Day 19

“The Key to our Lord’s Commands”

“Pray to the Lord Who is in charge of the harvest, ask Him to send more workers into His fields.” (Matthew 9:38 NLT)

THE KEY TO the messenger’s difficult assignment is in the hand of God, and that key is prayer, not work—that is, not work as the word is commonly used today, which often results in the shifting of our focus away from God. The key to the messenger’s difficult task is also not the key of common sense, nor is it the key of medicine, civilization, education, or even evangelization. The key is in following our Lord’s Commands—the key is prayer.“Pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest…” In the natural realm, prayer is not reasonable but ridiculous. We must realize that prayer is foolish from the commonsense point of view. From Jesus Christ’s perspective, there are no nations, but only the world. How many of us pray without regard to the persons, but with regard to only one Person—Jesus Christ? He owns the harvest that is produced through heartbreak and through conviction of sin. This is the harvest for which we must pray laborers be sent out to gather. The tragedy is that most of us stay busy at work, while people all around us are ripe and ready to be gathered, identified with Christ in baptism and discipled, we do not gather even one of them, but simply waste our Lord’s time in over-energized activities and programs. Suppose a crisis were to come into our immediate family’s life—are we there as workers to gather the harvest for Jesus Christ? Is our response, “Oh, but I have a special work to do!” No follower of Christ has a special work to do. All believers are called to be Jesus Christ’s own, messengers who are not “more important than the one who sends the message” (John 13:16 NLT), and someone who does not dictate to Jesus Christ what he intends to do. Our Lord calls us to no special work—He calls us to Himself. “Pray the Lord Who is in charge of the harvest,” and He will engineer your circumstances to send you out as His worker.