Open your eyes and look at the fields (John 4:35b)

When Jesus showed up he began to teach them with words that carried authority and meaning. Millenniums of waiting and the oppression by the Romans made many people candidates for believing that Jesus was the long awaited Messiah. The book of Acts records an amazing incident when 3000 people were added to the group of believers in one day. Imagine the discussions that took place among the core disciples regarding how to disciple all of these new believers. It has not been many days since Jesus had instructed them to "go and make disciples," so surely they were wondering how they would do this with so many new believers being added to them all at one time.    

When Jesus was making the statement in the caption above he also said: 

"Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor." (John 4:38b)

This statement describes the situation for many of the people we work with at Foundations For Living (F4L). One story illustrates the point. I recently met with Bishop Abraham the F4L National Director in India while he was visiting Canada. For more than four decades he has been church planting in a state in India where there were few if any Jesus followers when he began the work there. After 10 years he had managed to lead three people into a relationship with Jesus.

Today he oversees thriving churches, bible schools and other ministries. Sometimes the persecution is intense. Similar to the situation at the launch of the church in Jerusalem all of the Jesus followers are new to the faith so they need to be discipled. Bishop Joseph has added a person to his team to oversee the work of discipling the believers. As new church planters are trained and sent out they have been trained to lead people to become Jesus followers and to also be trained as disciple-makers. In this way the future does not rely entirely on the pastors to reach the communities for Christ.

In seventeen countries of our world and 11 more in waiting the hard work of bringing people to Jesus is ongoing. It is an amazing privilege for us all to partner together to harvest the fields that are ripe and ready for harvest. Thank you for your prayers because without this support the task would seem far to big for us to tackle. 

K R Paton

President