When we make it a human work, we

• feel pressure to get a decision.
• feel unprepared to handle every possible objection.
• feel insecure in presenting what we personally know about Jesus.

Rather, Evangelism is the work of the Holy Spirit.  But even with that in mind, we are prone to errors.

Top 3 mistakes in personal evangelism

1.  Failure to pray

Prayer prepares your heart, and God uses prayer to draw people to Christ.  Evangelism is ultimately a spiritual work.

Perhaps you can create a prayer list to help you with that?

Action step: Make a prayer list of friends.

When was the last time you prayed through your list of friends?

See Also:

• Ten Prayer Points For your Friends
• Prayer and Evangelism
• Three Verses on Prayer (in a book review article)
• Take the Risk, Offer to Pray.
• Prayer and Evangelism (Acronym to lead your prayer)
• HEART.
• Evangelism PAINS
• Prayer Strategy for Personal Evangelism (PODCAST)

2.  Spend zero time with non-Christians

Most effective evangelism happens between friends.

But many of us have been Christians for so long that we have few if any non-Christian Friends.

Thus, one highly effective habit to be intentional in building deep and authentic relationships.

As you look over your list of friends you are praying for, who do you need to “get to know better” or “spend some time with” this coming week?

Related Article: Spheres of Influence

3.  Control the conversation

This one is huge.

There are evangelistic methods where the evangelist controls the conversation through leading questions.

Others require the evangelist to steer the conversation from the mundane to the spiritual in a few short steps.

I watched one evangelist talk about the credibility of the bible, when it was clear that wasn’t a question in the mind of the listenener.

Instead, listen for spiritual thirst.

Spiritual Thirst opens conversational doors.

Good questions will open the door to great conversation, rather than leading the conversation down a defined path.

Read:

• 5 Great Spiritual Conversation Questions
• Resource: 52 Questions for Bible Teachers
• 44 Spiritual Conversation Starter Questions
• 20 Evangelism Questions To Start a Conversation
• Evangelistic Conversation Starter Questions

Personal Evangelism Coaching:

If you would like personalized help in personal evangelism over the next 60 days, I provide a telecoaching service of four phone calls over a 60 day period.

Read more about it here:  Personal Coaching for Personal Evangelism

Well meaning Christians threw out all sorts of cliches that lack substance, even if they are true:

• Pray
• Follow God
• Get back to the Bible
• Don’t follow man’s ways
• Just glorify Jesus and people will come
• Let your light shine so the whole world will want what you have.

Most of the answers centered on prayer for guidance and then obeying that guidance to grow the small church.

While these sayings are true, these answers to this small church pastor lack direction and clarity to help focus this pastor in the areas of evangelism to grow the small church.

Growing a church is prayer and work

I’m all for prayer. I teach how prayer

• gets us connected to the heart of God for the lost,
• helps us learn God’s voice, and
• sensitizes us to prompting of the Holy Spirit.
• positions us to listen to the direction of God into His plan.

I give space in my workshops for prayer.  We pray for God to give us

• a heart of the those who don’t know him.
• a passion to reach the community around the church
• a willingness to serve in the kingdom
• a confidence to share our faith while serving the community.

But growing the small church to make a difference is also work.

As Moses stood up on the mountain praying for the people of God, Joshua was on the ground doing the work.

We get to actively work in cooperation with God’s work of bringing people to faith.

3 areas of focus to grow the small church

Without denying or minimizing the value of prayer, let me share three directions for your small church to consider as you pray and plan.

1.  Equip your members in personal evangelism.  Evangelism training is more than just reading a book and doing nothing about it.  Start with a group of people in your small church and lead them into growth in their personal evangelism efforts.  This includes helping your members

• grow comfortable inviting friends to your small church,
• sharing their own testimony of coming to faith in Christ,
• sharing the gospel of Christ in clear and simple terms, and
• inviting people to surrender to the Lord.

2.  Improve your hospitality.  Since the small church is a partner in the work of evangelism, improve your hospitality system.  Help your members be proud to invite people to your small church and into your network of relationships and service, knowing that their guests will receive a good welcome and find a healthy place to grow spiritually.

3.  Engage your community.  Find out where your community hurts and lead your small church to something about it.  Get on a mission to be an agent of transformation in the community.  While serving, help your small church members to have those life changing conversations as the Lord opens those doors. Listen to this podcast episode here on how one small country church engages its community.

With God’s guidance in your focused prayer for these three areas, you can grow your small church by taking actions.  Use these areas to focus your prayers and your work.

Churches need to get the core values of church hospitality:

• Visitors are a gift from God.
• We have the privilege of influencing their journey to faith.
• We can lead them to Christ.
• We can help them find a place to serve.

But that is if our church

• welcomes visitors,
• loves the church visitor,
• serves the first time church guest, and
• works at including them in the Body and help them to grow.

We don’t want to make it unnecessarily uncomfortable for our guests.

We don’t want our behavior to make our guests decide not to come back.

They might be offended by the claims of Jesus Christ, but that is different from the unnecessary offense that our members might create against visitors who come for the very first time.

Growing effective hospitality ministry is one way that we can improve our congregation and one way that we might help improve our visitor retention rate.

Four avenues of praying for your church’s hospitality ministry

I want to give you four avenues of praying with regards to hospitality.

These are  four ways or four directions to pray for an increase in hospitality in your church.

1.  At the hospitality committee level

Spend time at your team level or your committee level praying for the work of hospitality in your congregation.

Take time during your committee meetings or take time at a particular time during the day where your leadership team prays that your church would get hold of God’s heart for the visitor.

Pray that your team would be able to be successful in casting that vision to greeters and to the congregation.

Pray that you would be able to find creative ways to meet the practical needs of the visitors who come.

Praying for the volunteers that serve in the ministry to have God’s heart for the visitor and that they would be blessed through their acts of service.

2.  Praying for your church

More specifically,  pray for your church and its members.

Pray that they would indeed welcome the visitors that God sends.

Pray that they would have the eyes to see the visitors in their midst.

Pray that they would get the vision of hospitality as the pastor casts it.

Pray that they won’t put up unnecessary stumbling blocks or barriers to visitors.

Pray they would get the vision as you do training meetings for your members.

A few days ago, I spent some time coaching with a pastor who took a sabbatical.  As he visited other churches, he began to realize the power of hospitality and now he wants to communicate that to the members of his congregation that they may be able to get that.

But part of casting that vision involves praying ahead of time.

3.  Pray for the invitations that your church members make

Perhaps you are launching a sermon series or you have got special events that are coming up and you are encouraging your members to invite.

Here are 10 ways that you can pray for those invitations.

4.  Pray for your visitors

You can pray that they would experience the message and worship.

Pray that that they would encounter the Presence of God in the midst of all of that.

Pray that they would hear the message of the sermon and that they would grow one step closer to God.

Pray that they would experience the warmth of your congregation, that they would experience the sacred Presence of God as they go through the worship service, that they would be drawn to come back for a second or third visit.

Prayer is the spiritual work

Those are four avenues to saturate your hospitality ministries in prayer.

Prayer is ultimately a spiritual work.

Hospitality is ultimately a spiritual work.

The conversion to faith in Christ and the journey of conversion is also a spiritual work that is facilitated by the work of prayer.

I would encourage your teams to dedicated some time to pray, not simply open your meetings in prayer, but to labor in prayer asking God to bring people to faith in your congregation.

Next step

Gather your team and spend the next 30 days in prayer for the hospitality ministries of your church.

Agree to pray at the same time each day.

Send your team a reminder email or text message near the appointment time.   Use some scripture verses on hospitality to shape your prayer.

Pray and watch what God will do.

“Overall, 31% of active churchgoers said they would definitely invite someone they know who does not usually attend a church to accompany them to a church service on Easter weekend this year.” Barna Group

What the numbers might mean for Easter Sunday

Let’s say this statistic would hold true for your congregation.

If you had 100 members, and 30 of them made personal invitations.

We know that not all invitations will be accepted.

But if half of them accepted and brought their families, you will have 15-60 visitors in your congregation on Easter. 

That’s huge potential!

Potential Impact and Reach of Easter Sunday

Some of them will be out of town visitors who won’t come back any time soon, but several will be local.

Some may be seekers and your church can have that evangelistic impact of influencing their decision to follow Christ!

Some of them will connect with your congregation and join you on your mission to the community.

Launching a sermon series at the same time will give your new visitors reason to make that second and third visit.

4 Ways to Maximize your Easter Outreach

1. Call your members into a season of prayer for 3-4 weeks ahead of Easter.

Our church is currently in a 21 day season of prayer in preparation for Lent.

Each morning our pastor emails us 3 scriptures to read and some guidance for prayer, and we commit to 3 times of prayer during the day – 9am, 3pm, and 9pm.

Praying through these Scriptures and the prayer guidance takes about half an hour each time.

As I’m praying through these items, I’m

• thinking about the sermon series that is coming,
• praying that we’d encounter people wrestling with the series topic.
• giving invitations to come and join us.
• praying for the particular friends on my prayer list.
• praying for my community – it’s schools, the government, businesses.

Prayer is preparing me, as well as preparing the church for the spiritual work of evangelism that is coming.

Possible Action steps before easter:

• Find a short 21 day email prayer guide, or create your own
• Launch a “Pray for 5 neighbors, 5 minutes a day for 5 weeks or something similar.”
• Ask God for opportunities to invite people.
• Read 10 ways to pray for more invitations.

2.  Fix and update your church website for Easter.

With the invitations that your church will be making this Easter, potential visitors will check out your website to learn who you are, what they might experience on Easter Sunday.  

Nothing is worse than for someone to get an intriguing advertisement drives them to your church website only to find something that’s out of date and embarassing.

• Have a promo piece for your Easter sermon series on your church home page.
• Clearly list any special Easter services on your home page.
• Special webpage for the sermon series or Easter.
• Refresh your webpage following this checklist. [yvon's link]
• Make sure your address and directions are on the footer of every page.

3. Enable your members to easily give invitations for Easter.

• Make flyers or business cards for members to give away.
• Use social networking tools to raise awareness of your Easter service. (To learn more, register for next week’s webinar)
• Pastor, make sure you are personally inviting people to church this Easter.

4. Review and refresh your Hospitality systems prior to Easter

• Refresh the vision of the importance of hospitality for Easter.
• Sneak in a last minute training for hospitality volunteers before Easter Sunday.
• Review your systems for hospitality to see what you can fix right now (download a free hospitality audit).
• Review your systems for follow-up contact.

In the past few days, we have seen the process of evangelism.

• Sowing the seed into the soil (A farmer sows the seed. . . )
• The mysterious process of growth (The seed sprouts and grows . . )
• Growth comes through visible stages (First the stalk, then the head . . .)

But ultimately, there is a harvest.

The farmer knows when the harvest is ready.  The farmer sees all the evidence that says, now is the time.

As witnesses, we can learn to notice

• when the Holy Spirit is bringing conviction of sin,
• when a person is ready to surrender to Christ
• when it’s God’s kairos moment to bring conversion to a person.

The farmer doesn’t rush the process.  The witness doesn’t race to the finish line.

But an effective witness can watch and observe for the moment of harvest and comfortably help a person place their faith in Christ.

Just as the farmer knows when the seed is ripe, we can learn to recognize those moments when the harvest is ready. The farmer has been working (weeding, fertilizing, watering) but the process is hidden (seed to shoot, to plant, to fruit, to harvest).

Today’s prayer

Lord Jesus, thank You for leading me to a place where I surrendered to you.

I thank you that You planted that seed of the word into my life and that it has blossomed into a relationship with You.

Help me to see the harvest around me and give me the confidence to call people to step into following you.

Grant me that privilege of the harvest.

Amen.

Today’s Action Step

Take some time to day to journal about the friends and strangers you are praying for.

1. Ask God to help you see where they are in their growth.
2. Ask God to bring the harvest to you.
3. Ask God to help you have a conversation this week with one of those friends to help them grow.
4. Ask God to give you an opportunity to share the gospel with one of your friends who are ready to hear it.

Spend some time writing out your prayers and review the last 13 days of journaling for answers.

Note: At this time, the series plug-in is broken.  To see other entries in this 30 days of prayer series, look at the Prayer category.

I once gave a talk to children at a Bible Camp in Panama.

Outside of the covered patio we used as a lecture hall, mango trees were getting heavy with fruit.

The mangoes were almost in season.

I had picked one bruised and green mango that had fallen on the ground.  Turning it over in my hands, and dramatically raising it to my mouth, I asked the children if they were ready to eat.

Their glee erupted as they tried to save me from a truly bitter experience. . . They quickly shouted NO!!!!

“Why not?”

“Because they are greeeeeeeennnnn!” was the enthustic reply from these kids willing to state the obvious for the clueless foreigner.

“But what would it taste like?”

“Bitter!” was their one word reply.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Because they are greeeeeeeennnnn!” was the enthustic reply from these kids.  Their chuckles and giggles led to a great bible lesson on growth and maturity.

Growth in Observable Stages

“All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head.” – Mark 4:38

We know that the Christian conversion is a process, a journey.

The seed of spiritual restlessness is planted.  Under the mysterious working of the Holy Spirit, that seed grows.

As it grows, it goes through observable stages that the farmer can see.  Jesus points out the obvious:

• Stalk
• Head
• Full Kernel.

Likewise, a seeker will start looking into Scripture, have conversations with friends, think deeply on these things.  God uses conversations, reflection, sermons, circumstances and more to help that journey along.

Don’t harvest before it’s ready

If you have ever tended a garden to produce flowers or fruit, you know you need to wait for the plant or fruit to mature.

The children at the Bible Camp knew that green bitter and immature mangoes will transform to the sweet tropical fruit in a few more weeks.  When the fruit is ready, they can enjoy it!

They have learned to recognize a ripe mango that is ready to be devoured.  They won’t harvest before it is ready.

So also with the process of conversion.

So much of our evangelism training focuses on the conversion, we forget to allow for the process of maturity.  We need to allow our seeking friends time

• to make their decision,
• find answers for their questions
• become willing to consider the claims of Christ
• find healing for wounds caused by Christians or other people that harm their journey.

Other times, we might encounter a stranger who has a spiritual conversation with us.  We can learn to discover where our seeking friends and strangers are in their journey and help them move forward towards maturity.

Find the next step

Once we discover their spiritual thirst, we can learn to recognize where they are in journey.

The farmer is able to observe the growth process, we can too.

The challenge for us is

• to be patient
• to trust the sovereignty of God
• to not rush the process

Today’s Prayer

Lord Jesus, thank You for helping me place my faith in You as my Lord and Savior.

I thank you that You planted that seed of the word into my life and that it has blossomed into a relationship with You.

I pray for my friends today that you would help the seeds that have been planted in their life to sprout and grow into a place ready for harvest.

Grant me the eyes to see where they are in the process, the patience to wait on your timing, and the joy of watching their growth towards you.

Amen.

Today’s Action

Take some time to day to journal about the friends you are praying for.

1. Ask God to help you discern their journey and where they are on it.
2. Ask God to give you insight on their spiritual need and how you might help their growth.
3. Ask God to help you have a conversation this week with one of those friends to help them grow.

Spend some time writing out your answers.

Note: At this time, the series plug-in is broken.  To see other entries in this 30 days of prayer series, look at the Prayer category.

When the service was over she came up to the pastor and I (I was the guest preacher, and pastor is to my right).

She began to talk with us.

She had been walking by the church and heard the noise and wandered in.

During the conversation, she expressed her concern about the health of the child in her arms.  Being of little means, she could not easily go to a doctor’s office, nor buy expensive medicine.

We offered to pray with her, that God would bring healing to her child, and asked her permission to pray with her right there.

She gave us permission and we had the opportunity to pray with her.

As I’ve not been back to that church, I do not know what came of that, nor do I know how God worked in that situation.

Listen for the Opportunity

Praying with your first time church visitors can give you opportunity to have follow up conversations about God’s work.

In my training for church greeters, we kick around the topic of training church greeters to look for appropriate moments to pray WITH and FOR church visitors.

If we attentively listen to the church visitor in our conversations, we might often hear them express something that is worrying them.

That can become a point of prayer with the church visitor before their departure.

That is the first step: Listen for the need in conversation.

Example of Praying with a Church Visitor

We had a church visitor who was an immigrant in our country on a Student Visa.  She was not yet a Christian, and had been invited to our international church.

As is my custom, I take the initiative to engage people in conversation.  As we talked, this church visitor expressed a concern over the status of her visa.  It was a big worry.

I offered to pray with her about this situation and the desired outcome.

“I know that God cares about your need.  Can we seek God together in prayer for His will to be done in this situation?”

I asked permission of her to pray with her at that moment.

“Would you be comfortable if I prayed with you right now for this situation?”

She allowed me to pray with her before she left.

The following week, she returned to our church.  God had answered her prayer.

Now she was more spiritually open to learning about following Jesus.  God gave her grace of a favorable answer as part of His work in drawing this student to Himself.

How not to be rude in Praying with a Church Visitor . . .

You can’t assume the stranger will be comfortable with you praying for them in public.

You can’t assume that the church visitor would even want you to pray for them.

Simply launching out with “Let’s pray about it right now” and proceeding to do so can be rude and embarrassing to your church visitor.

The key is asking permission to pray for them and with them.

In the example above, I asked permission of the church visitor in a two step process.

• Can we pray about this?
• Can we pray about this now?

I phrased it a little differently, but it is asking permission and giving room for people to say no.

One time, I asked permission and the person said no.  I respected that boundary (read Take a Risk, Offer to Pray).

Another time, we were in the cafeteria and I asked permission to pray.  The response was no.  Rather, the person wanted to pray alone that night over the situation we talked about.  He wasn’t comfortable with an public prayer in an open space.

You’ve got to be sensitive to the comfort level and boundaries of the person.

Permission is the foundational key to not being rude.

7 Tips to Praying for a Church Visitor

Here are 7 more tips to praying for a church visitor without being embarrassing or rude.  Notice, this starts after you have been given permission.

The following is taken Organic Outreach for Ordinary People: Sharing Good News Naturally (p. 114).

If you ask for permission to pray with an unbelieving family member or friend and they say yes, pause right then to offer up a simple prayer. Here are seven simple suggestions:

1. Keep your prayer brief. In most cases less than a minute is wise.
2. Use common language. Don’t make your prayer flowery and don’t use the King’s English. Let your words of prayer be conversational and natural.
3. Extend a hand if it is appropriate. If you feel it would be taken the right way, take the person’s hand or place your hand on their shoulder. There is power in touch.
4. Pray for the person’s specific need or joy. Focus your prayer on what they shared with you and don’t wander to other topics. Keep it simple; don’t turn your prayer into a chance to preach a sermon.
5. Pray in the name of Jesus. There is power in Jesus’ name. God already knows and cares about the person you are praying for. Make sure they know to whom you are praying and who to thank if the prayer is answered.
6. Check in to see how things are going. After a week or two, check in and see if the need has been met or if the joy is continuing to flow. If so, give God the glory. If the need persists, keep praying.
7. Be sensitive to location and volume. If you are in a public place, step out of the flow of traffic. You may be comfortable with prayer, but it might be new territory for the person receiving it. Seek a little privacy if possible. Also, pray quietly. Remember, the only people who need to hear are you, the person you are praying for, and God.

Order Organic Outreach for Ordinary People: Sharing Good News Naturally from Amazon (affiliate link).

Let me ask you this?

Have you seen how God answers such prayers and how that has helped you have further conversations with your visitors?

If you liked this article, please share it using the bookmark or sharing tool below.

How does the seed grow?

I remember science projects I did in elementary school to make seeds sprout.

We played with the variables of soil, light, water, and even gravity (by using a record player) to see what might happen.

I recall the wonder and marvel that the seeds sprouted.

My children have repeated similar experiments with guandu and papaya seeds, and I got joy at watching their excitement over the shoots peaking out from the soil.

Watching a seed actually sprout and turn into something else provokes awe in my spirit at the great marvel of God’s design.

Scientists can probably describe

• the mechanics of how a seed grows,
• the right elements that contribute to helping a seed spout
• how a seed shoots forth it’s roots
• how genetics help it turn into the right plant,
• how the chemical interactions with water, soil, and light make the seed sprout.

But the inner workings remain a mystery of wonder to me that seeds sprout and change into something beautiful.

Even without my attention, my care, seeds grow once they are activated.

Silently.

Mysteriously.

Over time.

Transforming into what they were designed to become.

The mystery of Christian conversion

As evangelists, we sow the seed of the word, but God makes it grow.

How the individual seed grows in the life of the person who receives it remains the mysterious work of the Holy Spirit.

How did you come to surrender your life to Christ?

Can you remember a day or even a particular moment?  You had come to place in your life where the invitation to follow Christ became irresistible and you surrendered your life.

Or maybe it was more of a gradual awareness and personal ownership.  You grew up surrounded by Christians, in a Christian environment, and somewhere along the way, you owned your own faith.

Either way, your conversion and surrender to Christ was at the end of a quest, a journey, a path of spiritual restlessness and need that led you to see your need for Christ.

A seed had been planted.

The journey began.

Eventually, it led to your conversion.

That mysterious inward journey is the Holy Spirit drawing you faith: “Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.”

That journey is unique

That seed cast by the evangelist or sower fell on the unique soil of your life:

• the circumstances of your life at the time,
• the people of spiritual influence around you,
• your own background, upbringing, and personality.

These elements all make for a totally unique and mysterious process of conversion under the sovereign guidance of the Holy Spirit.

The genuine conversion experience is a work of the Holy Spirit unique to each individual.

We can’t restrict conversion to following a formula.  There is no on/off conversion switch.

There is a mystery of the journey that we must acknowledge.

Today’s Prayer

Lord Jesus, thank You for helping me place my faith in You as my Lord and Savior.

I eventually saw my need for You.  Thank You for that drawing work of the Holy Spirit, bringing me to the place where I have found forgiveness, longing, and a peace that passes understanding.

I thank You for the circumstances that led me to surrender my life into the joy of following You, those trials and inner questions that helped me see my need for you.

Thank You for the people who influenced me to follow You: for their conversations with me, their patient answering of my questions, their trustworthy representation of a Christ follower.

I pray for my friends today that you would help the seeds that have been planted in their life to sprout.

Amen.

Today’s Action

Take some time to day to journal about your journey to faith in Christ.

1. What circumstances in your life helped you see your need for Christ?
2. Who were people of significant influence in your journey and what did they do to have that significance?
3. What was in your upbringing and background that helped you see your need for Christ?

Spend some time writing out your answers.

Image Source: Morguefile.

A man scatters seed on the ground.

Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head.

As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”

(Mark 4:26-29).

The role of the Christian Witness

1.  Scatter the seed.

All of us are called to share our faith and be a witness.

Some are called and gifted to a more specialized work of evangelist.

But all are called to be a faithful witness.

Part of our task is to take the word of God and scatter it in the field.

Some examples:

• How can we raise our friends spiritual thirst or curiosity with parables?
• How can we help our friends examine the stories and claims of Jesus?
• How can we engage people in meaningful spiritual conversation?

In our friends spiritual journey, do we dump the 50 lb bag of seed on them when they express their first question about Jesus to us?  Or do we scatter the seed carefully?

Can our conversations be seasoned with stories of God’s activity in our life, God’s calling on our life, and God’s blessing and presence?  Can we challenge people to look into Scriptures for themselves?

2.  Wait and Watch

A seed doesn’t bloom to harvest instantly.

There is no “on-off” switch.

The seed needs time to germinate, grow, and mature through a natural organic progression.

The job of the farmer is not to rush it.

Our job as a witness to watch for markers of the journey that our friends are on to faith in Christ and nurture them along into the next phase of growth.

When one believes in the urgency of the gospel message, this kind of waiting is hard.  We want people to know about

• the grace we have found,
• the transforming love of Jesus
• the joy of following Jesus with our whole heart, mind, and strength.

But, the seed takes time to nurture, grow, and develop.

3.  Harvest

The farmer knows when the harvest is ready.  The farmer sees all the evidence that says, now is the time.

As witnesses, we can learn to notice

• when the Holy Spirit is bringing conviction of sin,
• when a person is ready to surrender to Christ
• when it’s God’s kairos moment to bring conversion to a person.

The farmer doesn’t rush the process.  The witness doesn’t race to the finish line.

But an effective witness can watch and observe for the moment of harvest and comfortably help a person place their faith in Christ.

Today’s Prayer

Jesus, Lord of the Harvest, you have called me to be a witness in the areas where I live, in my community and in my workplace.

I confess that at times, I have not watched for

• times and places to scatter the seed
• my friends spiritual journey
• evidence that the harvest is ready.

Today, as I go about life, give me the eyes to see

• places to talk about your work in my life
• places to raise spiritual curiosity
• the current stage of my friend’s spiritual journey
• how I can help them in their growth.

Jesus, Lord of the Harvest, use me today.  Amen.

Today’s Action

Look specifically for an opportunity to plant a seed in a conversation today.

If you need some conversation starters, see some of these links:

• 14 Helpful Questions for the Evangelist
• Resource: 52 Questions for Bible Teachers
• 44 Spiritual Conversation Starter Questions
• 20 Evangelism Questions To Start a Conversation
• Evangelistic Conversation Starter Questions

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field.

When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.”

Matthew 13:44

In contrast to the parable of the fine pearl where the merchant was intentionally looking for the special pearl, this farmer seems to have accidentally discovered something of great value.

He was surprised by joy.

His spiritual blinders were instantly removed and he immediately saw the priceless value in what he found.

Some people come to faith in Christ through an intense searching – the merchant looking for the fine pearl.

Other people might come to faith by a seemingly instant awakening or discovery upon hearing the message for the very first time.

CS Lewis, Surprised by Joy

CS Lewis lost his mother to cancer before he was 10.

He felt bitterness towards God and by 18, he considered Christianity “one myth among many.”

He writes however, that in his hostility towards God, there were influences in his life.  He began reading some Christian authors, and was surrounded by other Christians like JR Tolkien.  He writes:

“I did not know what I was letting myself in for. A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.

There are traps everywhere…. God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.”

As he tells the story, on one occasion during this time he happened to take a bus ride.

When he got on the bus he was an atheist.

When he came to his stop, he got off the bus believing in God’s existence.

Not that Lewis was seeking God. He said he didn’t really want to find him. The revelation about God’s existence was something of a fright to him. He wrote in Surprised by Joy:

“Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about ‘man’s search for God.’ To me, as I then was, they might as well have talked about the mouse’s search for the cat.”

There was an awakening that happened in his heart, a discovery of God’s love for him that started his process of searching.  A historian writes that 2 years later, he fully surrendered his heart, mind, and self to Christ.

[Source: CS Lewis history]

He was surprised by joy.  He had found the treasure in the field when he wasn’t really looking for it.

I think of my friend who needs to find new life in Christ

I look at her life and don’t not see any evidence of searching for God. I don’t hear themes of spiritual thirst in her conversation.  In fact, I see a hostility towards God, much like what CS Lewis may have had.

Right now, she is not the merchant looking for the fine pearl.

It is my prayer that she stumbles upon the treasure hidden in the field and is surprised by joy.

When it comes to my friend, I pray for her conversion to happen.  I pray that I will get the opportunity to share the gospel with her.

I pray that she will find the grace that has captured me and experience the presence of God.  I pray that others will share the gospel with her. I want her conversion to be genuine, real, and effective.

I want to know her conversion has been made by the Holy Spirit, not my slick presentation, or her desperate grasping for a lifeline because it might work and she have nothing to loose.

I want my friend to find the treasure in the field and see immediately its amazing worth.

Today’s Prayer

Lord, you know the spiritual condition of the heart within those that I am praying for.

I pray that you would lead some of them to accidentally discover the treasure in the field and that in that instant, their eyes would be open to the priceless message of the gospel.

You are capable of awakening the heart in an instant – may they have the eyes to see their need for you, and be surprised by joy.

Today’s action

Pray through your list of names, one name at a time.

Linger in prayer over them, asking God to show you their spiritual thirst.  If there doesn’t appear to be any, spend some time interceding that they would discover the treasure in the field.