Celebration has been something that has been on my mind recently, partly because I was teaching on it around a month ago. Truthfully it was a tough talk to prepare because I wasn’t in a celebratory mood. I was inching towards a year of being in some form of lockdown, struggling with the monotony of working from home, watching my son getting frustrated at not being in school – all in all I wasn’t feeling celebratory.

There’s that word – ‘feeling’

I run way too much of my world through my feelings. It seems so natural to do so but the more I read the Bible the more I see God operating outside of feelings.

Take our approach to celebration versus God’s.

God timetabled celebration into the life of His people when they came out of slavery. He told them there would be set times of the year they needed to celebrate and remember wherever they were. Often we don’t equate timetabling and celebration. We have reduced it to a spontaneous moment when we ‘feel’ like we are up for doing it or a future moment if things go well. Here’s the problem with that.

God timetabled these moments so His people remembered they were free.

Reducing celebration to moments to a feeling is a sign that we aren’t free.

It’s only an enslaved mindset that spends its time waiting to feel it or focusing on a fantasy future that it thinks will bring it into a time of celebration.”If I only just won the lottery, if I could only move out of this place, if I could get this car, if only COVID disappeared, then life would be much better.

Whilst some of those things will signal improvements in our lives they will never bring about celebration on their own because it will be the same slave’s heart that wins the money, lives in that new area, drives that car or lives in a COIVD free world.  

True celebration will always be offensive to a heart that is still in slavery

That’s why so often in the church people get offended around celebration, labelling it as naive or childish. True Celebration requires freedom, a freedom in our heart; celebration cannot spread its wings when it is under slavery. 
A person who has celebration at their core. realise the promise of the Father in their life is more valuable than anything else they have been through, are going through or will walk through.

If we are part of the church then we should be out-rejoicing, out celebrating, everything else there is in society! No one should be able to beat the people of God when it comes to celebration! 

I can hear you all asking a good question. But what about pain? What about the loss we experience? Is it not wrong to have celebration in your heart when we are living in a time of such pain and loss?

I get it but here is what I have learnt

Celebration isn’t about avoiding pain or bypassing it, Celebration actually transforms it. 

I want to encourage you to make celebration your default, to dance like there is no one watching, laugh until your belly hurts. Try and find something each day to celebrate and watch it transform your world – it’s am much better approach than waiting until we feel like it!