Topic: Heart for the Harvest

Text: John 4: 34–35

 

John 4:34–35 come at the end of Jesus’ conversation with a Samaritan woman. The disciples returned having gone to buy food. She goes back into town to talk about who she had met. Jesus is having this conversation with the disciples. They’re saying, “Hey, we have bought the food you sent us to get, now you can eat. He says, “Oh, I’ve eaten. I have much better food than you’ve eaten. My food is to do the will of him who sent me, to finish his work. Basically, he was saying, what sustains me is obeying the father, accomplishing his will, doing the mission he sent me to do. Then he says, “Open your eyes and look. There’s so much work to do. There are so many people,” Who are in need of the grace and mercy of God, the living water that Jesus has come to offer.” So Jesus says, “This is food. This is sustenance. Giving your life, making this living water known to those who are thirsty.”

Just like Jesus told His disciples, we need the eyes of His people, the believers in Jesus, to be opened to see. The spiritual eyes need to be opened to see the vast areas that still need to hear the gospel. Some are close to us and some are far from us. Unless, our eyes are opened to see like Jesus saw and sees, our hearts will not yearn for what His heart yearns for. It is when we see that we will have burdened heart to do what he did.

The time for the harvest is now, not tomorrow or later. We need to develop the kind of heart that Jesus has. A heart for the harvest will not be deterred by hunger, possessions, other cares of this world and neither would it be at ease in Zion. It would forgo all to win a soul for the Kingdom. Open your eyes, the fields are ripe for harvest. There are people in need of salvation in Christ all around us right now.

Prayer:

• Pray that our hearts will be moved by what moves the Master’s heart.
• Pray that we may respond to the ripened harvest with obedience and the willingness to go.

Dr. David Umune

Zonal Chairman, NEMA Southeast & President, The Evangelizers’ Team Ministries International

Topic: Take Off the Barrier

Text: 2 Kings 5:1

 

Naaman did exploit. He was a great man. Naaman was a man of rank. He was a man who brought glory to his nation. He saved his nation and God helped him. BUT He was a leper. He needed help and he needed God as much as his people needed him. You are needed today for His Kingdom service. The question is, do you have a limiting “But”?

 

We cannot win the world by being timid, weak, frail or feeble. As a believer, nothing should stand as a barrier in serving the Master. If we are to conquer the devil, we must remove every limitation of leprosy like Naaman did and face the duty. Having a heart for the heart and then carrying a “but” aren’t compatible.

 

May we stand up and stand out for the Kingdom. More people are dying. There is a need for rescue. May the Lord redirect your step this year to be valiant for Him and for His Kingdom. It is no time to carry impediments around. There is still more exploits to be done. The good news is that Naaman got rid of the limiting leprosy. We must get rid of every limitation confronting us as well.

 

It is no time to find excuses for the “but”. It will limit your relevance in what the Lord wants to do through you. Are you a pastor, missionary, minister, believer etc. Have you identified a limiting “but”? The Lord is willing to help you but you have got to open up to Him. A potential harvester having a “but” is a major barrier to the harvest. Don’t be the barrier.

 

Prayer:

• Ask the Lord to open your eyes to any barrier in you limiting your relevance for the reaping of the harvest.
• Ask Him to help you to take away every identified barrier.
• Make a commitment to serve the Lord diligently.

 

Gabriel Barau

Executive Director, Go International, FCT Abuja

Topic: Sending our Best for the Harvest

Text: “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work” (John 4:34)

 

I recall having a discussion with an elderly man that I saw on his farm. He was harvesting his yams while two of his grandchildren who accompanied him to the farm were standing and watching him remove the tubers. I asked him why he would not sit back and allow the young teenage boys do the harvesting. His response got me thinking: “This is the expectation of many months. It needs to be done diligently and with experience. It is not a task just for anybody”, he said.

As we reflect on the text for this year’s month of missions, what caught my attention was the disclosure by Jesus that he was sent to finish “His (God’s) work”. In other words, when God was to conclude the labours of redeeming man, He did not send just anybody. I imagine the host of angels in heaven and perhaps other heavenly beings; God did not consider anyone else to be saddled with this task except the Lord Jesus. He was heaven’s best and God found it very convenient to send His best. Imagine a heaven “without” Jesus. God wasn’t bothered about heaven “losing” him to the earth. There is an expectation on earth and only the best could get it done.

There is a huge lesson here for the contemporary Church. If we must finish this task, we must identify and be very willing to commit our best to reaping the remaining harvest. The commitment and consecration of missionary sending has been to send the best. The nature of the remaining harvest keeps changing. They (the harvest) are now scattered across the globe. They are not necessarily the uneducated restrained to remote villages. Many of the unreached are now found in corporate offices. They are in the parliament. They are scattered in the market places. They are prominent in the sports world as well as in the academic. They are not dull nor naive. They are very sophisticated. Billions of them “live” on the internet. To successfully reach them, we must release the Church’s best. We should not keep them warming the benches on Sundays and during mid-week services. They should be released. Imagine the Church in Antioch sending forth Paul and Barnabas in obedience to the demand of the Holy Spirit (Acts 13:1-2).

Where are our own Paul, Barnabas, Silas, Philip, Stephen etc? We have withheld the warriors to the pews and sent the weaklings to the battle field. We consider it “promotion” to retain the men of valour in safe abode while deploying the weaklings to the battle fronts. The enemy we confront understands the battle at hand. God sent His best and so must we! The earnest expectation of all creation in a time as this is the extension of the blessings of redemption to the ends of the earth. This is no rehearsal or friendlies. We must get our best enlisted.

Reflection for Action

– As a Church Pastor or Ministry Leader, who is that potential best that has been kept on the bench? What is the Lord saying to you today?

– Are you the best that God is looking for or has been asking to be sent?

We will be happy to guide you in making the decision that will profit God and His kingdom. Talk to us today! Check the cover pages of this devotional for contacts you may speak with.

Prayer:

• Lord, help us to develop a heart for the harvest like yours.
• Make our hearts willing to release our best for the reaping of the remaining harvest.
• Help us yield in obedience as you lay demand on us to be sent.

Dr. Adeoluwa F. Olanrewaju

Director Finance and Admin., NEMA

Topic: Heart for the Harvest: Jesus Our Perfect Example

Text: Matthew 4:12-16

The Holy Scriptures are replete with examples of several men and women both in the Old as well as the New Testaments who had a heart for the harvest of souls into God’s Kingdom. However, amongst these several examples, there is one Person that is unequalled in His passion, zeal and willingness to sacrifice for the lost. I am talking of the Man, Jesus Christ our Lord. In the passage above, we read of a major decision our Lord Jesus Christ took because of His heart for the harvest. Jesus Christ was originally from Bethlehem which was a small town in Judea in the southern part of Israel. Due to the threats against His life as a child by King Herod, an Angel of the Lord warned Joseph, His earthly father, to take Him and His mother and to flee to Egypt. Upon Herod’s death, Joseph brought the child, Jesus Christ and His mother back to Israel but instead of returning to Judea, he settled in Nazareth of Galilee in order to fulfill all that had been written about Jesus the Messiah long before He was born. (Read Matthew 2:13-23).

In the today’s text, Jesus had spent several years growing up and working as a carpenter in Nazareth, after He had assumed the identity of ‘Jesus of Nazareth’, He took a major decision because of His concern for the Unreached. The Bible reports that ‘…leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea coast…That it might be fulfilled…The people which sat in darkness saw great light.’ My Lord Jesus left family and familiar territory for the unfamiliar in order to reach the lost and in order to rescue those dwelling in spiritual darkness. Because of His heart for the harvest, my Lord Jesus paid a major price.

Having lived His life as a great visual aid and example for us, Jesus now calls each of us to emulate Him. Each of us should be ready where and when necessary to relocate geographically in search of unreached tribes. A genuine heart for the harvest means a genuine commitment to drop all personal ambitions to pursue the salvation and discipleship of ethnic nations. Having a heart for the harvest means we are ready to engage in concerted prayer so that strongholds of sin and unbelief can give way to righteousness and faith. Speaking of Jesus, the Bible said: ‘He shall see the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied.

Finally, a heart for the harvest would mean a willingness to employ our financial and material resources towards supporting the missionaries who will go to dwell among the unreached. There is no doubting the fact that both the global and the Nigerian Church have been endowed with much wealth. Unfortunately, less than 5% of our wealth is deployed towards cross-cultural missions in order to reach the dark places of the earth speedily.

This year, more than ever before, may we be endowed with the passion and sacrificial heart of Jesus towards the unreached. Amen.

Pastor Tokunbo Salami

Immediate Past National Chairman, NEMA & National Director, Pleroma Missions

Topic:   The “food” versus the Father’s will

Text: Then Jesus explained: “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work” John 4:34 (NIV).

Commentary: What was the will of the Father for our Lord Jesus Christ? Read John 6:37-40

The priority is the problem here, not the food, what is more important to us as disciples of Jesus? What is more expedient for us as Jesus’ followers will determine how we go about the great commission. Jesus was so rivetted by the joy of doing what the Father sent Him to do, and of finishing the work that He gave Him. This satisfied Him more than his usual and ordinary food. The “food” of delighting in the Father’s will was so great that He cared little about the temporal food of this world.

• The seriousness and the urgency of Christ’s mission are brought out graphically in John 4. Here, the Bible records how the Lord Jesus converted a Samaritan woman at a well. It occurred when He and His disciples stopped to rest from their journey at Jacob’s well. As they were all tired and hungry, the disciples left Him there to go buy food at the nearby city of Sychar. During their absence, a Samaritan woman came to the well, and our Lord took the opportunity to preach to her. This brought about her salvation, and she ran back to tell other Samaritans in the village to come and see the Messiah.

  When the disciples returned with food, Jesus was still talking with her. Not interested in what had happened, the only thing they were worried about was that their Master should have His long-awaited food with them. But Jesus replied that He had something superior to be troubled about. Here was an excellent opportunity to save sinners, and there was much work to be done! He therefore challenged them about our Kingdom Mission being our urgency.

  The disciples saw the great conversion but they scarcely seemed to be thrilled or interested about this. It appears that the spiritually dull disciples, with their earth-bound vision, saw only the recent. Why was this so? Perhaps they were too anxious with the mundane subject of food. All that was on their minds then was that they had bought food for themselves and their Master and that He should now come and eat with them.

  Maybe we can see a bit of ourselves in these disciples. We are oftentimes troubled about the basic necessities of life like food and drink, rest and sleep, health and comfort, clothes and shelter. There is nothing abnormal about being concerned with these things. But when our thoughts and our time are wholly preoccupied with them, then there must be great cause for concern.

  There are more important things in life to be concerned about. Here are some thought-provoking questions:

• Would you sacrifice your leisure time or rest time if there is an opportunity for you to lead someone to Christ?
• Would you sacrifice buying the dress or Shoe you always wanted, to send the money to a mission field in need?
• Would you forgo a day meal to fast and pray for the unreached people groups or Nations?

  Failure to answer these questions positively may show that you are preoccupied with the mundane things of this life. If you are earnestly seeking to advance God’s kingdom on earth, the first thing you need to do is to remove this preoccupation and embrace a sense of mission, a sense of being urgently compelled by a divine purpose. That mission must be as dominant to you as life. This is what Jesus meant when He said in v.34, “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me and to finish His work.” To Him, doing the will of God and finishing it was his priority before food and drink. He could not do without them. They were His mandate, and He must realize His mandate! Do you have the same sense of kingdom mandate? The work of saving people from eternal death is part of your mission in life. It is as basic to your existence as food and water. Unless you take this kingdom mandate seriously, you will not see a need to go and bring people to the saving knowledge of Christ or budge out of your comfort zone.

Prayer:

• Dear Lord Jesus, please help me to put your kingdom mission and mandate first priority. Give me the enabling grace to serve and fulfill the great commission, even when it is not convenient or suitable.
• Please, Lord, remove the spiritual dullness in me and give me a sound mind in Jesus name.

Dr Mrs Ada Folajinmi

President, Sojourners Ministry International, Kachia, Kaduna State

Topic: When the Heart for the Harvest is Lost

Text: John 21:1-17

In the John 4:31-38 passage, the disciples had left Judea, going northwards to Galilee, Samaria was on their way. Along the way they got tired, hungry and thirsty. Even Jesus was tired and sat near the famous Jacob’s well in the town of Sychar. The disciples left Jesus there and dashed to town to grab some food and drinks. They had their fill and brought some for Jesus to eat, only to find him chatting with a woman. They urged him to eat and he told them “I have food to eat that you know not about”. The disciples wandered, did someone bring him food while we were away? Jesus told them, “my meat (food) is to do the will of him that sent me and to finish his work” (V.34). Though Jesus was tired, hungry and thirsty, the priority of the harvest was his consuming passion. Jesus was sensitive to the mission opportunities around him. May God open the eyes of our hearts to see the great commission opportunities of our time. May God grant us harvest eyes.

In our text today, we see a group of disciples who have experienced the miracle of five loaves and two fishes; the transfiguration, several teaching and parables of the kingdom, the passion, death, resurrection as well as the first and second post resurrection appearances (John 20:19-23). These were leaders who had been sent by Jesus, just as the Father sent him (John 20:21). Men who had been raised to subdue nations and labour in the harvest. Unfortunately, people raised to fish for men, went after fish to eat and to sell to make money. This depicts a loss of the heart for the harvest.

What is responsible for a loss of the harvest heart? Matthew 6:25-33 give us the clue. When a disciple allows the thought of what to eat, wear, drink, who to marry, where to work etc, dominate his or her heart to the detriment of eternal pursuits; this leads to a loss of the heart for the harvest. Moreover when a disciple lacks eyes to see the Great Commission opportunities in their neighborhood, schools, work place, cities, rural communities etc, a heart for the harvest is lost.

What is the Harvest?

The harvest refers to eternal souls already paid for by the life-blood of the only begotten Son of God as an inheritance for the kingdom. They are those who are yet to hear about Jesus, and or haven’t made the decision to accept him as their personal Lord and Savior.

What is taking the place of an ardent pursuit of the harvest of lost and perishing souls in your life? There is a need to identify such things. Decide now to lay them aside. Prioritize the pursuit of the kingdom of God. As Jesus came to Peter and his team, he comes to you today asking “do you love me more than these things that you have allowed to take the place of an ardent pursuit of eternal souls as harvests for the kingdom?”

How is your devotion to the harvest that Jesus paid for with his blood? Would you ask for a restoration of a heart for the harvest? May you experience a heart that burns for lost souls earnestly seeking to reach them with the good news of God’s love through Jesus Christ. Amen.

Mike Adegbile

Immediate Past Executive Secretary, NEMA & Movement Catalyst for Go-North Initiative

Topic: Harvesting at God O’clock

Text: John 4:34

Jesus was intense and intentional about the harvest. It was passion and core focus of His ministry. You cannot read the gospel carefully and miss His heart and burden for the harvest. To Him, nothing really matters if it does not matter to God and His glory among all peoples. In every encounter with both Jews and Gentiles; in virtually all His miracles and through all His parables, the harvest was always in the front burner.

He came for the harvest. He lived and died for the harvest. He actually called harvesting His food, the sustenance, or the nourishment of His being. To ignore the harvest is to fail the litmus test of a true disciple. Harvest without a labourer is a tragedy. He establishes the church, as His labour force, for the harvest. To misunderstand or misinterpret the harvest and its season is disastrous! He once stunned on His followers:

Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that the sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor (John 4:35-38 ESV))

This jolted their fixed minds. A striking and consequential disruption of their calculation of times and seasons. Shifting attention from the burden in verse 34 to the timing and consequence of our harvest involvement:

• Jesus says, it is God o’clock! It is harvesting time. Take another look at what time and season you are in. It is time to bring in the sheaves. Don’t suspend your fruitfulness. If you read God’s time piece, harvest is right now upon us.
• Don’t postpone the harvest. Understand God’s seasons. Appropriate God’s season of the harvest and enter into the harvest. Don’t delay the celebration. Throne room will soon be filled with people from all tongues, language, peoples and nations.
• Sowing is ongoing, so is the harvest. The reapers and the planters are on duty together. You can’t be in and be left out, except by your own choosing. It is God O’clock.
• At God O’clock, the harvesters are being paid. If you enter into their harvest, you get something eternal for your labour. There is a lot more to harvest than your limited struggling efforts could grasp. The generation of starters are re-released into the generation of the finishers.

At God O’clock God is working ahead of you into your seasons. He is supplying the “seed to the Sower and bread for food. He will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest” (2 Cor 9:10 (ESV). Harvesting at God O’clock brings your labour to a tangible season of fruitfulness. It can eliminate dryness and frustration.

If your heart is right for the harvest, it won’t matter which season you are in. Since what you’re reaping today was another man’s sowing of yesterday; just as your sowing today prepares a stage for the harvest season of others tomorrow. God is rearranging the seasons as we understand them. This can rattle human calendar. “Behold, the days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when the plowman shall overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes him who sows the seed; the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it. (Amos 9:13 (ESV)) So, God is collapsing our known seasons while setting up multiple seasons of the harvests.

Prayers:

• May our time piece be set to synchronize with God O’clock.
• May the Lord connect our hearts with His timing for the harvest.
• May we not miss this revival birthing season of harvest of the nations in the horizon. May we read His piece in ways that help us stop postponing, delaying and denying the harvest.

Rev’d Canon Timothy Olonade, PhD
Pioneer Executive Secretary, NEMA & President, El-Rehoboth Global Missions (aka El-Rehoboth Global Leadership Foundation)

Topic: Faithfully Seeking the Lost

Text: For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10).

Jesus Christ came with the purpose of seeking those who are lost. Christ taught the importance of seeking after the one who is lost. We will have to seek out the lost intentionally because they’re not likely to come to us so we must go to them. Since the fall of Adam, all mankind is in a lost and fallen state. In that regard, Jesus told His disciples to go into all the world and to make disciples of all nations but also to teach them to observe what He taught them (Mathew 28:19-20). This is part of the seeking and saving of the lost. The passion of Jesus Christ for the lost was what He wanted to teach His followers and His disciples, and it’s what they wanted to teach us. That we must remain faithful to the end in our passion for the lost.

God, in his infinite mercies, has other amazing ways of witnessing to the lost. Darlene Sala in her Series: “Encouraging Words; Seeking the Lost”, told the story of a professional diver, who while diving one day on the bottom of the ocean, noticed an oyster with a piece of paper in its mouth. He detached the oyster and held the piece of paper close to the goggles of his headgear. He found that it was a Gospel tract telling how to become a Christian, and calling on whoever reads it to repent of his sins.

The diver was amazed and said, “I cannot hold out against God any longer, since He has gone to so much trouble to track me down.” He repented of his sins at the bottom of the ocean and placed His faith in Jesus Christ. God used an oyster to change the diver’s life. God is glorified when a lost person is found and saved from eternal condemnation.

Quite often, people cannot reach out to God by their own efforts. God often reaches out to us. The story of Zacchaeus in the gospel of Luke 19 is a good example of this. Zacchaeus was determined to see Jesus, and would let nothing stop him. But he was so short that he could not get to see Jesus among the crowd, so he ran ahead and climbed the sycamore tree beside the road, to be able to watch Jesus from there (Luke 19:3-4). For Zacchaeus to mix with the crowd at all was a courageous act; for many people would have taken an opportunity to kick, or push the little tax-collector who had for long rip them off.

The action of Zacchaeus is a picture of human effort to reach God. The sycamore tree typifies the human way to reach out to God. But being short and inadequate, human effort cannot reach God’s standard to find & reach him. Only the tree of Jesus, which is the cross, can bridge the gap between God and man. The connection that has been lost due to sin has been reconnected through Jesus Christ, the mediator between God and man.

When Jesus was passing by the tree, he looked up at Zacchaeus and called him by name. “Zacchaeus!” he said. “Quick, come down! For I must be a guest in your home today” (Luke 19:5). Jesus looked out for Zacchaeus more than Zacchaeus was looking out for Jesus! Jesus is always looking for lost sinners more than lost sinners look for Jesus. That is His passion. He wants to enter into every person’s heart and life. All believers of Christ should have this kind of compassion for the lost. Unfortunately, very few believers are actively sharing their faith. We must get back to the heart of Christ’s mission and passion so that the Church can be the voice of truth to those who are lost. God makes it clear through His word that He wants all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1Timothy 2:4).

Prayer:

• There is nobody who is out of salvation’s reach. Pray for the lost in faith and hope (1 Thessalonians 5:17).
• Ask the Lord to remove every veil covering the eyes of the lost.
• Ask the Lord to place more believers on the path of the unreached who will boldly proclaim the truth and faithfully walk in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.

Andrew Gwaivangmin

Executive Secretary, NEMA

Topic: Heart for the Harvest

Text: John 4:34

We all need a heart for the harvest like our Lord and Master. His goal was to finish the harvest. The harvest became His meat (food, strength and nourishment). For us to have and maintain a heart for the harvest like our Lord and master we must:

1. Own the harvest: Owners take serious responsibility. Owners would do anything, pay any price, go to any length to get the harvest home. I know it because I practice farming. Harvest time is a crucial time for the farmer. You can’t ignore the harvest. You can’t suspend the harvest. It is a top priority. Food and pleasure may wait but not the harvest. Our hearts cannot be on the harvest unless we see the harvest as our own.
2. We need to remind ourselves the extent of the harvest. It doesn’t matter how much and far we have reached, the question is what is left undone.
3. We need to know the enemies of the harvest: In the harvest of crops and grains, we have the wind, fire, late rains and thieves as enemies. Other faiths and occult groups are competing for the same harvest fields we are sent to. On the other hand, wars, terrorism and crises are killing and destroying lives and properties in the fields Christ has commanded us to go to.
4. Reward is coming: The Master says in Rev. 22:12 “Behold I come quickly; and my reward is with me to give every man according as his work shall be.” Our labour shall be rewarded by the master Himself. We live to work and we must work now while the sun shines.

Prayer:

• Ask the Lord to make you own the harvest.

Rev David Kanda

National Chairman, NEMA & General Overseer, Harvesters for Christ Ministries, Kaduna