Jesus highlighted the crisis in Luke 10 and Mathew 9:37 where He said the “harvest is plentiful but laborers are few. Jesus’ first direction to His disciples was to pray. We are not here to just comment, observe or highlight on the crisis, our first response should be prayer because that is the first place we need to be. The prayer meeting is the prerequisite for power. If we ask God for laborers, He will send them. The results for the crisis are laborers, prayer, and the people who need to go to God in prayer. God does not need a large crowd of people. He needs a certain type of people that will pray for laborers who are empowered. They are people who labor on our behalf, so therefore we need to do the same and labor on other people’s behalf.
What do laborers look like?
- Laborers have vision.
- They understand that the work is God’s work and not theirs.
- They also understand that the work is supernatural work and it cannot be done in our own strength.
- Laborers understand that time is limited, and they are on an assignment.
- Laborers understand that they cannot do anything unless God is with them and they should not take credit.
- Laborers follow orders.
Vision
- Vision is important because it determines direction, priority and supervised focus for the future.
- Vision helps us to solve internal conflicts.
- Vision gives us direction.
- We need a vision for our lives especially when it comes to evangelism.
- When God gives us a vision, we need to record it. So that when the transformation takes place, we will have a reminder.
- When God gives us a vision, it can take us on a road where other people will not go.
- When God gives us a vision, we need to be obedient with it because it is for us, so what people think doesn’t matter.
- God will release supernatural strength to us to be able to fulfil the vision and mandate when He gives us a mission to accomplish.
- We need a prophetic word over our lives, just as Jesus gave the woman at Samaria a prophetic word. When Jesus did that, the same woman went and evangelized to introduce the lost to God.
One of the attacks we are up against is the religious spirit. The religious spirit has us operating in fear, so we need the power of God to undo this situation. The spirit tries to keep us from focusing but we shouldn’t tolerate it. We need to have our mouths fill with words from heaven. We need to ask God to open our ears to hear the truth and to be anointed with wisdom. For those who know Christ, death is not a defeat. When there is an outpouring of the spirit, a religious spirit always follows.
We must never water down the gospel of Jesus Christ to suit the agenda of someone else. The message in the gospel is about the kingdom because there is no kingdom without a king so the two should never be separated. Our lives should reflect the message we speak. If someone rejects a message, another person will be receptive to the gospel.
Fear of rejection and the fear of offending persons.
- We must not be frightened to correct. We can’t just cuddle each other but we must also correct.
- We must be free of our feelings. Genuine obedience comes from the heart and it reaps rewards.
- We must be genuine lovers of people.
- The root of rejection is pride.
