What Should I Be?

What Should I Be?

Was his desire to be a minister a commitment to God or a yearning to be like his brother?

DAVID BRAINERD was the sixth of ten children of Hezekiah Brainerd, a Puritan legislator from Haddam, Connecticut. His was not to be a carefree childhood. When David was nine, his father died, and when he was thirteen, his mother passed away.

After his mother’s death David continued to live at the homestead, now headed by his oldest brother, Hezekiah Jr., and his wife. A year later when his sister Jerusha married a farmer in East Haddam, he moved in with them.

David had inherited a farm from his father about ten miles from Haddam. When he turned nineteen, he decided to try his hand at farming. However, he soon discovered that he was not destined to be a farmer. Instead he made a pledge to God to become a minister. David greatly admired his older brother Nehemiah, who had become a minister after graduating from Yale, and he longed to follow in his footsteps.

Even though he wanted to go into the ministry, Brainerd had his disagreements with God. He rebelled against the doctrines of original sin and the sovereignty of God. Divine law was too strict for him. He also disliked the idea that there was nothing he could do through his own strength to commend himself to God.

After his trial year on the farm, Brainerd returned to Haddam to live and study with his pastor, Phineas Fiske, in preparation for attending Yale. After six months Fiske died, and Brainerd continued his studies under his brother Nathaniel.

In spite of his plans for the ministry, Brainerd was not yet a church member. To join the church one needed to have an assurance of salvation, and Brainerd didn’t.

On a Friday morning in July 1739, as Brainerd was walking in the forest, he came to the realization that he was spiritually lost. He saw that all of his religious endeavors in no way obligated God to bestow his grace.

The turning point in David Brainerd’s life came two days later on July 12, 1739. In his diary Brainerd wrote:

When I was again walking in the same solitary place . . . unspeakable glory seemed to open to the view and apprehension of my soul. I do not mean any external brightness, for I saw no such thing. . . . It was a new inward apprehension or view that I had of God, such as I never had before; nor anything which had the least resemblance of it. . . .

I felt myself in a new world. . . . At this time the way of salvation opened to me with such infinite wisdom, suitableness, and excellency, that I wondered I should ever think of any other way of salvation; was amazed that I had not dropped my own contrivances, and complied with this lovely, blessed, and excellent way before. If I could have been saved by my own duties, or any other way that I had formerly contrived, my whole soul would now have refused it. I wondered that all the world did not see and comply with this way of salvation, entirely by the righteousness of Christ.

Two months after writing the above entry in his diary, David Brainerd entered Yale and went on to become a missionary to the Indians of Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. He died in the home of Jonathan Edwards at the age of twenty-nine. His diary became a devotional classic, influencing hundreds to follow him into missionary service.

After Brainerd’s death, when Jonathan Edwards edited his diary, he wrote at the top of the page for this day, “Lord’s day, July 12th 1739 forever to be remembered by D.B.”

Reflection

Can you identify with any of the details of David Brainerd’s conversion? Have you found yourself quarreling with God or trying to merit God’s grace through your own efforts? What a wonderful salvation it is that can’t be earned but only be received through faith.

It is clear that no one can ever be right with God by trying to keep the law. For the Scriptures say, “It is through faith that a righteous person has life.”

Galatians 3:11