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How I Discovered Praise Power
I was not raised in a Christian home, and knew nothing of praise power until I was grown. I was born-again in a fine Baptist church, was called to preach as a Baptist, and began my preaching ministry in Baptist churches. My wife was raised in an old-fashioned Pentecostal home. Her dad has been for many years a real Holy Ghost, pioneer Pentecostal preacher. So our backgrounds were very different. Here I was a Baptist, my wife a Pentecostal. But we have come along wonderfully for years together. The Baptists stand for baptism in water; the Pentecostals stand for baptism in fire. You get water and fire together, and you produce steam. So we have been steaming along all of these blessed years! A few weeks after joy and I were married, however, I had an ego-shattering experience. I was working for Evangelist William Freeman as his magazine editor. Realizing the importance of a deep devotional life, I would get up every morning and pray for an hour. joy usually prayed at another time, and since our apartment was small, she couldn't help overhearing me. "Honey," she said one day, with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, "I would suggest that one of these mornings you make a tape recording of your hour-long prayer. Then instead of going through all the rigors of praying like that every morning, you could just turn the recorder on and let it play." "what do you mean by that?" I replied, somewhat surprised. "Honey," she said kindly, "I don't mean to embarrass you, but honestly, you say the same things every morning in exactly the same way, and it's just an hour of repetition." "It is?" I asked in amazement. "I never thought of it that way." "Well, you just think about it," she replied, going back to her work. Some weeks later, in our evening prayer time which we always had together, joy said, "Honey, the Lord has been so good to us, why don't we just devote this evening to praising the Lord, instead of asking. Let's just give Him thanks for all His benefits to us." "A whole devotional time devoted to praise?" I thought. "I don't think I'm up to that!" Furthermore, the very idea of praising God without asking Him for anything bothered me, just from a theological viewpoint. I had done a considerable amount of reading on the subject of prayer, and one of the authors I most admired taught the very practical view that prayer is made up of one basic essential: asking. He taught that while praise, thanksgiving, and singing are good, they are not the same as prayer. Prayer involves the simple process of asking and receiving. Now here was my wife suggesting we spend a whole devotional time not asking for anything-which in my mind was equivalent to not praying! "No, joy," I insisted. "We're going to pray. Praise is all right, but we've got to pray." "But, Honey," she protested, "isn't praising God the same as praying?" "Not at all," I replied. "Prayer is asking. The answer to prayer is receiving. Praise is something else altogether." "I don't know-" she said doubtfully. "It seems that we hardly ever praise God." "Joy, you just don't understand," I countered. "Why don't you get that book on prayer out of my library and read the chapter about asking? I'm sure it'll help you." Then, after a thoughtful pause, I said, "Now-let's get down to business here and start asking God to provide for our needs." I was quite stubborn about it, and she went along with me. However, my wife had experienced a wonderful deliverance from a nervous disorder just before I met her. For eleven long months of her young life, she had been tormented by a mental oppression that had been a great trial to her. "You're not going to live to see twenty-one," the devil would torment her. "What a terrible thought!'' she'd reply within herself, not realizing the source of her thoughts. "Yes, you're going to die," the devil said unfeelingly, "---and very soon!" She'd cry and cry when those tormenting thoughts came, but nothing she did drove them away. She bought her clothes with the thought in mind that she would die young in life, and that possibly the dress she was buying would be among her burial clothes. The incredible thing about the devil's ability is that he made her believe for a time that GOD was telling her she was going to die. The nightly bouts of depression became unbearable. She began to think that if she were going to die so soon, she ought to stay awake and squeeze as much out of life as was left. She frittered away the nights doing this and that. Finally, knowing that she had to go to work in the morning, she'd try to get some rest. But by that time, she was too keyed up to sleep, so she'd spent the rest of the night tossing and turning, often struggling with cold chills and tormenting imaginations. For eleven months, it was like living in a clear plastic bag. She could see everyone around her, but she was in a different world. From time to time, people peered in at her, but never quite understood her fears. On Sundays, she'd go to the First Assembly of God where her father was the pastor, and play the piano and vibraharp. But her heart wasn't in it. Through the week, she tried to busy herself with the endless duties of her managerial position in a department store. But no matter how busy she was, still the haunting thought lingered in the back of her mind: "You're going to die soon. It won't be long now . . .." In desperation, she began a careful study of God's Word to see if she couldn't find an answer to her fears. Much to her delight, she found that God makes abundant promises to His people of long life, as well as all our heart's desires. And since her desire was to invest her life in the Lord's service, she began to feel somewhat encouraged. "But what if these thoughts about death really are coming from the Holy Spirit?" she'd ask herself. "What if God is trying to warn me?" So it became a seesaw existence. As long as she looked at the Word of God, she felt at peace. But when she allowed her attention to return to her old fears, nothing would give her any peace except the tranquilizers she'd been using. (Continued)
