BCWE Business Review

Another portion from David Brainerd’s diary. 

Reflected on the goodness of God to me in the past year.  Of a truth God has been kind and gracious to me, though He has caused me to pass through many sorrows.  He has provided for me bountifully so that I have been enabled, in about fifteen months past, to bestow to charitable uses about an hundred pounds New England money, that I can now remember.  Blessed be the Lord, that has so far used me as His steward to distribute a portion of His goods.  May I always remember that all I have comes from God.  Blessed be the Lord that has carried me through all the toils, fatigues and hardships of the year past. As well as the spiritual sorrows and conflicts that have attended it.  Oh that I could begin this year with God and spend the whole of it to His glory, either in life or death.

David Brainerd told the Lord he was willing to do anything.   We say this also without the slightest resolve or determination to make good on it.  This quote by David Brainerd was how he lived his life.

“God has made me willing to do anything  that I can do, consistent with truth, for the sake of peace, and that I might not be a stumbling block to others.  For this reason I can cheerfully forego and give up what I verily believe, after the most mature and impartial search, is my right, in some instances.  God has given me that disposition that, if this were the case that a man has done me an hundred injuries and I (though ever so much provoked to it) have done him one, I feel disposed and heartily willing humbly to confess my fault to him, and on my knees to ask forgiveness of him; though at the same time he should justify himself in all the injuries he has done me and should only make use of my humble confession to blacken my character the more and represent me as the only person guilty.”

If I could master myself well enough to live this, I could then truthfully say that I was willing to do anything.