David Brainerd

David Brainerd was a 1700s Presbyterian missionary determined to preach Jesus to the Native Americans in the colonial American frontier. Even today, he is considered a giant of faith by men of all denominations and has been the inspiration of countless missionaries.

With such a reputation, it would be easy to assume he led a charmed life. This is not true at all. In fact he died at a young age (29), and for the short life he did live, he was chronically ill and depressed. During his college years (just like us now), he had to drop out of Yale for a time because his tuberculosis was causing him to cough up blood. Later, not letting his sickness get in his way, he pushed on and preached to the Native Americans with much success.

Listen to some of his journal and diary excerpts that show how brutally hard life can sometimes be but what authentic faith in God does in even such heartbreak:

“Rode several hours in the rain though the howling wilderness, although I was so disordered in body that little or nothing but blood came from me.”

“Exercised with a violent cough and a considerable fever; had no appetite to any kind of food; and frequently brought up what I ate, as soon as it was down; and oftentimes had little rest in my bed, by reason of pains in my breast and back: was able, however, to ride over to my people, about two miles, every day, and take some care of those who were then at work.”

[In one of his depressions] “Was so overwhelmed with dejection that I knew now how to live: I longed for death exceedingly: My soul was ‘sunk in

deep waters,’ and ‘the floods’ were ready to ‘drown me’; I was so much oppressed that my soul was in a kind of horror.”
[But he always depended on God] “Oh I longed to fill the remaining moments all for God! Though my body was so feeble, and wearied with preaching and much private conversation, yet I wanted to sit up all night to do something for God. To God the giver of these refreshments, be glory forever and ever; Amen”

“When I really enjoy God, I feel my desires of him the more insatiable, and my thirstings after holiness the more unquenchable…Oh, for holiness! Oh for more of God in my soul! Oh, this pleasing pain! It makes my soul press after God.”

This is a perfect example that God doesn’t require the most fit people; he calls those who are faithful and who depend on him in all things. And then when God does use such dismal vessels to accomplish such amazing things, He gets all the more glory. Just amazing.

I pray that we as college students, though natural as it is to seek independence and to strive for our own glory, will consider the God that Brainerd worshipped, count Him as worthy, and let Him use us in the same way. May we be just as passionate about missions as feeble Brainerd was.

Side Note:
This is an excellent time to talk about a related side note: the sovereignty of God. Many have claimed that the natural outworking of our Presbyterian theology (most notably, predestination) is that it would create lazy Christians who think they don’t need to evangelize because what would be the point? If God has already decided who was to be saved, then why try to save anybody? However, we see time and time again in lives like David Brainerd that this is not what happens to true Calvinists. Why?

Well when we examine his journal and diary we see that the only thing that kept him preaching to the Native Americans was God’s sustaining him and his discernment that there was more than just his feeble effort at work. In fact, it is the ‘free will position’ that would have paralyzed his evangelism. If he had thought that God had not already called and decided to efficaciously save numbers of the Indians that he was preaching to, he would have known how useless it was. I mean, think about how inadequate he felt at trying to communicate to people who spoke a different language, were part of a different culture, and were frequently out of his reach. And on top of that the Bible teaches that all natural men are dead in sin (Eph 2:1). Dead people can’t choose to save themselves. So he would be preaching to dead people who had no chance of responding in the affirmative. So it is precisely his belief in the electing love of God that pushed him to preach Christ to people. And this is what Brainerd journaled about in one of his entries: “All my desire was the conversion of the heathen, and all my hope was in God.” His faith was not in the man he was preaching to, or in his own ability to persuade; it was in God’s ability to save. That is comforting and missions inspiring.