When you cease from labour, fill up your time in reading, meditation, and prayer

David Brainerd (April 20, 1718–October 9, 1747) was an American missionary to the Native Americans who had a particularly fruitful ministry among the Delaware Indians of New Jersey.  By almost every standard known to modern missionary boards, David Brainerd would have been rejected as a missionary candidate.  He was tubercular—died of that disease at twenty-nine—and from his youth was frail and sickly.  He became a missionary to the American Indians and, in the most real sense, “the pioneer of modern missionary work.”  David Brainerd is known for being a man of prayer.  He kept a daily journal (later published in the Life and Diary of David Brainerd) which records many prayers and answers to prayers.  One of his loggings reads, “I have now baptized, in all, forty-seven persons of the Indians.  Twenty-three adults and twenty-four children….Through rich grace, none of them as yet have been left to disgrace their profession of Christianity by any scandalous or unbelieving behavior.”  I wonder how many preachers can say that today?  Brainerd’s life and testimony has had a life-transforming effect upon many, motivating them to become missionaries, evangelists, preachers, people of prayer, and power with God.  Brainerd died in the home of Jonathan Edwards.  His ministry to the Indians was during the time of the Great Awakening.  Brainerd’s centuries-spanning influence for revival is positive proof God can and will use any vessel, no matter how fragile and frail, if it is only sold out to souls and the Saviour!