM Plenary – Rev. Dr. Nakah
Oh! I just can’t do justice to Dr. Nakah’s sweet, painful retelling of the FURY that he and his (then-fiance, now-wife) experienced when they sought her parents’ blessing on their engagement.
His wife was from a ROYAL TRIBE and he was, most decidedly, NOT.
In Africa, this was simply unacceptable. (“You don’t contaminate royal blood!!!!!”)
Her mother looked her in the eyes and said, “If this marriage happens, it will be over my DEAD BODY. If you go ahead with this, you are as GOOD AS DEAD TO ME.”
And then it took an entire YEAR of Dr. Nakah and his fiance persevering in negotiations with her parents, often receiving horrible abuse and destructive words, before the mother would even LOOK at her daughter.
(As an aside, Dr. Nakah then said, “I guess Adam was the luckiest man on earth.” And we all laughed and laughed.)
But praise be to God! After they were married–with the blessing of BOTH of our parents–now his in-laws are members of their church and he is the son they never had and their beloved pastor.
Dr. Nakah asked us: HOW DOES GOD DO IT? Once the battle lines of hatred have been drawn; war has been declared and expressed; daggers have been thrown at you; sharp piercing words have been said … how does God do it? How do we begin to even THINK about living together? More or less loving and forgiving and being reconciled?
In Dr. Nakah’s words:
– I thought God would come alongside me and encourage me to get my wife because He had brought her to me. I thought we could walk away! “This crazy family” as I called it. But God said, ‘Listen to me Mr. I love God! You cannot honestly love me (1 John 4:8 ) and not love these two people who brought your wife into this world.’ God is love and the one who abides in love; the one who loves in love—abides in God. And God abides in him. The categorical and clear message of Scripture is that if you don’t love, you don’t know God. If you abide in love, you abide in God and God abides in you.
My situation, pain, bitterness, frustration, anger … the commandment to love overwhelmed me. Loving demanded that I tear the skin off of my body and wrap it around her; felt as though I were dead; all the longing I had for health, success, happiness, I felt now FOR HER. I wanted those things FOR HER.
Absolutely astounding. Different way of loving; making friends; spreading the gospel.
– This means something POWERFUL has to happen first!! Earth shaking. Reconstructing. Something overwhelming has to happen in our lives in order for us to love like this! Well beyond what self-preserving, self-advancing human beings like you and me. GOD has to do something extraordinary in our lives so that we can love the unlovable, unlikable … those who are unlike us.
But what’s wrong with me preferring to spend time with that group and not the other? He says, ‘I just don’t like you.’ Do we really have that option? God has to do something in our lives … but is there anything in this world more supernatural than being raised from death to life? Christ in us, the hope of glory? Us abiding in God; God abiding in us? Being called the children of God. The same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead is the power that works powerfully in us.
God has done that extraordinary thing in order for us to love.
– I really wanted my inlaws to know I was a believer. I told them that over and over again. I told them. I really wanted them to know. And I wanted them to know that their daughter would be safe. I am a man of God. I love God. How would I do that? How would I prove that my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ was REAL? By doing the works of LOVE.
We know that we have passed out of death into life. (How do we know?!?) because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death. Where love is absent, faith is dead and we are dead.
Mother/father in law will know I am real? LOVE ONE FOR ANOTHER. Love for each other in the church is the badge of Christianity.
Anyone who doesn’t love me; discriminates against me; mocks me because of my language/tribe; doesn’t want me to marry their daughter … persecute me, oppose me, say horrible things about me … they have become my enemy. Jesus says LOVE THEM.
What does this mean?
Love your enemy: gracious, redemptive, LOVE.
– God is calling us to new depths of love for each other. In order to make peacemaking a reality, something else must happen first. That we, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints … and to know the love that surpasses all …
I got LOST in this love!
My wife said, ‘Don’t you think you are overdoing it?’
I wanted to love them. Serve them. Be their pastor.
I couldn’t believe it, one day after church, I had just finished preaching, someone who had visited our church for the first time was talking to my father in law and asked who is that? My father in law said, ‘He is my son.’
May God grant that we being rooted and grounded in love …
And to know the love of Christ which surpasses all!
Amen & Amen!!
And much love to you all from North Carolina —
Hoping to write again later tonight!
Yours,
Tara B.