What You Celebrate as a Church

Shyju Mathew

"Experience the Word of God, in the power of the Spirit."

May 2, 2016

[Translation: [French | Italian | Spanish]

It’s important for us to celebrate what God does in our lives. I’ve been thinking about how the world celebrates, and how they celebrate things that aren’t important, for example, celebrating the victory of sports teams, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m ALL FOR CELEBRATION!  However, when it comes to CELEBRATION I believe that the church should take the LEAD rather than letting the world out-celebrate us! We have to celebrate the fact that we will live for eternity in heaven with the Lover of our souls.

8 Principles on Why Celebration is Critical:

Here are eight keys that will change the way we see celebration:

1-What you celebrate displays what you value!

What you celebrate shows the world around you what you value, that’s why the enemy has a way of focusing our festivity and joy on the things of the world.  Focusing your celebration on the things from God that are happening in your live will increase their value and your blessings.

2- When you celebrate what is Important to God, it becomes Important to us!

Marks of a maturing believer is that we can celebrate what God celebrates.

We need to celebrate the way God celebrates. How does Heaven celebrate?

God celebrates salvation. Heaven takes time to celebrate when a sinner repents and accepts Jesus as their Lord and personal savior. Heaven rejoices over new souls! As a church, we must rejoice with heaven because it is important to us.

If we don’t learn to celebrate the goodness of the Lord we’ll end up complaining about everything in our lives.

3- Celebrating God’s goodness drowns the lies of the enemy.

The enemy constantly plans problems in such a way as to overwhelm you with bad news so you start feeling discouraged and allow anxiety in your heart. We need to turn the bad news around and say, “I will celebrate the good things that God is doing in my life.”

Drown the lies of the enemy by choosing to celebrate. [tweet this]
 4- Celebrating what you have over what you don’t have is the key to happiness.

Many times instead of celebrating what we have, we allow discontentment in our hearts because we focus too much on what we don’t have.

Change your perspective. Do not allow your happiness to depend on your success or failures.

5- Celebrate because it’s a command. 

In the Old Testament the people of God celebrated 7 major feats with great food and festivities.
It’s a command to celebrate the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

Take a minute today to celebrate what God is doing in your life and city.

Don’t let anybody steal your celebration.

Don’t let anybody steal your joy.

Don’t listen to the lies of the enemy – celebrate the goodness of the Lord.

Celebrating what God does in your life drowns the lies of the enemy. [tweet this]
6- Celebration destroys the works of the enemy. 

Revelation 12:11 (NKJV) reads: “And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.”

Let’s examine these two things given to the children of God in order to overcome the plans of the enemy: 1) the Blood of the Lamb, and 2) the word of their testimony.

The enemy will to try to somehow steal your joy and confidence in God. Be at peace with God, celebrate with Him no matter how intense is the demonic battle against you.

Throughout the Bible you’ll see people weren’t disappointed or embarrassed to share their testimonies. Your testimony of making Jesus Christ your personal Lord and Savior is a divine seed of GOD that gets implanted in the hearts of the unsaved when you share it.

Don’t let the enemy steal your testimony.

7- Don’t let your celebration depend on who is celebrating around you.

You become vulnerable and can be easily hurt when your celebration depends on the behavior and actions of those around you.  Let your celebration depend on your deepest trust in God and your intimate relationship with Him. Celebrate the blessings of God in your life with humility & give God the glory.

Celebrate the goodness of Jesus. Don’t hold back – boast about who He is and what He is doing in your life.

Don’t let other people’s jealously stop you from going into your destiny.

8- Celebrate especially the little, the nothing and the tomorrow.

The how and what of celebration will depend on what’s important to you. Find and celebrate the little things from God in everyday life that make you happy. Celebrate the little and because you were loyal with small things, the Lord will trust you with much greater things.

Celebrating the little is easy, but celebrating the nothing is harder. It’s hard for us to celebrate what doesn’t exist!

When you learn to celebrate what looks like nothing, God will begin to honor you and entrust you with more. Don’t forget you’re celebrating the God that creates everything from nothing.

Celebrate the nothing because Jesus makes everything out of nothing.

Celebrate your tomorrow because Jesus is already there [tweet this].

I believe this blog will help you in your walk with God. Think about how you can practically apply this teaching in your life.

Let this be your prayer today:
When the Lord Jesus returns I won’t be caught complaining, but will be found with a rejoicing heart.