The following excerpt is taken from the chapter entitled ‘Eyes on the Harvest’ from Wayne Cordeiro’s book “Jesus: Pure & Simple”.
The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.
Matthew 9:37-38
After sharing about his granddaughters unfocused prayers and the fact that the author needs to guide her prayers, Wayne goes on to say that ‘Jesus guides our prayers too. The disciples once said, “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). I wouldn’t mind taking a prayer seminar taught by the Master. We still can.
Slip into one of the seminars the disciples were attending. You can hear Him instruct them on how to pray. “Pray therefore to the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest. The harvest is ready but the labourers are not.” (see Matthew 9:37-38).
I wonder how many prayers of mine Jesus has answered. A hundred? A thousand? Maybe it’s time we answered just one of His.
Consider this chapter an invitation to regain focus. It’s a call to get our eyes back on Jesus and the things He cared about, to get our eyes back on the harvest. I’ll bet most of us pray often for our own needs, but consider this a divine request to pray for others’ greatest need: salvation.
Pretty simple. Let Him guide your prayers. Otherwise you may be praying for dogs, cats, and cars.
Jesus always had His eyes on the harvest. He didn’t pray for more money, fewer problems, or bigger houses very often. Reading the Bible, I notice that He didn’t pray for more friends, more prominence, or more blessings. He never told the disciples to pray for a problem-free life, a fat retirement account, or a pin-striped donkey that would get them down the road faster and in style.
In Luke 10, Jesus told His disciples to pray fervently for labourers who had their eyes on the harvest. That same directive is ours.
It’s easy to lose focus in a … church. Weekend services just seem to happen on cue, and programmes appear to take place automatically without much prompting. The lights come on, people sing songs and play instruments that just happen to be in tune, and they seem to play in rhythm… usually. The preacher comes up with an encouraging sermon and the right Scriptures just materialise on the screens. We pray for God’s blessings and after a rousing final chorus, we leave for lunch, inspired to face another week at work.
We punched our spiritual time cards, and we motor onward in our daily lives. But we forgot our assignment.
The weekend service was not an end. It was a means to partner with one another in our attempts to reach our families and friends for Christ. It’s not just about Jesus working in us. It’s also about Jesus working through us.
You never determine the size of a church by how many are in it. You measure its size by how many are still outside of its doors.’
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