It is one thing to pray for our neighbors and friends and another to become part of the answer to prayer. God wants to activate our ministry, and one way he does this is by opening our eyes to the need. How do we see the people who live, work, and play around us? Or do we even see them at all? Many of us have learned to live in relative isolation, thanks to air conditioning, television, refrigerators, and “social media.” We may keep up with events and people from afar, missing out on much of life and the opportunities all around us.
Until we see people as Jesus does and make a decision to offer to get involved in their lives, it is not likely that we will understand his heart for them or influence them very much toward God.
Matthew’s Gospel records a time when Jesus spoke to his closest followers about the crowd that surrounded him. It gives us a glimpse into his heart for people.
And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; 38 therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” Matthew 9:35-38 (ESV)
Compassion motivated Jesus’ earthly ministry. He saw people as harassed and helpless sheep who desperately needed someone to protect, feed, and lead them. The Greek word for “harassed” can also mean “flayed”. We have a difficult time understanding just how wounded and in danger people with Christ are. Jesus pointed out that there is a great harvest field, which is ready and waiting for caring people to go to work. This means that the Holy Spirit is already at work in the lives of the harassed and helpless. What is stopping us?
We all battle with fear, laziness, disobedience, reluctance to experience discomfort, and a general lack of love for the those who do not know Jesus. Have we forgotten what it is like to live without knowing the Lord? What can help us to change?
Prayer
Prayer is the first part of Jesus’ solution to adding people to his harvest team.
Only God can change us on the inside and make us willing to invest our lives in his harvest field.
Jesus said to pray “earnestly.” This is because Satan fiercely resists any effort to share the gospel and make disciples. In addition, the part of us the Bible calls the “flesh” resolutely opposes sacrificing our comfort and ease to participate in God’s harvest work. It is the spirit inside us, the part of us in union with God’s Spirit, that wants to serve God in the harvest. The spirit and the flesh are in continual warfare until Jesus comes back again to raise us from the dead and deliver us finally and completely from this struggle. Until then we must make a determined stand against the inner pull of the flesh against God’s mission.
Without constant effort and determination, we followers of Christ tend to be lazy, self-centered people who put our own comfort, ease, and security ahead of helping lost, helpless, and harassed sheep who have not yet found the Shepherd.
Earnest prayer is needed to pry followers of Christ out of the comfort of their own homes and into the places where people who need Jesus can be effectively engaged.
Only God can transform us into people who are consumed with his passion for the lost and dying, but we have a part to play, and it begins with prayer. God wants us to make the choice to join him in this noble task.
But prayer does not save people: the Gospel does. Prayer is a means to an end and can never substitute for the kingdom work of actually conveying the Good News to those who desperately need to hear it.
As powerful and necessary as prayer is, it can never serve as an excuse for not obeying the Great Commission by going to the lost.
Getting into the Harvest Field
Going and making disciples (the Great Commission) is the second part of Jesus’ solution. Bringing people into the family of God through sharing the gospel message requires us to get into the harvest field ourselves. This will not happen without our overcoming the inertia of doing nothing and making the choice to go outside of our homes, our “comfort zones,” and engage people on a regular basis.
No great fisherman only occasionally dabbles in the sport. No effective fisher of men only randomly dips his line in the water.
Once we break loose from what held us back and make the choice to get involved in people’s lives, we find that God has already been at work. He wasn’t idly waiting for us to show up. We should not have the attitude of expecting the Spirit to join us as we plow ahead with own ideas and attempts to do God’s work. Instead we should look for what the Spirit is doing and join him as humble observant servants.
The harvest field is where we discover how to partner with God’s Holy Spirit.
Joining in God’s work is the most fulfilling and rewarding thing anyone can do.
Generally speaking, harassed and helpless sheep are not lining up at our church doors on Sunday mornings. In fact, many of them have been turned off by the church; although, many are still attracted to Jesus. Often they are a “mess” – people with a blend of rebellion, resentment, and hunger for God all rolled up in one.
Where and how can we successfully engage people who need and secretly desire Jesus, but who want nothing to do with what they understand about “church”? I am sure the same was true in Jesus’ day. Countless people in Israel found nothing to attract them to the austere legalism and hypocrisy practiced by the Pharisees, who were considered to be the best models what it meant to be a devout Jew. Their form of Judaism was to be found in the Temple and synagogues, an unlikely habitat for the average “sinner”.
Jesus frequented these religious centers, but also he went elsewhere in search of those who were most open to his life transforming message.
Jesus engaged people in homes, market places, trees, wells, and along the road. He did not set up a central meeting place and expect people to flock to him. In addition to teaching in synagogues wherever he went, he visited people’s homes and met them in market places, wherever life happened. And Jesus is our model.
Until we become the answer to our own prayers by making the choice to get involved in the lives of those who live around us, we are not yet a part of God’s mission to the heartrending and often silent cries of harassed and helpless people in need of God who live all around us.
