“My soul longs, yes, even faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God” (Ps 84:2).
O to be soul-hungry for the Lord! David Brainerd (1718–1747), one of the earliest missionaries to Native Americans in the U.S, lived and died all-out for God. His single-minded devotedness, expressed in his biography prepared by Jonathan Edwards, influenced generations of missionaries. Expelled from Yale for questioning the profession of faith of one of his tutors, he then set himself to reach the unreached Native Americans, a life of privation and constant challenges. Brainerd died of “consumption” in Edwards’s home at the age of 29.
Christian scholar Dr. Clyde S. Kilby suggested that the far-reaching influence of Brainerd could be traced to the fact that “in our timidity and our shoddy opportunism we are always stirred when a man appears on the horizon willing to stake his all on a conviction.” Brainerd famously said, “I love to live on the brink of eternity.”