About this time last year, I posted a series on Jesus’ instruction to His disciples (which we also are) concerning how they were to be as they took the Gospel to the world.
I built it on
the serpent’s physiology, limitations and vulnerabilities.
But I remembered
recently that I probably overlooked the foundation to the whole thing.
We are as sheep
being sent to wolves.
It is the hunted
hunting the hunter.
It is the prey
searching the prowler.
Just imagine a
cow looking for a lion or a goat looking for a leopard.
Yet that is the reality
of that instruction.
We are not being
told to be shrewd the way some are called streetwise.
We need to be
shrewd because we are being hunted by the same people we are seeking to win
over.
This means that
any slip on our side is not just disastrous, it will result in our consumption.
You see, the
hunter lives to eat the prey. He must eat the prey to survive.
Can you imagine
a deer being sent to Esau just before he had gone home to sell his birthright?
That is the kind
of chance we have with our mission field.
Forgetting that
simple truth has led many believers into spiritual destruction.
I have severally
written about people who have gone to minister becoming the vices they had gone
to rescue their mission field from.
Like pastors
burdened for harlots ending up as their customers. Or others who have gone to
rescue others from alcohol dens ending up being drunkards.
How many
ministers have gotten into politics to bring righteousness into politics have
ever dented that wickedness? Do not they become part of the problem they had
sought to solve? Do they not become as wicked as the people they had gone to
’save’?
But it is not a
lost cause or Christ would not have commanded us to go.
It is only that
we, in our passion to rescue the damsel in distress (a lost world), we overlook
the giant holding her captive, and especially the fact that the same giant is
not satisfied with having one captive.
The bravado many
of us employ in our rescue (evangelistic) efforts expose us to the giant long
before we get anywhere close to his tower, meaning we will find him ready for
our approach.
Our proclaiming
victory before we get to the battlefield extinguishes our fire before we need
to use it.
But the most dangerous
part in our endeavours is the fact that for the most part we want to get into
the battle field before getting any orders from our King and Lord.
Allow me to
share a verse many know yet assume never exists.
Therefore
said he unto them, The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: pray
ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into
his harvest. (Luke 10:2)
The fact that
the harvest is plentiful is not an open invitation to rush into that field. The
fact that there are no labourers does not make you one immediately.
Our first call
is to pray; call the Lord of the harvest to send labourers into that field,
availing yourself in case He may see it fit to send you yet leaving the decision
to Him.
And that because
only the ones who are sent are equipped for the job at hand.
Even in military
circles, when there is a war, it is not everybody who picks the weapons, it is
the ones who have been assigned those duties.
The driver does
not rush to the armoury. Nor does the cook or doctor.
Each will run to
the place where the tools of his part in a war are.
Incidentally,
that is the same way with ministry and spiritual warfare.
We must know
what our commander wants us to be doing. We must receive His direct orders on
the same.
Allow me to give
an example.
I have gone for
numerous missions.
You will find
everybody rushing for the flowery parts of ministry leaving the very essential
ones to somebody else.
Everybody will
want to be in the door-to-door and open-air campaigns and nobody will be left
in the kitchen or washing dishes, thinking those are inferior tasks in a
mission.
Then they come
complaining that supper is late, yet only one person was responsible enough to
realise that those ‘evangelists’ also had stomachs.
And there will
be a battle the next morning because nobody wants to lower themself to wash the
dishes, especially because they will be left out of the actual mission of
reaching out to the lost.
That is why as I
grew older, I found myself gravitating around those ‘lower cadre’ ministries
lacking volunteers so that I can fill in the gaps.
It is sad that on
a week-long mission you will have one person smelling of smoke because nobody
had any burden for anything other than ‘lost souls’. That you will find someone
who never left the camping ground to even get a glimpse of the land being ‘conquered’.
That you will find someone completely exhausted from doing all the donkey work
alone without any assistance or appreciation.
That is why you
will hear such a person vowing never to be involved in any other mission due to
the draining that one exerted on them.
That happens
because probably none in the whole mission had a personal invitation to
participate in that mission.
They simply
interpreted that verse to mean
The harvest is
plentiful, the labourers are few, please rush into the harvest field before
time runs out.
The sheep rushed
to the field to save wolves without any order and equipping.
Imagine a sheep
going to the wolves’ den and introducing himself thus,
Good morning my
friends. Will you allow me five of your minutes to share with you about the
love of God (or the four spiritual laws)?
Would be the
wolves be listening to the narration or whetting their appetites for this juicy
meat that brought itself to their den, saving them valuable hunting time and
energy?
Yet is that not
how many of us approach evangelism?
What is the
application?
I leave it to you to pray about your part.