Your life was short?29 years, 5 months and 19 days. And only eight of those years as a Christian, only four as a missionary. And yet few lives have sent waves as far away as David Brainerd’s.
Why has your life had such an impact?Why did John Wesley say, “Let every preacher read David Brainerd’s life carefully?” Why did William Carey consider David Brainerd’s life?Jonathan Edwards as such precious and holy?Why did Henry Martyn (missionary in India and Persia) write, when he was a student at Cambridge in 1802, “I wanted to be like him!?(David Brainerd’s Life)?
- Why did this life have such a significant influence? Or maybe I should ask a more modest and practical question: why does it have such an impact on me.
- How did this help me continue in ministry and seek holiness.
- Divine power.
- And fertility in my life?.
The answer is that Brainerd’s life is a living and powerful testimony of the truth that God can and uses weak, sick, discouraged, dejected, lonely, and wrestler saints who weep before him day and night to do amazing things for him. Glory. There are great fruits in your afflictions. To illustrate this, we will first look at Brainerd’s struggles, then how he responded to them, and finally how God used it with all his weaknesses.
Three hundred years ago, Brainerd was born on April 20, 1718 in Haddam, Connecticut, and converted at the age of 21. During his third year at Yale, where he was preparing for pastoral ministry, someone heard the jealous Brainerd say that one of his tutors “was no more fun than a chair. “The Great Awakening had already created tensions between awake students and seemingly less spiritual teachers and staff, so Brainerd, though the first of his class, was summarily expelled.
Although he tried several times over the years to correct things, Yale never readmitted it. God had another plan for Brainerd. A quiet six-year place in the shepherd or conference room, followed by death and the small historical impact on the kingdom of Christ, God wanted to take him into the wilderness, so that he would suffer for his cause and have an incalculable influence on the history of missions.
Brainerd was batting an almost constant disease
He had to leave his studies for a few weeks because he had begun coughing up blood in 1740. In May 1744 he wrote in a newspaper: “I drove for several hours in the rain, through the woods, even though I felt so bad Because I kept coughing up blood?(The Life of David Brainerd, 247). Occasionally I would write something like, “But when the afternoon came, my pain increased too much, so I had to go to bed. . . Do I sometimes almost stop exercising my reason for the severity of the pain?(253).
In May 1747, at Jonathan Edwards’ house, doctors declared that he had incurable tuberculosis and that he did not have much time to live (447). Edwards comments that in the week before Brainerd’s death, he told me that it was impossible for anyone to conceive of the agony he felt in his chest, and expressed great concern, because he did not want to dishonor God for an impatience motivated by his extreme agony, it was such agony that he even said that if he had to endure it for a moment , would it be unbearable?The night before his death he told those around him that he “had a different idea of the death that people imagined” (475-476).
Brainerd suffered from recurrent depression. He has been harassed several times by the most desperate desanimos, and the surprising thing is that he survived and continued.
He called his depression “a kind of death. ” There are at least twenty-two places in the paper where he longed for death to free himself from his misery. For example, on Sunday, February 3, 1745, he wrote, “My soul was remembered, absent and faithful?almost saying hell) last Friday; and was very afraid of being forced to drink this “shaky glass” again, inconceivably more bitter than death, and made me wish more death, unspeakably more, than hidden treasures?.
It was only in retrospect that he considered himself an “object worthy of the compassion of Jesus Christ. “But in the dark hours, he could sometimes feel desperate, in love or scared. This is the scariest side of depression, as natural restrictions for Suicide began to disappear. But unlike William Cowper, Brainerd got rid of suicidal impulses. Were all your desires for death limited to the limits of biblical truth?Did the Lord give and the Lord took him?(Job 1:21). He often desired death, but only that God took it (Life of David Brainerd, 172, 183, 187, 215, 249, for example).
It is simply surprising how many times Brainerd has insisted on the practical needs of his work in the face of these waves of discouragement, which undoubtedly captivated many missionaries who knew firsthand the types of pain he was suffering.
He says he had to endure the profane conversation of two strangers one night in April 1743 and said, “Oh, I wish a dear Christian knew my anxieties!”(204). A month later, he said, “Most conversations I heard you are in the Scottish Highlands or the Indian language Do I have a Christian companion with whom I can embrace and share my spiritual pains, with whom I can get kind counsel in a conversation about heavenly things and unite in prayer?(207 ). This misery sometimes led him to withdraw from another company. He wrote on Tuesday, May 8, 1744: “Sometimes my heart seemed willing to sink into the difficulties of my work, as I was sinking into the woods, not knowing where?(248). ).
Brainerd was alone in her ministry until the end. For the past nineteen weeks of her life, Jerusha Edwards, daughter of 17-year-old Jonathan Edwards, was her nurse, and many believe there was a deep (even romantic) love between them. But in the wilderness and in the ministry, he was alone and could only pour out his soul to God, and God gave birth to him and made him continue.
Can we go on to describe Brainerd’s other struggles, his immense external difficulties, his dark vision of nature, his problem with loving Indians, his temptations to leave the country? But now we turn to how Brainerd reacted to these struggles.
What immediately catches our attention is that he didn’t give up. One of the main reasons Brainerd’s life has such powerful effects on people is that, despite all his struggles, he has never renounced his faith or ministry. ending his career, honoring his Master, spreading the kingdom, and advancing personal holiness, it was this unwavering fidelity to Christ’s cause that made his life shine in glory.
Among all the means used by Brainerd to seek holiness more and more and try to be useful, prayer and fasting stand out. We read that he spent whole days in prayer. Wednesday, June 30, 1742: “I spent most of my time. day praying incessantly? (172). Sometimes I would reserve up to six moments in the day to pray: “Blessed be God, did I have much freedom five or six times a day, in prayer and praise, and I felt a great concern in me Do you think of the salvation of these precious souls and the expansion of the kingdom of the redeemer among them?(280).
And with prayer, Brainerd sought holiness and usefulness with fasting. Time and again, in his journal, he recounts the days spent fasting. One of the most notable, given the way most of us celebrate our birthdays, is the fast of his twenties. fifth birthday:
Wednesday, April 20th. I have reserved this day to fast and pray, to prostrate my soul before God for the gift of divine grace; especially so that all my spiritual afflictions and inner anxieties may be sanctified in my soul. My soul felt pain when I thought of my infertility and mortality; that I have lived so little for the glory of the eternal God. I spent the day alone in the woods and there I poured my complaint with God. Oh, may God allow me to live for his glory in the future!(205).
Because of the immense impact of Brainerd’s devotion on his life, Jonathan Edwards wrote, over the next two years, the book The Life of David Brainerd, which was reprinted more frequently than any other Edwards book. And throughout his life, Brainerd’s impact on The Church was incalculable. In addition to all the famous missionaries who tell us that they were supported and inspired by Brainerd’s life, how many other unknown faithful must exist who have found, in Brainerd’s testimony, the breath and strength to continue!
It is an inspiring thought that a stone thrown into the sea of history can produce waves of grace that break on distant beaches hundreds of years later and thousands of miles away. Robert Glover reflects on this thought with admiration when he writes:
It was Brainerd’s holy life that influenced Henry Martyn to become a missionary and was an important factor in William Carey’s inspiration. Carey, in turn, moved Adoniram Judson, so we walked through the spiritual lineage?Whitefield, Brainerd, Edwards, Carey, Judson, etc. , in the true apostolic succession of spiritual grace and power in ministry around the world (The Progress of World-Wide Missions, 56).
But the most lasting and significant effect of Brainerd’s ministry is the same as the most lasting and significant effect of each pastor’s ministry. Are there Indians, perhaps several hundred, who now and for eternity owe their eternal life to the direct love and ministry of David Brainerd.
Who can describe the value of a soul transferred from the kingdom of darkness and weeping and gnashing of teeth to the kingdom of God’s beloved Son? If we live twenty-nine years, or if we live ninety-nine years, right? worthy proof of saving a person from the eternal torments of hell, for the eternal enjoyment of the glory of God?
Do I thank God for David Brainerd’s ministry in my own life?Passion for prayer, the spiritual feast of fasting, the sweetness of the word of God, relentless perseverance through difficulties, relentless focus on the glory of God, absolute dependence on grace, final rest in The Righteousness of Christ, the search for sinners who perish, holiness in suffering, the fixation of the spirit on the eternal and a good end , without cursing the disease that killed him at twenty-nine, for all your weaknesses, imbalances and sins, I love David Brainerd.
O may God grant us the persevering grace to spread the love of his sovereignty in all things, like Brainerd, to the joy of all peoples!Life is too precious to be wasted on trivial things. Grant us, Lord, the unwavering determination to pray and live with the urgency of David Brainerd: “Oh, why would I live on my heavenly journey?”(186).
David Brainerd’s diary, commented on by Jonathan Edwards in this volume, is a challenge for today’s Christian; his life of devotion to the Lord is an example that should have an impact on the lives of those who sincerely seek to please the Lord in his way.