Praise Break

Summary

Summary prepared by Acts 2:38 Life from the YouTube recording's caption track, read through the transcript panel — published in summary form; watch the full sermon at the source.

Because of the Times 1999, The Pentecostals of Alexandria, Alexandria, LA. Johnson, pastor at Austin, Texas, preaches the noon session on one discipline: when offence is coming on — when you are about to get a bad spirit — stop everything and praise God on purpose, the way other people take a coffee break. He calls it a praise break, and the sermon is built as three located scriptures with a string of stories from his own church and his own hard year hung on them. (One block stands outside the sermon's span and is seamed in packet.md: the host's introduction at the head. One name is redacted in this summary under the minors rule — see packet.md, Flag 9.)

Behind Babe and before Hank

He opens with baseball. A lawyer friend back home answers his trivia questions — who batted after Ruth, who batted before Aaron — with a shrug: who cares. Johnson cares, he says, because today he is behind Babe and before Hank. Then Ruth's own story: struck out three straight times, down to his last swing with the bases loaded, and he kept swinging and won the game. That is the sermon's first word to the house — whatever has struck you out, keep swinging; this stop on the journey is not the destination.

Scriptures: (none in this movement)

The subject announced, and the first scripture: worship in spirit and truth

He announces his subject as enjoying the presence of the Lord, with the subtitle that gives the sermon its name: I need a praise break — because he is about to get offended. His first text is located and voiced entire: the hour has come when the true worshippers worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeks such to worship Him, and God is a Spirit. A man's spirit is his own — the little-s spirit is yours, he says — and worship is the one thing this congregation can do for God that He cannot do for Himself. He leads the house by the hand through the psalmist's vow to bless the Lord with His praise continually in his mouth, then preaches David's own praise breaks: seven times a day will I praise thee, and the next verse's promise — great peace have they that love thy law, and nothing shall offend them. America runs on coffee breaks, morning, afternoon and evening; David stopped seven times a day and praised whether he felt anything or not. The sunrise- to-sundown psalm follows, located and voiced: from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same, the Lord's name is to be praised.

Scriptures: John 4:23-24; Psalm 34:1; Psalm 119:164; Psalm 119:165; Psalm 113:3

How God measures a church, and the greater works

A British prime minister, short of stature, told an American reporter that in his country a man is measured from the neck up. How does God measure a church — by real estate, by numbers, by prestigious membership? No: the Father seeketh such to worship Him. The baptism of the Holy Ghost is not a credential or a goal, he says; it is a gateway, a birth certificate, not a diploma. Then the second movement's text, located and voiced entire — he that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do — with his own observation that the second occurrence of the word works in that verse stands in italics, added by the translators, so the promise is not a competition in miracles. Nobody has duplicated Jesus: the water turned to wine untouched, the fish that paid the tax, the five thousand fed. The greater thing the church can do is the thing He cannot do for Himself — worship. What one man once a year did beyond the veil, any believer can now do seven times a day.

Scriptures: John 14:12

The duties of a priest

His second scripture is located as a job description for a priest: the Lord separated the tribe of Levi to bear the ark of the covenant, to stand before the Lord, to minister unto Him, and to bless His name — and, he adds on a spoken locator the captions garble, God has made us all kings and priests unto God. The four duties carry the movement. Bear His presence: people must feel a good spirit around a priest, and if people feel worse when you are coming, you need a praise break. The ark carried on the shoulders of worship brings victory, blessing, and guidance; a back-desert boy who praised was taken over two men the prophet had already passed by. Stand before the Lord before you stand before people — a preacher who cannot worship cannot lead worship. Minister to God, and bless His name. Worship is also his church-growth testimony: he told sixty people in Austin that worship would grow them, and it did — a Sunday when he preached well produced nothing, and a Sunday when they worshipped well produced five Holy Ghost baptisms; even a balcony dweller, in the shut-off balcony, received the Holy Ghost. Worship makes a seat for God: he retells, as an interpretation he heard from Japanese believers, the old line that God inhabits the praises of His people — when we praise, we create a seat, and God comes down and sits in it.

Scriptures: Deuteronomy 10:8; Revelation 1:6

The rain cycle

His third movement's text is located in the book of Job and read at length: God is great and unsearchable in years; He makes small the drops of water, and the clouds drop rain upon man abundantly. The schoolroom rain cycle becomes the sermon's mechanics: the sun draws vapour up from rivers and lakes, the vapour forms clouds, the clouds cool and send the rain back — and rain makes the oranges and apples and potatoes grow. God sends back rain according to the vapour. Send praise up and something comes down. Jesus Himself worshipped — he tells how Jesus rejoiced and leaped for joy — and Jesus, hemmed in by Pharisees, Sadducees and Herod's leaven, needed a praise break of His own.

Scriptures: Job 36:26-28

The staged Transfiguration

Johnson then demonstrates the Transfiguration on the platform. He calls men up to stand in for the cloud, for Peter, for James and for John — a fellow preacher stands in the demonstration at his invitation — and preaches the scene as it forms around him: Jesus praising on the mountain, His face and garments changed, Moses and Elijah appearing, the cloud overshadowing. Each figure is an answer to a need: Moses for deliverance and advocacy, Elijah for miracles, the cloud for the Holy Ghost baptism and rain, James for church growth, John for revelation. Peter is there too — the first preacher at Pentecost — and Johnson, in character inside the demonstration, voices the opening of Peter's Pentecost answer before the house's applause cuts the line short; the moment is told here as part of the staging, and packet.md prices it as a citation candidate and excludes it (Flag 6). A young visitor to his Austin church told him a Sunday morning service beat a famous rock concert — and could give satisfaction besides. Johnson is in his jubilee year, forty-nine and already living his fiftieth, and he is not going to be shut up. Down the mountain, the first thing Jesus met was a father whose son had a devil — because the devil wants to bind the child, and in every believer a childlike spirit that must never be bound. Not childish — childlike: the spirit that bounces and jumps and hollers is what keeps a preacher going.

Scriptures: (none new in this movement)

Church is not always rosy

He turns confessional about his own congregation. A couple walked out after one of his best sermons saying anywhere was better; the same week a man walked in asking for a pastor. A young woman of his church — [name redacted] — was dating a boy outside the church, against everything he preaches; when she called asking to talk, he braced for the worst news a pastor dreads, and she told him she had broken up with the boy. That was all — and it was praise-break news. (Her name is withheld under the minors rule: her age is never stated, she is not his child, and the desk rule is redact-and-flag on uncertainty — packet.md, Flag 9.) There are kids experimenting with drugs and alcohol; he went out on the front porch after the congregation and prayed with the boys there. His assistant brought him a mother's story of a teenage son who had fathered children young — told without any name, as he heard it. The parking lot they could only afford to patch got yellow barriers and a do-not-cross sign, and one unnamed kid moved the barriers, drove through, and buried his truck in wet concrete. An evangelist's prayer-cloth ministry, which his church took up with enthusiasm, sent out five handkerchiefs in one week and got three reports back that the recipients had died — and he needed a praise break anyway, because stopping to praise is what you do instead of getting offended.

Scriptures: (none in this movement)

The closing text: mourning turned into joy

His third scripture is read at the close, the chapter located and the verses voiced at their performed extent: they shall come and sing in the height of Zion and flow together to the goodness of the Lord, their soul as a watered garden, sorrowing no more; the virgin rejoicing in the dance, young and old together, mourning turned into joy and sorrow exchanged for rejoicing. If you want out of sorrow, stop everything and bless the Lord at all times. He speaks from inside it: when people tried to get him to stop preaching for two months during his own ordeal, he could not stay away — the day after he lost his family he was at church, on his knees, and the childlike spirit came back as he praised. Then the roll of a hard year: the first death of 1998 was a woman of his church who never missed though she took beatings for coming; then a missionary to Brazil who was his buddy; then a ninety- three-year-old California preacher who had been an anchor to him; then the widow of the man who founded the church he pastors; then a dear friend of forty-six, gone of a heart attack weeks before. Things are not always rosy back in the valley — but come to Zion and magnify the Lord, and He turns mourning into joy. He closes with a ship in treacherous water, whose fearful passenger was told by the captain that they would go through if the rivets held and the boiler kept boiling; the only way this company does not go through is if the grave comes or the Rapture takes place. The David promise sounds one last time over the whole house — great peace have they that love thy law, and nothing shall offend them — and the charge is the sermon's title turned into an order: take a seven-times-a-day praise break, bless the Lord one more time from the bottom of your heart, and go take on the day.

Scriptures: Jeremiah 31:12-13; Psalm 119:165