According to recent polling by Pew Research, nearly a third of Americans (28%) classify themselves as ‘religious nones’. This means they have answered agnostic, atheist, or have chosen ‘nothing in particular’ when asked about what religion they follow.

While this can be concerning, it is an indication that Christians may need to retool our evangelism, particularly the use of the word of knowledge when it comes to sharing our faith.

The word of knowledge is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, where a person receives divine revelation about another person or situation that they would otherwise not know (1 Corinthians 12:8). This revelation can often be used to open a person’s heart to the realities of Jesus.

How many people have heard sermons where preachers quoted Jesus telling His disciples, “Behold, I tell you, raise your eyes and observe the fields, that they are white for harvest” (John 4:35 NASV).

We are then told because the fields are ripe for harvest, we need to go out and share our faith.

Except that is not really true. The wheat is not bending over with heavy heads of grain ready to be plucked.

This is why Jesus prefaced that statement by telling the disciples, “Do you not say, ‘There are still four months, and then comes the harvest’?”

He was saying that though the harvest was four months away, something had happened that caused the crop to grow and ripen quickly.

The thing we frequently miss is the word of knowledge that Jesus had during an encounter with a Samaritan woman at the well.

When Jesus received the revelation about the woman’s marital status through a word of knowledge, He set the stage for it by telling her to bring her husband to the well.

When the woman said, “I have no husband,” Jesus responded by saying “You have correctly said, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this which you have said is true” (John 4:17-18 NASV).

It seems the woman had separated from her first husband and probably never divorced, and then lived with four other men over the next few years.

Stunned by this revelation about her personal life, the woman declared Jesus to be a prophet and then returned to her village declaring, “Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is He?”

As the Samaritans poured out of the village to see Christ, it was this group that Jesus described as being “white for harvest.”

They had been ripened by a word of knowledge. This is the ingredient we are missing in the sermons about the fields being white for harvest.

We need the supernatural when it comes to a spiritual harvest.

As part of this, we need to start activating and using the gifts of the Holy Spirit for evangelism.

I was reading an interesting story about just such an incident in Diane Harrison’s book, This is That: 100 Questions and Answers about Prophecy, where she talks about the word of knowledge being used for evangelism.

Several years back, during their regular prophetic training sessions at the church she attended, groups would go ‘treasure hunting.’ This involved asking the Holy Spirit to provide revelation through a word of knowledge of where they were to go and who they were to speak to.

In this instance, Megan, a member of one of the groups, felt the Holy Spirit had impressed on her that they were to go to a specific coffee shop in the city.

She had received an impression that there would be people there with “blond hair, green eyes, black jacket and huge hoodie” who needed prayer for emotional healing.

When they arrived at the coffee shop, there was a group of people who exactly fit this description. However, they were members of a biker gang, that included a woman wearing a large hoodie covered in skulls.

When Megan timidly approached the group, she explained that she had felt impressed by the Holy Spirit and that there was a particular group of people that she needed to pray for.

When she gave them the description she had received, one of the guys piped up, “Hey, that’s our table right here.”

Not only did she get to pray for several in this group, but one of the members of this biker gang actually told Megan this incredible story.

He had been involved in three serious motorcycle accidents, but a strange thing happened after his third accident.

He had a dream where Jesus appeared to him, giving the biker a Bible verse. When he woke the next morning, he was “totally freaked out and found a Bible and sure enough the verse was there.”

He then contacted the chaplain of a Christian biker gang in the city, who said that Jesus was speaking to him through the dream. The biker said he gave his life to Christ, which changed his life.

That story was not only shared with Megan but also with his biker friends.

Though no one gave their lives to Jesus that particular day, Megan supernaturally impacted them, exactly as the Holy Spirit wanted her to do.

Jesus finished off his encounter with the Samaritan woman, by telling His disciples, “One sows and another reaps” (John 4:37). In other words, we have different roles to play in this process.

That day in a restaurant in a Canadian city, Megan planted several seeds through a word of knowledge. These are seeds that the Holy Spirit can now use for a later spiritual harvest.

We also often think that the Holy Spirit only displays His gifts and power through anointed evangelists and preachers.

This is not true. God wants to do it through you.

Megan was in her early twenties. She was not a pastor. She was not an evangelist, yet the Holy Spirit supernaturally used her.

This is the retooling that God wants as He desires to send thousands into the harvest, not just a handful of preachers.