ANOINTED WORD MINISTRIES

CRAZY PRAISE

JoyUs Musing
Edition #10-14

"I will give fervent thanks to the Lord..." Psalms 109:30, NAB

There was a time my husband and I faced a bad financial trial. EVERYTHING went wrong. Because his contract
ended much earlier than expected, he was laid off from work.

Things began to fall apart financially. The bank wanted to know when we would pay the back car notes and were
talking repossession. The mortgage people were not communicating with one another, so each phone call was a
living nightmare. One person wanted to put us on a repayment schedule; the other wanted us set up for
foreclosure. We did not want to answer the telephone because credit card companies were pressuring us.

We could guarantee we would catch the payments up but no one was listening. There would be another contract,
we just didn't know exactly when. No one cared. It began to feel as if every demon in hell was working with the
world's finance system to repossess our two cars and foreclose on the house. We were losing our positive focus.

The unemployment check barely covered the rest of the debts. We had nothing to live on after tithing, giving a
small offering and paying those bills. Someone heard Leland was laid off and bought a bag of groceries from
church: hamburger helper without the hamburger, a can of tomato sauce, and a can of pinto beans. It was hard to
count it as joy, much less food. It was very discouraging. Thank God for generous parents!

We were blessed with enough money to make a house payment. The mortgage company told us they would
refuse it because it wasn't the three we needed to catch up. I was told if I sent it, they would stamp it "declined"
and sent it back. It made us so mad, we decided to plant the money as a seed.

One of the ministries' we study under taught us that "if what you hold in your hand is not enough to meet your
need, it is your seed." That $380 was not enough to satisfy the mortgage company. It wasn't enough for the car
notes either. If it had been, we would have made that payment. So we decided to give it to God as an offering,
trusting that He would provide a miracle. We "planted" that financial seed into a good ground ministry.

Bad ground would be a ministry that didn't believe in the prosperity message. That would be akin to plant tomato
seeds in the crack of a concrete sidewalk and expecting the best tomato crop on earth to produce. Good ground
is any ministry that believes the faith message; one believing the entire Bible is true including the prosperity
message.

We sent the $380 to a ministry we partnered with (one who'd taught us about debt freedom). I called their prayer
line, told them what we were doing, and had prayer over our offering seed. That's all we knew to do. Everything
was in God's hands.

While awaiting his next contract, we pumped up our faith by watching faith ministers on satellite (it was free),
listening to faith audio and videotapes, reading the Word and faith-based books. One day, we heard the minister,
T.D. Jakes, talking about what to do when times were rough and nothing was going right. Rev. Jakes said, "you
need some crazy praise when it looks like nothing is going to work."

Immediately, my husband and I jumped up, grabbed one another and jumped around in a circle, praising the Lord
at the top of our lungs. We yelled at the devil and praised the Lord. We thanked Him for provision and answers.
We yelled, danced, jumped, and basically, acted like idiots. We gave God crazy praise. Man, did that feel good!
We laughed and felt better than we had in a long time.

Later, we found that what Rev. Jakes meant was that when it looks like it is crazy to praise the Lord because
everything is going wrong, that's when you praise Him anyway! However, because of the pressure we were under
that ecstatic jumping, yelling, dancing, and acting crazy caused us to laugh so much, we got our eyes off the
problem and back on God. It changed our focus back to where it belonged. In faith, on Him.

After that, anytime one of us got down or under the thought attack that said "you're gonna lose it all", the other
would grab them and say, "let's have some crazy praise." You can't stay depressed during crazy praise. Even if
you wanted to punch the other person out when they try to initiate the crazy praise, a few times around and you'd
be praising God and laughing. It was silly but it worked. It wasn't how we did it, but that we did it. We praised God
in the midst of our circumstances because we trusted Him instead what we saw.

Soon after that, the contract came through making twice the money, with a huge per diem check. We would have
to leave home for this short-term contract, but the money was enough to get us out of the hole we were in. With
much favor from the companies involved, it was a miracle that enabled us to catch up every debt and open a
savings account to put in six months worth of living expenses - like God had told us to do the year before the
contact ran out. *Ahem*

David had the right idea. In the King James version of Psalms 109:30 it says, "I will greatly praise the Lord with my
mouth". The Strongs definition states that greatly means "vehemence." To do something vehemently is to do it
passionately, with enthusiasm, zeal, and fire. See? Crazy Praise! We had His Word on it!

Sharing the goodness of God:

Musing Copyright © 2010 Nan C Loyd
All rights reserved. Used by permission.