“therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest fields.”
Matt 9:38
“for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation”
Rev 5:9b-10
We’ve been thinking about the sending work that we do. We are motivated to send out laborers because the “harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.” (Matthew 9:37) We can remember how overwhelming the need for workers felt while we were in Japan. There were so many college students and so few Christians reaching out to them. But we prayed and God used us to open doors so that Cru staff and students came from Singapore, Korea, Hong Kong, Canada, and of course, the U.S. to join us in the work. God asks all of us to pray for workers to go to the world.
This harvest means the salvation of people. All people need to hear the good news that Jesus died for them to set them free from sin and give them the hope of eternal life.
It’s a harvest that is amazingly simple: it’s just people reaching people.
It’s also a harvest that is amazingly complex. To reach the whole world, laborers for Christ must cross cultures and enter into wildly diverse lingual, cultural and social groups with vastly different worldviews, cultural knowledge and traditions.
When we pray that God will send out workers, God begins to work! He first leads them to Jesus; He sees them grow in faith; He has them hear sermons and stories of missionaries. They begin to get excited that God is leading them to reach others with the Good News.
We are so thankful that God uses Cru to reach college students all over the US with the gospel! So many students are won to Christ, built up in their faith, and sent out to reach others in their dorm, in their classes, or on a beach mission trip, or even across the world on a summer mission trip through their involvement with Cru. These students often become the people we help to send into internships or as full time missionaries with Cru.
We both got called into missions through our involvement with Cru in college! That is one of the tremendous privileges we have working with Cru in sending. Rochelle has been excited to see many Cru interns applying to join us long term this Spring in her work as an applicant liaison. Even in the midst of the pandemic, so many young people are following Jesus’ call into missions!
Yet we have also seen God call young and older believers to serve with Cru who didn’t have previous involvement with Cru. Steve’s supervisor’s story is an example of this. He didn’t have prior involvement with Cru, but heard about it, and God led him to leave other career choices and follow Jesus into missions. Another example of this is Lauren, a music major playing flute, who left all that to go into the harvest with Cru, ultimately going to Kazakhstan. Steve works hard to get clear information out there online so that more people can join with us in serving Jesus full time.
The harvest is so huge, and the workers for it so limited, each one is precious.
We are so blessed to see how God has used Cru, along with so many other mission agencies and local churches, to bring the gospel to those who had never heard before! We have been amazed to see how the work has multiplied online during this lock down year. God’s Word and Love cannot be stopped! Even in this past year our team has helped send over 800 harvesters and served many hundreds more inquirers. Yet we know there is still work to be done and more laborers to be prepared and sent and cared for as they go.
Together we are helping the gospel get to people ransomed by Jesus, people from every tribe, language, people group and nation. It’s what we are thinking about and praying about in all our work. Thanks for praying that we may do this more and more abundantly.