Sowers and Reapers Rejoice

As a Frontiers crisis manager, I recently spent a week monitoring a team in an unstable country, helping them sort through their options in response to a particular threat.

That same week, I also spoke with a team leader in North Africa. His team started as one of the original Frontiers teams in the 1980s. Now, 30 years later, there are still only a handful of followers of Jesus among the majority Muslim people group.

Then I listened as several short-termers shared about spending the summer in a Muslim country. They described how they were able to talk about Jesus freely. They even met Muslims who wanted to follow Christ. Glory to God!

God’s Spirit is breaking into some places—and not yet in others.

But how could it be so easy for them? They’ve gone to a Muslim land and—without putting in the hard work of language learning and cultural understanding—led people to Jesus.

Meanwhile, workers in other places have yet to find people interested in Christ.

“We went out [to the field] with grand visions of movements to Christ,” said a worker on the team that recently navigated a security threat. “But for the past decade we’ve just been removing stones from the harvest field.”

The truth is that God’s Spirit is breaking into some places—and not yet in others.

Jesus spoke about this in the well-known parable of the sower in Matthew 13:3–9. Some seed fell beside the road, some on the rocky places, and some among the thorns. Some seed also fell on good ground.

This story comes shortly after Jesus looked at the fields and told his followers, “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 9:37–38).

Not all workers get to reap. Some spend their ministries removing spiritual stones and thorns, and others are planting and watering. But the good news is that God promises a great harvest, and the sowers and reapers get to rejoice together.

“Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together.” — John 4:35-36

Let’s continue to ask God to raise up laborers for the least-reached peoples and places of the Muslim world, and let’s pray for breakthrough in places as yet unresponsive. Together may sowers and reapers rejoice in the harvest to come.