Thrust Out Laborers

“Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he send forth laborers into his harvest.” — Matthew 9:38 (ASV)

John Nelson Hyde was born on 9 November 1865 at Carrollton, Illinois, the year the American Civil War ended. He grew up as one of six children in a minister's home. His father, Smith Harris Hyde, was pastor of the Presbyterian church in Carthage, a small prairie town in western Illinois, for seventeen years. His mother was remembered as “sweet-spirited, gentle, music-loving, Christ-like.” Years later John told a friend she had been the best singer he had ever heard, and “such a holy woman.”

It was an ordinary Christian home: a family altar, a praying father, a mother who sang. But one thing stood out. A young minister who often ate at the Hydes' table heard Dr. Hyde pray the same prayer again and again, at home with his children listening and from the pulpit on Sundays. It was the command of Jesus at the top of this chapter. In the older English that minister remembered, he asked the Lord to “thrust out laborers” into his harvest. Most parents quietly add “but not mine” to that prayer. Smith Hyde didn't. He “magnified his office and rejoiced to give his sons up to a life of hardship and trial.”

John graduated from Carthage College in 1887, and years later he admitted what had been going on inside him. He had decided to be a missionary, but a great one. “I wanted to shine as a great missionary,” he told a friend. He was “a little proud of the 'B.A.' after my name.” And he was honest about it: “I loved the Lord and I wanted to serve Him, but 'self' was at the foundation of my ambition.”

In 1889 he went to McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. His older brother Edmund followed him there. Edmund had joined the Student Volunteers, college students who pledged to serve overseas if God allowed. One summer he went to do mission work in Montana and caught a fever. Too ill to travel safely, he was put on a train home with his ticket and instructions pinned to his coat. He reached home delirious and died a few days later, in August 1891. He was about twenty-eight. John “was deeply impressed by his brother's death,” and wondered “if it were not God's will for him to step into the gap.”

He didn't decide in a rush of grief. He carried the question for most of a year. Then, late one Saturday night in his final year, he went to a classmate's room and asked for all the arguments for and against going abroad. The classmate refused. Arguments weren't what he needed, he said. He should go to his own room, get on his knees, and stay there till the question was settled. John went. The next morning at chapel he found his friend and said, “It is settled.” His friend remembered that “his shining face was enough to show which way the decision had been made.”

On 15 October 1892, newly ordained, he sailed from New York for the Punjab in north-west India. He was twenty-six. A father's prayer had been answered through his own son.

Notice two things. First, the decision you keep reopening with one more argument may need time on your knees more than another opinion. Second, John went with mixed motives: real love for God, and a big wish to be admired. That is normal. God doesn't wait until your motives are pure before he sends you. He often purifies them on the way, if you let him.

One thing to do this week: write down the one question about your future that you keep going round in circles about. Instead of asking for one more opinion, spend ten quiet minutes with it in prayer, with your phone in another room, and tell God honestly that you are willing to hear his answer, whatever it is.