Chioma Jesus - Na God I Dey Praise Lyrics

Video

CHIOMA JESUS - NA GOD I DEY PRAISE(NOBI SAY I DEY CRAZE)

Meaning & Inspiration

My knuckles are knotted now, swollen from the damp of too many winters, and my voice doesn't carry like it did when I was first saved at that tent revival back in '82. I spend a lot of time these days just sitting in the quiet, watching the dust motes dance in the late afternoon sun, waiting for the shadows to lengthen. When I put on this track from Chioma Jesus, it hits me right in the marrow.

She sings, "No be say I dey craze, na God I dey praise."

There is a strange, holy kind of madness that comes when you’ve been on this path long enough. To the world, the way we hold onto hope when the bank account is empty or the doctor has nothing left to say looks like losing one’s mind. They see an old person humming to themselves in a grocery aisle or weeping during a quiet moment in a kitchen, and they think we’ve lost our grip. But Chioma hits on the truth of it: it isn't insanity. It is just the only logical response to a God who has kept His hand on your shoulder through the darkest, coldest nights.

When I was younger, I thought praise was about the feeling in the room—the rush, the noise, the sheer height of the sound. Now? Now I know praise is what keeps you upright when your bones feel like dry sticks. It is the stubborn refusal to let the silence of God define Him.

"Aka na ogwo oria," she cries out—The Hand that heals the sick.

I’ve held that hand in the middle of a hospital room while machines beeped out a rhythm of uncertainty. I’ve known that healing, though sometimes it didn't come the way the young people pray for it. Sometimes, the healing is the grace to endure the breaking. Does it offer comfort when the strength is gone? Yes, but it’s a different kind of comfort. It isn't a soft pillow; it’s an anchor. It’s the realization that even if the world thinks I’ve lost my marbles for keeping my eyes on Him, it doesn't change the fact that He is the only thing that hasn't crumbled.

There is a weight to her words, a raw, unkempt kind of honesty. We spend so much of our lives trying to keep our dignity, trying to look like we have it all together for the sake of the neighbors. But there’s a dignity in the "craze" of praise. It’s David dancing before the Ark until he looked foolish to his own wife. It’s the late-night prayer when you’re too tired to kneel, so you just whisper his name into the dark.

I don’t know if I have the energy to stand up and dance like she does, but my spirit knows the melody. It’s the song of someone who has seen the doors open and close and realizes that the One who holds the keys is the only one worth talking about. It makes me wonder if, in the end, the "craze" is just the shedding of everything that wasn't really Him anyway.