Q2, S04 Prayer
Question 05:
Will You Join Me?
There doesn’t seem to be any ambiguity in the gospels when it comes to joining Jesus. When Jesus asks Peter to drop his net or Matthew to join him, there is a clear and obvious point of decision. Either they leave their jobs and travel with Jesus to become fishers of men, or they don’t.
Throughout the gospels we find that people respond in different ways. Some did. Some didn’t. But the call always seemed to be clear.
Today it is a little more difficult to discern. Jesus isn’t present in the same way. We have the Holy Spirit, of course, but the Spirit isn’t literally walking from city to city by foot. So joining the work of the Holy Spirit, participating in the work of the kingdom, can seem more ambiguous.
Would Jesus want you to leave your job to go into vocational ministry? Does he want you to start a non-profit organization? Does he want you to join him in talking to your neighbor? Does he want you to do devotionals with your children or disciple other adults? Should you serve in youth ministry, prison ministry, or inner city ministry? The reality is that it can be all of these things. But it doesn’t have to be any of them.
Maybe it will help to consider a few things that Jesus said and did.
1) Making his disciples into “fishers of men.”
2) Sending the disciples out two by two.
3) Teaching his disciples to pray “Your kingdom come.”
4) Boiling the Law down to “Love God, Love others.”
5) Explaining that the world will know his followers by their love.
In each of these situations, Jesus is centering his kingdom around relationships. As fascinating as it is to watch Jesus walk from city to city performing miracles, this isn’t the real focus of his mission. The people are. Jesus always had compassion on the people he encountered; this was the true heart behind his miraculous healings.
To be a follower of Jesus is to join him in what he is doing. At the heart of it all, being a follower of Jesus means being a lover of God and a lover of people. This means that it’s impossible to follow Jesus and be relationally isolated. Joining Jesus means forming and strengthening relationships with the people God places in our lives.
Tool: The Network
Our tool for this month is the network. The network diagram actually serves as a great visual for what the kingdom of God looks likes. It’s not about the church buildings we sit in to listen to sermons. Nor is it about the religious duties we perform. The kingdom of God is really about the people we interact with. It’s the people we love and bless and serve and challenge and pray for.
Joining Jesus means making bonds with people. Every time we make a new connection with someone, we are opening the door to blessing another person. We are giving that person an opportunity to experience the love of God in a tangible way.
We sometimes picture the kingdom of God as a Billy Graham Crusade, where hundreds of people respond by giving their lives as individuals to God. Last month we focused on the question: “Have you encountered me?” With this focus, we saw that true spirituality requires that we encounter Jesus. It doesn’t matter how religious we believe ourselves to be—if we are not encountering Jesus, then we’re missing the heart of Christianity. But we don’t simply encounter Jesus as isolated individuals. Most often, we encounter Jesus through interpersonal networks. In fact, a careful study of the Billy Graham Crusades found that the overwhelming majority of people who were “converted” at these Crusades came to the Crusade with a person who had invited them. In other words, even these “conversions,” which we think of as isolated individuals, are really a testament to the power of the network.
When Jesus sends us out to be fishers of men, he is calling us to join him in loving and blessing the people around us. So we open our eyes and look at the people he has placed in our lives. We form new relationships so we can share the love of Jesus in tangible ways. But we don’t stop there. We also strengthen existing bonds, all the while drawing people more and more into the life of Jesus and his kingdom. As we do so, the network simultaneously strengthens and expands. What holds the whole thing together is the relationships, and these relationships are held together with the love of Jesus.
So when you think of the kingdom of God, think of joining. Think of joining Jesus—in prayer, at the table, and in his mission. And as we join Jesus, we should also think of who else we can invite to join us.
Quarter 2, Session 4: Pray with Jesus
WILL YOU JOIN ME IN PRAYER?
Passage
Matthew 9:35–38
Concept
This session falls under Jesus’ fifth question: Will you join me? As Jesus interacted with the crowds of people, he had compassion on them. His compassion led him to act in practical, loving ways towards them. In this context, Jesus invited his disciples to join him in prayer that God would send laborers into this harvest of sheep who are in need of a shepherd.
Key Question
Where are you seeing opportunities to join Jesus in showing compassion to the people he has placed in your life?
The Network Tool
Do you see our Network tool being played out in Matthew 9:35–38? With whom? How so?
Pray with Jesus
“Harass” is a strong word, but we’ve all experienced being harassed in some way at some point. Harassment is what happens when people abuse their power. It happens when someone’s prestige or authority allows them to push boundaries and do things that others couldn’t get away with. This often happens in the workplace, but you may also have felt harassed at times because of your gender or your race or your occupation or your beliefs. When you’re on the receiving end of harassment, you feel as though you’re being pushed to the point of losing your cool. You feel as though someone else is taking advantage of you, trying to get you to respond in a certain way.
If you’ve ever experienced harassment, you know it’s a helpless feeling. It’s not always clear what the proper response is, and you often feel powerless to do anything about it.
Many in the Church today look at those outside the Church as wicked, sinful, and degenerate. When they look out the Church windows, they do so with suspicion and distaste. But this is not what we see with Jesus.
Jesus had no problem associating with people outside of the faith community. He rubbed shoulders with them, ate with them, and did not try to distance himself from them. In our passage, we see that when Jesus looked at the crowds, he felt compassion for them. Why? Because he saw them as harassed and helpless. He saw them and thought of sheep that had no shepherd.
Compassion starts with the recognition of another person’s situation. Compassion refuses to be disgusted by another person, but instead looks at others with love and seeks to understand the pain and wounds that another person is experiencing. Jesus knew that the people he encountered were being harassed in a variety of ways, and this led him to respond in compassion.
1. Read Matthew 9:35–38. Right off the bat, what strikes you about this passage? What do you find interesting or challenging or confusing?
Sheep Without a Shepherd
Reading the Gospels, we get the impression that most places Jesus went, the people who were sinners and outcasts gathered around him. And we get no indication that Jesus was displeased with this. The people he distanced himself from were the self-righteous and self-important religious leaders. Whenever Jesus encountered the disreputable people of his day, he always seemed to hold them close. This is different than most religious people throughout history have behaved. Why is that?
Jesus sees the things we have a difficult time seeing. He sees beyond the divisions, beyond the status, beyond the markers we typically use to decide who we will interact with and who we will avoid. And because Jesus sees past these superficial things, Jesus responds to people with compassion. It’s not a stretch to say that Jesus’ mission is driven by compassion.
Compassion is not pity. “Pity” implies that we feel that we are better than someone else. Compassion is not about feeling bad for someone else who is going through something we wouldn’t want to be going through. Compassion is about feeling a deep affection for a person who is going through a difficult situation. It’s not feeling sorry for someone, it’s feeling love for someone.
As Jesus pursued his mission, he looked around and saw people who were harassed, who were going through many different kinds of struggles. And Jesus felt a deep affection for them. Jesus didn’t just feel compassion when he looked at individual people. He felt compassion for the crowds. That means that it’s not just the religious he has compassion for, but also the sick, the sinners, everyone.
It’s one thing to feel compassion for someone we like. But when Jesus looked at the crowds, there were many different kinds of people there. And he felt compassion for all of them. Jesus is able to feel compassion for both the victim and the perpetrator. He is able to see the story behind it all that we don’t see. He sees the hurt that is behind the veil that we will never be able to see.
In our divisive media culture, it’s easy to get worked up about issues, but it’s increasingly difficult to see real people. We will know we are developing compassion when we can look at someone walking past us or sitting at the next table and feel compassion for a story we don’t even know yet because we understand that whatever this person’s story, they are being harassed in some sense. We are all sheep without a shepherd in one way or another. Without a shepherd, there are many wrong paths to go down, each of which leads us to some pain, or heartbreak, or error.
2. Who is it most difficult for you to have compassion on? Whose story is the most difficult for you to understand?
3. What are some entry roads into compassion? In other words, what simple steps could you take to begin experiencing more compassion for different types of people?
The Harvest Is Plentiful
When Jesus looked out over the crowds and saw their harassment and hopelessness, he declared that the harvest was plentiful. These unshepherded sheep were ready to be brought in.
We sometimes think the harvest is scarce. This is true if we are simply going through the motions of religion. But truly, people are thirsty for the truth of the gospel. And if we can open up our eyes and have compassion on the people around us, engaging them in love and grace, then we will begin to understand that the harvest is indeed plentiful.
We often take ourselves out of Jesus’ mission because we assume Jesus’ plan simply won’t work even before we’ve joined him. We have our own ideas about what righteousness looks like, how we should spend our time, or what people really need. But do we really think that we know better than Jesus? Do we really think we can do better than following in the actual footsteps of Jesus?
Jesus asks us to join him. To believe that there is a harvest ready to be brought in. To reach out in love, simply blessing people without any expectation of being blessed in return.
What we’ll find is that God is already out in the world, doing things. We will never show up anywhere and find that God has not been working. We are simply invited to join in the harvest. The work of joining Jesus in his mission does not mean convincing people or strong-arming them somehow. We don’t need to know how God will produce the harvest, we are merely invited to join him in gathering it.
4. What do you think “the harvest” actually is? Try to be practical and specific.
5. If the harvest is plentiful, why do you think the laborers are few?
6. Make this more personal: What do you think is the biggest hindrance you experience to joining Jesus in pursuing the harvest? What obstacles or excuses keep you from this?
Pray to the Lord of the Harvest
The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. And what we are told to do in response to this situation is pray. As we pray, we are asking God to send us out along with other laborers. We do pray that God will raise people up and send them out, but we do not pray that God will do this without also sending us. Often it seems that we love our Sunday morning services more than we love the people God has placed around us. We have found a comfortable spot for ourselves, but we are willing to ask God to motivate someone else to do the harvesting. We need to be open to being the answer to our own prayers in this regard.
Jesus is inviting us to pray that God would make us more like the men earlier in Matthew 9 who carried their friend to the feet of Jesus so he could be healed (vv. 2–8). It’s a prayer that we would be more like the Good Samaritan, who in meeting the needs of a hurt person became the embodiment of compassion (Luke 10:29–37).
We will always find that as we labor with Jesus, our compassion will increase.
7. In what sphere might God be inviting you to be a laborer for his kingdom? Where are you seeing opportunities to join Jesus in showing compassion to the people he has placed in your life?
8. It is vital that we regularly pray with compassion that people would come to know Jesus and experience his love. Write down the names of people you feel led to pray for in this regard.
9. Spend some time in prayer. Pray that God would give you a heart of compassion. Pray specifically for the people you listed above.
Key Question
Where are you seeing opportunities to join Jesus in showing compassion to the people he has placed in your life?