In Matthew 9:32-37 we see Jesus has been preaching, teaching about the Kingdom and healing the sick. In verse 36 He looks upon the crowd of people and it says compassion welled up within Him. He said the people looked like lost sheep without a shepherd.
Then Jesus makes an interesting request. He said to his disciples, “The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send more workers into his fields” (v37-38).
Up until this point Jesus has done all the ministry work. He had been preaching, teaching, healing, driving out demons, raising the dead and calming storms. The disciples were following along and just watching and taking it all in.
Now the disciples were getting asked to be involved in His work. How? By praying. Jesus asked them to pray for workers to go out in to the harvest. As I reflected on this request a couple of things came to mind.
1. Prayer should always precede ministry outreach.
2. When I pray God often softens my heart and calls me to be involved.
In the start of the next chapter we see Jesus sends out the 12 disciples. We do not know how long after it was when He asked them to pray, but I suspect it was fairly soon.
Matthew 10:5-8 NLT says, “Jesus sent out the twelve apostles with these instructions: “Don’t go to the Gentiles or the Samaritans, [6] but only to the people of Israel-God’s lost sheep. [7] Go and announce to them that the Kingdom of Heaven is near. [8] Heal the sick, raise the dead, cure those with leprosy, and cast out demons. Give as freely as you have received!”
In this sending out we see Jesus gave them strict instructions. Go to these people, preach the Kingdom, heal the sick and caste out demons. It was a set of clear instructions with defined boundaries.
As I dwell on these passages from Matthew 9&10. I am reminded on our early days at PASSION Australia. Our board would have a meal together and then spend an hour or two in prayer asking God what He wanted us to do.
We would simply pray, “Lord You said the harvest field is ripe, but the workers were few. Please send us out. Let us know where to go and what to do. Lead us to the people whose hearts you have been preparing, we want to lead them to You. Amen”. Then we would wait on the Lord.
Often over the next few days God would speak to us separately and when we came together again, we would share what God had been saying to us. Most times it was exactly the same and it confirmed what we needed to do.
At first we were surprised, like the disciples when they came back from their first mission. But in time we realised that if we pray first, then God would lead us to the people who needed Him and were ready to receive.
We learned a simple lesson in the early days of PASSION. The Great Commission of Matthew 28:18-20 is given to us, but ultimately it is God’s mission. He wants to whole world to come to know Jesus and He uses us. But it always works best when we seek Him and pray, “What do You want us to do and where do You want us to go?”
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