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About the Book
"Walking in the Spirit" by Simpson A.B. is a Christian book that explores the importance of living a life filled with the Holy Spirit. The author emphasizes the need for believers to rely on the power of the Spirit in order to live a victorious Christian life. The book discusses practical ways to cultivate a closer relationship with the Spirit and experience the fullness of God's presence.
David Brainerd
Born to a farming family in Haddam, Connecticut, Brainerd soon turned his aspirations to the clergy and a life of study. The early death of his parents, combined with a naturally melancholy personality, caused him to be morose and to fixate on the brevity of life, so that his religious life was characterized by prolonged depressions punctuated by ecstatic experiences of God. He began to study for the ministry at Yale College in 1739. During his first year he showed signs of the tuberculosis that was to end his life prematurely. During the following year, the New Light preaching of George Whitefield and other itinerants such as Gilbert Tennent and James Davenport gained many adherents at the college, including Brainerd, and he became involved in a separate church founded by students. In November 1741 he was reported as saying that one of the local ministers who was a college tutor had “no more grace than a chair.” Determined to snuff out the New Light among the students, the Yale Corporation, led by its rector, Thomas Clap, expelled Brainerd for refusing to make a public confession.
Officially barred from the ministry, Brainerd nonetheless became an itinerant preacher, filling pulpits of New Light sympathizers throughout New England and New York. In the process he gained the admiration of many clergymen, including Jonathan Dickinson, a Presbyterian minister of New Jersey and commissioner of the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge. Dickinson in 1742 first proposed that Brainerd become a missionary. To prepare himself, in 1743 Brainerd went to work with John Sargeant, missionary to the Stockbridge Indians. He was ordained by the Presbytery of New York in 1744. From 1743 to 1747 he ministered to the Indians in western Massachusetts, eastern New York, the Lehigh region of Pennsylvania, and central New Jersey. At the New Jersey Bethel mission (near Cranbury), he achieved his most notable successes. Out of his experiences here came the publication of two installments of his journals that described both the revivals among the Delaware Indians and his own spiritual turmoil and exultation.
Brainerd preaching to the Indians for all of his zeal, however, Brainerd’s constitution could not stand up to the hardships of wilderness living. In April 1747, seriously weakened by tuberculosis, he left New Jersey for the home of his friend Jonathan Edwards in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he died in October.
In 1749 Edwards published An Account of the Life of the Late Reverend Mr. David Brainerd, drawn from Brainerd’s extensive diaries and supplemented by Edwards’s own commentary. Edwards sought to portray Brainerd as a model of Christian saintliness who manifested his faith in good works and self-sacrifice, expurgating many passages that recorded Brainerd’s depressions and enthusiasms. Over the centuries, this work has achieved international fame, has gone through countless printings, and has inspired many missionaries in pursuing their call.
Minkema, Kenneth P., “Brainerd, David,” in Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, ed. Gerald H. Anderson (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 1998), 84-5.
This article is reprinted from Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, Macmillan Reference USA, copyright © 1998 Gerald H. Anderson, by permission of Macmillan Reference USA, New York, NY. All rights reserved.
How God Impacts Our Money and Stuff
The love of money is more than dangerous — it’s spiritual suicide. The consistent warning of Scripture is that the people of God better watch their backs when it comes to the allure of financial gain (Matthew 6:24; 1 Timothy 6:10). Earning a stout salary can be a good thing, but what we do with those earnings is all important — and the writer to the Hebrews can help us. In a list of practical exhortations, he writes, Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5) This is a simple verse, but the line of argument is astounding. Notice the first two lines. The commands parallel one another: keep your life free from the love of money and be content with what you have. Contentment and Freedom The commands look like different angles on the same posture. We are exhorted to free ourselves from the love of money (and its siren call to acquire more), and then, in the same spirit, we’re exhorted to be content with what we currently have. This latter command (“be content”) functions as a sort of development from the former. In order to really keep ourselves free from the love of money, we have to sincerely believe that what we already have is enough. There’s food on the table and clothes on our back. We’re going to be all right (1 Timothy 6:8). If we lack contentment — if we are always thinking about what we want next — then our orientation on money creeps along from value to veneration. Money becomes our ticket to more. It becomes our gateway to that thing that will give us what we think we’re missing, which means it becomes a hero. And anytime we attribute savior-like qualities to something, however subtle it might be, our affections are sure to follow. If we keep dreaming about what we don’t have, we’ll soon be doing an adulterous rendezvous with the revenue. The most vehement traction against this slippery slope is too simply be okay with what you have. The writer to the Hebrews says to be content. We’re good. We’ll be okay. We can pause our panting for more. And then he tells us why. He Is There Keep your life free from love of money and be content with what you have, for [God] has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” The command for us to be free and content is grounded in God’s promise to always be there. The quotation here is taken from Joshua 1:5, but now carries an amplified meaning after the ascension of Jesus. In the Commission to his disciples, Jesus says clearly, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). And as he told us about the Holy Spirit, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever” (John 14:16). We have the Trinitarian surety that wherever we are, God is there. Whatever circumstance, whether we have abundance or want (Philippians 4:11–12), God is there and he’s not leaving us. This might seem like a strange influence on our financial situation, but it’s really not. The presence of God, as with so many other things, drastically alters our perspective on money and stuff. We don’t love money, and we are content with what we have, because we have God. We don’t love money, and we are content with what we have, because we have God. We can always say, no matter the state of our earthly assets, that “we have a better possession and an abiding one” (Hebrews 10:34). God is our portion (Psalm 73:26). He is a feast for our souls (Psalm 63:5). “I will never leave you nor forsake you,” he says. Our treasure — the most desirable Being in the universe — is irreversibly committed to keeping us close forever. So yeah, money is just money, and what we already have is plenty. Article by Jonathan Parnell
