A Plentiful Harvest

“The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”  Matthew 9:37-38

A friend of mine who is doing a Crusade Summer Project out in Lake Tahoe this summer posted a picture of this verse a few weeks ago, and the verse has not left my mind since.  To be honest, most of the time my heart and mind believe the opposite: that the workers are many and the harvest is few. 

I remember going door-to-door during the Dare2share conference sharing our faith “hoping” that one person out of the many we talked to would receive Jesus.  The Lord has presented me with numerous opportunities to speak and write, and often times I “hope” that at least one person would be touched by the Spirit working on their hearts.  As I have worked with several customers at Verizon over the last year I “hope” that one person would recognize that there is something different about the service I give them and ask about it. 

I “hope” to impact ONE person.

I put hope in quotation marks, because it is really not hope at all, but rather wishing.  Hope is the assurance of things to come.  I am hardly assured. 

The verse is Matthew above tells us we should have hope that others will be impacted,  that there are those waiting to be touched, and that those waiting are numerous.  So numerous, in fact, that we cannot do the work on our own.

How incredible is that news?!!!

We can be assured that there is not just one person in our neighborhood waiting to trust in Jesus by hearing the gospel, but many.  So many, in fact, that we need to pray to ask more Christians to move into the neighborhood to help love and share Jesus with them.

We can be assured that there is not just one co-worker in our place of work waiting to trust in Jesus by hearing the gospel, but many.  So many, in fact, that we need to pray to ask more Christians to speak up or work with us to help love and share Jesus with them.

We can be assured that there is not just one person in our community waiting to trust in Jesus by hearing the gospel, but many.  So many, in fact, that we need to pray to ask more Christians in our churches to help serve their needs, lead bible studies, give financially, and share the gospel with them. 

I will paraphrase Jesus once again by saying the problem is not that there are only a few waiting to receive Christ and we have exhausted sharing the gospel.  Jesus is very intentional about using the word “harvest” instead of “planting” and “plentiful” instead of “minimal”.  The point is that there are people READY to receive Him just as a crop is READY when harvesting season comes.  Secondly, those people are numerous.  Therefore, the problem is that we are not sharing the message of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross enough, AND we never could.  EVER.  We need others, so many more others, to join with us in doing so, just to meet the growing number of waiting gospel recipients.  Do you believe this truth?

More than we need to be praying for “insert name here” to receive the gospel, we need to be praying for someone to SHARE the gospel with them.  More than we need to pray for our ministries to grow we need to pray for more to serve.  More than we need to pray about whether our church will survive, we need to pray about whether where we are meeting will be enough to contain the people attending.  The harvest is ALREADY PLENTIFUL; it is the WORKERS that are MINIMAL.

Although the disciples may not have understood what Jesus meant when they first heard this truth, I am sure they did at Pentecost when 3000 trusted in Christ for the first time.  Suddenly, the harvest was plentiful.  Or how about the Lord adding to their numbers daily (Acts 2:47) to the point where the number of MEN grew to 5000 (Acts 4:4).  Or how about the time when more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number (Acts 5:14) so much that the disciples were overlooking an error in the daily distribution of food (Acts 6).  (Sounds like a lack of harvesters to me)  So they pray for more workers among them and the result: “So the word of God spread.  The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.” (Acts 6:7)

Do you believe that this revival could happen in your neighborhood?  Your workplace?  Your community?  We should.  Our Lord says the harvest is ready.  He is waiting for us to pray for workers.