Article March 20, 2006 Issue

'PRAISE YE THE LORD'

BY KIATEZUA LUBANZADIO LUYALUKA

IT WAS A SHINY Sunday morning. As I was walking down the street, I could hear the loud sound of tom-toms and people singing, clapping their hands, and dancing: They were praising the Lord. Sensing their joy, I was remainded of the Bible verse: "O clap your hands, all ye people; shout unto God with the voice of triumph" (Ps. 47:1). What I had come upon was an adoration service, the prelude in any African evangelical church. Praising the Lord is natural to any devotional activity.

Since before the earliest Bible times, people have yearned to feel the presence of God, though usually they associated worship of the Divine with the material. For example, a Samaritan woman said to Jesus, "Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship" (John 4:20). But Jesus, trying to help the woman catch the higher meaning of worship, told her, "The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him" (John 4:23).

For me, not a single day passes without praising the Lord, though not with loud songs and clapping of hands, but "in spirit"—mentally, and "in truth"—through the understanding and demonstration of the Word of God.

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