I Am Sending You

Daily Reading:  Luke 10

After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go. And he said to them, “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.  Go your way; behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. (Luke 10.1-3)

Devotional Thought:  Jesus sent out seventy-two of his followers to spread the news of the Kingdom.  He is still sending us out today.  What "translates" from then to now?

• Jesus appointed and sent them.  Too often we pursue our own plans and ambitions, even in the church.  We always do best when we wait for and follow the appointment of Jesus!

• Jesus sent them to the place he was about to go.  Wow!  They got there before Jesus!  Like John the Baptist, we are called to prepare the way for the Lord.  We often pray that the Lord would go before us, but it’s a sobering thought to realize that Jesus wants us to go before him.

• The harvest was plentiful.  There were lots of people who needed to hear the message of the kingdom and to be delivered from sin and despair.  That is still true today.  Let’s have our harvest eyes focused on the needs around us.  There is ample opportunity to win the lost, and if we will truly ask for God to open our eyes, we will see them.  Seeing isn’t enough, though.  We need to do it!

• Jesus was concerned about the scarcity of workers – then, and now.  Will you be a worker?  Will you go out into the harvest field?  It’s right where you live and work and play.  Go and be his witness through love, through living, through your words.

Go!  Jesus is sending you!

Prayer: Lord, I want to bring you glory, and I want to take your blessings to the world around me.  Help me to see the fields white unto harvest and respond to your voice sending me.  Amen.

Psalm of the Day: Psalm 137.1-9

1 By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion.

2 On the willows there we hung up our lyres.

3 For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth, saying, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"

4 How shall we sing the LORD's song in a foreign land?

5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill!

6 Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy!

7 Remember, O LORD, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem, how they said, "Lay it bare, lay it bare, down to its foundations!"

8 O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed, blessed shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us!

9 Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!