Lesson 30: Prayer provides Laborers, part 2
How little Christians really feel and mourn the need of laborers in the fields of the world so white to the harvest. And how little they believe that our labor-supply depends on prayer, that prayer will really provide “as many as he needs.” Not that the shortage of labor is not known or discussed. Not that efforts are not sometimes put forth to supply the want. But how little the burden of the sheep wandering without a Shepherd is really borne in the faith that the Lord of the harvest will, in answer to prayer, send forth the laborers, and in the solemn conviction that without this prayer, fields ready for reaping will be left to perish. And yet it is so. So wonderful is the surrender of His work into the hands of His Church, so dependent has the Lord made Himself on them as His body, through whom alone His work can be done, so real is the power which the Lord gives His people to exercise in heaven and earth, that the number of the laborers and the measure of the harvest does actually depend upon their prayer.
Solemn thought! Oh why is it that we do not obey the injunction of the Master more heartily, and cry more earnestly for laborers? There are two reasons for this. One is that we miss the compassion of Jesus, which gave rise to this request for prayer. When believers learn that to love their neighbors as themselves, that to live entirely for God’s glory with their fellow-men is the Father’s first commandment to His redeemed ones, they will accept the perishing ones as the charge entrusted to them by their Lord. And, accepting them not only as a field of labor, but as the objects of loving care and interest, it will not be long before compassion towards the hopelessly perishing will touch their heart, and the cry ascend with an earnestness till then unknown: Lord, send laborers. The other reason for the neglect of the command, the lack of faith, will then make itself felt, but will be overcome as our pity pleads for help.
We believe too little in the power of prayer to bring about definite results. We do not live close enough to God, and are not enough entirely given up to His service and Kingdom, to be capable of the confidence that He will give it in answer to our prayer. Oh let us pray for a life so one with Christ that His compassion may stream into us and His Spirit be able to assure us that our prayer is effective.
Such prayer will ask and obtain a twofold blessing. There will first be the desire for the increase of men entirely given up to the service of God. It is a terrible blot upon the Church of Christ that there are times when actually men cannot be found for the service of the Master as ministers, missionaries, or teachers of God’s Word. As God’s children make this a matter of supplication for their own circle or Church, it will be given. The Lord Jesus is now Lord of the harvest. He has been exalted to bestow gifts—the gifts of the Spirit. His chief gifts are men filled with the Spirit. But the supply and distribution of the gifts depend on the co-operation of Head and members. It is just prayer that will lead to such co-operation; the believing supplicants will be stirred to find the men and the means for the work.
Prayer: Oh our Lord, we cannot understand how You can entrust such work and give such power to men so lazy and unfaithful. We thank You for all who You are teaching to cry day and night for laborers to be sent forth. Lord, breathe Your own Spirit on all Your children, that they may learn to live for this one thing alone—the Kingdom and glory of their Lord—and become fully awake to the faith of what their prayer can accomplish. And let all our hearts in this, as in every petition, be filled with the assurance that prayer, offered in loving faith in the living God, will bring certain and abundant answer.