David Brainerd
David Brainerd
David Brainerdwas an American missionary to the Native Americans who had a particularly fruitful ministry among the Delaware Indians of New Jersey. During his short life he was beset by many difficulties. As a result, his biography has become a source of inspiration and encouragement to many Christians, including missionaries such as William Carey and Jim Elliot, and Brainerd's cousin, the Second Great Awakening evangelist James Brainerd Taylor...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionReligious Leader
Date of Birth20 April 1718
CountryUnited States of America
Oh! how amazing it is that people can talk so much about men's power and goodness, when if God did not hold us back every moment, we should be devils incarnate!
I have ever found it, when I have thought the battle was over and the conquest gained, and so let down my watch, the enemy has risen up and done me the greatest injury.
I love to live alone in my own little cottage, where I can spend much time in prayer, etc
This morning about nine I withdrew to the woods for prayer. I was in such anguish that when I arose from my knees I felt extremely weak and overcome. ...I cared not how or where I lived, or what hardships I went through, so that I could but gain souls for Christ.
I think my soul never was in such an agony before. I felt no restraint, for the treasures of divine grace were opened to me. I wrestled for absent friends, for the ingathering of souls, for multitudes of poor souls, and for many that I thought were the children of God, in many distant places. I was in such an agony, for half an hour before sunset, till near dark, that I was all over wet with sweat: but yet is seemed to me that I had wasted away the day, and had done nothing. Oh!, my dear Savior did sweat blood for poor souls!
Of late God has been pleased to keep my soul hungry almost continually, so that I have been filled with a kind of pleasing pain. When I really enjoy God, I feel my desires of Him the more insatiable and my thirstings after holiness more unquenchable.
In the silences I make in the midst of the turmoil of life I have appointments with God. From these silences I come forth with spirit refreshed, and with a renewed sense of power. I hear a voice in the silences, and become increasingly aware that it is the voice of God.
Oh, that I could spend every moment of my life to God's glory!
God designs that those whom He sanctifies...shall tarry awhile in this present evil world, that their own experience of temptations may teach them how great the deliverance is, which God has wrought for them.
No amount of scholastic attainment, of able and profound exposition of brilliant and stirring eloquence can atone for the absence of a deep impassioned sympathetic love for human souls.
We are a long time in learning that all our strength and salvation is in God.
The whole world appears to me like a huge vacuum, a vast empty space, whence nothing desirable, or at least satisfactory, can possibly be derived; and I long daily to die more and more to it; even though I obtain not that comfort from spiritual things which I earnestly desire.
As long as I see anything to be done for God, life is worth having; but O how vain and unworthy it is to live for any lower end!
If you hope for happiness in the world, hope for it from God, and not from the world.