Any Christian individual or organization that grows is involved in prayer. Jesus assumes that his disciples will pray. In Matthew 6, his famous sermon, he doesn’t command people to pray, he simply says, “When you pray…”
But I want you to take a look with me at a monumental prayer moment. Jesus actually instructs his disciples to pray for something specific. And look at the following context. Then…share what this passage teaches us about the nature of prayer and our participation in it. – leave me a comment.
Luke 10:1-3 - “Now after this the Lord appointed seventy others, and sent them in pairs ahead of Him to every city and place where He Himself was going to come. (2) And He was saying to them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest. (3) Go; behold, I send you out as lambs in the midst of wolves.” (NAS95)
So what do you think? What do we learn about prayer as a growth challenge? What does Jesus do after he tells them (us?) to pray that the Lord will send workers? What is your reaction to this?
Early this Saturday morning, way before I stopped at the computer to read your blog, I had this urge to email you about prayer and the leadership conference. Have we beseeched the Lord enough to send the laborers to this conference?
Radical idea — you, as the leader, call some of the prayer warriors of CCC to come to church. You start the prayer walk with reading the scripture that you feel is the key to this conference. You pray over the conference. Then the group walks and prays at each place there is a break out session. Pray for the leader that is doing the session, pray for the team, pray for guidance and wisdom for that team. At the end you have one of the other prayer warriors or another leader/pastor pray over you that God would give you the guidance and wisdom and vision for this conference. Then send them out to continue to pray. An hour where we gather to call out to God to bring the laborers to this conference and to guide us.
Isn’t the verse saying call out to Him, pray? Do we need to be more like the early church who seem to meet often to pray? Or maybe we need to stay on our knees a little longer asking for those laborers. We want growth…hook on to the power of prayer.
Perhaps that power of prayer becomes so intense that “we” can’t stop ourselves we want to be “sent” to “go”. We start saying “Here I am send me!”
What strikes me about this verse is that these disciples are actually participating in the answer to their own prayer. Jesus tells them to ask the Lord to send workers, and then, guess what!? The Lord sends THEM into the harvest field. I think there is something to this. The idea of participating with God in answer to our prayers. Doing more than just waiting for an answer.
Just something to think about.