You Are Always the Answer to Someone’s Prayers

A Chance for God to Show Himself Strong

Being in full-time Christian ministry is not for the faint-hearted, nor the inflexible! You need to make sure you’re stretching regularly, especially when you are in limbo seasons of searching out new opportunities. Why so? Because there will undoubtedly be times where you will have more than one set of metaphorical hands on various limbs, pulling you in opposite directions!

We have experienced this in Ireland to some degree, but far more so amongst the world’s most unreached peoples overseas. Even before we moved permanently, we heard phrases centred around, “You are the answer to our prayers.” Since living there, and travelling to various cities and ministries, we have heard it again and again. “We’ve been praying for so long, perhaps you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this!”

It’s always a little heart-wrenching, and can often leave one feeling a little guilty. In very different ministries we have encountered this. We, like everyone else, have a variety of skills and giftings, so it doesn’t take much to imagine a particular role or ministry lining up with one particular selection of your skills or talents. On the mission field, no matter who you are, you probably have some qualification that would justify you filling a particular need in just about any ministry.

Each time, there’s the brief flicker of imagined epiphany, “maybe this is it.” (Whatever it really is…) Only to quickly recall to mind that in lands of such overwhelming gospel-famine, you could certainly go anywhere and do just about anything, and it would be worthwhile. Of course you are the answer to everyone’s prayers… because there is such immense need, and not enough labourers. We are living in an unreached nation for that very reason, to try turn the tide on that a bit. Soon we will be leaving the capital for a smaller city. Is the mega-city reached? Certainly not! Are there lifetimes of work that could be done there? Certainly! And yet, this other city is also incredibly unreached, as is the next city, and the next, and the villages in the North… and the South… and East and West.

One particular need that I am praying for at the moment is for more pastoral-hearted people to come. I fall into this category more myself, so I see the opportunities from that standpoint. Many first-generation believers, whose messy first-generation churches fell apart and need shepherding. Other small groups that need building up. More traditional places who need to be shepherded into a love for their neighbours and reaching out to them. There is a need for pastoral-hearted missionaries to come and shepherd such people into healthy, self-sustaining fellowships.

But then the more evangelistic kinds will see that there are vast swathes of this country that need pioneer work done in them, starting from ground zero as it were. They’ll look and see the thousands of unreached areas of cities, and villages etc.

Those with more support-type giftings will see the need for building up resources and establishing local-led structures that serve the church for decades to come. They will note the areas in which so many pioneer missionaries need help, and yet be unable to serve each one.

The point is this. The harvest is plentiful, and the labourers are few. As we prepare to take our next steps, there is definitely a sorrow associated with it; as we look at all the opportunities we could take, the places we could go, the ministries we could serve in, and the fact that we have to pass them by. Not that it’s a case of FOMO, or a selfish desire to have different experiences. Rather, it’s the pain that comes from seeing the great need in those places, knowing that we could go there, and yet knowing that we absolutely can’t go everywhere. We are finite, we are not omnipresent. We cannot bear the burden of a nation, never mind the world, on our shoulders.

But thank the Lord we know one who does. One who sees the crowds and has a far deeper compassion for them than we do. When despair at the immensity of the task overtakes us, and guilt at not doing many things pricks at our hearts, we remember what the sovereign Lord of the harvest was most concerned that we do:

“Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

Instead of despairing at the work left to be done, we call this to mind. He is the Lord of the harvest. And the labourers merely do the work. Ours is to work hard in the corner that he has put us in. Ours is to be filled with the compassion for this world that brought him here to redeem it. Ours is to pray for the Lord to send out more workers, knowing that he will make sure his harvest is brought in.

And that’s why this need is such a wonderful opportunity. Not an opportunity to show how much we can do, or how we’re going to change the world. But, as with every need, it is an opportunity for God to show himself strong on behalf on the lost of this world. The bigger the need, the greater the opportunity for him to show that his arm is not short to save, that his tears have not run out, that his compassion does not fail, and that he is the strong one upon whom we rest our weary heads at the end of a long day’s work.

We may be the answer to someone’s prayers. It’s possible, perhaps even probable. But thank God that we are not the answer to every need here. Because it reminds us that he is. And only if the Lord of the harvest answers his people’s prayers for more labourers, will those needs ever be fully met. The harvest is great, the labourers are few.

Will you get on your knees and petition the compassionate Lord to send more? Heaven and earth will rejoice when he answers.