Praying For Workers; Listening For The Call

Asking for workers and listening for the Call

The week started off normally for Southern Baptist missionary Lisa Wagner and her family, who minister among the urban poor in the Dominican Republic.

On their monthly bill-paying day, they spent the entire morning in traffic, trying to pay bills at five different places. Then they decided to stop at an American fast-food restaurant for lunch. When they arrived, the restaurant was out of everything they ordered. Wagner complained that the only thing they had was a local red soda that tastes like cough medicine from the 1960s.

The next day a man posing as police officer tried to force their vehicle over on a small, deserted side street. “Thankfully,” she says, “we were able to drive away unharmed.”

On another night, Wagner found a cockroach running back and forth across her youngest child’s face. Garbage collectors were on strike and had not picked up the trash in weeks.

The next day, she tried to catch up on the laundry, but the electricity was out all day.

“Yes, my life in the United States was easier,” she says. “But God called me to be here to share the good news of Jesus Christ. More than anything, I truly desire to do God’s will.”

Sometimes when you become a worker for God, life isn’t always a bed of roses. Life can be difficult and often uncomfortable. But the lack of comfort much as the pain from bending over a field for hours planting seed will allow you to reap a great harvest. Working for God you will reap a harvest of souls.

Matthew 9.37-38 Read

I. The fields ready for Harvest

A) Agriculture grows civilizations (Statement about Western Civ class)

1) Formerly humans were hunter/gatherers

a) Nomadic, followed the food.

b) Moved with seasons.

2) Agriculture changed their way of life.

a) No longer had to follow the food

b) Provided for permanent settlements

c) Populations increased dramatically

3) Jesus said in Matthew 9.37

a) The harvest is plentiful

b) Illustration of Cotton Field white to harvest.

If we want to increase the kingdom of God we have to harvest

Jesus is telling us in Matthew 9 and John 4 its time to become agriculturally mined.

B) Harvest time is now!

1) John 4.35 “Do not say, ‘There are yet four months, and then comes the harvest’? Behold I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white for harvest.”

2) Harvest time for Missionaries, for Preachers, Teachers, and even members of Calvary Baptist Church.

3) Don’t Make Excuses (Refer back to John 4.35)

a) I’m too old (you’re never too old to pray)

b) I don’t know what words to use (God will give you the words)

Don’t say the fields not ready

4) Jesus was to come to give sight to the blind

a) Isaiah 42.7 “To open blind eyes, to bring prisoners from the dungeons, and those who dwell in darkness from the prison.”

b) We have prayed for a people in the “heart of Darkness” this week. (You might be the candle that shines the little bit of light on someone in need of Jesus.)

c) Jesus tells us “lift up your eyes and look on the fields. They are white to harvest.”

i) It is time to see through God’s eyes

ii) It is time we see the plentiful harvest.

C) Harvest time will provide a bumper crop

1) God will give the increase if we are faithful. (Cal, and Miss)

1 Cor 3.6 “I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth.”

2) God causes growth based off our work.

b) no work no harvest

c) Genesis 8.22 “While the earth remains,

Seedtime and harvest,

And cold and heat,

And summer and winter,

And day and night,

Shall not cease.”

God promised to never again curse the ground, he promised even in Genesis, if we are faithful to sow, (preach the Gospel), reap, (invite others to accept the gospel), He would give the increase. A harvest of souls.

D) Harvest failure

1) Israel was called to be a nation of Priestly harvesters.

2) They worshiped God as priests, but failed to witness of God to the world.

3) We are to fulfill the harvest plan of God.

4) 1 Pete 2.5

“you also as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

5) Worshipping in the presence of God should lead to telling others of His goodness.

a) Paul on the road to Damascus

i) Met Jesus, went from Persecution to Preaching Jesus

ii) Peter, went from denying to declaring Jesus.

The Priest Hood of believers need to move from Worship to Witness.