Be Still And Know

Matthew 9:37-38 [Jesus] said to his disciples, “The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send more workers into his fields.” This is a fascinating statement from Jesus. He was seeing a huge reaction to his ministry with crowds of people responding to both his teaching and his healing. The harvest was clearly enormous, and so he reflected on the need for more workers. The obvious question to ask is this: if it was so clear that more workers were needed, why was it necessary for the disciples to pray about it? Why didn’t God recruit more helpers automatically? This is a really important question. And the answer helps us to understand the nature of prayer. Because God is all powerful the answer has to be that he could have instantly enlisted more workers. But God has chosen to work in partnership with us. He wants us to be involved in his work of mission - and the most intimate way in which we can join in partnership with him is thr