Pan-African Praise
On Saturday, I had a feeling that I should go to Action the next day. That church is one of the mega-churches in
On Sunday morning, while heading to the church, I was thinking about the bookstore at the church that I still hadn’t had a chance to check out. I was thinking about finding a book from Juanita Bynum that I had seen around.
Having gone alone, I thought that it was interesting that I happened to be sitting beside a woman that had met in Sakumono. Over the course of the next couple of hours, I enjoyed the service. Then it came – the reason that I had come to Action that morning. At the end of the service they made an announcement that Juanita Bynum would be coming to
It was information that took a little while to sink in. I wasn’t going to set my expectations in stone, but there was a good chance that I was going to see Juanita Bynum, in
On Tuesday, I met up with a friend, Laria, from the church that I attended in Tamale to go for lunch. After eating and heading out of Osu, I remembered that a friend had told me of a bookstore in the area that had a book that her sister had written. I asked Laria if she wanted to look for the store. After asking a few people, we were directed to a Christian book store (which was not the place that we were looking for). While browsing in there, we saw a few materials from Juanita Bynum. The woman running the store decided to show us a few of them and we watched one that had Juanita Bynum’s wedding on it. It really was amazing, and full of lessons that had an impact on me. I then decided to buy a DVD that had an early message of hers called “No More Sheets”.
I watched it that very evening and it spoke so deeply to me, it was incredible. The three revelations were of the way that we be single without being single (which is not being in a relationship, but still not being free from past relationships), that we need to prepare for our future faithfully instead of longing for it, and I realized that (even though I registered a business last year) that I was afraid to pursue my goals.
Though the video was quite a number of years old, in a couple of days I would be seeing her in person.
That Thursday morning, I arrived at what is called The Jericho Hour at 9am. After about two hours, the service was still going on and Juanita Bynum had not arrived. I had come to find out that she was not actually in the country to be preaching, but she had been invited to be honoured with the position of Goodwill Amnbassador to
At that point, about two hours into the service, I had a feeling to go outside and call a friend of mine who still had not arrived. I had been wondering where she was, as I was holding a seat in a building that was completely full from one side to the other. The huge factory sized structure was excited and glowing with praise. I stepped out to make the call, then decided to lean on a railing that faced the road. Just as I did that, I saw an entourage begin to move towards the building. Within two minutes, the entourage passed right in front of where I was standing, and there I saw Juanita Bynum walking into the building. They had been conducting a ground breaking ceremony for the University/College that Action is planning to build. As Juanita walked, there seemed to be a combination of a determined focus and a regal protocol determining the care she took with each step. She walked as the nucleus of a bulging entourage of about 75 people, passing a growing crowd without needing to accommodate a single step to the people surrounding her, and without having her attention drawn to anyone.
As they entered the building, I followed and went to take my seat. They continued, parting the thick crowd with surprising ease. When she arrived on the stage, the already energetic atmosphere became exhilarating.
After an introduction from the churches Archbishop, who was making his first appearance in the building of 2007, she took the microphone and began to sing.
She offered the slow, but strong, chorus, “To God be the glory. To God be the glory. To God be the glory”.
She then began to speak:
Praise the Lord everybody. Praise the Lord everybody.
I am honoured and overwhelmed for all that the Lord has done in my life, for my life and also to my life. When I met the Bishop we automatically had a connection because I believe someone had told him about my prayer. But I wanted to give you the history.
I started praying at 5 in the mornings. The Lord would wake me up and I would just sort of file into the basement to pray. One morning he said to me, ‘I want you to greet me as if you are greeting a date’. And so I would get up in the morning at 5 o’clock and would get completely dressed. And I would go into my basement, and I started praying. And at first it became a choir because I just didn’t know where God was trying to take me, because I was born and raised in the traditional church. (insert 3”53)
I was in the basement one morning and I was praying and I didn’t feel like I was getting the breakthrough that I wanted - and this is going to bless you – and the spirit of the Lord said to me, ‘I want you to pray for the God of Africa’. And I said to the Lord, ‘well, what does that mean?’. And he began to remind me that the first time that the traditional churches in America began to hear about blinded eyes being opened, and the dead being raised, and limbs growing, and deaf ears coming open was from people coming from Africa.
I decided that I did not want the God of America anymore, I wanted the God that opens blinded eyes, the God that causes the lame to walk. I wanted the God that causes limbs to grow back.
I began to pray. I began to seek the Lord. For years I prayed in the basement and I said, ‘God, I gotta have that presence’. I said, ‘whatever it is that those people have’, I said, ‘I’ve got to have the power of God on my life like that’. And let me tell you something: don’t fool yourselves, and don’t let no one from
When I say that you are a mighty people, it’s because I know a people that in a shout the blind can see … when you raise your voice and shout.
Never mess with the person that prays. Never mess with the person that prays. Because the person that prays has the heart of God, the person that prays can stop a demon in it’s tracks. The person that prays can uproot spiritual
No weapon that’s formed against you can prosper.
I prayed and I said ‘God, I want the God of Africa’. When I began to pray that prayer, let me tell you the opposition that I ran into, because my praise changed. I didn’t have a little cute praise anymore. I wasn’t worried about my hairstyle and my makeup, I was shouting when there was no shouting music. I wonder if somebody knows what that means. I began shouting and dancing with no shouting music. I started yelling and nobody’s listening. I started running around the church, and they started saying that woman has lost her mind.
So, they said, ‘she’s crazy’. They said, ‘she’s crazy’. They said, ‘that lady is a lunatic’. And I would listen to the Spirit of God, and whatever he would tell me to do, I would do. I would grab sheets and I would pray with sheets, and I would wear white, and they said that lady was crazy. But, I used to be that lady that sits in the front row like many of you, and I kept praying and when God empowered me with what I call the spirit of
The first time that I came to
I prayed, and when I came here, it changed my life forever, because I knew at that moment that I wasn’t strange. I knew at that moment that I wasn’t crazy. And when I my brothers and my sisters praising God the way I praise God, when I saw them sing the way I sing, when I saw them shout the way I shout…
For the next sixty seconds I want you to shout to God.
I love you
With that, she stepped off the back of the altar as the entourage re-assembled around her and she was headed to “The Castle” for a meeting with President Kufor.
No comments:
Post a Comment