Holiness and Prayer - By Jim Tharp, 1999

Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. (II Tim. 2:22)

The apostle knew that Timothy's prayer life would be the secret of his power with God and with people. Paul yearned to see his spiritual son mightily used of God, but he knew something of the costly route to such power. He knew that despite Timothy's brilliance and giftedness, his praying could be hindered by carnal compromise, a stricken conscience and a guilt-ridden heart. The old warrior longed to see this promising young leader join with the stalwarts of the faith and boldly approach the Throne of Grace, having complete confidence that he would receive all that he asked because he was in obedience to the Lord and doing all to please the Lord.

Just who are those who get answers to prayer, who see God's will done on earth as it is in heaven? Who are those who know how to ask according to God's will, and know even as they ask that their request will not be denied? What kind of people are those who prevail in prayer?

The apostle James tells us that they are the righteous. He declares that, "The passionate prayers of the righteous have a powerful effect" (James 5:16, Free Translation). He is not referring to the self-righteous, of course, but those who have been justified freely from the guilt of sin and made righteous in the heart by the cleansing of the Holy Spirit from the power of sin. The righteous are those who are justified freely and sanctified holy. They are the ones who are promised a hearing with God. Their hearts have been purified so that they do not "ask amiss" or with wrong motives (James 4:3). Also, the righteous are those who have confessed and cleared their hearts with one another. So the righteous are those who are right with God and with one another.

The Pure in Heart

Jesus said, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" (Matt. 5:8). We hear a great deal about the power of the Holy Spirit in these times. This writer has emphasized it again and again, and I shall continue to do so. But if our interest in power exceeds our passion for purity, we are not ready for the baptism with the Holy Spirit. It is the divine order to purify the heart before empowering for ministry. God is more interested in our being than in our doing. Mark Rutland so accurately declares:

Our Heavenly Joshua Leads in Warfare - by Jim Tharp 2013

Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand.

Joshua went up to him and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?”

“Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.”

Then Joshua fell facedown to the ground in reverence, and asked him,

“What message does my Lord have for his servant?”

The commander of the Lord’s army replied,

“Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so.

(Josh. 5:13-15, NIV)

Believers called to engage in spiritual warfare during these end-time seasons can learn a great deal from Joshua’s lesson learned from the Commander of the Lord’s army—the very incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ, Captain of the Lord of hosts.

It is significant that God the Father chose to call his incarnate Son JESUS—the Greek form of Joshua. Without Joshua’s encounter with the Heavenly Joshua, he could never have become a conqueror.

Those of us who are being called to Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, … the authorities, … the powers of this dark world and … the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms (Eph. 6:11-12, NIV). We must have a greater revelation of Jesus Christ than we have ever known. We must behold our Lord Jesus Christ as a warrior (Ex. 15:3, NIV). Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle (Ps. 24:8, NIV). We must learn with Joshua that the kind of warfare we are called to wage is Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord Almighty (Zech. 4:6, NIV).

Joshua had his vision of the Commander of the Lord’s army in chapter 5. 

But the Jericho victory would not come until later in chapter 6. The earthly Joshua must first worship the Heavenly Joshua and learn from Him the true secrets of spiritual warfare. The earthly Joshua must know that every effort exerted in human strength alone would fail. He had to learn what every spiritual leader must learn: Without God, we can’t; without us, God won’t! Let us all consider the three very important truths the Heavenly Joshua conveyed to the earthly Joshua before the battle of Jericho was launched.

1. “Joshua, taking Jericho is not your idea; it is God’s command!” Just as Moses had been called of God to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, Joshua had been called to lead them into the Promised Land, even after a generation of failures under Moses. He must feel himself under orders from Almighty God—the One who would be his highest authority to whom he would be accountable and depend on.

Christians, as we are facing end-time darkness spreading the Gospel, building the church, renewing believers, and seeing manifestations of the supernatural, let us remember that we have to undertake it all with a clear understanding that God Himself has prophesied, commanded, and directed our efforts. Jesus said, … I will build My church, and the … powers of the infernal region shall not overpower it … (Matt. 16:18, ANT). He made it clear that He would do this through His Spirit-anointed praying and the Church’s Spirit-empowered praying (Luke 24:49). Then he said in the last days I will pour out my Spirit on all people…sons and daughters will prophesy, …old men will dream dreams, …young men will see visions…I will pour out my Spirit in those days…and everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved…(Joel 2:28-29, 32, NIV). The last days, according to the prophet Joel, would be characterized by many outpourings of the Spirit for preserving and perpetuating the Church. Outpourings of the Spirit would be the work of our Sovereign God, but these times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord would be conditioned by the faith, obedience, and intercession of the saints.

2. “Joshua, Jericho will not be taken by your weak army; it will be taken by divine, invisible forces!” The earthly armies of God do not impress the world, but the sinister forces of darkness are traumatized by those Spirit-filled men and women who put on the whole armor of God—the belt of truth (strengthened with the Gospel of truth), the breastplate of righteousness (covered by the integrity of Spirit-cleansing from sin), feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace (poised in battle with holy boldness), the shield of faith to extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one (a Spirit-cleared mind to avert every doubt, fear, frustration, and temptation that would distract, discourage, or defeat), the helmet of salvation (bringing every thought into the captivity of Christ our Commander-in-Chief), and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God (making the Scriptures our Word of testimony, which renders the enemy powerless), and praying at all times in the Spirit (passionately prevailing in intercessory prayer for His revealed will against the principalities, the rulers of darkness, the authorities and the hordes of wicked spirits operating in the heavenlies.

3. “Joshua, Jericho will not be taken for your glory; it will be taken for the glory of the Captain of the Lord of hosts!” My fellow believers, the kind of army that we must enlist in will not impress the world, nor will it attract a majority of the believers—

not even most of those who make up our evangelical churches today. The only kind of spiritual army that can prevail against the tide of evil that Satan has planned for our times will be made up of those who will persevere through all three stages of spiritual warfare—asking, seeking, and knocking.

Our Heavenly Joshua is our example. He became the divinely anointed Intercessor. Here’s how He prayed: During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears … and He was heard because of His reverent submission (Heb. 5:7, NIV). In Luke 11:9-10, Jesus tells us how to persevere and prevail in prayer: So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.

Asking is petition—it represents desire, stating a need, filing a claim.

Seeking is resolution—it represents committing to a course of continuing and prevailing in prayer.

Knocking is supplication—it represents desperation, burdened praying, crying out, pleading, begging, fasting, shedding tears, passion, agonizing, groaning under the load of revival praying. Too many believers consider this kind of praying extreme, fanatical, and foolish. May God multiply the number of spiritual warriors who will follow their Heavenly Joshua into this kind of revival praying until the Spirit gives them such a holy boldness that they will not be denied!

The great revivals of church history have been poured out after prolonged seasons of perseverance in burdened prayer and glorious praise. Spirit-filled prayer warriors learn early in revival praying that burdened praying goes with blissful praise. At the parting of the Red Sea, when God delivered His people and drowned their enemies with the same miracle, the Israelites with Moses exclaimed, Who … is like you, O Lord—majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders? You stretched out your right hand and the earth swallowed them. In your unfailing love you will lead the people you have redeemed … The nations will hear and tremble … (Ex. 15:11-14, NIV ).

I am convinced that America will see a mighty rending of the heavens only after a greater number of believers have been cleansed from sin, filled with the Spirit, and answer the call to desperate, intense, sacrificial, passionate, prolonged supplication!

Prayer warriors, let us follow the examples of the great intercessors of the past—Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Nehemiah, and Daniel—who humbly and faithfully confessed their sins and then representatively confessed the sins of the church and the world. As modern intercessors, we need to stand in the gap and seek God’s forgiveness for our coldness of heart, deadness of spirit, hypocrisy, apathy, self-righteousness, unbelief, prayerlessness, worldliness, idolatry, and pride.

I believe the urgent call of the Spirit to North American believers is a call to sacrificial intercession. He is calling for wrestlers (Eph. 6:12, ANT). Andrew Murray, Oswald Chambers, and Wesley Duewel defined wrestling as “struggling in anguish over.” Aren’t our dying churches, our imploding America, and our lost young people worth “struggling in anguish over”?

My prayer partner Wesley Duewel does not believe that intercessory prayer at the level of wrestling is self-induced; we don’t work ourselves up into a hyped emotional state—we simply yield to the Spirit-inspired groaning within us for the renewing of the paralyzed body of Christ and against the self-destroying of our nation and the heart-breaking disregard our younger generation has for the things of God.

But let every intercessor realize how easy it is to turn off the Spirit’s work within us of longing, aching, pleading, and believing for the revival that our Lord Jesus Christ, our Great High Priest, is praying for through us. How gracious of Him to trust us with His own holy desires for the Kingdom of God! And yet, how prone we are to fall asleep.

I think I hear Him calling to His sleeping disciples today, Could you … not keep watch with me for one hour? … Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. (Matt. 26:40-41, NIV).

To pray in the Spirit is to push against the threatening clouds of spiritual darkness and beyond the visible, audible, sensual, and spirit world to the very Throne of grace. Let us remember this is not natural science; it is believing and obeying our Heavenly Joshua’s command to prevail with Him for another mighty rending of the heavens to prepare His people for His Second Coming!

The Midnight Cry - By Jim Tharp, 1998

"Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour." (Matthew 25:13)

Any attentive reader of the Synoptic Gospels will understand that the Kingdom of God is the central theme. The reign of God has already entered human history in a unique way through the glorious person and work of Jesus Christ, but its consummation awaits a future intervention. So the Kingdom of God has to be seen as both present and future. The Kingdom of God has come; the Kingdom of God is coming.

Jesus took time to teach and answer questions concerning the future of the Kingdom. For the first sixteen centuries of Christendom, the eschatology of Jesus was sufficient. But in the seventeenth century, Johann A. Bengel set the return of Christ for the year of 1836, and in so doing he became the father of premillennialism. During the nineteenth century an entire system of dispensational eschatology was developed, and the idea of the pretribulation rapture of the church can be traced to J. N. Darby and the Plymouth Brethren. Concerning this dispensational eschatology, H. Ray Dunning writes, "For some reason it has become so pervasive among conservative Christians ... that it has assumed the status of orthodoxy among large groups of both laymen and ministers." Contemporary advocates of this Second Coming theory include John Walvoord, Charles C. Ryrie, Hal Lindsey, Tim LeHaye, Jack VanImpe, John Hagee and many others. While these dear men are my Christian brethren, and I rejoice in the Gospel they preach, I must in the interest of genuine revival make a statement: Christian Renewal Ministries believes in the Second Coming of Christ -- and I am convinced that there is some biblical support for the idea of a Rapture. But we do not subscribe to the feverish speculation and depressing theories of latter-day premillennialists who confuse a pretribulation Rapture with a general Resurrection, and who would set the time of the Lord's Return around current events (Israel, Russia, conflicts in the Middle East, the European Common Market, NATO, etc.) instead of the Word of our Lord concerning the obedience and empowerment of His Church.

George Eldon Ladd, an evangelical thinker and writer on the Kingdom of God, suggests that the most important single verse in the Bible might well be Matthew 24:14: "And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come." This verse was Jesus' answer to the disciples' question, "What will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the world?" Matthew 24:14 should help us understand something of when Christ shall return, and His parables on the Kingdom (Matt. 25:1-46) should help us understand something of the conditions of both the world and the church at the time of His return.

The Midnight Darkness

The first of Jesus' three parables on the Kingdom (Matt. 25:1-13) draws on the drama of an old Middle Eastern wedding celebration to show how it will be at the time of His return. The bridegroom and his ten male attendants would at some time around the midnight hour (but almost never at the exact minute of midnight) arrive at a significant place (under a certain large tree near the main house, at the end of a bridge over a stream, or at a large rock marking the boundary of the property, etc.) on the bride's father's estate. No one would know the place or the time when the groom and his party would arrive except the coordinator of the activities having to do with the bride and her ten female attendants. The ten girls would all gather with the bride at her father's home early in the day and hear the rules and be told to rest and sleep. The bride and her attendants would be wakened by calls before the time of rendezvous. This would come around midnight, but usually before. When the midnight cry went out, every girl was to trim her lamp (more like a torch) and see to her oil supply, because if any girl's torch went out on the way to the rendezvous, then and there she would be disqualified to be a part of the wedding celebration.

The parable refers to midnight as a symbol for darkness and lateness. Surely, we now live in a moral midnight, and though we do not know how late it is, we believe it is very late. What an hour for the Church of Jesus Christ to come awake and see His glory in revival and the harvest of souls!

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.

 

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.

 

The Wind of the Spirit - by Jim Tharp, 2014

The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit. (John 3:8).

The distinguished Jewish theologian could no longer deny the miraculous power of God at work in the life and ministry of the Galilean. Nor could he quench his thirst to meet Jesus face to face. So, humbling himself and putting his reputation on the line, Nicodemus went one night to confess that Jesus was from God and inquire of Him the way of salvation.

Jesus responded to Israel’s prominent thinker by making an issue of the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. No one can enter the kingdom of God without a spiritual transformation, Jesus explained, and this requires the Spirit of God to bring about the miracle of regeneration. Just as a natural birth is necessary for one to enter and become aware of the human family, we must be born again, born of the Spirit—in order to grasp the reality and relationships of the kingdom of God. Furthermore, admission to the kingdom of God is never by the proud prerogative of race, status, nation, class, or gender. It is certainly not by heredity! All who enter the kingdom of God must be born into it by the Spirit. This spiritual birth is an act of God.

Jesus was faithful to explain to Nicodemus the one simple condition for being born again: believing in God’s one and only Son who was lifted up (crucified) for our sins (John 3:14-21). The evidence that one has truly believed (come into the light), Jesus said, is that he lives by the truth (John 3:21).

 

The Leaven of the Pharisees - by Jim tharp, 1998

Then Jesus said to them, "Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees." (Matthew 16:6)

Both Matthew and Mark record that Jesus used the metaphor of "leaven" (yeast) to warn the disciples against the teachings of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Leaven was a common symbol for evil in Jesus' day, and could therefore be applied to many kinds of wickedness with the thought that even a small amount could go a long way and have an insidious effect.

Jesus brought a serious charge against His disciples when He said, "O you of little faith, why do you reason among yourselves because you have brought no bread? Do you not yet understand, or remember the five loaves of the five thousand and how many baskets you took up? How is it that you do not understand that I did not speak to you concerning bread? -- but to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees?" (vv. 8-11).

Manipulation or Obedience

We do not have to guess at those erroneous teachings with which Jesus took issue with the Pharisees and Sadducees. He had denounced them for their demand of manipulative signs instead of believing in the abundant evidence He had already supplied concerning who He was. But now the disciples are perilously close to the same unbelief as to the person of Jesus and His miracles. The Lord sought to train His men to think deeply about the revelation He was giving them. He was grieved that their tiny faith brought them to such an unimaginative conclusion. To follow the thinking of the Pharisees and Sadducees would cause them to miss the truth that Jesus was Himself "the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matt. 16:18). To follow their thinking would be to seek to restrict and control the very Messiah whom they claimed to believe in.

Scripture or Tradition

The Pharisees were the more prominent Jewish group in Jesus' day. Descendants of the Hasidim (pious ones), they believed fanatically in a righteousness which comes by law. They actually became so obsessed in seeking to render explicit what was implicit in the law that they resorted to artificial means of exegesis. Their devotion to an external holiness prompted rigid codes for dress and diet. The Pharisees stubbornly held to a number of inherited traditions, which, although not found in the written law, they held as a part of the law given to Moses on the Mount. So they proposed two parallel divine revelations: the written law and the oral tradition, and they taught that these were equally important and equally authoritative.