Prayer and Missions

The Bible Text (Luke 9:57-10:2)

“And He was saying to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest” (Luke 10:2).
(from NASB).

Prayer for Kingdom Advancement (Lu 10:2a)

Seventy apostles seem like a lot, but is it really for the thousands of people? The solution for this is that we would pray that God would raise up those to go into His harvest. Jesus says it this way, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.”

If you do not pray for missions on a regular basis, you are not being at all sensitive to what God wants to do through your life. If you are one of those people who complain to God “Why do you let the lost die?” but do not pray, let me just state that you are part of the problem.

A Christian, a Christian family and a Christian church that is worth anything must integrate missions into its prayer life, care and budget. I praise God for the vision here to keep lifting the budget of this church for missions.

Jesus was talking to these disciples about prayer not because they were the only ones to pray but because they would see so much more need when they went out where they were supposed to. It is good and proper to have people know more about the needs out there. I myself get a lot of requests for pastors and Bible colleges for material (they are poor and have no money to order). Where can they get the training materials? So I have made it my recent prayer to help me supply a library to many of these training places. I don’t have the financial resources to do this, but I pray.

By praying that God would raise up new missionaries, it does not mean we are to neglect prayers to sustain those that are out there already! What missionaries are you supporting? Our children know the names of the ones that we support because we regularly pray for them. We get their prayer information.

Jesus’ instruction has a powerful punch to it. He is basically saying that if you prayed like you should, there would be enough workers on the field to bring the harvest in. The problem is not God but us.

This is where many people do not understand the Lord’s plan. They think God will save the ones He will save. Yes, He will. But we also can say, and with much more relevance to our lives, that God will save those that we send workers to. We as a congregation can have a great impact if we just started to seriously pray. God is waiting for us to pray so that the workers would go and so that the harvest would be reaped.

Summary

You might fuss over having this burden placed on you, but that is God’s design. It is part of the gospel. The test is whether we have enough love for God and others that we would so orient our lives to appropriately respond. We might not be sent, but are we sendable if God would so choose? Have we indeed broken our affection for comfort, convenience and preference? If not, we might wonder if we ourselves truly are His own.

Jesus’ Gospel of the Kingdom is first seen in how God sent His most beloved into the most hostile world to face a horrible death so that others might find His love and forgiveness. If Jesus lives in you, then missions is seeded like DNA right into your life. You will in response to His work care about what God is doing around the world. You will as needed start restructuring your time and resources to make a difference. You will pray for God to send out equipped workers into the field and care for the harvest about you.

When God’s love is seeded into us, we grow as a mission community, an extension to the harvest fields about the world. Let us take the ever greater task at the end of the world upon our hearts as we beseech the Lord of Harvest to raise up equipped men and women to reach out to them, even if it means us.

May your church indeed be a sending community!

“And He (Jesus) said to another, “Follow Me.”” (Luke 9:60).