Celebration as a Posture of Faith: Heralding the Everyday Miracles

You may be seated. I just love singing with my family.

Don't you just love hearing my family sing?

Hallelujah. Psalm 150, verses 1 through 6.

Psalms 150 · chapter mention

The message translation. It's the only paraphrase that I like because Eugene

Peterson was a God-fearing, God-loving, and he actually was a scholar.

He spoke Hebrew and he spoke Greek,

and he really spent years of his life translating this into a paraphrase.

And so I trust it. He says this, Hallelujah!

Praise God in his holy house of worship. Praise him under the open skies.

Praise him for his acts of power.

Praise him for his magnificent greatness.

Praise with a blast on a trumpet. Praise by strumming soft strings.

Praise him with castanets and dance. Praise him with banjo and flute,

or I'd prefer an electric guitar.

Praise him with cymbals and a big bass drum, praise him with fiddles and mandolin,

let every living, breathing creature praise God. Hallelujah.

Another passage I want to read today, and during Paul's second missionary journey,

and he's in Greece, and he's gone through some,

struggles with the Christians, Jews in a particular town, and he's told to get

out, and so he's just kind of ushered out, and he finds himself in Athens waiting

for his friends to come, And while he's there, he comes to a place that is just

filled with shrines and altars,

people that are just obsessed with worshiping of the gods.

And it just kind of begins to stir something in him as he begins to celebrate

the reality of the real God.

And he's talking to the people because it says that these Athens, they just loved reason.

They just sit around and talk all the time about new ideas. And so here's Paul,

someone bringing brand new ideas.

And then they bring him to the Areopagus. And some scholars think that this

is actually the place where people were kind of put on trial.

I don't know that he was technically on trial, but like, let's take you and

let's test your thinking. Let's test your thoughts.

And he stands before the people, it says in Acts 17, verse 22,

Acts 17:22

then Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus.

And he said, people of Athens, I see that in every way you are very religious.

For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship,

I even found an altar with this inscription, to an unknown God,

or in some translations say, to the God that nobody knows.

So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship.

And this is what I'm going to proclaim to you. The God who made the world and

everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands.

And he is not served by humans' hands as if he needed anything.

In other words, we don't serve him because he needs us to. We're not slaves.

Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.

From one man, he made all the nations that they should inhabit the whole earth.

And he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.

God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find

him, though he is not far from any one of us.

For in him we live and move and have our being, as some of your own poets have said.

He's quoting one of their poets and then goes on to quote it. We are his offspring.

We are his offspring. Paul, just a freaking genius when it comes to interacting

with the world he lives in.

And sometimes we don't understand that as we're trying to dig into Paul and

we kind of read our culture into it, read our ideas, even read some of our centuries of ideas.

And we forget that Paul is ever, ever geniusly engaging with the culture in which he lived in.

And here he unpacks the reality. You worship all these gods.

And even the one that you say nobody knows is you're trying to cover all your

bases. Let me tell you what it is you are looking for.

Amen. And that's not really my message, but Paul just gets me excited.

You know, every year, usually this time of year, I do this every year,

I like to preach about celebration.

It's kind of funny because I usually want to end on this really powerful moment.

And then I celebrate, but we end it really somber and soft because I think that's

okay because celebration is not a loud noise. It is a posture.

It is a way of seeing. But every year, this time, I preach about celebration.

And here's why I picked this time.

Because about 34 years ago,

Next month, 3rd February, no, 3rd, sorry,

3rd Thursday, I don't know why I said February, of July 1991,

took an entire day for me to get the courage to ask Amy Divagilli to go out with me.

15 years old, full of love and passion, terrified to ask her,

alone up in my room, which we were not supposed to be.

It wasn't nothing hanky-panky. I was just showing her my sweet pink guitar,

trying to get the courage.

Finally, will you go out with me? She said, that's a stupid question.

Because we already knew we were going out. Of course, my father walked up and

said, what are you doing here?

He was nice because Amy was in the room. Nobody wanted to make Amy cry,

but it's like, get out of the room.

About 34 years ago, about 31 and a half years ago, right there on that very

spot in front of the entire congregation, I got on my knees and I begged and pleaded this Amy D.

Vigili to marry. I didn't really have to do that on her birth date, January 2nd.

And of course, two weeks later, or 10 days later, two weeks later,

left for India for a year.

And then 30 years ago, my God in heaven, we're old enough to say 30 years ago,

31 years ago, 40 years ago,

30 years ago, on this very spot where I stand, I stood with my beloved hand

in hand as we exchanged our vows and began the greatest adventure of my life and the,

greatest something of my wife's life.

Adventures, but adventures are sometimes scary. And so this time of year,

I'd just like to talk about celebration because I think there's something fundamental,

something biblical, something spiritual, something fundamentally human about

understanding the reality and the necessity of celebration.

And as I just said a moment ago, celebration, which is not a noise,

it can be noisy, it can be loud.

It is a way of seeing, a way of being.

And when we see rightly, we celebrate rightly.

And this is a statement I will make throughout this entire message,

what we fail to celebrate, we will eventually forget.

It we celebrate our anniversary every year and sometimes this year most of it was working,

watching baby spend we spent it watching though we loved us and why will what

else would we want to do on our anniversary of 30 years and watch a five-month-old baby.

And i was happy to do it we are going away today for just a couple days,

Bit the bullet, stepped out. We're going to the place of our honeymoon and our

anniversary for so many years.

Just to remember, because what you fail to celebrate, you will eventually forget.

If I don't celebrate the reality of our union, our marriage every year,

really every day, but this is a time to celebrate it, eventually it will become

something that I forget.

I'll forget its importance. I'll forget its significance. I'll forget all that

it meant to me. What we fail to celebrate, we will eventually forget.

And just for a few moments today, I want to talk about not just celebration,

but the reality of the miracle that celebration is for the human experience.

Celebration, this is kind of a break in our Holy Spirit series that we've been doing.

But at the same time, you cannot connect to anything in Christianity and not connect to the Spirit.

Because you see, celebration is more than just having a party.

It is a way of connecting to the

spirit as a way of seeing God and God's faithfulness and God's goodness.

Because you see, when I learn how to connect to the reality of the Holy Spirit

in me, as I just said in our prayer, you know, John says that in the beginning

was a word and we all, we have this beautiful Trinitarian understanding of the Godhead. It's complex.

We'll never truly get it, but there's something very beautiful about this community

and God, one God expressed in three different ways.

And we talked about the Word, which becomes Jesus made flesh,

that they're the beginning, the Word and the Spirit, as they're bringing life

or order to everything that we see.

Creating things like humans and the animals and the world and bringing order

to all of these things and even creating the reality of marriage as you made one man and one woman.

Find their wholeness as image bearers together.

Not that we are whole by, you know, unwhole. We're not Jerry Maguire. You don't complete me.

But there's something about male and female together that images God in a most

perfect and beautiful way.

All of these things done by the hand of God, the wind of the Spirit and the

Word, and that very same Spirit is in me.

It's in you. If you are a believer, if you've put your faith and trust in Jesus

Christ, and that says that that comes as part of the package.

Me, to that me, when I realize that that is what is in me, then everything I

experience in life becomes a moment to see God in a moment to,

in my seeing of God, celebrate how good and faithful he is.

Eugene Peterson, the late, great Eugene Peterson, he said this,

the word Christian means different things to different people.

To one person, it means a stiff, uptight, and flexible way of life,

colorless and unbending.

And I kind of hate that we've allowed, and there's more to this quote,

but we've kind of allowed over the centuries, the gospel, the evangelistic tactics

to be one of, do you know where you're going to go when you die? You're a sinner.

You need to be saved when that's not how the gospel is presented by Jesus or

in the scriptures. It is presented like this.

Regent Peterson goes on to say this, to another, it means a risky,

surprise-filled adventure live tiptoe at the edge of expectation.

If we get our information from biblical material, there's no doubt that the

Christian life is dancing, leaping, daring life.

You see, the invitation of the gospel is not where you're going to go when you die.

You're a sinner. You're evil. It is that there is sickness in your soul that has corrupted you.

And I have new and better life to offer you.

Now, today, I have a reason to give you to truly celebrate. Come on.

Randy Elkhorn said, in seeing God, we see everything clearly for the first time.

You see, for me and my own personal journey over the last two years,

and I've talked about it a lot because I can't talk about it enough,

the reality of intentional spiritual formation and the most important one for me,

there was Sabbath and then there was this act of practicing the presence of

God, the reality of the Spirit in me, of the silent prayer where I take a few

moments every day just to focus on the reality that God is not just with me.

He's in me and he's looking at me as I look at him and nothing but love.

There's something that is powerful. And then when I realize that that very thing,

that person, that presence that I'm experiencing that moment is the same person

that as I look out the windows, so light be and created and painted the landscape.

Come on, There's something that

makes me just want to celebrate when I realize the goodness of my God.

Seeing God, we see everything clearly for the first time.

In Eugene Peterson's version of this passage in Acts that we read, he says in 17,

verses 24 through 28, The God who made the world and everything in it,

this master of sky and land, doesn't live in custom-made shrines or need the

human race to run errands for him, as if he couldn't take care of himself.

He makes the creatures. The creatures don't make him.

Starting from scratch, he made the entire human race and made the earth hospitable

with plenty of time and space for living.

So we could seek after God and not just grope around in the dark, but actually find him.

He doesn't play hide and seek with us. He's not remote. He's near.

We live and move in him and can't get away from him. As one of your poets said,

well, we are the God created.

You see, celebration for me is more than just, let's just have a party.

It is connecting to the reality that God in his goodness has chosen to call

me his son, the creator of the universe, the one who painted the sky with the stars,

who put breath in my lungs, who's given me the miracle of life. Come on.

And that every day is a reason to celebrate life itself.

And I'm grateful for celebrating moments as this new life that was created when

my wife and I were joined.

But every day life itself is a miracle, but we miss it.

All of us, when we're looking for something more, better, when we allow ourselves

to watch Instagram reels, the gram who tells us that this is what life is supposed to look like.

We miss the beauty and the miracle right in front of us.

Mary Jean Iron was not a believer, was a believer at one time and actually lost

her faith, but has a really beautiful book.

And she says this normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are,

but we call mundane. God calls miraculous.

The miracles are already here. We're waiting for a miracle. And there are big

miracles that I'm waiting for and believe they're possible.

But the miracles exist every time I get out of bed.

And then the miracle we're looking for, we miss the miracle.

We're living. And that's why celebration is so important.

Learning a rhythm of gratitude and celebrating. You are a miracle.

You know, I don't mean to get graphic, but 300 million little swimmers.

Entered your mama's body. 300 million, give or take. I'm sure nobody's actually

counting them one at a time.

I don't know how they come up with their numbers, but 300 million,

but there's one you. That, my friends, is a miracle.

I hate myself. I hate how God made me. My friend, you're a freaking miracle.

I've listened to a lot of things recently on the abortion argument and how there's this agenda.

There really is, and we think that people don't actually talk this way,

but the medical system, when they, they want you to take certain genetic tests

so that you can see potential genetic abnormalities in your child.

And they want you to do it early. You want to know why? Because if you find

something that may be a little abnormal in the miracle, well,

let's just, let's just end it.

When there's something miraculous and beautiful and worth celebrating about

every single life that breathes on the earth.

Your body works. Your heart beats. You breathe in and out.

I never appreciated the miracle of breath as much as I did when we got the pleasure

of sitting around my father-in-law as he took his last breath,

something that is really traumatic and scary.

But when you realize the beauty of the breath that is given by God and then

given back to God, there's something we're celebrating every time I take a breath.

I love Psalm 139. It's one of my favorites. The writer unpacks the reality of

the miracle of my very being, body and soul. I am marvelously made.

The sun rises, the moon reflects, the earth spins.

I don't have all the science. I have it written down, but I don't feel like getting techie.

It's a freaking miracle.

The same moon that is in the sky tonight that

rises will be the same moon all the way across the world

that rises come on when night comes there i can remember connecting to this

reality of the stars when i was in india when i was 18 years old and there was

a particular season i talked about it a few weeks ago where i felt abandoned

i thought everybody had forgotten me but it's just because it changed the phone

number and i was up on my there was a roof,

When I was a teenager Me and Steven Menta, who's here today Was the best man

at my wedding And we spent a lot of time outside at night Looking at the stars Smoking cigarettes.

It was just our thing. We loved Jesus. It was just our thing.

And we would sit on this beam and we'd look at the stars and we'd look at,

always it was just love that we could see the Big Dipper.

And then I would do it also with my wife when we were boyfriend and girlfriend.

And I can remember this moment of desperation.

I was sitting on this roof laying and I was crying and I'm looking at the skies

and I couldn't find the constellations.

I couldn't find the Big Dipper. And I was just heartbroken. I was walking around feeling alone.

And even the sky is different. and God has abandoned me.

And finally, I just sat there and I put my head back in desperation.

And as I looked upside down, there it was.

I'm a different part of the world, but it was the same sky.

And it just, in that moment, I remember having this tangible experience.

I put on With or Without You from YouTube on my headphones, my favorite song

to this day. And I just basked in the reality that God was the same.

And the same God that was with me, those moments as growing up that I so cherish

was there with me on that roof all by myself.

And I had this very tangible experience in the presence of God. It's a miracle.

Things like friendship is a miracle. Well, how is that a miracle?

It's a miracle that we as human beings, the only created beings in the world

that can connect to somebody else in a deep and fundamental way.

I'm so grateful for the friends in my life.

There are some people that I bear with them and I try to be a good friend to

them. And then there are some people that just being with them refreshes my

soul. And I leave for days on the experience.

That is a miracle that we can make those kinds of connections.

Marriage itself in a world that is just kind of devalued it.

Music.

And it's just something that maybe you can do, you shouldn't do.

But the reality that two people, a male and a female, can connect to one another

in such a fundamental way and wrap their lives together in a union that is for

the rest of their lives is a miracle.

All of creation, shared languages. It's a miracle to have a shared language.

When I was in India, I recognized how miraculous it is to speak the same language

as somebody else because I spoke none of their language.

But the fact that they do, that God

has given us the ability as human beings to speak

and to communicate laughter tears all

of these things all of creation is a drumbeat of

celebration but do we hear it genesis chapter 1 and the creation narrative and

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

it ends and after each day god would look over and say it was good and finally

at the end he looked over all that he had made it was so good so very good.

But celebrate the goodness of God. Celebration, taking the time,

connects me to a way of seeing that I don't have living in my own little world of discontent.

Celebration is also a spiritual practice. You see, God wrote Sabbath into the

rhythm of creation, resting.

But when it came time to begin the process of redemption, he didn't just write,

Sabbath continued connecting to that redemptive story, But at the same time,

he also wrote celebration into the rhythmic living of his people.

Leviticus 23 lists at least seven feasts in order of their season's observances.

It wasn't just, we think of these feasts, we read them, and we read like the

New Testament where Paul says you don't have to observe the feasts,

and we think the feasts were law. They were, no, they were parties.

God wrote into their living experience times to stop and celebrate.

Get together. Stop working. And through your celebration, remember the different

things and moments of your life where God interacted and did miraculous things.

He wrote it into our very experience.

Jesus and his ministry got mocked for how much he celebrated.

He was either at a meal, going to a meal, or leaving a meal through most of the gospels.

He told parables where the kingdom looked like a party.

Isaiah and Revelations point us to a future of celebration.

You know, it's common to view Christianity and view the law,

as I just said, and even our new covenant relationship with God as doing hard

things for good reasons. It's like eating broccoli.

Christianity is just one long broccoli experience. So I love broccoli now because

I've eaten it enough. But that's not the image that is given to us of either

the Torah or the kingdom that Jesus brought.

I'm not saying that there's never hard, difficult things we have to do.

That is true in all understandings of life.

But the reality of the kingdom is how to live the good life.

And it is a life of celebration, a life worthy of celebration.

Wherever we go, newsboys, maybe I shouldn't mention that name right now.

There's a lot going on in that band.

A particular band back in the day sang the song, Wherever I Go.

That's where the party's at, talking about the Christian experience.

But here's a problem. We are humanly, fundamentally born, created with this

innate ability or this innate desire and need to recognize and to celebrate.

But most of the time, and apart particularly from the kingdom reality, we celebrate badly.

Ronald Rollheiser, one of my favorite writers, he was actually a Catholic priest

at one point and beautiful writer in the formation space.

And he says, mostly we celebrate badly because our idea of celebration is to overdo things.

We try to celebrate by taking ordinary things to excess, taking things that

maybe aren't even bad, but taking them, abusing them and taking them to a place

of excess. That's how you celebrate.

You know, we're reading this. My wife reads these articles about on Facebook.

I don't know what it is. It's some page that it gives you the news articles

from a hundred years ago from Binghamton's newspaper.

And like the big bad news was two young boys, refrigerator thieves,

who had chosen to live a life wild and woolly and were stealing from refrigerators.

And it was like frowned upon.

You see, we come from a culture, a moralist, a culture that is kind of born

out of Christian moral ethic that frowned upon excess and taking things to excess.

But we live in a culture today that doesn't only not frown upon it, but it is celebrated.

Celebrated.

Celebration for many of us means overeating, over-drinking, loud socializing,

drunken singing, and staying at parties into the wee hours of the morning,

all in the hope that somehow in all that excess we will achieve celebration, whatever that means.

But for all of our frenzied effort, there is precious little genuine enjoyment

and a lot of regret a lot of the time.

But you see, for us as believers, as those who carry the presence of God,

the new temples of the Holy Spirit.

Celebration for us is something so much more beautiful. For us,

it is literally worship in motion.

I love what we read in Psalms 150. Praise him.

Celebrate for his acts of power. Praise him for his surpassing greatness.

You see, celebrating, celebration. What is it? Is it just getting loud.

No, it is taking the time intentionally to remember what God has done,

to anticipate what he can and will do, and to worship it with our whole being.

You see, celebrating, and the definition in Webster, to celebrate means to laud,

to glorify, to commend, to solemnize.

You see, for us as believers, celebration is something so much more than just

how do we find pleasure and excess.

It is how do we see faithfulness in everything?

How do we see God's sovereign goodness in all the aspects of our human experience?

Ronald Rollheiser, he said, the very purpose of celebrating is to heighten and

intensify the meaning of something.

I'll say this again. What we don't celebrate, we will eventually forget.

When we don't celebrate every aspect of the God-given beauty of our human experience,

the faithfulness of God. I don't mean celebrating everything to be human.

Like, I just took a crap. Sorry.

You hear what I'm saying? The elements of our human experience that are expression,

signposts of God, and when we fail to celebrate them, we will eventually forget.

We'll begin to hate, despise the very things that God has given us and blessed us with.

Just like the children of Israel as they wandered through the wilderness,

they failed to celebrate.

Every day they should have gotten up and just celebrated we were no longer slaves,

but instead they just kept waiting for something better.

They eventually hated the freedom that God had given them.

You will hate the spouse that God gave you if you, over time,

fail to celebrate and remember the beauty that it is. That's what an anniversary is all about.

It shouldn't just be once a year, but if you don't at least do it once a year,

over time, and if you don't do it day by day, remind yourself,

celebrate. I celebrate you, my love.

Let's go out on the date to remember, to laud, to add value to the reality that we are one.

You will forget it. You'll forget what it was, forget why you did it,

and eventually you will despise it.

Celebration, you see, also connects us to each other.

And Hebrews, the writer of Hebrews in chapter 10, is encouraging the people

who are under great persecution.

Some Jews, Jewish converts are considering leaving the Christian faith,

leaving the way, because it's just gotten too hard.

And he's encouraging them to stick with it. And at one point,

he says, let us hold unswervingly to the hope that we profess.

For he who promised is faithful.

The one who promised how this is all going to end is faithful.

So let's hold on to that hope and let us consider how we may spur one another

on toward love and good deeds,

not giving up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing,

but encouraging one another and all the more as we see the day approaching,

as we see darkness approaching.

Let us not forget the hope that we have. And the way we do that is find creative

ways to come together and to spur each other up, to celebrate.

Come on, And I know it's hard, but God has been so faithful.

I know there's some things that we don't know how they're going to end up.

And some of them could end up badly, but God has never left us yet.

And he's promised us a hope and a future that is bigger than any of the trials

we could possibly go through.

And as we were saying last week, he's always been on time.

So let's remember together.

You see, Sunday morning gatherings, it isn't an obligation. It's a wedding party that we get to come to.

See, Monday is the marriage, and it should be celebrated too.

But you can't celebrate alone. I mean, you can celebrate alone,

but it's just really pathetic and sad.

Sometimes I do. I'm alone in my car. I'm just so happy.

Crank up some music. Every time I put on Sky Full of Stars by Coldplay, I just want to jump.

And sometimes I do, but truly to celebrate the way God has designed me to celebrate,

to remember, to laud, to appreciate, to add value to a moment in the memory,

rewriting the memory again in my life.

That's what celebrating does when we come together, my wife and I,

every year on our anniversary.

And this is the first time since we sold our cottage or my in-law sold our cottage.

I hate him for that, but it's okay. I love him still.

This is the first time going back to the place where we began to fall in love,

the place where we had our honeymoon, the place, because it's almost like celebrating

has a way of rewriting that memory again on our minds.

And we were sitting last night, even talking about some of the beautiful memories

that we've had in this place where love grew and love became something beautiful

as our children and as they came.

And there's something about celebrating that doesn't just connect us to the

other people, but it rewrites as we connect with one another,

remembering what God has done.

It rewrites them again in our memory.

And so that's why we come together every Sunday. And every time we meet as a

church in some way, it's to celebrate together.

Because you can celebrate alone, but a true celebration requires gathering together.

Nothing will get you celebrating like being around someone else that is celebrating.

Need the obnoxious dancer to spur us on. And this church is Dennis Volz.

He's not obnoxious. He's beautiful. At wedding parties, like at our beautiful

Pine Grove, is Uncle Brian doing his weird Uncle Brian dance.

He's beautiful. It just makes you want to dance and move.

Celebration is also how we witness or how we communicate to the world,

show the world, reveal to the world the God that we are celebrating.

In this passage in Acts, Paul saw the shrine to the God nobody knows,

took the opportunity to, in his way of communicating,

celebrate the truth of who this God they were groping for and looking for really was.

You see, seeing God, as we learn to live in a rhythm of celebrating all that

he's given us, gives us the ability and the responsibility to make him seen.

The more we see God, the more I feel a drive and a passion to make him seen.

And we elevate Jesus. You see, celebrating elevates a moment.

And we elevate Jesus when we celebrate his goodness in full view.

But we don't want to, you don't want

to offend people. So we just keep our Christianity quiet when they ask us.

No, my friend, I'm not saying, you know, do the old Roman road crap,

like, you're going to, or some of these, whatever, some of these ministries

that they want to teach, bring you through the 10 commandments and want to show you how you're a sinner.

No, show them how good your life is because of the faithfulness of your God.

That will elevate. I'm not saying there's no time for a love heaven conversation

when people who truly want to intellectually understand why you are a Christian,

but they're going to want to know why you're a Christian after they have seen

a life that celebrates the reality of God's faithfulness.

Elevate Jesus, when we celebrate his goodness and full of you.

When somebody says, well, I ain't so happy today. Oh my gosh,

because I'm so blessed and God is so faithful.

How come you never complain about the boss? Because God has allowed me to work at this place.

He's faithfully met every need. He's provided a way for me to provide for my

family. And I'm so grateful. I know that seems kind of cheesy.

Maybe it doesn't have to be the way you do it. But when we celebrate in the

open view of all the world to see, we elevate Jesus.

Celebration makes what we have desirable to those who don't have it.

I don't want to live a gospel life. I don't want to live an evangelistic life,

that is scaring people into Christianity.

I'm not saying there's no heavy realities of judgment for all of us.

I heard one preacher always say that, why do we save or save?

We don't know until we get there and he says, come on in.

I'm just kidding. I think we have a confidence in Jesus.

I feel pretty confident. But I don't want to live a Christianity that the only

engagement I have with the world is when I'm scaring them into coming to my church.

You see, when I'm celebrating and living life to the full, as Jesus showed us,

even in the Sermon on the Mount, of life of human flourishing when we're celebrating

the human experience, celebrating our spouse to our friends.

I hate when I hear a Christian complain about their spouse.

I'm not saying there's never time to go to a friend and ask for help and work through some things.

I'm not saying you're going to hell if you've ever complained,

but I hate it when I hear a spouse just openly just bash his wife or a wife or husband.

Why would anybody want to come to a church where you are in when they already hate their wife right.

Wife already hates them. Celebration makes what we have desirable to those who don't have it.

And also, learning to live in a rhythm of recognizing God's faithfulness,

learning to live in a rhythm of celebration, it gives us a new way of seeing God everywhere.

And that even translates into our relationship with the people around us in

the world, our work people.

We begin to see them the way God sees them, as miracles waiting for the revelation.

How do we celebrate? Psalms 150 gives us some cool ideas.

Praise him with a blast on the trumpet. I can do a kazoo really,

really good. No, I'm serious. I'm really awesome on a kazoo.

Praise by strumming soft strings. Praise him with castanets and dance.

Praise him with banjo and flute.

Praise him with cymbals and a big bass drum.

Praise him with fiddles and mandolin, instruments, movement,

full-bodied praise. This is not a how-to list.

Sometimes we read the Psalms and we're trying to create a culture of praise

and worship or something, and this is, well, the Psalm says to do this.

This is why we have to do this.

No, this is not a how-to list. It is a language of celebration.

It is the vernacular of a culture's way of celebrating something worth celebrating.

Instruments, movement, dancing is so cool. I wish more of you would just start

dancing in church. Well, it's so dumb.

I'm not going to make you. I'm not going to say you have to.

Sometimes when you do it all the time, it becomes just the thing that you do.

And I want you to do it because it's just something about getting your body

involved that just brings more to the celebration.

On a how-to list. This is a way of communicating. Give your whole self to the

moment that you're celebrating in celebration. Hallelujah.

Which one of his meanings is literally to shine, reveal something,

reveal God in your celebration.

How do we celebrate? We come to, as far as Christians in our Sunday gathering,

we come ready to recognize how faithful God has been and ready to show somebody

else, remind somebody else to bring our whole self, not just as a spectator,

but as one who is engaged in the celebration.

Nobody wants to be the person, the wallflower at a party.

I'm not here to judge you if you're a wallflower, if you're shy,

if you're an introvert. You hear what I'm saying?

That wallflower is always waiting for somebody to help them step out of their

introvertedness and truly bring their whole self, truly bring themselves to

the joy of the celebration.

How do we celebrate? Come every Sunday, ready to show somebody else,

remind somebody else how good God has been, how faithful he is, how he's always on time.

Make it on time. He's always on time. I think you've gotten better.

I think we've kind of brought it up a few times recently. I feel like we're doing really well.

It's summer, so a lot of people are gone. That's okay. You're here and you came.

Bring yourself to the moment.

Also continue to recognize just as the celebration of your marriage shouldn't

end after the marriage party.

It shouldn't only be for anniversaries. It should be experienced every day.

Celebrate every moment of your life, the goodness of God, not in excess,

not just find ways to lose yourself in it, but to find God in celebrating him and his faithfulness.

Celebrate as my family has been, And I've told the stories. We've always had

so many different ways as we were poor.

Kids didn't know we were poor. We had no money. So we'd eat pancakes. We'd eat oatmeal.

They hated oatmeal, but they liked pancakes. But they had to eat the oatmeal

to get to the pancake, whatever.

But we would take the time to even those moments. We're together.

We're so blessed with these kids. We were not the kind of parents.

Some parents are like, I'm not judging you.

But we just weren't those kind of parents that are just like, I can't wait.

I hate this season. I hate this man. I can't wait till they get out of this

shit. We loved every season.

Now, there were some that were harder than others, but we loved being with our

kids. And to this day, my kids are my best friends.

You can't be friends with your kids. I'm sorry. I broke the rule.

They're my best friends. And we would just find ways to celebrate.

When we were sick of the pancakes, we'd just start throwing them at each other

in a party. We'd have Friday night dance parties.

Survivors. What's the song? Eye of the tiger.

We'd have competitions. Who can hold your hand up the longest?

One time Aiden peed his pants because he wouldn't lose.

And he just kind of peed his pants a lot when he was young. It's a thing.

We were just finding ways to bring meaning to a simple moment of eating dinner together.

And we've continued that. My wife and I are dedicated to creating a place,

even on our property, to celebrate the people that we love.

Because sometimes it's a loud party. Sometimes is dancing to music in our pine grove.

Sometimes it's swimming in the creek. Sometimes it's quiet moments on the porch

with a cup of coffee, making this moment matter, showing each person that sits

there, I'm so glad that you're there.

I celebrate you and your friendship and the faithfulness that God has shown me through you.

Sometimes it's quiet, but it's intentional.

Shehera Artokian And the Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, says in an introduction to the

book at one point, he says, It's no bad thing celebrating a simple life.

Rollheiser again. He said, what does it mean to celebrate something? What does it do?

It heightens it, to share it, to savor it, to enlarge it.

There's something about my relationship to my wife that is heightened and enlarged

and savored when we share in a moment of celebration and remembering that this thing that we have,

though it has had ups and downs, it's been hard, it's been terrifying.

It's been exciting. It's been amazing. It's been fun. It's been sad.

It has been beautiful, and it has been a testimony and a signpost of God's faithfulness.

And when we take the time to celebrate it so we don't forget it, it heightens it.

It brings it to a moment that has been enlarged and expanded. It's reality.

It's just like, again, actually, it's better. I would argue, I love young puppy love.

It's exciting. It's fun. You're here today. You're young. You can't wait to

fall in love. That's great, but it can't hold a candle.

The 34 years of tested and tried and mature love.

And it's the same with our friendships and our relationship to God.

When we take the moment, instead of complaining about what you don't have or

complaining about a miracle that you wish God had done, taking the moment to

celebrate all that he has done.

Maybe it's quiet, a quiet moment of just the God.

I've forgotten how amazing what I have is.

10 years from now, I'm going to wish I was back here in this moment.

And I'm not even recognizing how beautiful that it is.

As parents don't do that.

As spouses don't do that. As friends don't do that. As followers of Jesus don't do that.

Because what you fail to celebrate, you will eventually forget then go ahead

and stand up it took way longer than I wanted I.

Going away for a couple of days, so I won't think about you at all.

Every aspect of marriage gets better over time.

All of it. Let's leave that there. When we take the time to celebrate,

you see, celebration is how we move with the spirit, how we stay awake to God's goodness.

His presence is how we, it's a new way of seeing God.

And when we take the time to celebrate, and whatever it may look like.

Maybe it's just a meal where you're going to be intentional about making this.

This is a celebratory meal, whether it's an outing, whether it's,

I don't know what it may be, bowling with friends, whether it's just simply Sunday afternoon,

with your family, whether it's coming to church, I don't know,

whatever it may be when we take the time to make it a moment of recognizing and remembering.

When we stop, We honor the life that God has given us.

We take time to celebrate. We take the time, we stop time to honor it.

Celebration, as I've already said, it rewrites memory. It binds us to God and to each other.

My wife and I on our anniversary is very rarely involved a luxury getaway.

It's never involved the luxury getaway.

We're hoping in September we'll get to get something big. It's 30 years.

We're going away for three days.

But we'll rest. We'll laugh. We'll remember together.

Because you see, celebrating is the act of choosing who, why,

where, and how continuously.

I'm celebrating you because this is how I show you that I'm choosing you.

This is who I chose. This is why I chose you. Today is where and when I choose you.

And the moments of celebration in my life are the moments that are etched in the fabric of my memory.

The things that I'm celebrating and the moments of celebration, all of them.

There's things that I've forgotten, a lot of things that I've forgotten in almost

50 years of being on planet Earth.

But the moments of celebration are etched in my memory.

I can remember every single Christmas morning with my kids.

I can remember every anniversary. I can remember every cup of coffee with my

beloved friends sitting on my porch. It's kind of our space. It's our thing.

They're etched in the fabric of my memory. And they point me ever and always

to the goodness and the faithfulness of the creator, and the God who has been so faithful.

So as we close, I'll just give you this charge.

Celebrate. Celebrate to remember.

Celebrate to connect. Celebrate to glorify.

Celebrate because God is worthy. Celebrate because the kingdom is a party.

Celebrate because you're still breathing.

Psalms 150, verse 6, as I close, let everything that has breath praise the Lord.

Psalms 150:6

Praise the Lord. If you're still breathing, there's a reason to celebrate.

Thank you, God, for the breath in my lungs.

And I need you more than I need the breath inside my lungs.

But because I have breath in my lungs, God, I'm so grateful.

I'm so grateful. Lord, today.

Pray for every member represented by this beautiful church family.

That you would reveal yourself to them in new and beautiful and special ways

even as they go through the rest of this week and this day,

as they respond to this message and they are challenged to recognize your faithfulness

and your goodness in the miracles of everyday mundane life.

Lord I pray that you meet them there in a special way.

Reveal yourself to them in a special way, to all of us, Father,

as we choose to celebrate your faithfulness,

as we choose to live in the miracle of celebration,

as we choose to live in the miracle of friendship and marriage and life and

community, as we choose to see

every person that crosses our path as a miracle waiting to be revealed.

And as we do so, Father, be glorified in our breath, through us and in us.

We thank you for it, Lord, today in Jesus' name. Can somebody say amen today?

God bless you.