Calling Forth A Harvest For Six Weeks

After eighteen months of rapid growth in our church in Southern California there was a sense that our staff needed an executive pastor to manage the staff and lighten the load our senior pastor was carrying.  The senior pastor and I had conversations about the potential of me assuming the role as the new executive pastor.  I began praying for each of the pastoral staff by name in the afternoons.  I would walk in a park above our church and pray.  This park was on a hill.  The Santa Ana winds were blowing and I could see the entire Pomona and San Bernardino valleys from this vantage point.  As I was praying for the staff, I was led by the Spirit to call forth a harvest.  Methodically, one by one, I named every city in the valley I could see and asked the Father to bring lost people to our church.  The next day I began praying for the staff again, and then the Spirit led me to call forth a harvest a second time.  It was the last week of November when I began this prayer effort.  Four afternoons a week I would walk in that linear park and pray for the staff and then call forth a harvest.  I continued this prayer effort for six weeks.  

Every Christmas our church offered multiple Christmas Eve services.  Four thousand people entered our doors in the Christmas Eve of 1990.  In the previous two years we watched the church leap one hundred people in attendance in the first week of January.  The same thing happened this year.  However, another one hundred plus people began attending our church the second week, then the third Sunday and again on the fourth Sunday as well.  Our Church leaped five hundred people that January. 

Now something was happening in America January of 1991.  People were flocking to churches because the Persian Gulf war was beginning.  Coalition Forces of 956,600 from 34 nations with 73% being American were on the ground of the Kuwait/Saudi Arabia.  Operation Dessert Shield had turned into Operation Dessert Storm.  The allied troops protecting Saudi Arabia began an air assault on Iraq on January 17.  The American population was full of fear as scud missiles were launched into Israel.  Saddam Hussein threatened chemical warfare against coalition forces.  There was the prospect of much American blood being shed in the impending fierce ground war.  

Most churches in America swelled at least 10% in attendance that month.  We grew over 25% in our regular attendance.  After 42 days of aerial bombardment and 100 hours of ground war Desert Storm was completed and Kuwait was liberated.  The growth most churches experienced during the war shrunk back to normal.  However, our church kept 350 newcomers.  What was the difference?  Again our church was poised for growth.  Our staff and lay leadership were gifted and committed to making disciples.  The Lord new He could entrust 350 newcomers to us so He led one intercessor to called forth a harvest for six weeks and he brought in the harvest.  

Praying For The Harvest

It was my first day at my new church, Friday morning, June 1st.  I was the new pastor of small groups at a church in Southern California.  It was my practice to pray two hours in the worship center of my previous church on Saturday morning for the Sunday morning worship service.  This church had five worship services, two on Friday night and three on Sunday morning.  So I entered the worship center and knelt down to pray for the Friday night services.  Our worship pastor saw me and knelt down beside me to join me in prayer.  In the course of our prayer time, we called forth a harvest of the lost from the east, west, north and south.  The next morning we prayed for the Sunday morning services.  We faithfully prayed this way throughout the summer and fall.  Six weeks after that first morning in prayer our church attendance grew one hundred people in one weekend.  This amazed all of us.  

This church had been planted ten years earlier.  Through the first eight years, the church grew to 1250 people in attendance.  Then the church attendance plateaued for two years.  The church planter and then senior pastor tried everything he knew to spur the church onto new growth.  The Lord used that season to call him into a new global ministry of training church planters.  One of his associate pastors became the second senior pastor and I was the first new pastoral staff member he hired.  Our church had a very gifted pastoral staff and team of lay leaders led by it's new senior pastor.  We were poised for growth.  All we needed was an on-site prayer effort along with calling forth a harvest to see a harvest of souls.  By Labor Day Weekend, three months later, 250 new people were attending our church.  That summer catapulted our church to be one of the twenty fastest growing churches in America in the next two years.   

One year prior to that summer, I read Larry Lea's book, Could You Not Tarry For One Hour.  In it I was introduced to praying for the harvest.  The notion of praying for the harvest comes from Isaiah 43:5-7.  Within the context of the passage, the prophet is calling forth the dispersed children of Israel.  There is a principle here of calling forth those individuals that God is drawing to Himself.  In our implementation of this principle, we call forth two kinds of people:

1. Laborers, asking the Lord of the Harvest to bring laborers into His harvest field, and
2. Lost, asking the Spirit to bring all those who are lost so they can hear the gospel and become followers of Jesus.  He is saying to the Lord of the Harvest, "Bring them to us, gather them to this ministry."

This is spiritual warfare!  Whether the Christian leader is asking the Father to bring them or addressing the demonic and saying, "Let them go!"  The powers of darkness that are blinding the eyes of the unbelieving and holding them in prison (the gates of Hades) within the kingdom of darkness don't want to let them go.  We sometimes passively assume that our churches and ministries will grow.  Sometimes, in the grace of God, they do.  However, I want to suggest that in most places throughout the world where there is a harvest there is aggressive spiritual warfare prayer.  The powers of darkness do not want to give up those whom they hold in bondage and desire their destruction.  So we call them forth, in the authority of the name of Jesus and in obedience to God's calling in our lives.  This kind of warfare prayer can bring great results for the advancement of God's Kingdom on earth.

Years later my family was attending a church in Arlington, Texas.  The pastors of the church asked me to lead their pastoral staff in a Jericho Prayer Effort for an evangelistic outreach.  A gifted team of evangelists who tear a part telephone books, blow up water bottles and judo chop concrete blocks, giving them an audience to present the gospel led the evangelistic event.  We began praying on a Monday at the noon hour.  Everyday through the week we called forth a harvest of lost students and their families from 28 elementary, Jr High and High School campuses that were targeted with special assemblies led by the evangelistic team.  The evangelistic event began on Wednesday night.  Fifteen hundred plus students and their families attended that first night.  One hundred students and adults responded to the invitation at the end of the evening.  Day by day we prayed, calling forth a harvest.  Each night of the five night evangelistic event was more of the same as 500 plus students and adults trusted in Jesus.  God did an awesome work among us!  Those in spiritual authority of that church, the pastoral staff, prayed daily for the harvest and God responded by bringing them to Himself.

Seeing The Parable of the Sower In Real Life

Mary Lynne and I saw the Kingdom truths of the parable of the sower in action when we ministered in Southeast Asia this past May.  We stayed for three days in the home of our good friends who are missionaries.  We met Oso, a man of peace, our friends had discipled and was now leading a House Church within his Muslim village.  Our friends had been sowing the seeds of the gospel in Oso's life for three years.  After having an encounter with Jesus and watching his wife be healed of cervical cancer, Oso began studying the way of truth with our friend.  Two and a half years later there are 24 House Churches of Muslims leading Muslims to Christ.  

Wow!  I was so excited about all that I heard of the grace of God and the move of the Spirit in the lives of these Muslims who were following Isa (Jesus in Arabic).  I thought the principles of Luke 10 could give birth to a similar movement the United States!  Mary Lynne was a little more skeptical and with good reason.  Not all the House Churches were thriving.  As it turns out one of the persons of peace who launched a House Church had fallen away and some of the groups were struggling.  The picture we saw on that island mirrors the picture of the Kingdom Jesus speaks of in in Matthew 13.  

Jesus taught His followers that the sower sowed seed on four different kinds of soil.  The First soil was the path on the field.  When the seed fell on the path the birds came and ate the seed.  Not all Muslims who hear the word of God respond with faith in Isa.  

The second soil was rocky.  When the seed fell on the rocky soil it sprang up quickly because the soil was shallow.  When the sun came up it scorched the plants and they whither because they had no root.  As it turned out, when Oso started his Discovery Bible Study, he invited his brothers, family and closest friends.  They received the word with joy and even witnessed there lives being transformed as they studied the word.  Just as the sun scorched the plants and they whither, so their village responded with a harsh persecution and all of Oso's brothers and most of his family and friends fell away from following Isa.  Oso is a very courageous man who together with a few family members and friends are faithfully following Isa in the midst of much persecution.

The third soil was full of thorns.  The seed fell on the thorny soil and began to grow.  However, the thorns choked out the new plants and they didn't bear fruit.  In the same way, another person of peace, who received the word from a member of Oso's House Church, chose to follow Isa.   However, later she was caught up with the world and fell away from following Jesus.  

The fourth soil was good and fertile soil.  The seed fell on it and it reproduced 30, 60 and 100 fold.  Our friends met with several of their House Church leaders the last night we were in their home.  I was amazed as I heard their stories!  Each one of them started a Discovery Bible Study with their household and was now leading a House Church of Muslim followers of Isa.  One woman was even starting her second House Church the very next day.  

When I heard of 24 House Churches being planted in two and a half years, I was very excited about the growth of the church on this island in Southeast Asia.  What we witnessed was the truth of the parable of the sower in Matthew 13.  The Kingdom of God does grow as we sow the seeds of the gospel.  However, many who hear the word do not respond at all.  Some fall away from the Lord Jesus because persecution and still others fall away because of the cares of the world.  The good news is that still others bear fruit 30, 60 and 100 fold and the Kingdom of God expands with the sowing of the seeds of God's word.