John never expected a Tuesday afternoon to change the way his whole team prays.
Four years ago, John Evanko joined the expansion team sent to labor at Western Kentucky University (WKU). Last fall, that team’s labors bore faith-building fruit: 34 students prayed to receive Christ. In the middle of all that excitement, one day in October stood out — and it unfolded one text message at a time.
John and the team were on campus, paired up with students to evangelize, rather than going alone. It wasn’t long before the group text started lighting up. It wasn’t long before the group text started lighting up.
The first message came in: a student had just prayed to trust Jesus. Before anyone could finish typing a reply, a second text landed — another student, another conversation, another yes. There was a third. Then a fourth. By the end of the afternoon, a fifth message hit. What started as a normal afternoon of sharing turned into a stunning thread of new life.
Most of the names mentioned in the text thread were people who had been prayed for by name. Students had been meeting weekly to pray in the wee hours of Thursday mornings, and on this afternoon, some watched as hearts were changed in the span of a conversation. Afterward, they made the connection: their prayers were part of what happened.
One student, Jack, was so excited by what he’d witnessed that he wanted to rearrange his entire schedule on the spot, just to keep evangelizing alongside John.
Ask John whether this changed anything, and he doesn’t hesitate, “It’s the kind of day that resets what you think is possible. Nobody walks into a semester asking God for 34 students to come to faith, because nobody could have conceived it.”
But now that it’s happened once, the limits on what they’re willing to ask for have expanded. Higher goals. Bigger prayers. Staff and students are walking into this fall with a different kind of trust, because they’ve already seen what God does when laborers show up in faith.
The harvest is plentiful and the laborers are few. Wherever God is expanding your labor, go. You may not be able to imagine what he’ll do there. That’s okay — pray and show up.
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