Pray earnestly to The Lord of the Harvest

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 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." (Matthew 9:36-38 ESV)

As I was reading this passage this morning, the following thoughts came to mind:

First, The Lord said to His disciples "pray earnestly to The Lord of the harvest." He is telling them to do this because "the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few." The Lord is saying the same thing to his people today. The "mission field" for lack of a better term, is full of those who do not believe and yet in many places, the laborers are very, very few. Interesting enough, The Lord could have then set forth a discipleship plan for his disciples on how to "make disciple-makers." Instead what we have recorded here is pointed "pray earnestly to The Lord of the Harvest." Now, do not mistake me. I know that in Matthew 28 Christ tells his disciples to make disciples and I am in no way discounting the task of "making disciple-makers." What I desire to communicate this morning is the first and most important task in disciple-making. The call is clear for you and for me. We MUST PRAY TO THE LORD OF THE HARVEST!

Second, notice that the harvest is "the Lords." The passage says "pray earnestly to The Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into HIS HARVEST." (emphasis added). Though there is a very real "stirring of our emotions" and personal involvement in the task of proclaiming the Gospel of Christ, we must never forget that the harvest belongs to The Lord. Results are God's business, we must pray. We must sow by speaking the word, we must have compassion on others, as The Lord had compassion, we must hold the rope (financially) for those whom The Lord of Harvest is sending to His field, but we begin to lose sight and bring in corruption when we have taken our sight off the fact that this is the Lord's business, His harvest, and His mission, not ours.

In light of this, would your please pray to The Lord of the Harvest that He might send laborers into his harvest? Yes, we would ask you to also pray about becoming a monthly financial partner with us in this task, but we ask that this would only come through a glad heart that is motivated to do so by praying to The Lord to send out His laborers to His harvest.

Praying with you, that the Lord's way may be known in all the earth, that His salvation be made known among all Nations!

Aaron


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Partnership with Puebla, Mexico

Recently two of our staff members attended a missions meeting to hear a presentation on future missions partnerships in the state of Puebla, Mexico. We heard testimony from director of missions for the Baptist state convention and his desire to lead his congregations in partnering in the task of church planting for the coming year 2013.

According to Wikipedia, the following information describes part of the states demographic:


In 2005, the state had a population of 5,383,133 according to the INEGI census, ranking fifth in the country. Over 93% of the state’s population identifies as Roman Catholic with 4.4% identifying as Protestant or Evangelical.

In 1921, Puebla had the second largest population, after Oaxaca, of purely indigenous people according to the national census. Since then, the official census has eliminated categories for race, counting only those who speak an indigenous language. In 2000, an attempt was made to count indigenous ethnicities, regardless of language spoken. This count ranked Puebla as fifth with a total population of 957,650. However, according to the 2005 census, there were 548,723 people who spoke an indigenous language.

Would you be willing to pray with us concerning a few of our staff members attending a vision trip? We specifically need to know right away if this is something in which the Lord would have us participate as the vision trips are scheduled for the first few months of 2013.


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Mexico Mission Update

We mentioned on our Facebook page that we are completely overwhelmed by the generous outpouring of support by God's people and every day we continue to feel the same way.

We wish to announce to you that not only have the funds for the original eight team members been received, but we have received funds for two additional team members to be fully funded. In addition to this we have some funds received for the construction project.

The construction project will require approximately $1200.00 to complete. We will be joining funds with Iglesia Espiritu Santo in Northern Mexico to work with them in the repair of two of their roofs and improvements to educational space. Psalm 67 desires to work with people, not in the place of others. Our partnership projects have a heavy emphasis on disciple-making with everyone involved and we always seek to work with people instead of doing for them what they could and should do for themselves. Our desire is not to form dependency but foster fellowship and cooperation for the sake of the Gospel. Pastor Candido (pictured above) will assist in leading our team and his congregation to work together in unity and cooperation. Please pray for him and his family!

This being said, we would like to ask you to pray concerning this construction project? If the funds are available we will partner the funds given with the congregation in Mexico to work with them in this endeavor. Your tax-deductible contribution will help us do this. You can make an online contribution with credit card or paypal by clicking the link above. Please placed "Mexico 2012" in the comment section so that we can know that this is going toward the project.

If you have any questions about this, please feel free to contact us at office@psalm67missions.net or by calling 636.224.8811.





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"God Be Gracious to Us and Bless Us" But Why?

The following article was written in January 2011 by Pastor Scott Lee of Rockport Baptist Church in Arnold, Missouri on their blog.

"God Be Gracious to Us and Bless Us" But Why?

“God be gracious to us and bless us, And cause His face to shine upon us that Your way may be known on the earth, Your salvation among all nations.”
Psalm 67: 1-2

Psalm 67 is about missions! It’s a cry for God’s blessing. But unlike so many who cry for God to bless them, the Psalmist is not thinking only of himself He has a much greater goal in mind. He prays that God would bless us and be with us, not so we can be blessed, but so that through us the nations might hear and know and worship God as He deserves to be known and worshiped!

This has always been the motive behind the saint’s desire for the blessing of God. God does not bless us so we can hoard the blessing to ourselves. He blesses us that we might be a link in the chain He ordains to bring the blessing of Christ to others through the preaching of the Gospel.

We saw this in the call God gave to Abraham in Genesis 12:3 (That sermon can be found here) when He said, “I will bless you and you will be a blessing and all nations on earth will be blessed through you!” Clearly God doesn’t bless us so we can look in the mirror and say, “How wonderful to be blessed?” God blesses us so that other nations and people we’ve never met might be blessed through us! How? By hearing and responding to the Gospel of Christ that we preach and send to them through missions! This has always been God’s plan. It was God’s plan for Abraham. It was also His plan for Isaac and, as we’ll see this morning (Rockport Sermon for 12/12/10), for Jacob and his sons as well! Indeed, the Bible itself is a missionary book! It’s a call for us to realize what God is doing in our lives. He is blessing us for the purpose of making His glory known and enabling us to carry His Good News to the ends of the earth so that “all peoples” and “all nations” may hear and be glad in Him!

May God enable us to orient our lives and our church to that holy calling as we remember to give and pray for and go on mission until the whole world has heard and acknowledged the Salvation that has come in Christ!!

Don’t forget to make missions a part of your giving this year!

Pastor Scott Lee
Rockport Baptist Church, Arnold, MO
http://www.rockportbaptist.org



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Rejoice Tamaulipas!

During our mission team meeting last weekend, we discussed the theme of the work to which we believe The Lord is calling us. Translated into English the theme would be "Rejoice" or "Be Glad" Tamaulipas! You might be asking, what does this mean?

You may or may not know that Mexico is a country made up of 31 states and one "Federal District." Tamaulipas is the northeastern-most state bordering a portion of the state of Texas of the USA. You may also be familiar with the fact that the state of Tamaulipas has been terrorized in the past years with countless acts of violence from wars between drug trafficking organizations attempting to export their products to the largest consumer of drugs in the world, the United States of America.

In the past our groups have visited, taught, and labored with people in remote areas in this beautiful state. We have seen their suffering and we have seen the terror on their faces and some of our teams have had first-hand experience with some of the terror. In one area we specifically remembered people from a small village telling group members that they were so thankful when we were with them because our message brought hope for them, their families, and their children.

"Alegrate Tamaulipas" or "Rejoice Tamaulipas" is what we are calling our work this coming Christmas break. This expression is taken directly from the scripture found in Psalm 67:4 which says "Let the nations be glad and sing for joy!" During our meeting we discussed a couple of thoughts concerning this theme.

Unlike the popular thought of the world today which says "don't worry be happy" or "just wait and things will turn out alright" we say, Rejoice The Lord is King! The world offers you and I "well wishes of good feelings" but we proclaim to the world that Christ reigns and because of this, lift up your faces and rejoice! You see, we desire to invite people to delight themselves in the person of Jesus Christ, because He is worth it!

We desire to proclaim good news to those who suffering and hurting. We will experience times with those who live in a greater state of poverty, and we pray for them. We do not desire to export American culture or luxury. We desire to bring to them what is stronger than the peso, the American dollar, or the Euro. We desire to communicate the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that all peoples might be glad and sing for joy!

We thank you all for partnering with us that the Nations be glad and sing for joy!

Psalm 67 Missions Network


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