Ultimately every Christian is striving to live their life loving God so that one day we can join him in heaven. And the cool thing is, all of heaven is celebrating. So why do we think it's ok to not celebrate God on earth for what he has done? I mean if we're going to spend eternity praising him, why not start now? Sometimes we get too wrapped up in "secondary things." We focus our time and energy on celebrating that promotion or our 18th birthday, but we forget who blessed us with that job or life in the first place. Jeremiah the prophet reminds us that everyday there is something new to praise God for in Lamentations:
My soul is downcast within me.
Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:
Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning (Lamentations 3:20-24)
So I guess what we should take away from this is that we should be able to look at every day and find something new to praise God for. Even if it's only for waking up alive. And in our celebration we should be undignified; we should praise God without caring who's watching, or what we look like. Just give God all the praise and glory we can give Him. So tomorrow I'm going to celebrate God for the blessings I have, no matter how bad or good my day goes. I'll thank him and celebrate him for my family, or for my girlfriend, or for my friends. Or even for the fact that I wake up alive.
I will celebrate before the Lord. I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes (2 Samuel 6:21-22)
=) as the girlfriend, i enjoyed reading this one. thanks for posting these sweetheart, i know its necessary for school but i hope it really helps you learn all that God is trying to teach you.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your blog. You mentioned so many great concepts we must grasp as Christians if we are going to make it to heaven someday. We should be celebrating daily for all God has done in our lives and had blessed us with. Sadly too many Christians are not experiencing fresh and new each day. I know I am a blessed individual-blessed with a family, a place to serve the Lord, and blessed with an eternal hope of seeing Jesus face to face someday around the throne. I am practicing now for what I will be doing in heaven! CELEBRATE! Great thoughts here! Blessings on your ministry, Justin!
ReplyDeleteI like the reminder that we shouldn't care how we appear when we are worshiping and praising. So often we get concerned by others around us, when our focus should be on God only.
ReplyDeleteThis is so true that we need to celebrate God in worship, even when it's not easy to do that because of circumstances in our lives. This past Sunday I quoted a video that had these words in it...
ReplyDelete"Worship is saying 'I trust You' even when our eyes don’t see it. Worship is saying 'Thy will be done' even when our hearts don’t feel it. Worship is saying 'I’ll follow You' even when our minds don’t understand it."
With all the craziness that goes on in our daily lives, or at the very least my life, praising God and celebrating that we've made it through one more day falls to the background a lot. It shouldn't, but it tends to, for me. Seeing as every day could be our last, why wouldn't we want to spend it celebrating rather than moping? Thanks for the reminder Justin :)
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