The Praise Cure

Praise God.

Let's pick our Bibles up, wave them around, let's get into the Word.

This morning, this Thanksgiving season, there went my notes.

I guess I'm just lost now, don't have any notes.

I don't know what I'm gonna do.

Oh yeah, there they are.

Praise God.

Let's say this together Say Heavenly Father, I do give thanks for your holy name, for your holy Word and for your Holy Spirit.

I'm so grateful to be in church.

I'm glad my church is open for business, kingdom business, and I'm one of the participators in that kingdom, not standing on the sidelines, not sitting in the bleachers, but I'm in the game.

I'm participating in Jesus' name.

Amen, you can be seated.

Hallelujah.

Let's look at Psalm eight, please.

Praise God, our God reigns.

Psalm eight and then also Hebrews 13.

If you will get both of those and you're ready to go, start with Psalm eight.

Oh Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth?

Who has set thy glory above the heavens?

Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings has thou ordained strength?

Jesus said in the gospels when he quoted this verse.

He said has thou perfected praise?

Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, has thou perfected praise?

I like the way Jesus quoted it.

It means that you know he quoted it because he wanted to accomplish make a point when he was talking.

Have you perfected praise?

Why?

Because of your enemies, that you might steal the enemy and the avenger, and then Hebrews 13, 15.

By him, that is, by Jesus.

Therefore, let us offer the sacrifice.

Let us offer the sacrifice of praise when we feel like it, occasionally, no, continually.

That is the fruit of our lips.

Giving thanks to his name, and you know, this Thanksgiving season, holiday season, I just wanted to share a message entitled the praise cure.

The praise cure, amen.

I think sometimes we forget to praise God.

Sometimes we get so wrapped up in trouble and wrapped up in the things that are going on in life.

And, yeah, we know we have an enemy, we know we can bind him, we know we can rebuke him and all of that.

But you know it's good to remember that God is greater than the enemy and he's worthy of our praise on a continual basis.

Amen.

I mean he's already set us free.

He's not gonna set us free, amen.

I mean some of us, you know, when we look at our bank account and we look at our 401K and we look at our accounts payable and our accounts receivable.

It looks like we're in debt, but God's delivered us from oppressive debt.

I said he's already delivered us.

You know, jesus said look on the fields, they're wide already to harvest.

I mean we already have ripe harvest.

We're not waiting on it to happen, we've got it right now.

You know God is a now God.

Everything that we have is now.

It's not gonna happen, it's not gonna be later.

We already been healed.

I said we've already been healed.

We're not waiting for the evidence to show up in our bodies.

I mean the evidence is right here that we were healed, amen.

So he's worthy of our praise about that.

I mean let's not wait for circumstances to change before we just absolutely get down with praising God.

Or should I get up with praising God?

Hallelujah, amen.

He's already blessed us with all spiritual blessings and heavenly blessings.

Blessed be the Lord who daily loaded me with benefits, even to God of my salvation.

You know I've had jobs that had no benefits, zero benefits.

Have you ever had a job with no benefits?

I mean there's no paid vacation, there's no paid days off, there's no insurance, there's no benefit.

You know what he's got all the benefits we need.

If you have a job like that.

You're not without benefits, because he daily loads you up, every day.

You ought to be shouting oh, I've got benefits today, glory to God, I've got mutual of Jesus, hallelujah, there's no copay with him.

Hallelujah, hebrews says we must offer to God continually, continually.

You know, continually is a lot, isn't it?

I mean, there's no gaps.

There's no gaps Now, actually, in Hebrews, there where he says you know, by him, therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually.

That is the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name.

He's actually, when you look in your margin, if you got a study Bible, it gives you Habakkuk 14-2.

And Habakkuk puts it this way offer the sacrifice of praise, that is the calves of our lips, giving thanks under his name, the calves.

What in the world does that mean?

Well, it means the Jews would give thank offerings and, yes, they used their voices.

But they had to go buy calf.

They had to take that calf to the priest.

The priest had to kill that calf and divide that calf in two and burn that calf on the altar and that was the thank offering.

When the smoke, the smoke mixed with incense and everything.

When that went to heaven, that was their thank offering.

It costs them out of their pocket.

They had to go buy that calf and give it to the priest, and the priest would keep part of it, eat part of it and burn the rest of it.

Are y'all with me now?

And so it's the same.

When we praise God, we offer him the sacrifice of praise with our lips, that is, the calves of our lips, giving thanks under his name, hallelujah.

I mean, you know, instead of talking so much about the devil, let's think about thanking God a little bit more.

You know, talking about the trouble, talking about the sickness, talking about the need, talking about this, talking about that, talking about our country, I know there's plenty to talk about, you know.

I mean Biden has just I mean he's made one mistake after another.

I mean it's just unbelievable.

He's done everything in the world to raise gasoline prices.

Now he's blaming the gas stations for jacking up the price.

I mean, are you kidding me?

Maybe it's.

It'd be funny if it wasn't so stupid.

I guess he thinks everybody is stupid, that we don't know what's going on.

Well, you know what.

We can talk about that all more.

I can talk about Biden, I can talk about Kamala, I can talk about all these people.

You know what I prefer to just praise God.

I'm telling you they shall soon be cut down as the grass and wither as the green herb.

That's what I talk about.

Look at Psalm 149.

Let's just whip over there.

I wanna just, you know, I know y'all thank God around Thanksgiving table, but continually is a big word, continually, and we all got room to praise God more than we have.

Amen, gonna have a better amen.

Amen.

I mean we all have room to praise God more than we do.

Amen, because continually, just think about a word continually.

The Holy Ghost inspired that to be put in the Bible so that we would be stirred.

Psalm 149, verse four For the Lord, take it pleasure in his people.

He will beautify the meek with salvation.

What is salvation?

Going to heaven, well, that's part of it.

But it's everything else that Jesus bought and paid for Health, healing, wholeness, abundance.

And then it says let the saints be joyful in glory, let them sing aloud upon their beds.

Let the high see now.

Let, let, let See.

That means it's not gonna happen automatically, it's not just gonna come out of you, just automatically.

It says let the high praises of God be in their mouth and a two-edged sword in their hand To execute vengeance upon the heath and punishments upon the people.

Ooh, that's getting kinda heavy there.

But notice it starts with what Praise Let the high praises.

In fact, when you get back to verse six let the high praises the word praises is italicized, so it's not even there.

It just says let the high, let the high, let the high of God.

I mean we oughta be standing on the mountaintop looking down at the trouble Instead of being down here just underneath all the trouble.

Well, how you doing?

Well under the circumstances.

I'm doing all right under the circumstances.

What are you doing under there?

What are you doing under there?

You're supposed to be on top.

Come on, that's right.

Well, brother, you know your honeymoon with the Lord's gonna end soon.

You'll go down in the valley.

You're gonna be walking in the valley this time next year.

I had a lady tell me that she found out I got saved.

She'd been saved the year before that.

She started talking to me about the valley.

I said you know, I refuse to walk in no valley.

I'm gonna walk on the mountaintop.

So we're tempted to get in the valley.

Amen, let the high of God be in your mouth and a two-edged sword in their hand.

To do what?

To execute vengeance upon Biden and punishments upon his administration, all the unelected officials that are ruling like their supreme beings, fouchy God.

Glory to God.

I wanna shout a little bit oh, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.

That's my two-edged sword, in case you all didn't know.

Hallelujah, hallelujah, glory to God.

To bind their kings with change and their nobles with fetters of iron.

What does that talk about demon powers?

I know we can bind the devil.

I know we can have authority over the devil.

We exercise that authority.

But there's something happened that went when we were let the high praises of God.

When we sing aloud on our beds, when we praise God, right in the middle of the circumstances, so many things are happening all at once.

That's why I'm speaking to you this way.

I mean let's not leave off the praises of God, let's not leave off the high praises of God.

I mean, you know there's praises, and then there's high praises.

I mean come apart praises.

I mean, you know, when you just, you know, can't contain yourself anymore.

To bind their kings with change, their nobles with fetters of iron, to execute upon them the judgment written.

This honor have all his saints, hallelujah.

You know, we hear a little bit.

We hear a lot about judgment right now and I think most of the church doesn't even read this verse, doesn't have any revelation of their authority, doesn't have any revelation of the power of praise and thanking God, and you know so.

You know there's just a whole lot of judgment.

That's not happening because the church is asleep.

The church in some cases is even dead, so there's nothing coming out of that part of the church and I don't know which one is dead and which one's asleep.

They look the same until you get close enough to smell them and then you can tell the difference.

Praise the Lord, to execute upon them the judgment written.

This honor have all his saints.

Praise ye the Lord.

Oh, hallelujah, glory to God.

You know we're so quiet.

You're taking notes, morris Colton Todd, you can take notes when you listen to this message the second time.

Just get it in your heart first.

You know the devil.

It seems like he always comes at night.

You know when he's gonna attack you.

He usually attacks at night.

He'll bring the symptoms, he'll bring the trouble.

He'll.

You know he'll remind you of what he's doing and how bad off you've got it.

And it just seems like it's at night.

You know it's just sometimes it's midnight when these things start happening and sometimes we're struggling in the midnight hour for just honest about it.

I believe that's why Psalm 149 says let the hive God be in their mouth, let them sing aloud upon their beds.

Sometimes it's time to go to bed singing and shouting.

You know that's a little bit off, you know you wanna kinda quiet down and go to sleep, but sometimes you need to do a little shouting before you go to sleep.

Paul and Silas were in that situation Acts 16.

I hear they.

You know they were following God, they were in God's will.

They'd gotten, not gotten, together after Paul and Barnabas had a breakup.

Yeah, they did.

They had sharp contention, they parted ways.

Jesus did not fall off the throne, and so Paul hooked up with Silas and they went off into what was Paul's second missionary journey.

And they're, they're on the side of the road, they're praying.

Okay, let's see, let's, you know, let's go to Bithynia.

But the spirit suffered them, not Didn't say how.

They just lost their peace.

Maybe, maybe that was it.

And then they went to the church and then it says they were forbidden, acts 16,.

They were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia Minor.

Isn't that curious.

I thought we're supposed to go into all the world, preach the gospel to every creature.

They were just going to go to Asia Minor and the Holy Ghost said I forbid you to go there, it's not time for them, it's not, that's not your job.

I've got somebody else for that who knows what the situation was.

So they waited, thank God.

They waited until they knew what God wanted them to do.

And the Bible says Paul had a dream, and in the dream it was a Macedonian man.

I don't know how he knew, maybe he had a Macedonian baseball cap on a big M there.

I don't know, doesn't say.

And the Macedonian man said come over here and help us.

So they assuredly gathered oh, it must be God's will for us to go to Macedonia.

And I mean they started making tracks for Macedonia.

They got there and they got some people saved down by the river side and met Lydia, the seller of purple, who invited them to come and stay with her.

She got saved and they had favor.

But then, when they went into town, there was a big uprising.

People were screaming and shouting and they were beaten with many scribes and they were thrown into the inner prison as opposed to the outer prison.

The outer prison has a view, the inner prison doesn't have a window.

Can you imagine how it smells in the inner prison?

And their feet and legs were held fast in the stalks.

And at midnight, paul and Sassi it's a pretty tough situation.

Here they are, in the will of God, here they are doing what God told them to do.

Here they are walking with God, walking in the Holy Ghost.

They show up and here's how they're treated beaten with many stripes and thrown into prison.

And at the midnight hour, silas says Paul, would you look at my back?

I think it's bleeding, man, it hurts.

Well, I would, except they got me all crooked in these stalks and my back has got a spasm in it along with all the stripes.

No, they didn't.

They said they prayed and they sang praises and the prisoners heard them.

So that meant they weren't quiet about it, they weren't just man.

I mean they let the high praises of God they didn't even have a bed.

They let the high praises of God loose, and all the rest of the prisoners heard them, and the devil heard them.

The devil said I'm gonna kill those guys.

I'm tired of messing with them.

They should have already died.

I'm gonna kill them in this earthquake.

But God invaded the earthquake.

He busted open the prison doors, all the prisoners were able to leave and Paul and Silas, their hands and feet, came out of the stalks.

The keeper of the prison was gonna kill himself because he just knew that they were all gonna escape.

He'd be held accountable.

He said no, don't do thyself.

Do thyself no harm.

We're all still here.

And he got saved, him and his house.

They all got baptized.

They washed his stripes.

Oh, hallelujah, come on In the midnight hour.

That's the time to shout.

That's the time to praise God.

It doesn't just come out by itself.

That's why it's called sacrifice of praise.

It's a sacrifice because your flesh is not willing.

Your lips do not want to praise God, your lips want to complain.

Your lips and your mouth wants to talk about the trouble To whoever will listen.

Well, a lot of people get on the phone and call as many prayer lines as they can because they have the mistaken idea that if they can tell enough people about their trouble and get enough people praying, the things will be better.

How many of you know, that's not quite the way it goes, Amen.

So we get back to that offer of the sacrifice of praise that is the calves of your lips.

You've got to put your flesh to death.

You've got to mortify the members.

Your lips and your mouth is a member.

You've got to mortify your tongue.

You've got to mortify your lips and make them praise God when they don't feel like it.

Is this helping you tonight?

It's not.

It feels like night sometime.

It's so cloudy out there.

Your flesh wants to have a pity party.

Would y'all come to my pity party, y'all?

I'm the guest of honor.

Everybody's going to get to go around the room and commiserate with me.

No, that's what your flesh wants.

So that's the time to praise God because of what we know.

That's why it's so valuable to have revelation knowledge that Jesus has already bought and paid for.

It's not something we got to go get.

It's not something that's coming someday in the sweet buying Bye.

We got it now.

Now, god, oh, hallelujah.

You know hearing church is easy to praise.

God Got an atmosphere.

Praise teams sets it all up.

Brothers and sisters are all here.

You might be going through some things.

I can look out and see a few of you that I know you've gone through some things.

Maybe you're on the tail end of some things that you just finished with, others of you are just entering into some things that you just started encountering, and so forth and so on.

I could probably go around the room but, you know, somehow you found it where you could shout and you could praise God.

You know, at midnight at your house it's a little different by yourself.

You've just got.

You've got to just, you've got to just decide.

See that it isn't any different.

I said that it isn't any different.

Oh, where'd it go?

You got to offer the sacrifice, the sacrifice of prayer.

I remember back in the 80s when Houston was going through a depression, not a recession.

I was in the home building business.

I lost my business and why I obliged too long a story to get into.

But I moved to Corpus for a while until it caught up with me there, got laid off there on top of that, came back broke and my friend of mine he was a banker was talking to another customer of his, a builder Woodlands, very successful guy, and he was talking to him about me.

He's trying to help me get a job.

I said you know, kearney, if you help me get a job, I mean you know, everywhere I apply, I'm overqualified.

They don't want to give me a job.

I'm overqualified, I don't know.

It looks to me like I would want to hire somebody that's more than qualified.

But HR somebody taught them in HR class in college not to ever hire an overqualified candidate, and so they always get an underqualified candidate.

If they can find one, they can buy cheap and lord it over them.

Big it them up every day and tell them what a crummy job they're doing.

They don't deserve a raise.

I know you've been here 25 years, but you don't deserve a raise.

Are y'all with me now?

Y'all are so innocent.

I know it's never happened to anybody in here, but anyway he started a business and hired me to run it.

He started a unfortunately for me, he started a remodeling business.

Now you know there's nothing wrong with remodeling.

We've got some folks that are in the remodeling business in here.

It's wonderful business when you know what you're doing.

I did only remodeling.

I ever did was just to sell a house.

I had a new house and I'd have to remodel something.

I'd have to fix it.

I have changed something in order to sell it and I had to really need to sell it before I would even agree to do it.

But you know, in remodeling you're remodeling something that someone's living in.

That's a whole nother ballgame, and so that was a little bit.

That was a challenge for me, and I'm not a working contractor, in other words, I was a home builder.

So my work involved a telephone, you know call the electrician, call the plumber, call the carpenter, call the concrete man.

I mean I'm not the electrician, I'm not the carpenter, I'm not the roofer, I have to call those guys.

And of course by the time you do that it's hard to be lower than some of the guys that do their own work anyway.

So I knew we weren't making any money after about a year and a half.

I was talking to the boss, you know, and I wouldn't get paid squad, I mean it was a way underneath what it cost.

I mean I was going into debt just working for him.

But it was, it was a job, it was something what I needed to do.

I lost my business.

I had to, I had to have some money come in, and so I was grateful for it and prayed for him.

He was not a believer, him and his wife just lost his geese and, and so I saw what was going on in West University Place or Taren houses down in building new ones.

It was intriguing and I went through there.

You know, made up an excuse to go there.

You know I'm working six days a week and Sunday, sunday.

So you know there wasn't ever any time, but I had to go across town and pick up something.

So I went through, cruising through there and I was really intrigued by it.

So you know, I met him for lunch one day and I ran it by him and said, hey, what have you thought about maybe starting a venture in West University?

And I said, man there, I went through there the other day and he came.

When did you do that?

I said when I went to go pick up such and such and so forth.

And I said I walked through a red brick cube and it was the ugliest thing inside.

It had nothing to offer.

It was $350,000 on a little 50 by 100 foot lot.

I said I know we could do better than that.

We could probably clean up in there building the kind of houses that you built.

And yeah, I don't know.

And so I went away.

A couple of weeks later he called me and I thought, oh, he wants to talk to me.

Well, he laid me off.

He said I just can't keep, you know this, this remodeling thing, and I'm just not interested in building any more house.

In fact I'm, I'm going to retire next year.

And and, john, what are you going to do?

I said, oh, god's my source.

I mean, god never left me.

He was with me when, when I found this job.

He'll be with me the next, whatever the next thing is.

And they, they felt so bad, not enough to give me a severance package, but you know they, they paid me what they owed me, you know.

And so I walked out, got in the car and I took a deep breath.

You know, a tear tried to come in my eyes when I thought about having to go home and tell Gladys and you know she'd been with me through a lot of stuff.

So I started the car.

I said Lord, I could just say the devil stole my job, or or I could call this a promotion.

Now, that sounds kind of silly, but I had had a word a month before promotion, promotion, promotion.

And I was thanking God for promotion and I had in mind that building houses in West U and this man maybe starting a division and letting me do it.

And that's how your mind thinks.

Your mind wants to attach something promotion.

And then at Lakewood we had a meeting one night and one of the prayer ladies came up and says a brother, john, I was praying for you.

The other morning God gave me a word for you promotion.

I said, well, thank you, that's God.

And so I had that word.

So I said you know, lord, I can choose.

You know, I can say the devil just stole my job, or I can choose to call this a promotion.

I'm just gonna call this a promotion.

Glory to God.

And I started shouting there in the car, backing out of his driveway in the woodlands, driving home to spring.

It wasn't very far.

I shouted all the way home.

By the time I got home I was really.

I had the high praises of God going.

I bounded in the back door.

I said honey, honey, where are you?

I'm upstairs.

Oh, I got good news.

What, what.

She came to the what, what, oh, we've been promoted.

Really, that might not have been the best way to break the news.

I suggest that that ever happens to you.

Don't break the news that way.

Because she didn't see it my way at all.

Took her a while to see it my way.

But let me tell you something 30 days later I had $100,000 and another partner building house and starting to build houses in West University Place.

Are y'all with me now?

Oh, I'm telling you the high praises of God.

I'll tell you we've got to shout when we feel like crying.

We've got to praise God when we feel like whining, not about your feelings.

Are you with me now?

Brother Hagin tells a story of a young healing evangelist.

Now this is way back in the 30s.

You have to remember the setting of the 30s after the Azusa Street revival and there was such healing during that time and then started losing it because they got all these religious rules going and they started warring.

They were warring over the oil, the anointing, we're anointed and you're not, we're right, you're wrong, all that kind of stuff building fences around their churches, and.

But there was still some healing going on and this young man was a healing evangelist and Brother Hagin was preaching the Word of Faith beginning to back then, but he was one of the very few.

He had revelation that you could be healed by your faith and most of the other healing evangelists were the gifts of the Spirit that had to manifest.

Well, also during that time there was a huge outbreak of tuberculosis and this young man contacted and contracted tuberculosis and got sick, and so he had to come off the field and he called all the churches where he had preached and he said look, y'all pray for me.

I've got to come off the field and I'm not preaching now.

I'm believing God to heal me.

Y'all pray for me.

So he had a bunch of people praying for him and then some other preachers heard about it and they came and they laid hens on him you know several of them did and he got so sick that him and his wife had to move back to her folks home.

They were farmers in Corsicanna, texas, and he couldn't live on his own and didn't have the money to pay, and so they just went home and lived with her parents, and so he was in the back bedroom and he was so weak he couldn't hardly talk, much less move.

Laying in bed day after day, lots of people praying, lots of people, a lot of prayer groups, lots of people praying, and he's getting worse.

And so he looked out the back window one day and there's a clump of trees about 150 feet out the back of the house.

He said God, if you just give me the strength to get there, I will get under that clump of trees, I'll lay down out there and I'll pray till I get healed.

That was where he was, that was where his idea was, that was where his faith was was to pray and pray until.

And so somehow God did give him the strength to get out there.

He got out there.

I mean the last part of it.

He had to crawl on his hands and knees, but he got out there and he was so exhausted he laid on his back looking up through the trees I got, it was shade and looking up through the trees at the sky, and a voice came to him and says now you've done it.

You're out here and nobody knows you're here, and the only way they're gonna find you is when the buzzards come to eat your body.

Isn't that a lovely thought.

How many of you know that wasn't the Holy Ghost?

And he did too.

He knew that wasn't God encouraging him.

And then he got to thinking.

After that he said you know, there's so many people praying for me, all those churches, all those preachers.

If every one of them prayed for five minutes, what good is it gonna do for me to pray now, after all that praying and where I'm at now?

How many of you know that was the Holy Ghost Correcting his thinking.

Are you with me now?

I mean, he's thinking the abundance of prayers is gonna heal him, and now he realized if it could have healed him, he'd be healed right now, because if everybody had prayed five minutes, then it already said they'd prayed.

Are you with me?

In five minutes Times let's just say 200 people that's a thousand minutes Hadn't been healed.

Yet he said you know, I'm just gonna lay here and I'm gonna praise you, glory to God.

See, he couldn't even talk, he just whispered glory to God, thank you Jesus.

Thank you Jesus.

About 10 minutes goes by, thank you Lord.

Now his voice is getting a little stronger.

Within 30 minutes he was on his feet.

He was shouting so loud that his father-in-law was two miles away and came running, wanted to know what was going on.

He was perfectly healed, right there on the screen.

Oh, hallelujah, glory to God.

Well, they took him in, you know, for the doctor to check him and says well, we just don't understand this.

We call you the eighth wonder of the world.

You've got a hole in one of your lungs.

There's no way that you can live with that hole.

You're not, shouldn't be getting enough oxygen.

Your oxygen levels are normal and we call you the eighth wonder of the world.

And he just kept on.

He went back and preaching and he you know he had you know he changed what he did.

He changed his way of preaching and you know that's what I tell you.

God's miracles will do that for you.

That hole never did close up.

He had that hole the rest of his life.

I believe God left it in there as a witness to him that he doesn't even need a lung to breathe.

I'm telling you God can make you breathe when you don't even have any lungs.

Oh, come on, let's praise him this morning, Hallelujah.