"The Kingdom of God is at Hand" - by Jim Tharp, 2002

Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:14-15)

And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of Heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force. For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John. And if you are willing to receive it, he is Elijah who is to come. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. (Matt. 11:12-15)

But seek the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added to you. Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. (Luke 12:31-32)

Why are thousands of Christian congregations in North America locked in spiritual stalemate with boring services and barren altars? It is not due to the lack of sound doctrine, sincere preaching, adequate facilities and friendly worshipers. We have to look beyond the visible for the answers.

Many Christian leaders are so bound to tradition (cultural, denominational, congregational) that they are blind to the nature of the tragedies they face in their ministries. With all their knowledge and training, they remain ignorant of Christ's provision to turn their tragedies into triumphs. The average pastor prays to become a better leader, wants to deliver God's Word to the people, hopes for renewal in the church body and seeks to be open to divine direction for a more effective ministry.

Believe me, it is this great majority that Satan has set out to deceive. He calls their attention to some wild preacher who has a strange fascination with evil spirits, who sees a demon behind every bush or pew or pulpit, and who seeks to identify the unclean spirit attached to every bad cold or sinus infection. With this distraction, skepticism of the supernatural is deepened and it is easier to conclude that the actual work of evil spirits was limited to the times of Jesus and His apostles. Satan will do almost anything to keep pastors, teachers and evangelists from discovering the need for true spiritual warfare.

One of his most effective strategies is to simply keep them preoccupied with administration, counseling, meetings, visitation, and putting out fires of opposition so that every week is pretty much a prayerless one. These otherwise intelligent leaders would never dream that they themselves have become casualties in a spiritual war.

Satan recognized that the coming of Jesus Christ into the world represented a challenge to him and his kingdom. He knew that with Christ's entrance on planet earth his domain was being invaded and he knew that the stakes were high. Therefore, Satan attacked Jesus in every way. When he could not buy Jesus, he decided to kill Him. But the enemy never knew until it was too late that his plot to kill our Lord played right into the preordained purpose of the Sovereign God to give His One and Only Son as a ransom for sinners and to destroy the works of the devil. Satan did not know that the voluntary, self-sacrificing death of Jesus Christ on the cross decisively and eternally defeated him and his hierarchy of evil.

Resisting the Slumbering Spirit - By Jim Tharp 2008

And to the angel of the church in Sardis write: 'The words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your works; you have the name of being alive, and you are dead. Awake, and strengthen what remains and is on the point of death, for I have not found your works perfect in the sight of my God. Remember then what you received and heard; keep that, and repent. If you will not awake, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come upon you. Yet you have still a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments; and they shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy. He who conquers shall be clad thus in white garments, and I will not blot his name out of the book of life; I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.' (Rev. 3:l-6).

Many churches, as well as individual Christians, are afflicted with the Sardis Syndrome today. They have a reputation of being alive, but their inner life and strength do not match their claims to know the Lord. Their talk is full of Scriptures, but their walk is weak and wobbly.

The church in Sardis is called to repentance. It is called to an awakening. Awake (v. 2) is a command. God is calling the Sardis church to revival. A minority is walking in the Spirit of holiness - they have not soiled their garments - they have not compromised with the world, nor have they succumbed to the gravity of the flesh. They have resisted the temptation to join the majority to succumb to spiritual drowsiness, which leads to slumber. Spiritual slumber is a deep sleep reached gradually over a period of time by failing to respond to the leadership of the Holy Spirit. Christians can reach a point in their process of resistance to the Spirit's stirrings within them until they lose the sense of hearing. That is why the Lord Jesus in His messages to the seven churches (Rev. 2:1 - 3:22) closes each message with this warning: He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

All of us can recall early mornings when the alarm clock called us to awaken from our slumber, get out of bed and face the day. But most of us can also recall times when we resisted the call.

Prayer + Purity = Power - by Jim Tharp, 2003

Confess to one another therefore your faults – your slips, your false steps, your offenses, your sins; and pray (also) for one another, that you may be healed and restored – to a spiritual tone of mind and heart. The earnest (heartfelt, continued) prayer of a righteous man makes tremendous power available – dynamic in its working. (Heb. 5:16, Amplified NT)

The Holy Spirit was so faithful to deal patiently with me in the early 1980s to venture out into a ministry that majored in prayer instead of theology, preaching, administration and scholarship. I recall several sobering thoughts during those years that He used to get me to finally take the plunge in 1986: A number of times I had the sense of standing before Christ at the Judgment Seat and hearing Him say, If only you had believed Me when I said, “Whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you” (John 16:23); If only you had followed My instruction to the apostles and “tarried in prayer until you were clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:5, 8, 14, 2:1-4); If only you had “devoted yourself to prayer” (Col. 4:2); If only you had believed My Word that My Kingdom is not built by human ability and effort alone but by Spirit-anointed Prayer (Zech. 4:6), your ministry would have been in great power and your eternal rewards would have been far greater!

Those “if onlys” still ring in my soul and call me back to the Upper Room for fresh fillings of the Holy Spirit so that I might minister in power instead of mediocrity. May none of us learn too late at the Judgment Seat of Christ what might have been if we had only devoted ourselves to Spirit-anointed prayer!

I want to share an age-long formula for spiritual power and effectiveness in living and ministering for Christ. It worked for Jesus as He, though divine, operated in His humanity while on earth. It worked for the apostles, the reformers, and it has worked for the revivalists and reformers in more recent centuries. The formula is: Prayer + Purity = Power, and it still works today! Please understand that the Holy Spirit is both intrinsically and intricately related to each of these factors in the equation.

The Spirit of Prayer

Before Jesus launched His public ministry, He was anointed by the Holy Spirit following His baptism (Luke 3:21-22). With this anointing, He went to the wilderness for a six-week prayer retreat and a period of temptation by Satan.

 

Then Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and news of Him went out through all the surrounding region. And He taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all (Luke 4:14-15). In the power of the Spirit, Jesus continued to give prayer first place in His busy life. Sometimes He rose early and went out to pray in the morning darkness. At other times, He took some of His apostles and went to the mountain for a few days of prayer. On one occasion, in the midst of a healing revival, He disappeared, and His disciples found Him alone in prayer.

In His training of the Twelve, Jesus made sure they understood the role of the Holy Spirit in their ministry of prayer. They could not have a ministry unless they were filled with the Spirit, and they could not be filled with the Spirit unless they had a life of prayer. One of the greatest evidences that they were filled with the Spirit would be their manner of prayer and the fruit of their praying. In fact, nothing would happen apart from the Spirit, and the Spirit would work only in those lives that were devoted to prayer. It is clear from the Scriptures and from church history that God does not pour out His Spirit on a prayerless people. He cannot trust the fullness of His Spirit to a prayerless life.

Majoring in Prayer for Revival - by Jim Tharp, 2009

And behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you; but stay in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high. (Luke 24:49)

John Wesley, George Whitefield, David Brainerd, Francis Asbury, Charles Spurgeon, William Booth, Charles Finney, Bud Robinson, D. L. Moody and Mordecai Ham – all these messengers were different in many ways. Some were Wesleyan Arminian, some were Calvinistic. Some were scholarly, some were unlearned. Some were organized, funded and promoted; some were unorganized, penniless and opposed. Some were charismatic, some were cloudy in their personality. These dear men of God were different in many other ways, but they all had many things in common. The one common thing I want to emphasize today is that each man in this list was a man of prayer!

And, because they were men of prayer, they were men of the Holy Spirit. And because they were men of the Holy Spirit, they were men of holiness. And because they were men of holiness, they were men of power. And because they were men of power, they were men who saw revival!

This is not to say that Spirit-filled men and women do nothing but pray. I know pastors and revivalists who work hard, study the Word faithfully, visit saints and sinners, counsel tirelessly, attend conferences, spend time with their families and are accountable to their denominational superiors. But there is one unmistakable commitment that stands out in their life and ministry: they are committed to a life of ministry in prayer! They are often alone with God, staying in the secret place until their minds are captivated, their spirits inflamed and their hearts are overflowing. Most of this kind feel all this is a prerequisite to their study of Scriptures and development of sermons. Such messengers emerge to become channels of the living water that God uses to wash congregations large and small. A single sentence coming from the lips of such a fire-baptized messenger of the Gospel transforms more minds and hearts than a thousand sermons delivered by a cold-hearted orator, no matter how sound his theology or how timely his subject. 

The enemy of revival in our times is managing to mislead some of the most spiritually-gifted and brilliantly prepared evangelical messengers to exhaust their time and energies on labors that don’t count for the Kingdom of God and waste their time on reading and thinking on things that neither purify the mind nor enrich the soul. The great tragedy here is that, despite all their knowledge, they don’t even have a clue that they are being distracted.

Why Does Revival Tarry? - by Jim Tharp, 2003

The passionate praying of those who are right with God has powerful effects. (James 5:16, Free Translation)

But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. (Jesus to His disciples in Acts 1:8)

 

Bear up the hands that hang down, by faith and prayer; support the tottering knees. Have you any days of fasting and prayer? Storm the throne of grace and persevere therein, and mercy will come down.(John Wesley)

Whole days and weeks have I spent prostrate on the ground in silent or vocal prayer. (George Whitefield)

A religion of mere emotion and sensationalism is the most terrible of all curses that can come upon any people. The absence of reality is sad enough, but the aggravation of pretense is a deadly sin. (Samuel Chadwick)

It is well to get rid of the idea that faith is a matter of spiritual heroism only for a few select spirits. There are heroes of faith, but faith is not only for heroes. It is a matter of spiritual maturity. (P. T. Forsythe)

When God intends great mercy for His people, the first thing He does is set them a-praying. (Matthew Henry)

Beware of merely reasoning about God’s Word – just obey it! (Oswald Chambers)

The Church has halted somewhere between Calvary and Pentecost. (J. I. Brice)

How shall I feel at the judgment, if multitudes of missed opportunities pass before me in full review, and all my excuses prove to be disguises of my cowardice and pride? (W. E. Sangster)

Revival is the inrush of the Spirit into the body that threatens to become a corpse. (D. M. Panton)

No erudition, no purity of diction, no width of mental outlook, no flowers of eloquence, no grace of person can atone for lack of fire. Prayer ascends by fire. Flame gives prayer access as well as wings, acceptance as well as energy. There is no incense without fire; no prayer without flame. (E. M. Bounds)

No man is greater than his prayer life. (Leonard Ravenhill)

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In response to the most common question coming to me by letters, e-mails, telephone and person-to-person in these days, “Why don’t we see revival here in America?” I have decided to refer us to a powerful book by Leonard Ravenhill, Why Revival Tarries, published in 1959, and again in 1960 by Bethany Fellowship, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Over a generation ago, Mr. Ravenhill blamed the compromise of evangelists, the lack of urgency in prayer and pride as the main reasons why revival tarries. The greater part of his work is directed toward the lack of urgency in prayer. I shall in this message present what I consider to be the more critical of his arguments on this subject, and then make an observation of my own concerning the present generation.

Ravenhill wrote: “The Cinderella of the church today is the prayer meeting. This handmaid of the Lord is unloved and unwooed because she is not dripping with pearls of intellectualism, nor glamorous with the silks of philosophy; neither is she enchanting with the tiara of psychology. She wears the homespuns of sincerity and humility and so is not afraid to kneel!”

Pressing for anointed preaching, he said, “One does not need to be spiritual to preach, that is, to make and deliver sermons of homiletical perfection and exegetical exactitude. By a combination of memory, knowledge, ambition, personality, plus well-lined bookshelves, self-confidence and a sense of having arrived – brother, the pulpit is yours almost anywhere these days. Preaching of the type mentioned affects men; prayer affects God. Preaching affects time; prayer affects eternity. … The tragedy of this late hour is that we have too many dead men in the pulpits giving out too many dead sermons to too many dead people.

A Passion For God's Glory - by Jim Tharp, 2004

Then Moses said to him, "If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?"

And the Lord said to Moses, "I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name."

Then Moses said, "Now show me your glory." (Exodus 33:15-18, NIV)


God usually hides Himself from the half-hearted, the self-satisfied and the double minded. But He delights in revealing Himself to any who seek Him in single-hearted desperation. He is a God of grace, and He will meet anyone with forgiveness and transformation of heart and adoption into His redeemed family when they come to Him with faith in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And then He meets His children in sanctifying grace when they come to Him confessing the sin in their hearts and trusting in Christ's purifying power as it is administered by the Holy Spirit who is already indwelling them.

Receive The Holy Spirit - by Jim Tharp, 2005

Then Jesus said to them again, "Peace to you! As the Father has sent Me, I also send you." And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit ?" (John 20:21-22)

While faith in the atoning blood of Jesus Christ makes salvation a fact settled in heaven, it hasn't dawned on many believers that it is the inner working of the Holy Spirit that confirms it as spiritual reality. In studying the book of Romans we understand that believing the Gospel brings about a judicial change in the sinner, but our God of salvation seeks to make us conscious of this by giving us His Spirit.

Jesus prepared His disciples

Jesus spent most of His time with His disciples preparing them for their reception of the Holy Spirit. He knew that if they failed in this they could never advance His Kingdom to the ends of the earth. After His resurrection, Jesus appeared to the Eleven and "breathed on them," saying, "Receive the Holy Spirit." He exhaled (He "breathed on them"); He told them to inhale ("receive the Holy Spirit").

Really, as God the Father and God the Son breathe on us, we are to inhale (breathe in, receive, partake of) the Holy Spirit as the breath of God. The spiritual exercise the Risen Christ taught the disciples in the Upper Room was prophetic and preparatory to Pentecost. There the rushing mighty winds represented the breath and life of God and "they were all filled with the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:4).

We see the Early Church being renewed in the fullness of the Holy Spirit throughout the book of Acts, and we hear them emphasizing the Holy Spirit as the secret of their power and success. Friends, this is not a trifling observation. As A. W. Tozer taught us, "A doctrine has practical value only as far as it is prominent in our thoughts and makes a difference in our lives."