Seeing the way God sees

A disciple-maker does not look at lost people as projects to complete or problems to manage. They look at them as harvest — people God loves and is already drawing to Himself.

That is a way of seeing, and it can be learned, because Jesus taught it to people who did not have it.

Do you not say, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. — John 4:35 (OTB)

Notice where they were standing

He says this in the middle of a Samaritan town, to disciples who had just come back from buying lunch. A woman had gone into that town minutes earlier and was at that moment bringing it out to meet Him.

The harvest was not distant. It was walking toward them while they discussed food. The problem was never that the fields were empty — the problem was eyesight, and Jesus addressed it as such. Open your eyes. That is still an accurate photograph of a great many churches.

Three things that follow

Every person is either a disciple or a potential disciple. There is no third category — no one written off as a lost cause, too far gone, or the wrong kind of person for this.

The harvest is not small; the workers are. When a church concludes “nobody around here is interested,” it has almost always misdiagnosed a worker shortage as a harvest shortage. The two look identical from inside the building and require opposite responses.

God is already at work before you arrive.

For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.“ — Luke 19:10 (OTB)

He was seeking before you got there. You are joining something already in progress, not starting something from nothing.

Why this changes your week

If God is already working, your job stops being generate interest and starts being find where He is working and go there. Those produce completely different behaviour. The first has you persuading people who have shown no sign of anything. The second has you paying attention — noticing who asks a second question, who lingers, who keeps bringing it up.

This is the floor underneath the whole practice of looking for a person of peace. We go looking because Someone has already gone ahead.

Recite this

The fields are already white. Open your eyes and go where He is already working.

Try it this week

Name three people in your ordinary week — work, street, family — and ask God to show you which one He is already drawing. Then watch that person for a week without trying to move them.

I will watch ________________, ________________ and ________________, and ask God which one He is already drawing.