TRUE CHRISTIAN LOVE - by Jim Tharp

John 13:34-35

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have

loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you

are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Jesus came to earth in human form and was empowered to demonstrate what came to be known as agape love. Agape love is different from any other kind of love. Jesus longed for the day when His disciples would receive the Holy Spirit of power to love as He loved. This would happen when the Holy Spirit was poured out on 120 believers on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-4).

During the few years of training His disciples He could see their lack of love for one another. A few of them would seek to take authority over the others. They argued about who would be the most powerful. It was at these times of selfish arguments that Jesus would interrupt and remind them of the time after His death, resurrection, and ascension back to Heaven that He and their Heavenly Father would pour out the Holy Spirit upon them. Their praying faithfully for the Holy Spirit and their complete surrender to His will would empower them for ministry. Jesus trained His disciples to share the message of His gospel. But they were not to go out trying to preach the gospel until they had been filled with the Holy Spirit. His final command to them just before His ascension was to go back into the city of Jerusalem and begin praying for the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:4-5).

When those 120 believers were filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts, chapters 1-5), they launched their first evangelistic service in Jerusalem where many thousands of people had gathered. That first gospel message preached by the apostle Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, brought conviction of sin and a desire to get right with God to 3,000 penitent sinners on that first day. These thousands were added to the church of 120, and we read about the gatherings of these new Christian believers for worship and fellowship. Those believers full of agape love were soon led of the Spirit to pray with the new Christians, many of whom soon experienced the power of the Holy Spirit.

 

The apostle Paul warned the Corinthian church, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things; endures all things. Love never fails. …” (1 Corinthians 13:1-8}.

As a minister of the Gospel, I am praying for all Christians in our churches to pray for a fresh filling of the Holy Spirit that will bring heart-warming love. If we do this, it could allow God to open the heavens and pour out on weak churches and a wicked world the greatest revival in the history of His church!

Preparation for Revival - by Jim Tharp

I believe that God is saying, “Wake up and prepare for the great revival that I am going to give.” It has been said that revival is first a rude awakening before it is a great awakening. 

The most crucial time in revival is at the earliest stage when the Spirit is rousing Christians and congregations from their slumber and bringing about an awareness of their deadness. We must make a critical decision about waking up,coming fully awake, and receiving the whole truth about our undoneness and desperate need as God reveals it.

Clothed with Power - by Jim Tharp

“But you shall receive power when the 

Holy Spirit has come upon you . . ..” (Acts 1:8, NKJV).

“Behold, I send the Promise of My Father upon you; 

but tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are 

endued with power from on high.” (Luke 24:49, NKJV)

The church of Jesus Christ is filled with powerless Christians, many who are not sensitive to the Holy Spirit who was imparted to them in their experience of receiving Jesus Christ as their Savior. Actually, it is the Holy Spirit who convicts us of sin and leads us into repentance and then into the faith to place our trust in Jesus. Then, He abides in our hearts to help us live the Christian life—worship God, pray, understand the Scriptures, and seek the fullness of power.

Too many people who decide to trust Christ as Savior seem to think that this is all there is to the Christian life. Also, there is more to getting saved than being baptized and joining the church. We will need power to control our selfish desires, resist Satan’s lies and temptations, and find our place in life. We will need power to pray, power to worship, and power to know the will of God.

The Holy Spirit comes to abide in our hearts when we are saved. But as we begin this journey in faith, we must pray for more of the Holy Spirit. Realizing our weaknesses, we must pray for the Holy Spirit’s fullness. Now this requires us to surrender our hearts to Christ and devote ourselves to His will—not for just an hour or a day but for the rest of our lives.

Surrendering our lives to Christ is the Christian’s most wise and important decision after his or her experience of salvation. Being totally surrendered to Christ means that the Holy Spirit is within us to enlighten us as to who we are, what we are to do with our lives, and how to understand the word of God. He wants to help us grow in grace, turn all our dreams, hopes, ambitions, and strengths over to the Holy Spirit to live a Christ-centered life. This devotion to Christ will not only assure us of a successful life here on earth but also eternal life when we are called home to be with our Lord.

The Sin of Prayerlessness - by Jim Tharp

James 4:17, NKJV 

“Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.” 

There is probably no easier sin to commit than that of prayerlessness. We all need to realize that we can sin not only by doing what is wrong, but we can commit sin by not doing what is right—and certainly when it is something that God’s Word commands us to do. The prayerless man or woman who claims to be a Christian is disobeying our God of love, showing disrespect for the Word of God, and grieving the Holy Spirit who is available to help us and empower us for prayer.

 

Prayerlessness is a sin of neglect. Jesus taught His disciples to pray. They were absolutely amazed at His praying! They soon caught His secret—Jesus’ relationship with the Holy Spirit. He realized the need of getting His disciples prepared for receiving the power of the Holy Spirit after His return to heaven. As His apostles who would be called to spread His gospel to the world, they must learn to pray. Therefore, Jesus took the time to make sure they knew how to pray and how to receive the Holy Spirit. Because they were already believers in Jesus Christ, they could learn to pray. But they would realize the difference in their praying when they were filled with the Holy Spirit.

Praying for Our Nation in 2021 - by Jim Tharp

I Timothy 2:1-8, NKJV

“Therefore, I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time, for which I was appointed a preacher and an apostle—I am speaking the truth in Christ and not lying—a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.”

Christians are called upon by God to pray for many things—our homes, our churches, and our governments. On January 20, 2021, millions of Americans witnessed by television or in person the inauguration of Mr. Joe Biden as the 46th President of our United States of America. Please notice in the Scripture above how the Apostle Paul appeals to Christian believers to pray for those in authority: We are to offer “supplications, prayers, intercessions, and . . . thanks for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence.”

Most Americans realize that our nation has experienced more violence, division, and chaos throughout the last 36 years than we have known since the Civil War. I do not believe we can blame any one political party for all this chaos.

I have been a preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ for 75 years. In 1983, having pastored churches for 43 years, I realized the weakness of the American church. I felt called of the Holy Spirit to travel America and other parts of the world as an evangelist and challenge Christians to take seriously God’s promise in II Chronicles 7:14, NKJV: “If My people who are called My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”

Our Heavenly Father and our Lord Jesus Christ poured out the Holy Spirit on the early Church to revive the powerless disciples and other believers. Because they obeyed and fervently prayed for 10 days, there came the first outpouring of the Holy Spirit (Acts, chapter 2). Since that first outpouring, God has kept His church alive thorough those who grow hungry to get back to God and begin repenting of sins and praying. 

I want to close this message by urging my readers to seriously consider taking more time each day for prayer. If you are an unbeliever, ask God to forgive your sins, and then place your trust in Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord; begin living the life of prayer, worship, and studying the Bible—especially the Gospels.

The Christian’s Way to Pray - by Jim Tharp

Pray like this: 

Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. 

May your Kingdom come soon.

May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.

Give us today the food we need,

and forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us.

And don’t let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one. 

Matthew 6:9-13 (NLT) 

Prayer was in the life of Jesus when He came to earth to die on the cross to suffer and pay for the sins of anyone who would repent of his or her sin and trust in Him as Savior. Jesus was the model for His disciples, and He is still the model for all of us today. So, I wish to call attention to “The Lord’s Prayer” as quoted above. 

We have many prayers in our Bible in both the Old and the New Testaments. But, certainly, no prayer measures up to what Jesus taught His disciples (and us today) to pray. Regardless of our language or our location, no prayer can surpass “The Lord’s Prayer!” May we seek the Holy Spirit’s help in our praying! 

“Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy.” We are addressing our Father in heaven with worship and love, being reminded of the price He paid in sacrificing His only Son Jesus Christ, the star of heaven, who shared His Father’s omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence. Yet Jesus was willing to obey His Heavenly Father; the Son of God would be willing to become the Son of Man, be born of a woman, and suffer rejection, persecution, and crucifixion. But then came His resurrection, followed by 40 days on earth giving instructions to His disciples and other followers on how to prepare in prayer for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Yes, those 120 believers fasted and prayed for ten days, and the Holy Spirit came falling on them, and we read that “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 2:4, NKJV) This was the beginning of the Church age! 

Our Bible teaches us to honor, respect. and obey our fathers and mothers on earth, but we are not called to worship them. But a Christian believer should feel the need of a lifetime of praise and thanksgiving to the entire Godhead—God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. It was God the Father who planned for our salvation; it was God the Son who suffered and died, paying the price for our salvation; and it was God the Holy Spirit who convicted us of our sins and enabled us to repent. The Spirit cleanses and indwell us and gives us the power to pray, worship, find our place in the will of God, and live out our salvation throughout our lifetime on earth.

 

“May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” Jesus is telling His believers here that our greatest interest in life should be the Kingdom of God rather than our own personal interests. He is assuring us that God is interested in our personal needs. But we are called upon to trust God to have priority and rule, manifesting His kingly power over the righteous and the unrighteous and over the church and the world. But I believe we should sense that in this verse of scripture we as believers are to understand that our prayers should include the spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ for reaching lost souls to be brought into His redeemed family. Throughout all the history of the church, believers have been called to pray for the renewing of the church. Revivals have been God’s answer to strengthening His church. Never in its history has the church been so weak in holy living and its influence on the world. Millions of believers are hearing the call of the Holy Spirit to begin fasting and praying for the greatest outpouring of revival the church has ever known. 

“Give us today the food we need.” We should be thankful that God is interested in our personal needs. Jesus reminds us that we are free to ask God to help us have the provisions we need for the kind of life He would be pleased with. We are assured that if we put His Kingdom first, He will supply our needs. 

Preparing for Our Appointment with Death - by Jim Tharp

Hebrews 9:27-28 (NKJV): “And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment, so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation.”

The greatest tragedy that any mortal soul will ever suffer is to meet Almighty God at death unprepared. Divine judgment will await the soul that never trusted in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. As exclusive as it may sound, Jesus declared, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:6) Religion does not qualify us for heaven. And our Bible warns that honorable deeds or good reputations will not prepare us for going to Heaven. Only by repenting of our sins and believing in Jesus Christ as the Son of God who died to pay our sin debt and arose from the dead assures us that we are prepared to meet our Maker at death. When we make this commitment, our sins are forgiven, our names are written in heaven, and we are adopted into our Heavenly Father’s redeemed family. This means that we have been born again—not by the flesh but by the Holy Spirit. It also means that we have been resurrected from the grave of sin to walk in a new way of life. All believers are called to grow in grace by praying, studying their Bible, worshiping, and becoming part of a Bible-preaching church.

I want to remind us that our God of love does not want to send anyone to hell. We read in II Peter 3:9: “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” Too many people who hear the Gospel and realize their need to give their hearts to Christ make a terrible mistake by delaying. After so much procrastination, so many never get around to making the decision. So, the answer is found to this in II Corinthians 6:2: “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”

None of us knows when or how we will die. But the scriptures I have shared with our readers today warn us to be prepared for that appointment. It is my prayer that unprepared readers will soon allow the Holy Spirit to draw their hearts in such a way that they will feel God’s love causing them to humble themselves, confess their sins, place their faith in Jesus, and believe His Word that they are saved. They should take time to pray daily, study their Bible, and attend a church where the Word of God is proclaimed boldly and where they can have fellowship with brothers and sisters in Christ. When the Holy Spirit leads them, they should share their faith by testifying to unsaved family members or friends and be willing to help win them to Christ. When they feel the need of more spiritual power, they should pray and ask to be filled with the Holy Spirit, which will allow them to pray with the Spirit’s inspiration, direction, and power.