Siouxie and the Laces Blog

Beware! Danger ahead! The story of the life and death of David Brainerd will change your life. If you are comfortable with your life, content with your religious practice, or satisfied with your progress in spiritual things, chances are that you won’t be after feasting on Brainerd’s diary. Buried within the private, personal journals of this young missionary (Brainerd died at the tender age of 29) is a depth of spiritual wisdom, fervor for God’s kingdom and glory, and love for God quite unparalleled in modern Christianity. The mystics would acknowledge in Brainerd what they themselves longed for, a wholesale abandonment to God—His purposes and His will. Brainerd’s growth in grace began with his conversion in 1739. His own words best describe his feelings at that time: “My soul rejoiced with joy unspeakable to see such a God, such a glorious divine Being…My soul was so captivated and delighted with the excellency, loveliness, greatness and other perfections of God, that I was even swallowed up in Him…I wondered that all the world did not see and comply with this way of salvation, entirely by the righteousness of Christ. One who has been so entirely apprehended by the Almighty is enabled to see his own soul very clearly, and this Brainerd did.  The depth of his own human nature was before his eyes each day of his new life and most certainly played a part in his frequent melancholy. But it was balanced and fueled by the awareness of Christ’s perfection and the beauty of His perfect remedy for sin.