Daily Bible Verse ~ Matthew 9:37-38

Matthew 9:37‭-‬38 ESV Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

As we read through chapter 9 in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus makes a statement regarding the unreached people in this world. I have always looked at this verse as a call to go to the unreached, which I think in part it certainly is. But today I saw something I haven’t really picked up on before. Jesus does say the harvest is plentiful, but due to the lack of workers, He says to pray. Not just to pray, but to “pray earnestly” that the Lord would send out laborers.

The word Jesus uses here is the word beseech. It means to petition or to beg. At the end of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says to go and make disciples of all the nations. But here, he says to pray. Not just a little one line prayer that you do every so often when you think about it, but to earnestly come before the Lord and beg him to provide laborers to go to the nations and preach the Good News.

I did a little research this week regarding unreached people groups and the statistics are staggering. There are somewhere in the neighborhood of 3.14 billion people who have never heard the Gospel message. Out of those men, women, and children, 70,000 of them will die each day. They will die and be lost for all of eternity… And Jesus simply asks us to pray. The worst statistic I think I encountered was this. Out of all the missionaries sent out to reach the lost, over 75% go to nations where the gospel has already been established. 75%!! That is mind blowing. Almost 24% go to the unevangelized and a mere .37% got to the unreached. Less that 1/2 of 1% of the missionaries that you and I pray for and financially support actually go to the unreached.

Honestly, as I did the research I became embarrased that first of all, I didn’t know this. And secondly, that I too mostly support missionaries who are in what are considered “Christian” nations. So with this new information I became motivated to do what Jesus said to do regarding the harvest ahead… Pray for workers!

Digging Deeper:

Today’s digging deeper is doing some research… Check out: https://bethanygu.edu/blog/guidance/7-missions-statistics-that-will-motivate-you-to-go/ and https://joshuaproject.net/

Apply It:

Today I encourage you to pray for the lost and that the Lord will raise up workers to reach the unreached people of this world.

Prayer:

Lord, forgive me for not knowing how many unreached people groups are lost and without the hope of the Gospel. I know that there are tens of thousands of people each day that perish without you and I have done nothing about it. Please provide workers for the harvest and give me a passion to use my resources and time to reach the unreached with the life giving message of Jesus Christ.