by j.d. stegall

Created on: September 19, 2008   Last Updated: September 20, 2008

Yester year, if you visited a church for the first time, you were liable to walk in on a praise and worship service that resembled a circus, where saints swung by the chandeliers, doing wind sprints up and down the aisles. Reverends tap danced on organs like Sammy Davis Junior, while people in the choir would inadvertently knock one another out by shooting holy hands into the air to God.

Yes, praising the Lord was, and still is serious business and you may want to wear some protective gear, because you could get hurt if you don't know what you're doing.

But why should we sing and praise the Lord? Praising him is to do what human beings were created to do; it's natural. The Lord says in the Good Book, when it comes to little babies and toddlers, out of "their" mouths come perfected praise. They have the most pure, sweetest praise to the Lord's ears. One reason that will be explored why humans praise God is that we can never be fully satisfied if we don't.

The Bald Eagle chick is reared from the egg to a 35- day incubation period. Every three to four days the eaglet puts on one pound. This bird will grow six to seven thousand perfectly placed feathers to help it with its main plight in life. Literally ten to thirteen weeks after the eaglet hatches from the egg, it will almost be as large as its parents and prepared to do what it was created to do: Soar, in all its majestic beauty.

WHAT WE WERE CREATED TO DO

The Good Book talks about letting everything that has breath praise the Lord. If something is alive, it will have a definite propensity to do exactly what it was created to do. When I sang praises to God for the first time in church it felt like what I was built for, every DNA strand coded for exactly that moment. This is why we as humans will never be satisfied until we know this type of praise in our hearts; it's what honors and shows our love for the Lord God of the Bible.

When I shout praises unto God, it releases unrelenting joy in my heart, an act that is so powerful that even the mighty angels marvel, as they learn more about God, from us. Angels praise and glorify him in all of his glory in stunning- paradise and voluptuous light called heaven, but there is no sin, darkness or problems there. It behooves them to study us because we do it down here on the earth in a place of such darkness and evil where we could so easily be sidetracked with our trials and tribulations.

When Christians sing praises to him in this world of shadows, we are practicing for praising

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