David Brainerd Quotes

       David Brainerd
       1718-1747
      
       David Brainerd was an American missionary to the Native Americans. He was orphaned at fourteen and had an experience that intensified his dedication to Christianity at age 21 in 1739. Shortly after, he enrolled at Yale, but was expelled his junior year for privately saying of a college tutor, "He has no more grace than this chair".
      
       He then prepared for the ministry, being licensed to preach in 1742, and early in 1743 decided to devote himself to missionary work among the Native Americans. He worked first at Kaunaumeek, an Indian settlement about 20 miles from Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and subsequently, until his death, among the Delaware Indians in Pennsylvania (near Easton) and New Jersey (near Cranbury).
      
       His heroic and self-denying labors, both for the spiritual and for the temporal welfare of the Indians, wore out a naturally feeble constitution, and on October 9, 1747 he died at the house of his friend, Jonathan Edwards, in Northampton, Massachusetts.

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.     Topics: Apathy, Prayer, Believing The all-seeing eye of God beheld our deplorable state; infinite pity touched the heart of the Father of mercies; and infinite wisdom laid the plan of our recovery.     Topics: Atonement, Wisdom First, Resolve upon, and daily endeavour to practise, a life of seriousness and strict sobriety.     Topics: Character I bless God for this retirement: I never was more thankful for any thing than I have been of late for the necessity I am under of self-denial in many respects.     Topics: Contentment, Thankfulness, Self-denial Oh, how precious is time, and how it pains me to see it slide away, while I do so little to any good purpose.     Topics: Discouragement, Time 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.     Topics: Encouragement, Comfort A few of the sublimest geniuses of Rome and Athens had some faint discoveries of the spiritual nature of the human soul, and formed some probable conjectures, that man was designed for a future state of existence.     Topics: Eternity, The Future I care not where I go, or how I live, or what I endure so that I may save souls. When I sleep I dream of them; when I awake they are first in my thoughts.     Topics: Evangelism, Endurance 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.     Topics: Evangelism Once more, Never think that you can live to God by your own power or strength; but always look to and rely on him for assistance, yea, for all strength and grace.     Topics: Grace, Power, Pride If you hope for happiness in the world, hope for it from God, and not from the world.     Topics: Happiness Ardent love or desire introduced, as passionately longing to please and glorify the Divine Being, to be in every respect conformed to him, and in that way to enjoy him.     Topics: Holiness, Passion