Few books have set more hearts on fire for God and for missions than The Life and Diary of David Brainerd. It is the private journal of a young man who poured out his short life as a missionary among the Native peoples of colonial America, and who died of tuberculosis at just twenty-nine. Edited and published after his death by the theologian Jonathan Edwards, in whose home Brainerd spent his final months, and who regarded him as a model of true and vital religion, the diary became one of the most influential devotional works ever written — read and reread by later missionaries who traced their own callings to its flame. This guide introduces the man, the book, and how to read it without being either crushed or set ablaze in the wrong way.
Who David Brainerd was
Brainerd was born in 1718 in Connecticut, orphaned young, and converted after a long and painful spiritual struggle. Expelled from college over a rash remark, he never received the settled pastorate he might have had, and instead gave himself to the hardest work available: taking the gospel to Native Americans in the forests of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He travelled thousands of miles on horseback through wilderness, often sick, often alone, often discouraged — and in his last years saw a remarkable awakening among the Delaware people.
His body, never strong, was broken by the hardship, and he spent his final months dying slowly in the Edwards household, tended by Edwards’s daughter Jerusha. He died in 1747. His diary, which he had kept as a private record of his walk with God, was not meant for publication; that is precisely what gives it its searing honesty. It is the unguarded record of a soul in pursuit of God.
What the diary reveals
Two things blaze from nearly every page: an intense hunger for God and an utter devotion to the salvation of souls. Brainerd’s longing for holiness and communion with God is almost overwhelming. “O my soul longed to improve time wholly for God!” he writes — a cry that recurs in a hundred forms. His was the thirst of the Psalmist: “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you” (Psalm 63:1).
Equally striking is his consuming passion for the lost. “I cared not where or how I lived, or what hardships I went through, so that I could but gain souls to Christ,” he wrote — and he meant it, spending himself past the point of health in obscure places for people the world ignored. His life is a living commentary on Jesus’ words, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest” (Matthew 9:37–38), and on Paul’s willingness to count all things loss for the sake of Christ (Philippians 3:8).
Key themes to watch for
As you read, watch first for Brainerd’s hours of prayer. Again and again he withdraws to pray, sometimes for whole days, wrestling with God for his own soul and for the people he served. His diary is one of the great testimonies to the place of sustained, agonizing intercession in the work of God — and it was after such seasons of prayer that the awakening among the Delaware came.
Watch, too, for his seasons of darkness. Brainerd struggled with melancholy and frequent despondency, and the diary does not hide it. This is part of its enduring help: it shows a genuine saint battling depression, loneliness, and discouragement, yet clinging to God through it all. Believers who wrestle with low moods or a melancholy temperament often find Brainerd a rare and understanding companion — proof that God uses those who struggle in their own minds, and that spiritual usefulness does not require a sunny disposition. The same pages that record his darkness record his perseverance, and that is the encouragement: he did not wait to feel better before he served God; he served God through the darkness, and God met him there. And watch for the fruit — the account of the revival among the Native Americans, when after long barren labour God poured out his Spirit and many were converted, a firsthand record of grace breaking into a hard place like a seed falling into the ground and dying to bear much fruit (John 12:24).
Watch, too, for what Brainerd’s diary reveals about the cost of the work. He records the physical misery of his travels — riding through freezing forests, sleeping on the ground, coughing blood, pressing on when any reasonable man would have rested. He had few comforts and fewer companions, and the loneliness weighs on the pages. Yet the same entries that record his exhaustion record his refusal to spare himself, because souls hung in the balance and time was short. It is this combination — bodily weakness and spiritual determination — that gives the diary its peculiar power. Here is a man in whom the treasure of the gospel was carried in a very fragile jar of clay, so that the surpassing power might plainly belong to God and not to him.
The book’s astonishing influence
For a journal never intended for publication, The Life and Diary of David Brainerd has had an influence out of all proportion to its author’s brief and obscure life. When Jonathan Edwards published it, he gave the church not a treatise but a portrait — a real life offered as a pattern of what devotion to God can look like. That portrait went on to shape the modern missionary movement more than almost any other book.
The founders and heroes of that movement read Brainerd and were set aflame. His example of prayerful, self-forgetful, sacrificial labour for the lost stirred generations who went on to give their own lives in hard places across the world. Again and again, missionaries have traced their willingness to spend and be spent to the reading of this diary. It is a striking illustration of Jesus’ words that a grain of wheat, falling into the ground and dying, “bears much fruit” (John 12:24): Brainerd died young and saw comparatively little in his lifetime, yet through this small book his short life has borne a harvest still being gathered.
How to read it — with care
The diary is powerful, but it must be read wisely. Brainerd’s intensity can inspire, but taken wrongly it can also condemn, tempting sensitive readers to a joyless, self-flagellating religion or to despair that they will never match his devotion. Edwards himself, in editing it, gently noted where Brainerd’s melancholy coloured his self-assessments. So read it for the fire of its God-hunger and its love for souls, but filter it through the fuller gospel of grace and rest.
Read it slowly and devotionally, a few entries at a time, letting its passion provoke your own prayers rather than measuring yourself against Brainerd’s extremes. Let it stir you to seek God more earnestly and to care more for the lost, while resting, as Brainerd himself ultimately did, in the grace of God rather than the intensity of your own experience: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
Why it still speaks today
Brainerd’s diary has outlived him by centuries because it captures something the church always needs: a life wholly given to God and to the gospel, holding nothing back. It fanned the flame of the modern missionary movement, and its readers have included many who went on to spend their own lives in hard places for Christ. In a comfortable age, its costly devotion is a rebuke and a summons.
Above all, it is a portrait of what it looks like to answer God’s call with the whole heart — to say, with Isaiah, “Here I am! Send me” (Isaiah 6:8), and to offer oneself as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1) whatever the cost. Brainerd died young and largely unknown, yet through this small book he still speaks, calling every reader to a deeper hunger for God and a greater love for the souls of the lost.
Read it for yourself
No summary can convey the cumulative power of Brainerd’s own words, so go to the diary itself — but go prepared, with an eye for grace as well as fire. Let it drive you to prayer, deepen your longing for God, and enlarge your heart for those who have never heard. Read alongside it the lives of others who gave everything for the gospel, and let this frail young missionary, dead these many years, kindle in you the same holy flame: to live, as he longed to, wholly for God. Few books will search your heart more thoroughly about the seriousness of your own walk and the urgency of the lost — and few will do more to make you pray. Read it on your knees, and let a life poured out for God two centuries ago rekindle your own.