The Man Nobody Expected

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.” — Isaiah 55:8 (KJV)

There was one man at the Forks of the Delaware whom Brainerd had completely given up on.

He was a powwow, or conjurer: a man the people looked to for spiritual power, charms and healing. He was also a heavy drinker, and he had killed a young man. For more than a year he came to listen to Brainerd sometimes, but nothing changed. Worse, Brainerd felt he was keeping others away from Jesus, because people trusted his power.

Brainerd is brutally honest about how he felt. He wrote that he had often thought it would be a great help to his work “if God would take that wretch out of the world; for I had scarcely any hope of his ever becoming good.”

That is not a nice thing to think about someone. But it is honest, and you have probably felt something like it about a person who seemed to be the problem. Then Brainerd adds:

“But God, whose thoughts are not as man’s thoughts, has been pleased to take a much more desirable method with him.”

What happened? In July 1745 the man watched Brainerd’s interpreter and his wife publicly declare their faith in Christ. It moved him. He followed Brainerd to Crossweeksung in August and was there during the great awakening. Over the following months he came under deep conviction of his sin, and eventually found peace in Christ. He told Brainerd that after he felt “the word of God in his heart,” his spirit of conjuring left him completely.

The man Brainerd had wished would disappear became a brother in Christ. Brainerd ended that part of his journal simply: “To God be the glory of it.”

Who is the person you have written off? The one you think will never change, or the one you secretly wish would just go away? Brainerd’s story says: don’t be so sure. God has a habit of saving exactly the people we have stopped praying for.

And notice how it started. Not with a sermon, but with watching two ordinary believers, the interpreter and his wife, take their stand for Jesus. Your faithfulness may be the thing someone else is watching.

One thing to do this week: think of someone you have quietly given up on. Ask God to forgive you for writing them off, and start praying for them again, by name, every day this week.