Jesus said something that I believe is very important as we think about people coming to Christ and new communities of believers beginning to form. Jesus said:
“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day…”
John 6:44
As we have thought about what is required and the steps that we must take to see new communities started, we have also realized that this is actually God’s plan and mission and He is using us to accomplish His work.
As I talk about this, I realize that I can begin to wade into theological debates around Calvinism and Arminianism. But that is not at all my intention. Instead, my goal here is to simply say that Jesus is saying that God is calling people to Himself and then to ask, therefore, what should we be doing?
I believe that, at this stage in the process, our role is to pray. Jesus said that we should ask, seek, and knock, and doors will be opened. We believe that God wants His people to join Him in His mission. Even though God already knows what we need, we believe He wants us to ask Him for what we need.
When Jesus sent out his disciples, the first command that he gave them was to ask for more workers:
He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.
Luke 10:2
So, what should they be doing? Jesus tells them to pray, asking God for these workers. And where would they come from? From the harvest!
In the same way, we believe that an important step is to pray and ask God to move, to call people to Himself. We pray individually, in groups corporately, in private, and in public. One of our team’s most-used prayer methods is the Prayer Walk. We do these Prayer Walks each week. For some in our group, at times, more than one in a week. We believe it is an important part of our work and we even created a video to show more about how to do it (more posts coming in the future about the Four Fields referenced in the first part of the video):
In any case, regardless of how you decide to pray, the important part is to ask God to act and to move because through this movement, we see lives changed. We see people around us become softened to the message of grace and love that Jesus wants to ultimately deliver through each of us due to God working in each of our lives as He calls us to Himself.