It Is Well with My Soul: The Sacred Roots Annual 2022-2023

The Harvest Is Great, but the Laborers Are Few D uring the Season after Pentecost we engage in mission to the world. The risen and exalted Christ has given his people the commission to make disciples of all nations, to spread the Gospel of salvation to the ends of the earth. In Matthew 9.37-38 Jesus said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest.” He exhorted them to lift up their eyes and simply look to the fields of harvest, the teeming millions of the nations who need to know of God’s grace in the Son of God. The harvest is ripe, and the fields are white; the peoples of the world are truly ready for harvest (John 4.34-35). The call to mission is a call to obedience and perseverance. We are called to share the apostolic heart, its clarity, passion, and vision. Christ has revealed to us that the harvest of souls is vast, the judgment that the lost face is inevitable, and the time is urgent. The opportunity for millions to hear of God’s love in Christ has been given to God’s messengers. They are called to proclaim to the very ends of the earth, to cross the barriers of race, culture, and class in order to prophesy deliverance in Christ, new hope of eternal salvation, and the certainty of divine judgment. These truths, when embraced and believed, produced a kind of internal urgency in the heart of the apostles, and can do the same in us. The Season after Pentecost, therefore, is a time of urgency and readiness. No time can be wasted, no opportunity should be ignored, and no prospect overlooked. Our understanding of the harvest’s fullness and ripeness, when combined with a deep sense of the shortage of workers, should produce in us an overwhelming burden to share the Gospel with the lost, and to hazard our lives to go to the ends of the earth in order to tell those who have not heard the good news of salvation.

337