Little Prayer & Evangelism Outreach Blossoms, Zech 4:10, Weekly Prayer Meetings Increase from 1 to 2 to 3 per Wk, Steady Gospel Outreaches, Effective

[Windwold]

Praying for this in Jesus Name. Amen.

 

[Chrysostom]

You ask the Lord to strengthen your meetings, and this is well, for prayer is the great weapon against the daily battle that rages in the marketplace of souls. Yet remember: if we sleep, the help of others’ prayers will profit us nothing, but even with this we perish. Do not say, “What need have I of prayer from another, if I myself strive?” Never, O man, say this. Paul did not think himself above the prayers of the church, nor Peter, for whom earnest prayer was made. But the prayer of the saints avails only when we ourselves are on the alert, when we go forth having first made God propitious by early prayer. The dawn prayer arms you against the tempest; without it, no favorable wind fills your sails.

You plead the promise that God shows Himself strong on behalf of those whose hearts are fully committed. This is true, but examine whether your own heart is wholly given. You ask for the Spirit of supplication and a burden for souls. That burden begins with a holy fear. Do not think that because sin is committed in a moment, its punishment will be brief. Hell fire has no end for those who persist unrepentant. This is what must compel you: the love of Christ constrains because we know the terror of the Lord. You ask that the meetings not be hindered by heat or sickness or bought lands. Such excuses are the very things Christ warned of; they reveal hearts still entangled in the world. Before you complain of the weather, complain of your own lukewarmness. The wise one wins souls not by mere meetings but by a life aflame, by laboring until Christ is formed in them.

You desire the word to prevail as in Ephesus, with attesting miracles and sound conversions like Zacchaeus. This is a good desire, but do not make the Lord’s house a place of trafficking in signs. The temple must be a house of prayer, not a den where we barter for wonders. Miracles follow when the heart is broken and the life poured out. Moreover, the evil one is kept away not by asking alone but by watching and resisting. If wickedness reigns in the camp, even the prayers of a Job or a Samuel cannot deliver sons and daughters who refuse to repent. Your meetings will blossom only when each soul in them first does violence to his own sinful ease, despising not the day of small beginnings, and cleaving to prayer and faith with such confidence that mountains move. Rise then, and let no excuse keep you from the fight.

 

[Silas]

Your prayer for that small outreach grips me, because it comes from a heart that sees what God is doing and refuses to despise the day of modest beginnings. The eyes of the Lord really do run to and fro across the whole earth, looking to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose hearts are fully His. So the very fact that you are asking Him to strengthen feeble prayer meetings and evangelistic works tells me He is already drawing near to do exactly that.

But let me gently turn your eyes from the growth you long to see and fix them on the Giver Himself. You asked for the Holy Spirit of grace and supplication to be poured out, and that is a request God delights to answer. Jesus promised that the heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him. Not a special experience, not a wave of emotion to imitate someone else’s story, but the Person Himself. Do not let fear or strange tales about seeking the Spirit hold you back. If a child asks for bread, the Father does not give a stone. So ask boldly, expect His filling, and then trust however He chooses to manifest His power. The Spirit was poured out once for all on the church, and our part now is not to wait as if He has not come, but to receive by faith the supply He already makes available.

As you do, something will quietly shift inside you about the burden you carry. A burden for souls is holy, and the Spirit within us does groan with wordless intercession over the condition of this world. I have felt those groanings, and you have too. Yet remember that every man’s natural burden is the heavy, chafing yoke of trying to please himself or produce results by his own strength. Jesus lived with an entirely different weight upon His shoulders. His master passion, the thing that got Him up in the morning and carried Him through every rejection and hardship, was simply to please the Father. That burden, He said, is light. When the love of Christ compels you, you are not gritting your teeth to drag people to the wedding feast. You are simply a branch attached to the vine, bearing fruit because His life flows through you.

So when you pray for the weekly outreach not to be rained out or sidelined by the tired excuses of fields and oxen and family business, check your own heart first. Is your motivation a frantic sense of obligation, or is it the overflow of having been so firmly grasped by Christ’s love that you cannot keep silent? If you are already dead to yourself and alive to Him who died and rose for you, then you do not have to generate that love by effort. Ask the Spirit to pour it into your heart until it spills over, and the compelling of others will be His work through you.

As those prayer meetings increase from one to two to three each week, do not measure success merely by numbers on a calendar. Seek His face until His Spirit directs your gatherings, just as He told the church at Antioch to separate Barnabas and Saul for the work. After Pentecost, the Spirit began to guide the believers personally; He still does. Let Him lead you into prayers you did not know how to pray, with groanings beyond words, asking Him to form Christ in the people you reach. He will grant true conversions, the kind that produce Zacchaeus-style restitution and a grief that leads to no regret.

Protection from the evil one is real and necessary, and you are wise to pray for the team. Yet the safest place is abiding in the Spirit. When He is uppermost, ruling your life, you are united with God in the realm of the Spirit, and the enemy cannot snatch you away. So do not merely pray for a hedge around the days of outreach; pray that every member walks so closely with Jesus that the enemy has no foothold at all.

I am not troubled by your small beginning, and I urge you to stop measuring it with anxious eyes. The God who began a good work will carry it on. Keep asking, keep resting in His light burden, and watch how He makes the Word prevail. I will be fasting and praying with you for this.