THE POWER OF PRAISE by Lynn Downham

I was born on a dark, starry night three days after Christmas and my first cries were in a loud and brightly lit hospital nursery while my mother hovered between life and death with an amniotic fluid embolism. The medical college doctors saved her on the country’s first dialysis machine, and three weeks later I met my mom. During this near-death time, she experienced the overwhelming love of Christ, which probably solidified her Christian faith.

My first memories of praise were singing every Sunday in the Presbyterian congregation of saints to favorites like “I Love To Tell The Story” and “Christ The Lord Has Risen Today,” but my personal favorites were the Christmas carols. All of them. Somehow, they got into my heart and they have never left. I await Christmastime each year with longing, thinking excitedly about getting to hear and sing the Christmas carols. Although I’ve been in choirs and a chorus, now I just sing them for me and God and our daughter. I thank you, Mom, for surviving and taking us to church and for all the lovely Christmastime memories.

Jump forward to the season after I became saved. My education in praise deepened and became more heartfelt, and my understanding deepened. I began to really love to praise in song owing to Everlasting Word Full Gospel Baptist Church in Florida and the three Full Gospel International Conferences that I was blessed to attend. When you get 30,000 people in one area praising God at the same time, good things are going to happen, and the Holy Spirit is going to show up! During this time, I would also praise at home while Mike was working offshore because we had a two-story log house with a cathedral ceiling and you could turn the music up and sing to God to your heart’s content.

Now, fast forward to today, 2020. Quite a leap, I know. Does anyone remember the secular song, “American Pie” and the lyrics that talked about, “... the day the music died...”? That disturbingly strikes me as where we are right now. Our churches stand empty, hopefully temporarily. The few churches that are holding services are keeping the praise going with a skeleton crew of choir members because of the Coronavirus. We’ve been taught “praise Him in the valley.” Amen, and if we do not praise Him, Jesus’s words tell us “the very rocks will cry out.” I have long been determined no rocks are going to do my praising for me.

Here is my last point; forgive me while I use a well-known and much-loved worldly illustration to offer up a spiritual truth. In the movie, “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas,” what do the Whos in Whoville do? That’s right... they SING. An important point for believers, but even greater because not all people know Christ. When the Whos sing, what happens to the Grinch? It suddenly hits them like a sack of bricks that hey, maybe all this material stuff is not what’s important! So, to us believers, if we sing in our valley, the lost will hear our praise, and the power of the Holy Spirit will turn their hearts toward God.

I will leave you with a picture of praise from my book, The Mouses, for there are more ways to praise than just in song. I praise in paint and you praise in your gifts for they all serve to glorify our Father in heaven, our Lord Jesus Christ, and the wonderful Holy Spirit. Enjoy singing those Christmas carols this Christmas!

“But at midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.” (Acts 16:25 ESV)

Lynn Story Downham is a fourth generation artist who returned to North Carolina in 2014 after twenty-six years on the Florida panhandle. Her seventh family tree commission was for a “family tree for Jesus.” Twenty years later she is a born-again believer with a best-selling print, a beautiful family and a passion for sharing Christ through her art. Find out more on Facebook by looking up “Lynn Story Downham’s Art” or “Lynn Downham Jesus Tree.”