Explore Quotes by David Brainerd

I have ever found it, when I have thought the battle was over and the conquest gained, and so let down my watch, the enemy has risen up and done me the greatest injury.

I am an old sinner; and if God had designed mercy for me, he would have called me home to himself before now.

It is remarkable that God began this work among the Indians at a time when I had the least hope, and to my apprehension the least rational prospect of success.

I fear God never showed mercy to one so vile as I.

I board with a poor Scotchman: his wife can talk scarce any English.

Of late God has been pleased to keep my soul hungry almost continually, so that I have been filled with a kind of pleasing pain. When I really enjoy God, I feel my desires of Him the more insatiable and my thirstings after holiness more unquenchable.

I am more weary of life, I think, than ever I was.

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.

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.

I have withstood the power of convictions a long time; and therefore I fear I shall be finally left of God.

As long as I see anything to be done for God, life is worth having; but O how vain and unworthy it is to live for any lower end!

Thirsting desires and longings possessed my soul after perfect holiness. God was so precious to my soul that the world with all its enjoyments appeared vile. I had no more value for the favor of men than for pebbles.

O how much mercy have I received the year past! How often has God caused his goodness to pass before me! And how poorly have I answered the vows I made this time twelve-month, to be wholly the Lord's, to be forever devoted to his service! The Lord help me to live more to his glory for the time to come. This has been a sweet, a happy day to me; blessed be God... I hardly ever so longed to live to God and to be altogether devoted to Him. I wanted to wear out my life in His service, and for His glory.

It is impossible for any rational creature to be happy without acting all for God. God Himself could not make him happy any other way... There is nothing in the world worth living for but doing good and finishing God's work, doing the work that Christ did. I see nothing else in the world that can yield any satisfaction besides living to God, pleasing Him, and doing his whole will.

This morning about nine I withdrew to the woods for prayer. I was in such anguish that when I arose from my knees I felt extremely weak and overcome. ...I cared not how or where I lived, or what hardships I went through, so that I could but gain souls for Christ.

All my desire was the conversion of the heathen... I declare, now I am dying, I would not have spent my life otherwise for the whole world.

My desires seem especially to be after weanedness from the world, perfect deadness to it, and that I may be crucified to all its allurements. My soul desires to feel itself more of a pilgrim and a stranger here below, that nothing may divert me from pressing through the lonely desert, till I arrive at my Father's house.

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.

It is sweet to be nothing and less than nothing that Christ may be all in all.

I have received my all from God. Oh, that I could return my all to God.

We are a long time in learning that all our strength and salvation is in God.