A month before I turned 13, I wrote the last entry in that year’s journal. Before that day, I hadn’t written anything for over six months. I had confided in the previous entry,
I think these years of my life (12-13 years old) are kinda mixed feelings. I feel like laughing and crying at the same time.
I have to smile as I read my sincere thoughts. In many ways, I was a typical pre-teen. Raised in a believing family and involved in church since I was young, I considered myself to be set apart for Jesus and for His call on my life. I had spent years reading biographies of global workers who poured their lives out to serve people around the world, and I could see myself in their stories.
By the time I was in 7th grade, I had already been involved in children’s ministry for two years. I loved it and decided I wanted to be in ministry for the rest of my life. But on that day just before I turned 13, I wrote a prayer the Lord has continued to answer to this day:
Father, your glory means everything to me… Show me Your plan for my life. My desire is overseas ministry, but I don’t know what to do… thank you that when you ask me to do something, you provide the resources. You are so good to me.
Looking back at that prayer now, and the many steps it took for me to eventually reach the overseas harvest field, I see something new: I was the answer to someone else’s prayer.
For centuries, Christians have been obeying Jesus’ directive: “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest” (Mat. 9:37-38). The prayer I prayed as a 12-year-old wasn’t the result of my own spirituality. All the books, the Christian upbringing, and the early ministry experience were just a small part of my childhood desire to be a part of Kingdom work. I strongly believe that the Holy Spirit stirred that desire for overseas ministry in my heart because someone, somewhere, was praying for the Lord of the Harvest to send more workers.
The remaining task of seeing the world turn to Jesus’ glory is still expansive. When I walk out of my home in the Arab World, I am met with a population of millions who know Jesus only as a prophet, not as the Son of God who atoned for their sins. “The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God,” Habakkuk prophesies, “as the waters cover the sea” (Hab 2:14). This promise has yet to be fulfilled. The Arab World is mostly a desert land, and the physical dryness is reflective of the spiritual reality.
So today, as my Muslim friends fast and pray that their good works will be accepted, I am praying that God will send more workers. I pray He will stir in the hearts of children and teenagers and adults. I am praying He will call singles and families and empty nesters. I am praying that He will raise up more workers to take up their sickles, scythes, and rakes as they reach out to Muslim friends in their town or across the world. The harvest is still plentiful, and the workers are still few. Let’s pray together that the Lord of the Harvest will send more laborers.