How much force does He have to use?
To my knowledge, the Lord Jesus gave us only one prayer request.* Do we treat it like we sometimes treat others’ requests? Someone ventures to ask us to intercede for them at a prayer meeting, then waits expectantly for anyone to mention it audibly before the Lord—only to wait in vain. Are we guilty of this with our Master’s only prayer request?
“When He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. Then saith He unto His disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few; pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth laborers into His harvest” (Mt 9:36-38). What stirred Him to make this request?
• He saw the multitudes—do we take in the vastness of the need around us?
• He was moved with compassion on them—do we care about their hopeless plight?
• because they fainted—do we see that they, like we were, are without strength to change?
• and were scattered abroad—do we know that the alienation is only getting worse?
• as sheep having no shepherd—do we grasp how vulnerable and defenseless they are?
What was His remedy? It was to pray to “the Lord of the harvest” to increase the number of “laborers” who would work in the harvest fields. The word translated “send forth,” ekballo, is explained as meaning “to drive out, cast out, to expel, to draw out with force, with the implication of force overcoming opposite force.” Sounds a bit drastic, doesn’t it?
But what would it take to throw you and me out? To throw you out of your career path trajectory? To throw me out of my comfy North American lifestyle orbit? To send you or me on an entirely new journey into some neglected corner of the harvest field? What would it take to send a young college student half way across the continent on a bus to take the gospel to some hopeless Native American young people? What would it take to move a retired couple to become residents in a run-down project so they could reach the little kids there? Yes, these are real examples. And that’s the sort of thing the Master asked us to pray for.
Those “sheep having no shepherd” will soon have a visit from a different kind of laborer if we don’t get there first. I came across some startling web sites that show the strategies, statistics and global seriousness of the cults. One of them, called “Statistics of Jehovah’s Witnesses” (www.jwic.com/stat.htm), asks and answers the following questions:
“How many publishers (a “publisher” is their name for a JW door knocker) does it take to convert a person to a Jehovah’s Witness?…in Iceland, it takes 145 publishers’ work for one year to convert one person, whereas in Albania it takes only 7 publishers” for one year.
“How many preaching hours does it take to convert a person to a Jehovah’s Witness?… in Japan, it takes about 18,000 hours of preaching to gain one baptism, whereas in Nepal it takes only 2000 hours” (emphasis mine). Do we quit if a few doors close on us? Perhaps we don’t even begin for fear of imagined rejection. What do we think a soul is worth? What are we willing to expend for one? Oh, Lord of the harvest, give us compassion on the multitude! Of course, the enemy always marshalls bigger armies than the Lord’s little troop. And in the end he always loses “ for there is no restraint to the Lord to save by many or by few” (1 Sam 14:6).
*The Lord also instructed us that we ought to pray (Lk 18:1), how to pray (Mt. 6:9), for whom to pray (Mt. 5:44), and through whom to pray (Jn 14:13-14), but only here did He tell us what to pray.