PRAY

Yet again the assumption is obvious - we are a people who pray. ‘When ye pray’ says the Lord on another occasion, Matt. 6. 7. So, the Lord says to Ananias concerning Saul, now converted, ‘Behold, he prayeth’, Acts 9. 11.

There are a number of motives and incentives to prayer. One is human need. How do we cast our eyes over people, whether individuals sprawled in a stupor on the steps of a night club, or raucous youths yelling on street comers, or groups of hopeful, yet hopeless, adults purchasing their lottery tickets? The Lord saw them with the eyes of compassion; for example, the rich young ruler, whom ‘Jesus beholding loved’, Mark 10. 21; the woman taken in adultery, whom Jesus did not condemn, John 8. 11; or the crowds here, ‘as sheep having no shepherd’, v. 36. On another occasion He says to the disciples, ‘I have compassion on the multitude’, Mark 8. 2. This is an incentive to prayer; and we are to act in His Spirit, neither to judge nor condemn them, but to seek their salvation, John 12. 47. This is also shown on the occasion of the Lord being rejected by a Samaritan village. James and John react by wanting to invoke God’s judgement on it, but the Lord told them that this attitude was not His attitude, ‘ye know not of what spirit ye are’, Luke 9. 55 JND. God has committed all judgement to the Son, and not to us.

The picture here is of a scattered flock of bleating sheep spread over a hillside. If we care, we shall pray. ‘All that love Christ and souls should show it by their earnest prayer to God, that He would send forth skilful, faithful, wise and industrious labourers into His harvest such as He will own in the conversion of sinners’, M. HENRY. Labourers are needed if the sheep are not to remain scattered and lost.

Then the picture changes to fields of waving corn, ripe for the harvest; but reapers are needed if the harvest is not to be lost. If we labour, we must surely pray.

We must also be prepared to labour ourselves. So, the disciples, having been told to pray for God to send out labourers, are themselves sent out, Matt. 10. 1. The Lord is Himself the perfect example, v. 35.