A Heart for the Harvest
Marvin Bryant
(From Church Growth, 4th Quarter, 1997)
Late in 1862, during the American Civil War, General George B. McClellan was commanding the great Union Army of the Potomac. As an organizer and administrator, "Little Mac" was unequaled. As a fighting man, though, he was overly cautious and sluggish. For months he had defied Lincoln's repeated urgings for him to move on the Confederate army, even though that army was considerably smaller than his own army. Finally, in exasperation, Lincoln sent McClellan this terse telegram: "If you don't want to use the army I should like to borrow it for a while. Yours respectfully, A. Lincoln."
Sometimes the Lord's army isn't any more involved in its mission (spiritual warfare) than McClellan's was. In the Lord's army, soldiers and commanders alike are preoccupied with many issues and activities, some important, some not. Comparatively few appear to be engaged in the mission of rescuing those who have been taken captive by the Enemy.
Some of the soldiers who are still interested in the warfare for people's deliverance talk of the importance of fighting with the right methods, and some training in method is certainly needed. Much of this talk appears to be academic, however, in view of a deeper issue that is hindering the war effort. That issue is that, in their heart of hearts, many of the soldiers simply do not have a will to fight.
The Vital Role of Desire
I believe one of the root problems in evangelism is that not many of God's people seem have a strong enough desire to reach out to lead them to get involved in it. There are certainly other problems and issues, but the problem of desire seems primary.
Most of us find a way to do the things we really want to do. When I visit my hometown, Lake Jackson, Texas, I always find a way to eat Mexican food at Cafe' Laredo. I don't have to force myself. I don't have to get psyched up. I don't even have to have a plan. I so like eating there that I simply find a way to go.
On the other hand, exercising doesn't come quite so easily. If we hired a professional trainer to give an all-day seminar on the latest research, equipment and techniques of exercising, I suspect we could draw a large crowd. Two weeks later, though, precious few of us would still be exercising, for one simple reason: we don't like to exercise.
The critical factor that accounts for the success of my efforts to get to Cafe' Laredo is also the factor that accounts for sporadic exercising: amount of desire. Similarly, an adequate desire to be involved in God's mission is necessary if we are to overcome the difficulties and make it a priority in our busy schedules. We may be mature, spiritually-minded people with a desire to please God in many areas, but until we have an earnest desire to seek and save the lost, most of our evangelistic efforts are likely to be sporadic and short-lived.
If we could obtain a passionate desire to share the good news, that would be all the better. One business man, speaking of his marriage, said, "My wife tells me I don't display enough passion. Imagine! I have a good mind to send her a memo!" Many of us tend to respond dutifully to responsibilities that come to our attention. A sense of duty is good, but it likely will not be enough to sustain us in the long-term and sometimes demanding work of evangelism. Until we gain a passionate desire to share the good news, we are not likely to make much lasting progress.
Peter and John had such an all-consuming passion to share the good news. Acts 4:20 reveals one of the underlying dynamics of how these men helped turn the world upside down: "We cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard." Literally, the text says, "We cannot not speak about what we have seen and heard." They had seen and heard something that was so real and compelling that they were passionate about it, and they couldn't help but speak.
A television commercial some time ago showed an elderly woman lying on the floor saying, "I've fallen and I can't get up." It depicted a serious situation, but, unfortunately, the nature of the dramatization was such that the commercial left itself open to some good-natured teasing. I found one example of this both funny and profound. A friend of mine actually gave his especially gregarious wife a tee-shirt inscribed with the words, "I'm talking and I can't shut up." In a serious and much more significant vein, that is the dynamic Peter and John exemplified. In Jesus they had experienced something so authentic and profound that they simply could not help but talk about it.
A Desirable Possibility
Wouldn't you love the congregation you are part of to be full of people who couldn't help but talk about Jesus? I don't mean talk about him in a "blabbing," mindless way that doesn't make sense to anyone. I mean sincere communication of what they have learned and experienced about the One who has utterly changed their lives. I mean an inner conviction about who Jesus is, how important he is, and what our role is, that leads scores of people to find ways to speak earnestly about him. If you earnestly desire to do a thing, you generally find some good way of doing it.
Who knows what God might do today through a church full of believers who have a compulsion to tell others the good news. Perhaps it would lead to many conversions in that city. Perhaps it would lead to a new era of evangelism. Perhaps it would lead to the world being turned upside a second time by God's servants.
Not likely, you say? Perhaps not. But, as Sir John Simpson once said, "a passionate desire and an unwearied will can perform impossibilities or what may seem to be such to the cold, timid, and feeble." This is all the more true when the passionate desire and unwearied will come from God.
Finding a Heart for the Harvest
How does one get such a heart? Peter and John's example suggests it comes from what we see and hear. Though the phrase "seen and heard" probably refers to their eyewitness experience with Jesus, I believe something similar is still available to us. We may not see and hear in the same way they did, but I believe we can still gain the earnest compulsion they had. After all, the key to their compulsion was not merely what they saw and heard but also their faith in what they saw and heard. As we hear about Jesus and see him in the Scriptures, we can have faith, just as they did, and a similar earnestness can emerge in us.
Perhaps you have had, as I have, crisis experiences in which the faith that formerly resided only in your head moved down into your heart. Like Job, we may have heard of God, but after our real-life experiences with his truth, we "see" him, as it were. Our intellectual faith becomes heartfelt. Our theoretical faith becomes real. Our sometimes cold and formal faith catches fire. When those truths and life-experiences have to do with the gospel and evangelism, the result may be specifically a passion for evangelism ... an earnestness about the gospel ... a heart for the harvest.
My own interaction with God and struggle with evangelism over the years has led me to occasional fits of not being able to help but talk about what I have heard from the Bible and experienced in my life. It has led me to keep on teaching the good news to lost people, train believers to reach out to the lost, and develop tools to assist believers in reaching out. It has also led me to an enduring focus on the mission. These things have emerged only gradually, over about twenty years. The compulsion is still a far cry from that of Peter and John, and it is exceeded in many other evangelists among us. Regardless, what is inside me, in my heart, has helped me immensely in my efforts to be faithful to God in evangelism. I can't help but think an ever-increasing, heartfelt desire to see lost people saved on the part of ever-increasing numbers of Christians would go a long way toward a new era of evangelism.
Specific Choices
So how do we go about increasing our desire to be involved in the mission? How do we "see and hear"? My experience has been that the desire comes through interacting with God in a constantly repeated cycle of 1) praying, 2) reading the word, and 3) acting on what I learn. The prayer relevant here is for a heart that is open to God's word. In spite of many weaknesses on the part of Peter, John and the other apostles, they had an openness to God that ultimately led them to "see and hear" the life-transforming message. I pray constantly that God will open my heart to Him and his word.
Though any part of the Word can help transform us, the parts that have been most helpful to me in gaining a heart for the harvest are the texts that communicate the core gospel to me. That would include, especially, the parts of the four Gospels that tell of the death and resurrection of Jesus and their meaning. In addition, it includes the sermons to non-Christians in Acts, the spelling out of the gospel in Romans 1-8, and numerous other references to the gospel embedded in the letters. If God answers our prayers and helps open our hearts to his word, these texts will eventually have a profound, life-transforming effect on us.
Real transformation does not take place, however, unless we also act on what we hear. It is not with the measure we know or agree with that it will be measured to us; it is with the measure we use (Mark 4:24-25). As the truthfulness of the gospel soaks into not only our heads but also our hearts, small glimpses of the compulsion to reach out may begin to emerge. When they do, we must not neglect them. We must "do what our hand finds to do." If we are faithful in regard to the little measures of truth God enables us to see, he will soon entrust larger measures to us. It won't be long, then, until we are consistently seeking to act on his mission. At that point, discussion of some "how tos" seems very much more in order.
May we make ourselves available to God and may He give more and more of us hearts for the harvest.