Rekindling the Flames - by Jim Tharp

Believing that the greatest need in the American church today is a fresh filling of the Holy Spirit, I call attention to the apostle Paul’s urgent appeal to his closest partner in spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is found in II Timothy 1:3-8, NKJV: “I thank God, whom I serve with a pure conscience, as my forefathers did, as without ceasing I remember you in my prayers night and day, greatly desiring to see you, being mindful of your tears, that I may be filled with joy, when I call to remembrance the genuine faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am persuaded is in you also. Therefore I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me His prisoner, but share with me in the sufferings for the gospel according to the power of God.”

On his first missionary journey Paul visited the city of Lystra and discovered there the unusual young man named Timothy. Learning of the strong spiritual heritage in his grandmother and his mother, the apostle sensed the call of God upon this young believer. Spending months in the area and having a sense of this promising minister of the Gospel, Paul laid hands on Timothy and prayed for Him to be filled with the Holy Spirit. For several years Timothy traveled with Paul and demonstrated the power of the Holy Spirit in his personal life as well as in his successful delivery of gospel messages. Paul even sent him out on his own to help start churches in several cities. But those were years of persecution and many other hardships for messengers of the gospel. 

While suffering alone in Rome’s old dark Mamertine Prison, Paul felt the Holy Spirit impressing on him that he had more to pray about than his coming execution ordered by the emperor. Before his imminent death he longed to see his dear friend Timothy and pray for him to receive a fresh filling of the Spirit.

We read in Acts 4:31 that all twelve apostles, who had previously been filled with the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, received a fresh filling of the Spirit. The preceding days had been filled with much opposition—some apostles had been beaten, put in jail, and threatened. They had not lost their faith, but they were hungry, weary, and discouraged. General William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, warned his preachers to stay full of the Spirit “because the tendency of fire is to go out.” John Wesley, the great spiritual leader in England during the 1800s, confessed “When I fail to fast and pray, I soon lose my spiritual heat and passion.”

I remember a theology professor telling a group of pastors, “Be faithful in your praying, because it is easier to guard the ashes of our religious doctrines than it is to maintain the flames of spiritual fire.” It appears that the apostle Paul was trying to get Timothy to shake off the ashes and plead for fresh fire! He also warned believers in I Thessalonians: “Do not quench the Spirit.” The word “quench,” as used here means to dampen, to sit on, to stifle, to choke, to suppress, or to subdue.

The Holy Spirit is given to us as an empowerment when we are born again by repenting of sin and trusting Jesus Christ as our Savior. I have met many truly converted Christians who lost out because they had stopped praying, found themselves too weak to resist temptation, and gave little time to studying the Word of God. As a pastor, I met many of these dropouts and learned they had never been told about asking, seeking, and praying for the fullness of the Holy Spirit. 

I would remind my readers that Jesus spent more time discussing, teaching about, and promising the Holy Spirit to His disciples than he spent on any other subject. He knew His believers could never become what God’s Word requires of us unless they would take seriously His command to be filled with the Holy Spirit. After 74 years of living the Christian life, I know that all spiritual failure is due to a lack of a proper relationship with the Holy Spirit. Every sin in the life of the believer comes to pass because the believer did not take the Word of God seriously when it commands us to “be filled with the Spirit.” The sins might be committed sins, such as murder, adultery, or blasphemy; or they may be sins of omission, such as prayerlessness or unbelief.

Even though the Holy Spirit comes to live within us when we confess Christ as our Savior, we will soon learn from reading our Bibles and taking our weaknesses seriously that we are to seek the fullness of the Holy Spirit for the power to live the Christian life.

I feel the need to close this message on the Holy Spirit by listing four reasons why every believer should be filled with the Spirit:

1. We can never know the joy of divine love throughout our Christian life apart from the fullness of the Holy Spirit: (John 5:5)

2. We can never pray with power, wisdom, passion, and freedom without the fullness of the Holy Spirit: (Romans 8:26-28)

3. We can never witness effectively for Christ and win others to Him unless we are filled with the Holy Spirit: (Acts 1:8)

4. We can never live a life of holiness and power and be assured of our readiness to meet the Lord in our death or at the Lord’s second coming without the fullness of the Holy Spirit: (Romans 8:1-30; Galatians 5:22-26)

In these difficult times, I am praying that the Holy Spirit will get the attention of all His believers’ and cause them to be hungry for a rekindling of the fires of the Holy Spirit. This would result in fresh fire, fresh freedom, and fresh faith for the greatest spiritual awakening in the entire history of the church! Please, Lord, may it be so!