Christian Freedom - by Jim Tharp 2011

So Christ has made us free. Now make sure that you stay free and don’t get all tied up again in the chains of slavery to Jewish laws and ceremonies (Gal. 5:1, TLB).

So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed (John 8:36, NIV).

For God did not give us a spirit of timidity (of cowardice, of craven and cringing and fawning fear), but [he has given us a spirit] of power and of love and of a calm and well-balanced mind and discipline and self-control (2 Tim. 1:7, AMP).

Paul’s epistle to the Galatians is known as “The Christian Magna Carta.” This book about the freedom of the Spirit in Christ is to New Testament believers what the Magna Carta meant to the British in the thirteenth century. The king of England was slow to articulate the freedoms that the British people were calling for. The English barons pressured King John to assent and then declare a “Fundamental Guarantee of Rights and Privileges of the English Peoples.” The American Bill of Rights, the basic part of the American Constitution of 1776, was the American counterpart of the British Magna Carta of 1213.

The book of Galatians is Paul’s call to believers to exercise the freedom that Christ purchased for us in His death by crucifixion on the cross. Most of his readers at that time would have been Jewish believers who had known the bondage of the Jewish Law and ceremonies. Paul urged them to maintain the freedom Christ had brought and to not fall back into the bondage to laws and ceremonies. He reminded them that they have been given the Holy Spirit. So he asked them, Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?

I am greatly saddened when I am called to lead a church in revival when I sense so much bondage—apathy, indifference, anger, murmuring, criticism, negativism. So many leaders decry the deadness of their churches, but their efforts to fire up the atmosphere are futile and usually only worsen the condition.

Why are so many Christian believers in bondage? I believe the apostle Paul is telling us in the book of Galatians that it is due to our lack of responding to the Holy Spirit. We are given the Holy Spirit when we are born again (Acts 2:38, Eph. 1:13). But we are also commanded to be filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18). Born-again believers will not miss the fullness of the Spirit as long as they consistently walk in the Spirit (Gal. 5:16), are led by the Spirit (Gal. 5:18) and if by the Spirit they deny themselves fleshly desires (Rom. 8:13).

We are warned to grieve not the Holy Spirit (Eph. 4:30). As He helps us develop a sensitivity to both His constraints and restraints, we will learn how to please Him. We must learn to trust the Holy Spirit to enable us to resist the temptation to yield to sins of prayerlessness and inappropriate expressions as well as human weaknesses that we don’t normally consider to be sins. Yes, I believe there is a difference between weaknesses and sins. But I have learned that if I want to experience freedom in the Spirit in my Christian life, I must confess every act of falling short of God’s glory as sin and know that I am mercifully forgiven and restored in fellowship with Him. Then I am enabled to continue rejoicing in God’s gracious forgiveness and cleansing and move onward and upward in His glorious freedom. Early each morning, I find myself praying, “O God, help me this day to walk in sweet fellowship with Your ungrieved Holy Spirit!”

We do need to remember that grieving the Holy Spirit is not inevitable. Just because so many Christians grieve the Spirit doesn’t mean we have to. If we are prayerfully watchful, we’ll catch the Spirit’s signals when we are being tested by the enemy to be drawn into a stream of consciousness that will lead to our being tempted to say or do something that will grieve the Spirit.

Believers who grieve the Spirit cannot bear the fruit of the Spirit. Bearing the fruit of the Spirit is simply allowing the Holy Spirit to reproduce the character of our Lord Jesus Christ in our daily lives. These gifts of His fruit borne in us are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Christians who grieve the Holy Spirit cannot pray in the Spirit. We are commanded to pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication (Eph. 6:18). This command is impossible to obey when we are disobedient, careless and insensitive to the Spirit. This means that we are not prepared to allow the Spirit to help us know what to pray for, how to pray, or even care passionately about getting YES answers in our praying. Therefore we just drift along and wonder why God seems so absent or far away in our lives.

Christians who live in bondage do not obey the Lord’s assignment as his witnesses. They aren’t filled with love for the lost person who needs to hear about God’s love. They aren’t ready to ask the Spirit for the passion, boldness and wisdom required to give a witness and lead a person to Christ.

Christians in bondage seldom fill their day with praise. We should begin the day with praise and worship, even if it is only for a minute. How can we go on into daily activities hour after hour without passionate, sincere praise to God for who He is and what He does in our lives and in our families?

As a revivalist I often begin the first night’s service facing an audience with empty, cold hearts. But because of the prayers of a concerned pastor, a few prayer warriors in the church and many heavy-lifting prayer partners all over the world, the Presence of God comes on the service. As I obey the Spirit and preach the Word, the Spirit honors us with His Presence, resulting in some of the empty hearts feeling and hearing a call of the Spirit they’ve not heard in a long time. As they come to the altars, I hear many of them praying thus:

“Oh, God! I thank You for speaking to my heart tonight! It’s been so long since my heart has been stirred. I didn’t realize until a few minutes ago that I’d drifted so far from you, had grown so empty, so cold, so hard. Lord, I’ve been critical of my brothers and sisters and the staff here, not realizing it was my emptiness and my bondage that is the problem in the church. Please forgive me. Give me a new heartwarming and a fresh filling of the Spirit. Help me to get back to praying, worshiping, praising, giving, witnessing and serving you! Lord, restore my joy! Bring back the ring in my testimony.

Fill me with holy fire. Bring back the glory of Your presence in my heart so that my loved ones, my extended family and my neighbors will know that Jesus is real to me!

Thank you, Lord for hearing my prayer and giving me the assurance that I’m now in sweet fellowship with you again!”

Dear brother, dear sister, are you free in Jesus Christ? Do you know joy unspeakable and full of glory? How much do you know about the fullness of the Holy Spirit and fire? God wants you to have victory over sin, but He also wants you to have victory over coldness and hardness of heart. He wants you to be alive, not a spiritual deadhead. Get the hymnal out and pray the old hymn by Haldor Lillenas and pray the song “Glorious Freedom.” Then receive that “freedom from envy, hatred and strife, freedom from vain and worldly ambition, freedom from all that saddens your life.” Receive from the Holy Spirit that “freedom from love and glitter of gold, freedom from evil temper and anger, glorious freedom, rapture untold!” Receive that “freedom from fear with all of its torments, freedom from care with all of its pain, freedom in Christ your blessed Redeemer, He who will rend your fetters in twain.”

God is calling you to freedom.

Freedom in worship and praise.

Freedom to prevail in prayer.

Freedom to give generously.

Freedom to live in holiness and power.

Freedom to grasp the dimensions of divine love.

Freedom to enjoy the Word of God.

Freedom to live with joy in light of His return.

Freedom to anticipate with great rejoicing the eternal Presence of God.

Jesus Christ died on the cross to atone for our sins, to purchase for us a freedom from sin, a life of holiness and power, a heritage of the kingdom of God—sonship, heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. In humility, let us come before the Lord with a hungry heart and a passionate faith to know the freedom to which we have been born anew!

Only then shall we be enabled to walk in unbroken fellowship with an ungrieved Holy Spirit and experience the dimensions of divine love in this life, preparing us for the life to come!

1946 Arkansas revival - by Jim Tharp 2012

Who is this that looks forth like the dawn, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army with banners! (Song of Solomon 6:10).


Throughout my sixty-five years of ministry, I’ve prayed to see the Solomonic vision of a Spirit-inflamed army of God emerge in the fullness of the power of the Holy Spirit to march forth in the glory of God and claim the multitudes in the valleys of decision. 

I caught a glimpse of this vision in the revival fires that swept me into the Kingdom of God in southeastern Arkansas in 1946. In Kentucky in 1948, my friend John K. Summers and I saw the glory of God sweep a rural community on the banks of the Cumberland River. Then for six weeks in 1950, we saw the glory of God move upon his people in Indiana and rally them for a period of praise and spiritual harvest of souls. In California in 1970, the fires of the Asbury Revival touched us for a short time in Pasadena.

"Unless You Repent ..." - by Jim Tharp 2000

Unless you repent you will all likewise perish. (Luke 13:3)

Therefore, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, but declared first to those in Damascus and in Jerusalem, and all throughout all the region of Judea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent, turn to God, and do works befitting repentance. (Acts 26:19-20)

Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place - unless you repent. (Rev. 2:5)

Millions of American evangelicals are now speaking optimistically about a coming revival, while others speak on the subject in more guarded and cautious tones. I personally believe that revival is the church’s greatest need, and I really do believe that it will come. But as I pray, travel, minister and converse with pastors and laymen, I find myself more deeply concerned, even disturbed, than ever before about American churches. Most of us believe that the Second Coming of Christ is near; but we also believe that the Bride (the Church) has not prepared herself for the Bridegroom’s (Christ’s) return. Nor has the Church completed its task of taking the Gospel to all the people groups on planet earth so that the end may come (Matt. 24:14). Only a genuine, full-scale, historic revival will bring about the holiness and power in the lives of the people of God to make us ready to meet the Lord. Only such a revival will fill the Church with the passion and purpose to complete its mission and bring back the King.

I fear that most pastors and lay leaders in our American evangelical churches are merely wishing for revival; they are not desperate for it. They prefer at this point to go on with religious business as usual than to experience Upper Room praying and repentance. This would involve cross bearing, burden sharing, tears, days and nights of prayer and fasting. Most of us are not ready for this. American churches seem to be intoxicated by their numerical and financial successes. They are more bent on institutional survival than on spiritual revival. How and when will this change? When leaders begin to focus again on Upper Room praying! A praying remnant must prevail with God in intercession until there are visitations of the Spirit. With visitations of the Spirit there will come conviction. And with conviction in the hearts of professing men and women in the body of Christ there will come repentance.

The Clash of Two Invisible Armies - by Jim Tharp 2012

The apostle Paul calls for believers with holy boldness to enlist in a Spirit-anointed fight against principalities, powers, world rulers of this present darkness, and hosts of wicked spirits operating in the heavenly places (Eph. 6:12). The call here is for an earthly army composed of regenerated, sanctified, Spirit-filled believers to go against an invisible hierarchy of evil commanded by Satan, the prince of the power of the air.

Just as Satan and his invisible forces of wickedness find human personnel on earth to carry out their evil purposes, so Christ and His invisible heavenly hosts solicit human believers to enlist in His holy purposes for redeeming, renewing, and reaching the world with His Gospel and preparing a people for eternity.

Both Moses and Joshua learned about God’s invisible armies. Before Moses could lead the Israelites out of Egyptian bondage and before Joshua could lead them into the Promised Land, they learned of these supernatural forces without which they could never have succeeded.

The Struggle of Prayer - By Jim Tharp - written in 2000

And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. (Luke 22:44 NKJV)

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. Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him .... (Hebrews 5:7-8, NIV)

Now I beg you, brethren, through the Lord Jesus Christ, and through the love of the Spirit, that you strive together with me in your prayers to God for me. (Romans 15:30 NKJV)

Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ, greets you, always laboring fervently for you in prayers, that you may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God. (Colossians 4:12 NKJV)

The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. (James 5:16 NKJV)

It is nothing short of tragic that so much of the church today is either too passive or too preoccupied to study the nature of intercessory prayer and make the necessary commitment for the unleashing of its glorious power. Frank Laubach believed prayer to be the greatest force in the universe available to man. John Wesley believed that God does nothing except by prayer. When Andrew Murray was asked why so many Christian ministers and workers had so little influence in their communities and over the world, he answered, "Nothing but the sin of prayerlessness is the cause of the lack of spiritual life." Leonard 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 the 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!" E. M. Bounds wrote, "Prayer is humbling work. It abases the pride of intellect, crucifies vainglory, and signs our spiritual bankruptcy, and all these are hard for flesh and blood to bear. It is easier not to pray than to bear them. So we come to the crying evils of these times, maybe of all times -- little or no praying. Of the two evils, perhaps little praying is worse than no praying. Little praying is a kind of make-believe, a salve for the conscience, a farce and a delusion."

Rivers of Living Water - By Jim Tharp, 2012

On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and proclaimed, “If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.’”

Now this he said about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were to receive; for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified (John 7:37-39, RSV).

The Feast of Tabernacles was one of the three major celebrations on the Jewish calendar of worship. It was a harvest festival during which the people gave thanks for the gathered crops.

Jesus knew that he would be the chief topic of conversation at this popular feast, so he urged his unbelieving brothers to go ahead to the feast in Jerusalem; he would come later, alone. When he arrived, he began teaching in the temple, attracting great crowds. He was not spouting dogmas, but declaring convicting truths. The chief priest and Pharisees sent officers out to arrest him. They returned empty-handed with only one exclamation: “No man ever spoke like this man!” (John 7:46).

On the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles, and during the featured ritual—the pouring of the water from the golden pitcher on the base of the altar, a commemoration of the flowing water from the smitten rock in the wilderness—there was a holy interruption: Jesus stood and proclaimed, “If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water’” (John 7:37-38).

The Beloved Apostle John makes sure that his readers know the meaning of Jesus’ words. He explained, “Now this he said about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were to receive; for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified” (John 7:39).

Following Jesus’ death on the cross, willingly offered in atonement for our sins, and after his entombment and resurrection came his ascension and glorification.

Then came the Feast of Pentecost and the fulfillment of the promise of Jesus to give the Holy Spirit to believers. Luke reports, “When the day of Pentecost had come, they (believers) were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance” (Acts 2:1-4, RSV).

Abundant Life

“And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit,” said Luke. The word filled denotes abundance (bountiful, plentiful). “I came,” said Jesus, “that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10, RSV).

In his teachings, Jesus stressed that the secret of a victorious life for his followers would be in their relationship with the Holy Spirit, who would be given to each of them at the new birth experience. The apostle Peter took Jesus seriously, so that after the Spirit had been given at the Feast of Pentecost, he promised those who would “repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins … you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38, RSV).

Harps and Bowls - By Jim Tharp, 2000

And as He took the scroll, the twenty-four Elders fell down before the Lamb, each with a harp and golden vials filled with incense -- the prayers of God's people! (Rev. 5:8, TLB)

Then another angel with a golden censer came and stood at the altar; and a great quantity of incense was given to him to mix with the prayers of God's people, to offer upon the golden altar before the throne. And the perfume of the incense mixed with prayers ascended up to God from the altar where the angel had poured them out. Then the angel filled the censer with fire from the altar and threw it down upon the earth; and thunder crashed and rumbled, lightning flashed, and there was a terrible earthquake. Then the seven angels with the the seven trumpets prepared to blow their mighty blasts. (Rev. 8:3-6, TLB)

As we turn to the book of Revelation in these times, we all need to be reminded of a classic observation on this final book of the Old Testament made by Dr. Jack W. Hayford in his new work, E Quake, "the book of Revelation will never make sense as a collection of prophecies until it is approached as a handbook on worship!" (p. 11).

In Revelation Five, John saw "in the right hand of Him who sat on the throne a scroll written inside and on the back, sealed with seven seals." While the search was on for someone "worthy" to open the scroll, John wept much, "because no one was found worthy to open the scroll and to break its seven seals." (v. 4).

The scroll symbolizes the will of God for the complete sweep of human history, His perfect plan of redemption, healing and restoration of the human race to its true destiny, His purpose for all of creation as revealed in the birth, life, death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ. This is why no one was found worthy to open the scroll and break its seals. But finally, in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, "stood a Lamb as though it had been slain (One who had the marks of the cross, having suffered for sin, having removed the curse of Satan and having triumphed forever over evil). The arrival of the Lamb to execute the will of God in judgment on the earth and eviction of all sin and darkness in the opening of the scroll and the breaking of the seven seals reminds us that Jesus Christ is the One and Only Person in all the human race whom God has appointed Savior (John 14:6; Acts 4:12) and Judge (Acts 17:31) and Perpetual Ruler (Isa. 9:6-7; Col. 1:13-20).

We need at this time to observe carefully what the twenty-four elders were holding as they worshiped the Lamb who was about to break the seals on the scroll: they had harps and bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints (v. 8). Harps are instruments of worship, of healing, of freedom, of power, of praise, of deliverance. In the early days of their relationship, when a distressing spirit would come upon King Saul, David would play the harp and the distressing spirit would depart from him (I Sam. 16:23). So today, praise and prayer are mighty forces. Our praises must precede the actions of the Lamb. When we are filled with praise, the Lord goes into action, and it's only a matter of time before the will and purposes of God are recovered in our lives, in our ministries, in our churches, in our families and in our world.

Let us note that at the very outset of the judgment process, before the breaking of the first seal, "the golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints" are brought forth as a critical focus for the Lamb (5:8). Then comes a solemn pause at the opening of the seventh seal -- "silence in heaven for about half an hour" (Rev. 8:1). This breathtaking apprehension is expressed as a dreadful silence before the apocalyptic finale. All celestial beings are hushed in solemn respect of the powerful prayers of the saints who have prayed the will of God to pass across the ages of history, as the Just One Himself pauses to decide to what extent such intercession must prevail and determine the outcome of all things. Notice that the angel "was given much incense, that he would offer it with the prayers of all the saints... The smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, ascended before God from the angel's hand" (8:3-4). Wesley Duewel sees this "fragrant incense" as the intercessions of Christ. He writes, "His fragrant intercession is added to the prayers of God's children for God's kingdom to come and His will to be done on earth. Fire from the altar, symbolic of the mighty power of the Holy Spirit, is added to the combined prayers of Jesus and His saints, and all is poured out upon the earth. Immediately there follows the seven trumpets as outlined in the subsequent chapters of Revelation. These awesome demonstrations of God's power work dramatically to speed the accomplishment of God's will on earth and the total defeat of Satan "(Touch The World through Prayer, pp. 223-224).