Faith & Spirit Quote by David Brainerd

Brainerd writes like a man trying to talk himself out of spiritual self-reliance. The opening, "Once more", signals repetition born of urgency: this is not a fresh insight but a hard-won corrective he has to press into his own mind, again and again. For an 18th-century clergyman steeped in Reformed piety, the target is a familiar enemy: the stubborn hope that moral effort can substitute for dependence on grace.

The intent is pastoral, but the subtext is almost bodily. Brainerd was chronically ill and famously rigorous, a missionary who ran himself ragged. That biographical pressure shows up here as theology with a pulse: "power or strength" isn’t abstract virtue; it’s stamina, willpower, the ego’s last fuel source. He’s warning against the subtle pride of spiritual productivity, the temptation to treat holiness like a personal project that can be managed through discipline and grit.

The sentence builds its own recoil. "Never think" slams the door on the fantasy of autonomy, then "but always look" pivots to a posture rather than an achievement. The escalation - "assistance, yea, for all strength and grace" - matters: it’s not God as a helpful supplement to your effort, but God as the only operating system. In Brainerd’s context, this is also a defense against cold moralism and religious performance. Reliance becomes the measure of sincerity, not the polish of one’s behavior. The line reads less like comfort and more like spiritual triage: stop trying to save yourself with yourself.