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
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.
I love to live on the brink of eternity.
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.
Oh! one hour with God infinitely exceeds all the pleasures and delights of this lower world.
I have received my all from God. Oh, that I could return my all to God.
If you hope for happiness in the world, hope for it from God, and not from the world.
It is sweet to be nothing and less than nothing that Christ may be all in all.
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!
It is impossible for any rational creature to be happy without acting all for God. God Himself could not make him happy any other way... There is nothing in the world worth living for but doing good and finishing God's work, doing the work that Christ did. I see nothing else in the world that can yield any satisfaction besides living to God, pleasing Him, and doing his whole will.
I longed to be a flame of fire continually glowing in the divine service and building up of Christ's kingdom to my last and dying breath.
The idea that everything would happen exactly as it does regardless of whether we pray or not is a specter that haunts the minds of many who sincerely profess belief in God. It makes prayer psychologically impossible, replacing it with dead ritual at best.
We are a long time in learning that all our strength and salvation is in God.
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.
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.