by Manik Corea, C4SO’s Global Consultant
This is the second part of a 3-part blog series on what C4SO churches can do to participate in and join God’s great mission for his Church in the world. Read Part 1 here.
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I will never forget the day I first heard God call me to be ready to go to the lost.
It was a Thursday prayer-and-praise meeting at my local Anglican church in Singapore. I was 16 years old, listening to an Indian missionary share about her time in the rubber plantations of Malaysia, reaching out to poor, Tamil-speaking Indian families who work long hours harvesting the rubber sap.
During one of her evangelistic outreaches, the missionary told us of an elderly lady, her face weathered and furrowed by years of work in the hot sun, hearing the Gospel for the first time. Believing, she was now full of joy. But when she realized that Christians had had the good news of Jesus for centuries, with tears in her eyes she asked the missionary why it took so long for her to be told?
Her question to the missionary stirred my heart that day. I committed to God in front of the congregation, that I was willing and ready to go to find and tell the lost. Thirteen years later, I left Singapore in answer to God’s call.
Of course, not everyone is or will be sent, like some of us are, to cross cultures as missionaries.
But we are all called to be on mission with Jesus daily, to see and seek to bring lost people to Jesus (Luke 19:10). You don’t have to go to Africa or Asia to find people who are far from God. Such people are all around us, in your community and places of work, perhaps even in your home.
You and I are called to seek to make disciples of those people by introducing them to Jesus. Indeed, such a glorious and holy work cannot be delegated or out-sourced to another organization or leader. As Dallas Willard put it, “The Great Commission is still the mission statement of the Church.”[1]
Matthew 28:18-20 remains the clearest descriptive we have—what we in the NAMS Network call the “final command”—of the consummate task given by the Risen Christ to all who call themselves Christians. We are ALL called to be disciple-makers of all people for all times and places.
But where on earth do you start? Answer: Right where you are!
The first step is to see the lost around you. We teach new disciples in our work to make a list of family members and friends who don’t know Jesus. And then secondly, to begin praying regularly for them to come to know him—that God might use us to show and tell God’s love to them.
It is easy to be overwhelmed by the many people and needs around us. At such times, we need to pay attention to what Jesus said to do—that is to turn our gaze and prayers God-ward.
Step 2: Watch and Pray
In Matthew 9:36, we read that Jesus’ heart was filled with compassion for the lost sheep of Israel, whom he saw as “sheep without a shepherd.” What did Jesus tell his disciples in the next two verse to do as a result? They were to “…pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” In Luke 10:2, Jesus sends out 72 disciples on mission. Again, he gives them similar instructions to pray for workers.
Interestingly, the word Jesus used in both cases for “pray earnestly” is the Greek word “deomai” which literally means “to beg” or “plead.” This is so much more than a polite request.
But why would we need to beg God to save the lost? Certainly, God knows already that we need many more workers are needed to reach the overwhelming numbers who are lost without him.
It is clear in the rest of Scripture that God is neither reluctant nor hesitant to send and to save.[2] Instead, it is we who are slow to respond and to go.
The earnest prayers of God’s faithful missionary disciples are therefore needed to stir the rest of us to action. We must and will pray passionately as we realize many people out there need him. It is an urgent request that calls for action. This is further seen in the word “send” in Matthew 9:38 and Luke 10:2 which is “ekballō.”
Literally this translates as “thrust out” or “cast out” as in of fishing nets or sending demons out—it is an act of compulsion. As we pray, God responds to compel others to join in the great harvest work. This is no small request—but a call to see the great need of the world around us and to respond in urgent prayer.
Jesus wants our prayers to be driven not simply by our needs or those within our churches, but by the harvests of the world at large.
Similarly, St Paul asked that Christians would pray that he would be an ably proclaim the Gospel clearly and boldly and that it would have great effect.[3]
So, let us therefore pray for workers for God’s harvest fields, and like Paul, to ask for boldness to do our part to proclaim and share the good news of Jesus with those around us, so that they too, like us can become disciples of Jesus.
Practical Ways to Begin
1) One of the practices we have used at NAMS to help us pray is the “10:02 call”—after Luke 10:2. Essentially, we set our phones to ring at 10:02 am in the mornings, pausing to pray for a few minutes to beseech God earnestly for laborers for the harvest fields of the world as Jesus taught us.
We pray systematically through 15 global regions of the world twice a month, but you can simply pick a nation, your community or mission field you support, to ask God to send more laborers to bring in a harvest of peoples into God’s kingdom.
2) You can also find a lot of helpful prayer resources (both for individuals and congregations) to help guide your prayers in mission—from the New Wineskins Missionary Network here.
Samuel Zwemer, the great missionary to the Arab peoples in the nineteenth century, once said that “The history of missions is the history of answered prayer.” You can likewise make a great difference to the world through your prayers for the lost in the world, that God will surely answer.
In my next blog, we will look at the final step to finding the lost….
Footnotes
[1] https://renovare.org/articles/interview-dallas-willard-renovation-of-the-heart
[2] 1 Timothy 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9 cf Isaiah 59:1
[3] Ephesians 6:19-20; Colossians 4:3-4; 2 Thessalonians 3:1
The Rev. Manik Corea is the Global Executive of an Anglican Missionary Order of church planters, called NAMS. He is passionate about seeing and reaching the lost of all nations and peoples, and intends to bring this passion and experience into his role as Global Consultant for the Diocese of C4SO. You can contact him at manikcorea@namsnetwork.org.