Fully Equipped Laborers for the Harvest

At the beginning of the IHOPU Student Awakening in 2009, the Lord put a prayer in my heart that would grow into a significant mandate for me. 

In the first days of that move of the Holy Spirit, when I was a third year student, there was a “Student upper room,” where we kept an intercession set going while ministry was going on in the main auditorium.  As I thought of the large numbers who were experiencing the joy of the Lord, being set free from self-hatred and besetting sins, and getting healed downstairs, the following verses captured my heart:

And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” (Matthew 9:35–38)

I prayed this prayer earnestly in the days and months that followed. In my campus ministry years, I had been taught that the word “laborer” in this verse meant an ordinary, untrained field-hand.  The implication was that anyone could be a laborer if they would merely do something for Jesus.  But as I began to pray this verse, I realized that this interpretation did not hold up to scrutiny.  If “laborers” were untrained and common, why did Jesus say there were “few” of them?  And why was the primary command not simply to “go,” but to “pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out” laborers?  In fact, the word translated “send out” is a very forceful word – it is usually used in the New Testament for casting out demons!

Furthermore, the fact that Jesus saw the crowd as “sheep without a shepherd” strongly suggests that the laborers must be well-equipped for their task.  The language of “shepherding” in the Hebrew Scriptures refers to leaders of the people – the prophets, priests, and kings of Israel. (e.g. 2 Sam 5:2, Ps 78:71-72, Jer 23:2, Jer 50:6, and esp. Zech 10:2).  Laborers who would solve the problem of sheep without a shepherd suggest the promise in Jeremiah 3:15 of “shepherds after My own heart” (cf. Acts 13:22).

I have come to believe that this prayer for laborers represents the Lord’s desire to send out ambassadors who know Him so well that they accurately represent Him to people around them.  They will be “after His own heart,” because by knowing Him, they will feed others with the knowledge of God.  I see three dimensions of a fully-formed laborer after God’s heart:

• His word is in their mouths.
• His compassion is in their hearts.
• His power is in their hands.

Two and a half years later, that prayer continues to burn on my heart.  I believe that God desires to finish the task of evangelizing the nations in partnership with people who are “after His heart,” who, like Paul, have counted every lesser thing as rubbish in comparison to the excellence of the knowledge of God, and have become ambassadors trained and equipped to cry out to all nations, “Behold your God!” (Isaiah 40:9)

The answer to this prayer is not simply more missionaries graduating from Bible college and seminary.  Deep Bible study is necessary, but contemporary theological training is not, by and large, producing men and women who know their God and do great exploits (Dan 11:32, NKJV).  Fully-equipped laborers will be formed as the first apostles were – sitting at the feet of Jesus and listening to His word.  Prayer, not education, will be the first priority of these laborers.