Pray.

Pray.

Friday, June 17, 2022

A Prayer for Revival - by Jim Tharp

Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you? (Psalm 85:6)


O, Jesus, we come to You as Commander in chief of the Heavenly hosts, the mighty innumerable, invisible armies operating at your command throughout your universe. We plead your promise When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will raise up a standard against him (Is. 59:19). Release your Heavenly hosts to come against the moral and spiritual darkness. Lord, you have seen how your people in our land have failed in prayer, grown cold, disobeyed, and resorted to “cheap grace” (trying to justify sin in our lives rather than seeking your grace to cleanse us from sin).You warned us that in our backsliding Satan would come as a thief to steal and kill and destroy (John 10:10, KJV). Consequently, the evil one has targeted our land for rendering us spiritually dead, morally bankrupt, and politically corrupt.

We pray You will release your invisible armies into the heavens above every community in our nation to dispel the evil forces of darkness that have chloroformed the Church and poisoned the minds of our national leadership. We have dismissed God from the public square, deviated from the principles of our founding fathers, and destroyed the faith of our younger generation.

O, Lord, lay it upon the hearts of spiritual leaders to call for Solemn Assemblies—national, denominational, congregational, and citywide gatherings for serious heart-searching before the Lord, repentance, hours of prayer and fasting, periods of reading Scriptures, exhorting believers to confess their sins, acknowledge their sins of judging and criticizing, backbiting and insulting others, worldliness, lust, greed, pride, unbelief, not giving attention to prayer, worship, tithing, witnessing, good works, helping others in need, attitudes that divide and destroy fellowship, failing to attend the means of grace, gossiping, holding grudges, failing to witness to tell others about Christ and His love to save, forgive, and give hope and freedom to live in holiness and spiritual power.


 

Thursday, June 2, 2022

Passionate Prayer - by Jim Tharp, 1998

The passionate praying of one right with God is very powerful. (James 5:16, Free Translation)

When the apostle James speaks of "effective praying, "he is referring to prayers that get YES answers. The "righteous" person here in v. 16 is the one who has believed in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, whose sins are forgiven and who has actually by faith "become the righteousness of God" in Christ. The Father will listen to such a person just as readily as He will His "only begotten Son."

Jesus, the Supreme Example

I believe the apostle is seeking to impress his readers concerning the need for passionate praying. This is how Jesus prayed. "During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the One who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission" (Heb. 5:7, NIV). Westcott the scholar quotes a rabbinic saying that there are three kinds of prayers, each more powerful than the preceding: silent prayer; speaking and crying out; and tears. Passionate praying can include both the crying out and the tearful praying. Such praying is not merely noted in Heaven, but answered -- and usually answered in the affirmative. From the structure of Hebrews 5:7 ("During the days of Jesus' life on earth"), I do not believe that Jesus' tears in prayer were restricted to His agony in Gethsemane (Luke 22:44) and His compassion for the grieving (John 11:35). I am convinced that the inspired writer had access to some unrecorded facts of Jesus' pattern of passionate praying. Much of the Lord's great prayer of John Seventeen is given in the language of tears.

Elijah Eliminates an Element

Note that Elijah prayed "earnestly (fervently, emotionally, passionately) that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years" (v. 17). The prophet was not divine, nor was he superhuman; he was as human as the rest of us. However, when he prayed passionately that it would not rain (in keeping with the divine decree of judgment), it did not rain.