Hello everyone. Praise the Lord!
SALVATION THROUGH GRACE.
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Over the years, David worked hard to maintain a “proper religious life.” He wanted to do the right thing, but he really didn’t understand salvation by grace alone. Instead, he worked diligently to be “good enough,” reading the Scriptures, memorizing sermons, and separating himself from “youthful foolishness.” “I proceeded on a self-righteous foundation,” he admitted later, “and should have been entirely lost and undone had not the mere mercy of God prevented it!”
“God Swallowed Me”
Deep in his soul, David Brainerd longed to know the power and presence of God. He poured out his heart in prayer on long walks through the Connecticut countryside. Speaking to an
“unseen audience,” he wrestled with the demons within his own soul, struggling to find the way to salvation. In the spring of 1739, as David approached his twenty-first birthday, the Holy Spirit began to convict him of the sin of trying to earn his way to God.
“Sometime in February 1739, I set apart a day for fasting and prayer, and spent the day in almost incessant cries to God for mercy to see...the way of life by Jesus Christ.”
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His struggle was with God’s grace; he wanted God to accept all of his hard-earned works as a way to earn salvation. “All this time,” David wrote, “the Spirit of God was powerfully at work within me; and I was inwardly pressed to relinquish all self-confidence, all hopes of ever helping myself by any means whatsoever.”
David Brainerd was surrendering his heart and will to God. While walking briskly through the fields near Haddam that July, the heavens appeared to open, and the Holy Spirit fell upon Brainerd with His revelatory power!
As I was walking in a dark, thick grove, unspeakable glory seemed to open to the view and apprehension of my soul...a new view that I had of God...I stood still, wondered and admired!
My soul rejoiced with joy unspeakable, to see such a God, such a glorious Divine Being; and I was inwardly pleased and satisfied that He should be God over all forever and ever. My soul was so captivated and delighted with the excellency, loveliness, greatness and other perfections of God, that I was swallowed up in Him!”
God had captured his soul!
The Holy Spirit enveloped David Brainerd with both the majesty and the mercy of God, and he accepted his salvation in Christ based on grace alone. “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9 nasb).
Brainerd had turned to the living God with his whole heart, and God had answered his prayer with His glorious salvation. David was exited to begin studying tor the ministry.
- God’s Generals ( The Revivalists )
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William James Roop
