{"id":5641,"date":"2016-08-16T03:47:13","date_gmt":"2016-08-16T08:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/beyond-poor-results\/"},"modified":"2016-08-16T03:47:13","modified_gmt":"2016-08-16T08:47:13","slug":"beyond-poor-results","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/beyond-poor-results\/","title":{"rendered":"BEYOND\n  POOR RESULTS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>Topics:<\/b> Despair; Discouragement; Endurance; Evangelism; Fruitfulness; Ministry; Missions; Perseverance<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>References:<\/b> 1 Chronicles 28:20; Psalm 31:9\u201324; 1 Corinthians 15:58; Galatians 6:9\u201310<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'>\u201cIt seemed to me I should never have any success among the Indians. My soul was weary of my life; I longed for death, beyond measure.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>That is what David Brainerd wrote in the early 1700s about his early weeks as a missionary to Native Americans. Things didn\u2019t improve much for the first two years. Brainerd felt his prospects of winning converts were \u201cas dark as midnight.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>Three years into the work, though, he finally witnessed a revival among the Indians of Crossweesung in New England, and eighteen months later, the number of converts numbered 150\u2014which was profoundly significant in his day. Brainerd died after only five years on the mission field, at age twenty-nine.<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>After Brainerd\u2019s death, Jonathan Edwards\u2014whom some consider America\u2019s greatest theologian\u2014published Brainerd\u2019s journals. These were read widely in America and Europe. William Carey, the man who ignited the modern Protestant missionary movement, which has resulted in millions of conversions worldwide, said Brainerd\u2019s journals were a key source of his inspiration to take up the missionary life.<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>Who, then, can judge whether our work is worthwhile? Certainly we cannot when we are in the midst of discouragement.<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:right;line-height:normal'>\u2014Ruth Tucker, <i>From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya<\/i> (Zondervan, 1983)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Topics: Despair; Discouragement; Endurance; Evangelism; Fruitfulness; Ministry; Missions; Perseverance References: 1 Chronicles 28:20; Psalm 31:9\u201324; 1 Corinthians 15:58; Galatians 6:9\u201310 \u201cIt seemed to me I should never have any success among the Indians. My soul was weary of my life; I longed for death, beyond measure.\u201d That is what David Brainerd wrote in the early &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/beyond-poor-results\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;BEYOND<br \/>\n  POOR RESULTS&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5641\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}