Sunday Mornings | Call To Celebrate

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Don't be seated yet.

All right, you can stand again.

I'm gonna talk to you this morning about the call to celebrate.

The call to celebrate.

I didn't want you to sit down because I really believe this is sort of becoming a little bit of a time-honored tradition with me, is that I love to stand for the word of God, right?

I like to stand in honor of God's word.

If we can stand for the anthem, we can stand for the anthem of God's word.

Right?

Because it rings out through many generations.

Reading from Psalm 100, and I couldn't have asked for a better set of worship songs and praise songs before I shared this with you today.

But uh, this is what Psalm 100 has to say.

And would you read it with me?

And let's take a look at the first, the first or the second slide here.

This is why I said for you to stand.

You get that, the first words here?

Okay.

On your feet now.

Applaud God.

Bring a gift.

Yeah.

Bring a gift of laughter.

You know what a gift of laughter is for people?

Sometimes you just hear them laugh and you just break out, right?

Bring a gift of laughter.

How many of you thought that that's a form of worship to God?

But when you when you laugh in his presence, there's something that brings, you know, it's it's hilarious to heaven.

Is that what we did this morning?

Know this: God is God, and God God.

He made us.

We didn't make him.

We're his people, his well tended sheep.

Next slide.

Enter with the password.

Thank you.

Make yourselves at home, talking praise.

Thank him.

Worship him.

For God is sheer beauty, all generous in love, loyal always and ever.

Kind of reminds me of the song we sang, God will never let us down.

Amen.

Father, thank you for your word.

It's precious to us.

And we have made ourselves at home in your house.

We are at home when we're with you.

And uh one day we're gonna be with you forever.

And we're looking forward to that opportunity.

But in the midst of it all, we want to bring you joy.

When you look at our lives, we want you to see laughter, joy, worship, gratitude, praise.

We want to see you seeing us standing in awe of your mercy and goodness swallowing us, your faithfulness every day.

And so, Lord, help us to uh to measure our days like that so that every day incorporates that heart towards you.

We ask that in Jesus' name.

And fill this house this morning with a spirit of celebration.

I ask that in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

God bless you.

May be seated.

Well, we've got a lot of our young families away.

This is uh spring break, and we had a lot of them active last week.

Five night showing of Beauty and the Beast and families.

What a what a wonderful time it is to be alive.

Last week uh Pastor Brody shared on the danger of living too long in a life of dichotomy where our lives are lived in tension between what he called apparent conflicting concepts.

Like you used the phrase, uh, should the basketball team play defense or offense?

And uh good illustration of what we're talking about here.

It's not either or, it's uh it's a both and.

Is the church going to be known for what it is against or is it gonna be known for what it's for?

Well, in a way, there are absolutes, and you and I both know that.

Absolutely there are absolutes, blacks and whites.

But often when we focus on one or the other, it leads us either into legalism or liberalism.

We need both operating at the same time in the life in our lives.

Do we live by grace or do we live by works?

Uh both.

Do we follow Christ or we follow Paul?

Using Brody's communication last week.

Uh both.

We follow Paul as he follows Christ.

Do we do do we uh um have a uh prejudice for men or women?

Neither.

The Bible says we're all joint heirs together.

We stand before the Lord uh in in equality.

Do we live by the Spirit or do we follow a plan?

Uh it's a both end, right?

So this is what his heart was saying last week was that our our world is filled with these kinds of tensions, and the Christian community has got to find its way through that.

And he warned us against entering into unnecessary and unfruitful argument and debate, quarrels and controversies, discussions that tend to lead to judgmentalism.

And I think we've all been there, we've been part of it, we've been on the receiving end, and at times we've been on the giving end of that.

And eventually it leads to isolation and separation from one another, division.

So there is a spirit in the world, and you and I know that, we recognize that, that constantly works towards dividing.

Dividing a husband and wife, dividing the family, dividing friends, dividing our hearts one for the other, dividing our relationship between ourselves and God.

And it's a well-known tactic.

This is this has been strategically set for uh for for uh centuries.

Jesus said this in in Mark 3, he said, a house, and we could say a person or a family or a nation or a church, even organization, a company, that is divided against itself.

You finish it.

It can't stand.

It's impossible for it to make it when there's that kind of division.

So we must not let the spirit that is in the world of division enter into the house of God.

The state of the culture lacks the capability of living within that tension between the two truths.

What I talked about, truth and tension, or that the the two tracks that the train has to has to uh uh motor on.

Um they have a hard time uh trying to live within that tension, and they force aside either you're for or against.

But in the process, we lose the ability to dialogue.

And God spoke to us through Isaiah when he was communicating with Isaiah, said, Come and let us reason together, let's talk it out.

And I think that that our society has lost its ability to reason, and that's a concern for me.

And I just wanted to affirm the word that Brody brought last week.

It was uh it was a good word, and we need to keep ourselves and guard over ourselves.

So, in the process, the word that came to my heart this week as I pondered about ministry this morning was a word that kind of I just felt like God spoke to me in the middle uh of the early morning.

And it was this I have called my church to celebrate.

I have called my church to celebrate.

We all understand the word celebrate, I think.

The most common vernacular rendering would be let's let's have a party.

It means celebrate means to mark something as very important, to hold up something for public notice so that those on the outside can look in and go and notice what's happening, to keep something at the very forefront and to commemorate and never forget something.

That's what the word um celebrate means.

And I think that the context of that is shown up in our text from Psalm 100, where God says, Listen, I want you to celebrate.

I want but you I want you to party righteous.

Don't party in a carnal way, but party in a righteous way.

And and in that psalm read from the message translation, on your feet now, applaud God, bring a gift of laughter, enter with the password thank you.

That's all it takes for you to get in is just to have a grateful heart.

Make yourselves at home.

God wants his house to be a place where you're at home.

Talk praise.

Talk praise.

Don't talk criticism and judgment, talk praise.

Talk things that edify and build up and strengthen one another.

So the question that came to me is so, do we as his church have stuff to celebrate?

To mark is important, to hold up so that the public or even the world understands and to commemorate and never forget is that call to celebration within the context of who God has called us to be?

And I believe it is.

And so I want to address four areas this morning that I feel that we need to celebrate, and to some degree that comes into um conflict with the world around us, who are absolutely doing the opposite.

But let's let's let's try it together, okay?

The first thing or the first person that we need to celebrate is celebrate God.

Celebrate the Heavenly Father, celebrate Jesus, celebrate the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

David writes, know this, God is God, and God, God, He made us and we didn't make Him.

There's no question that God is passionate and celebrates us.

We sang that song about we were created before the foundations of the world in the heart of God.

And when God created the world, and didn't you love that song?

I really love that song.

Maybe it's just because I get, I operate a little bit by pictures and I envision it.

But when I see God putting it together, it was the heartbeat of God, the throb of God towards humanity and the fact that he was creating a world for us because we were in his heart created in Christ before the foundations of the world.

So King David gives us this impression that God's pretty passionate.

God is not uh stuck in the mud, he's not sitting on a chair in a rocking chair in heaven and just saying, you know, boys will be boys, girls will be girls, and and isolated from humanity and his creation.

God is very passionate.

Uh David writes this: he says, You are my hiding place, Lord.

You protect me from trouble, and you surround me with songs and shouts of deliverance.

That's talking about a pretty passionate God.

Come on.

You know, I love to personalize the scripture.

Don't just read it in third person.

I would read it this way: God, you are my hiding place.

You protect me from trouble, and you surround me.

My life, David, you're surrounded today with shouts on songs of deliverance.

God, you're singing around me.

God, you're shouting deliverance around me.

So in those situations where I feel like I'm I'm trapped and I'm I'm not able to break through, God is surrounding me with deliverance.

I don't have to fear being swamped or taken, being taken over.

God, throughout Scripture, is constantly celebrating our potential and our future.

He's not pushing us back to our past to remember our mistakes and our messes.

He constantly takes a look at us and says, Hey, I know you think you're weak, but you're strong.

I I know you think that you're young, but listen, I can make you like the wise men that are older in a moment of time.

I I know that you think it's impossible, but with me nothing's impossible.

Just come on alongside of me.

And God is always uh celebrating our potential and encouraging us forward, not to give up, to rejoice in our breakthroughs.

And I I don't know if you've noticed this about KCC or not, but we are possibly just a little bit more passionate than most churches.

I I've been in a lot of churches in 45 years, and I enter into some churches, and you just sit there and you're afraid to make a sound.

No one raises their hand, no one claps, no one dances, no one swings.

Come on.

We're a little bit more passionate than that.

And I'm not I'm not saying that comparison the Bible says to compare yourselves is unwise.

That's not the issue that I'm talking about here.

Is that I'm saying that God in our midst is passionate.

He's not He's not a dry, stuck in the muck mud God.

He's emotionally engaged with us.

When we sin, his spirit is grieved.

That's emotion.

When we do what's right, he's blessed, that's emotion.

When someone gives their life to Christ, all heaven breaks out in a party.

The Bible says the angels in heaven rejoice over one sinner that repents.

So, like we're talking about, that's going on all hello.

You ever thought how many people are repenting every moment of the day?

All the way across around the world here?

Heaven is rejoicing constantly because of this.

This is the if you get to heaven and you think it's gonna be stuck in the mud and not passionate and emotional and alive and fervent.

We're not just to love one another, we're to love one another with a fervency.

That's some of that the the world is you know is working at to get us divided, where a teacher can't put his hand or her hand on a child and pray because that's that's entering into their space.

But God is engaged in us and with us in everything we're doing.

God has not only renewed our mind about who He is, He's restoring our emotional health.

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, goodness, meekness, temperance, faithfulness.

This is the heart of God.

When we give our life to him, he comes in and starts healing our emotions.

You may have been an emotional basket case when you gave your life to Christ.

But when you give your life to him, he comes in and not only renews your mind, but renews your emotions.

And those emotions come alive in an environment like his church.

When we get in the presence of a very functional, healthy, passionate God, we become ourselves functional, passionate, healthy in our emotional expressions.

Depression and despair are turned away.

You turn my morning into dancing, you turn my despair, my depression, my heaviness into joy.

That ought to be the expression of his house.

You may, you may not know the person that's sitting next to you this morning.

You may not know the journey that they've been on to come to Christ.

But every one of us have our journeys.

And every one of us had to leave some stuff behind to come to where we are today.

We had to, it's almost like on the swinging trapeze, you cannot just reach out and grab the other one and hold on to the and the other one and be in the middle hanging on for dear life.

You've got to let go of one world or the other.

And when we gave our life to Jesus Christ, we let go of one part of the world, and there's that insecure leap of faith in the middle that just goes, okay, and grab a hold of God.

How many of you know it's not just us grabbing hold of him, but it's him reaching out and grabbing hold of us?

Hallelujah.

And so when we think about celebrating God, we need to understand we're all nobodies who have become somebody's called to tell everybody about somebody real big.

I mean, we've all been down that journey.

And God, with all of our mess, is still passionate in his love.

God did just love the world.

That's not what the Bible.

Read every word of the scripture.

The Bible in John 3.16 said, God what?

He's so, well, you know, focus on that little word, two-letter word, changes the entire passage.

God so loved you.

That there was nothing he wouldn't do to heal and restore, reach you, touch you, heal you, deliver you, forgive you.

Yes, we can applaud God.

There are people in this world that say you go to church every Sunday.

Well, a lot of people don't, but you go to church.

Why do you go to church?

You can have church at home.

I just love it when I connect with God's people and I hear their voices singing worship to God.

I love it when I connect with people and I see who have been on a journey and have been going through one thing after the other after the other in their life and have come through and are a testimony to me that if I hang in there with Jesus, I'll come through too.

I love that.

But we applaud God.

There's nothing in me that's ashamed about who God is, his character, his workmanship.

Because you're not talking about a God who hates you.

You're talking about a God who loves you, not one who rejects you, but one who welcomes you and accepts you.

We unapologetically celebrate the one person who is worthy of our praise in the midst of a generation that curses his name without even knowing who he is.

We celebrate the Lord.

We celebrate what he's done.

We celebrate who he is.

And we open our heart and we're thankful and we bring him some joy, a smile, a laugh.

We love being in his presence.

In his presence is joy, but in his presence are pleasures forevermore.

That's what it is.

You you get a picture of what it was like for kids to hang out with Jesus.

They swarmed him.

And all all I know about that dynamic is that kids pick up on this pretty quickly when there's a grumpy guy around.

They know who to stay away from.

But they swarm Jesus.

So much so the disciples said, people can't get at him because the kids are there, send the kids away.

He said, No, every one of you got to be like one of these.

Enjoy his presence.

Celebrate who God is in your life.

Don't allow the enemy to push into your mindset so many questions that separate you from who he is.

Celebrate him, lift him up, magnify him in your situation, and God will resolve your circumstance.

I believe that with all my heart.

The second thing that you need to celebrate is his church.

Do we understand how good we really have it?

Do we really understand that?

Because I travel into certain countries of the world where, man, for them to actually fellowship with another Christian is dangerous for them.

For them to be able to connect with a church and be together with a body of believers is dangerous for them.

We have that freedom.

And sometimes I think that freedom, we get so used to it, we feel that we're entitled to it until it's gone.

You say, Pastor, do you you perceive a day that being able to fellowship is God's church and be able to talk about the Bible may be gone.

I've been saying that for 30 years.

We do not know how good we have it right now.

Yes, listen, there are kids with problems in the house.

You may be one of them.

I may be one of them.

No one's perfect.

Okay?

And if you're looking for the perfect church, you better leave now because you're bringing some imperfection with yourself.

That's the reality.

We're people, churches, people, not bricks and mortar or denominational, you know, heading.

It is people, and people are all in process.

We all came here broken and dysfunctional and looking for something.

We're all at various stages of uh of maturity.

There are babes in Christ in this church that sometimes the message like we bring, it just shoots right over their heads because they they they're not used to that.

They want milk.

There are others who have been saved for a long time, and all they want to chew on is meat.

Come on.

There are others that just like, you know what I'm saying?

On a Sunday morning, you have to present a message that is hitting all three levels.

The children, the sons who love to fight the devil, and the fathers who know God.

You're having to address that within the body of Christ and make sure everyone is growing.

But we all came here dysfunctional, but we're his kids.

And if we allow him to adjust us and reshape us and grow us, we will become a spiritual family that no one can do without.

Eternal friends.

We're talking about eternal friends.

We're talking about creating brothers and sisters in arms.

They might have a fight with you, but if somebody else fights with you, they're on your side fighting.

Companions for life.

You know, one of the greatest problems in this city is loneliness.

People are struggling with loneliness all the time, but here there is a family.

God takes the solitary, the Bible says, and puts them in a family.

I'm so grateful for this KCC family.

I celebrate this church family.

The church is the cure and the solution for loneliness.

We celebrated our boys and girls basketball teams last week.

We packed out this ministry center last week with Beauty and the Beast.

We're feeding families on our city streets every week, along with providing medical care for those without coverage in the slums of Katelli, one of the largest slums in the world in Kenya.

We have created an educational curriculum with provincial and global outreach, bringing educational options to many who had none were sacrificially at times bringing offerings to help people who are struggling to get through when they couldn't have made it themselves.

This is the family.

We used our resources to help one another.

And I kind of always look back at the time when I was a young dad and struggling to try and take care of three uh ravenous children.

Who you'd go to the fridge and take a look and say, I thought that was in there.

It's gone.

It's gone.

But then they get they grow up.

And then they maybe get a you know a side job and bring home some money to help with the rent.

Come on, the mortgage.

And then they are off and have their own family and have their own house and their own vehicles.

And when your vehicle breaks down, you can call them up.

Or if your lawnmower breaks down, they take it and you don't see it again.

They walk in the door and their fridge is their fridge, right?

But hey, listen, something has changed.

Their fridge is my fridge.

I know where they live.

So what happens is when the family begins to expand and grow, the resource base continues to expand and grow, and we're able to help each other where we weren't able to do it before when there were just a few of us.

I think this is great.

It's celebrate God's people, celebrate the church, right?

Celebrate the children, the babies, right?

We love that sound.

Our mission as a society is to reach, to raise up and release kingdom-minded citizens who are competent to represent their faith in every sphere of culture.

That's our heart.

So everything that we do, from the ministry to the children to the youth, to the young adults to the age, we want to make sure that everyone is using their faith to have an impact.

Whatever you do, wherever you are, or whoever you are, you matter in this church.

And whatever you can do, it's needed in this church.

And wherever you're going, you're not alone because you're in this church.

Some people have been hurt by church.

There's no perfect church.

But when we turn our hearts to celebrate each other rather than to criticize each other, we become better people.

Do I have an amen out there?

I'm gonna have to set up an amen corner.

You just point, right?

I've thought about it for a long time.

Amen just means so be it.

Like right on, Pastor, right?

I said, Lyd, when we turn our heart to celebrate each other rather than to criticize each other, and like one man said, it takes no size to criticize, right?

Then we become better people.

Better people.

I want to be a better person.

You want to be a better person?

When we work through our issues rather than react to one another, we become bigger people.

We're enlarged inside in our soul, and when we lend a helping hand, we can go further and do more than we could have ever done alone.

We celebrate the spiritual family.

I'm a mother bear when it comes to defending your honor.

Nobody better pick on.

My family.

I'm not saying that I'm gonna pass over the stuff and the junk of people's lives.

Well, deal with it.

That's what a spiritual dad does.

We're gonna talk about the issues that really matter.

But when it comes down to it, I'm yours forever.

And I'll be like the father and the prodigal son, I'll be still looking on and down the road with my heart full of compassion, waiting for a return.

Celebrate your spiritual family.

Don't put them down.

Be thankful for them.

You never know when they're not gonna be around.

I said, you never know when they're not gonna be around.

And the very last thing you said to them was critical, judgmental, a put-down, a hurtful thing, an offendedness.

That's the last thing that you remember saying to that person, and that was the last day you saw them.

Make a decision in your heart that the very breath that you have with every individual that you encounter, you leave the grace of God behind, and the love of God behind, and the joy of God behind, and the encouragement of his spirit.

Preach it, Pastor, right?

Thirdly, because there's a list up to 40, but I just had to pick four.

Celebrate our marriages and families.

Celebrate your children and your grandchildren.

Birthdays and anniversaries are great, but your calling to celebrate your family is not an event, it's an every moment of the day situation.

I was always cognizant as a dad, as a husband, that some father and mother release the care of their daughter to me in marriage.

Yes, uh, it's a heavy-duty thing.

I've done it with my daughter.

Just release her to another man to take care of.

Part of me was holding on, right?

You don't you dare.

I have to trust that you will love her the way I love her.

It's tough.

I had to look her dad in the eye.

And he didn't have to say much to figure out whether I was treating her right.

All he had to do is look at his daughter, and he knew whether or not she was being treated right.

But not only do I have to do with a natural father, I have to do with Heavenly Father, because when I got married to my wife of 45 years, that's a long time, huh?

And I've known her since I was 10, so that's like, wow.

But but when I got married to her, I made a vow, but I didn't make a vow to her, I made a vow to God.

Heavenly Father, who, by the way, will never pass away or die.

He'll remember that vow.

And so, even though everybody, I might outlive everybody else who heard me make that vow, I'm never going to outlive him.

I made the vow to God about how I would treat her.

And how many of you know I'd rather deal with man rather than God?

God's a little bit more tricky.

He can get back at you any way he wants to get back at you.

Come on, men have their limitations, but God has no limitations in getting your attention.

And I remember, you know, her saying to me that I'm God's daughter, and God's a king, and I'm a princess.

Always treat me like a princess.

She had a sense of security about who she was that took me 25 years of my marriage to her before I could come to her and say, hey, listen, God's a king and I'm his son and I'm a prince, so you need to treat me like a prince.

It took me so long to get to that revelation that she had.

But I got my experience on the fly being a being a husband and a dad.

And there are things there I regret, wish I could have done better.

Uh but you're you're you're you're living this thing in process, in transition, moving from one thing to the other.

I soon realized that they were my primary responsibility, their spiritual standing before God, their character, their health, their calling and future.

And I had an important part to play in that.

And one day I knew that I wasn't going to be there, and what what will their memories be of me?

I did a funeral yesterday for Velma Combs, or Velma Combs.

And uh Amber is her granddaughter, and she was taking care of her grandma until she passed away.

And uh it she tells the story of climbing into bed with her grandma and saying, I love you, grandma.

Always just looking for a little bit of a response, right?

From a generation that wasn't that emotional and passionate and very expressive, right?

And grandma looked at her and said, I love me too.

What a character.

Granddaughter has been taking care of her and looking just for a little bit of sugar.

Didn't get it.

I love me too.

I I want my kids, my grandkids, my wife, to know the last thing I said to them is, I love you.

How many of you ever uh seen that that movie Saving Private Ryan?

Okay, nobody wants to put up their hands.

It was a tough, tough war movie.

But probably the greatest scene in that entire movie from my perspective, as a dad, as a father, as a husband, was at the very end of the movie, and maybe you'll remember that, but Private Ryan was uh sought out by Captain Miller and his group to, because all the boys in the family had been killed, and this one young man was still alive, and they were trying to bring him home, so the family at least had one child surviving the war.

And Captain Miller died in the process of getting him back home and saving his life.

And uh at the end of his uh when the captain was dying, he pointed to uh this young man and said, Listen, make me proud.

Basically, make me proud.

And at the end of the film, you see him go to the uh gravesite of Captain Miller and he looks up to his wife and he says, Tell me I'm a good man.

Tell me that he didn't die in vain for me.

Tell me I'm a good man.

Well, I don't know, has any one of you seen that part?

Does it resonate with your heart at all?

That's what I want at the end of my life on my grave.

He was a good guy.

Celebrate your family.

Celebrate your kids.

Listen, they're all gonna grow up, they're all gonna mature, they're all gonna have their stuff that they have to deal with, but listen, it's all part of life.

And I think I've come too late in my life to the realization that that's all part of life.

You can't correct every situation, and even the messes that people make are actually beautiful.

Celebrate your family, celebrate your wife, celebrate your kids, celebrate your grandkids, celebrate your great grandkids, celebrate them.

Thank God for them.

Amen.

This good, okay?

The last thing I want to talk about is celebrate your work.

Work.

Four-letter word, work.

We were all created in life to do something, to accomplish, and leave a legacy.

And that predisposition shows up early in life when you look at children and how they begin to construct their life.

It's abnormal for man to be idle.

Working is essential for your character as well as your health.

And many studies have been conducted on the demotivating power of unemployment, and they've written about the self-destructive cycle that happens and emerges in people who sit idle.

We were created to work.

We're not only his workmanship, but we were created to work.

And there's something very interesting in the Hebrew language that they have a root word that extends itself into two words in Scripture.

One is word, work, and one is worship.

The same root behind both, work and worship.

Meaning this: that work was designed to be an act of worship.

You're not building a house, you're building a temple to the glory of God.

You're not writing a poem, you're writing holy scripture that's going to have something that's going to have an impact as people read it forever.

Do you understand?

Work was an extension of worship.

You were meant to define your work and not have your work define you.

Work was always intended to be an extension of who you are called and designed to be.

That's why many employment manuals, even today, if you go into chapters and pull out an employment manual, you'll see them constantly refer to this area of work as vocation and calling.

You say, well, historically, that's exactly what it was.

It was a vocation.

It was something that you felt called to do.

It was part of your destiny.

We've lost some of that in our generation today.

And but when you wind up working according to your calling and gifting, one man said you never work a day in your life.

Jobs are not big enough for people.

People are too big for jobs.

There's much more inside of you than is in the job.

And most people live somewhere between a grudging acceptance of their job and an active dislike for it.

For many, modern work lacks meaning.

And for those who work to find meaning in work, there's another name for it, it's called workaholism.

Work becomes destructive.

The end instead of a means to the end.

Work should not become a four-letter word unless you turn it around and use it as the call rather than work.

But God created you with specific skill sets.

Don't compare yourselves with other people.

Someone needs who you are and what you have to give.

You say, oh no one, yeah.

You are all created with something that someone else needs.

You and your work are a gift to others.

Don't belittle who you are or what you can do.

Celebrate it.

And what others have to bring to the table too?

Celebrate it.

Recognize what they do.

Value their deposit into the whole.

Encourage their pursuit of growth.

Celebrate your own success, but also celebrate their success.

For those who have not worked for a long period of time, to be given work, something happens to the soul.

Something comes alive again in the soul.

God intended us to work.

And work should be an expression of who you are, an extension of who you are, and not something that you just do.

We're called to celebrate.

Are you getting the message?

God structured feasts and festivals in Israel to ensure celebration and joy brought strength to the work that they were doing, and we've got to have a celebration lifestyle in the body of Christ.

Celebrate God.

Celebrate your marriage and your family.

Celebrate the church.

Celebrate your work.

Did you get the message?

You feel God will use that message to help you this week.

When you're struggling at work, you say, Lord, I lift up my hands right now and I celebrate the work you've given me and the wisdom that you're going to deposit into my mind to be able to take the next step.

Thank you, Father.

Amen.

And then watch what God does.

Celebrate your family.

Celebrate your marriage.

Listen, we can lose it all by lack of celebration.

You believe that?

So David writes in Psalm 100, on your feet, applaud God, bring a gift of laughter, sing yourself into his presence, know him.

God is God.

He made us.

We didn't make him.

Enter with the password, thank you.

Make yourselves at home.

Talk praise, thank him, worship him, for God is sheer beauty, all generous in love, loyal always and forever.

Thank you, Lord.

Amen.

Thank you, Lord.

Thank you, Lord.

Now you you may be here this morning and and uh you don't know Jesus.

You don't know what a joy knowing him can be.

But you know you don't have to leave here that way this morning.

Myself, any of the pastoral team will be available at the end of the service.

We're here to help you.

And you know what?

It's just a matter of saying, Jesus, I acknowledge my need for you.

And I I just want to make a break between what I've been and what I've done and where I'm going.

And I need you to help me get to where I need to go next.

Turn from your life and turn into his life.

God will shift things in a moment of time.

So, Father, help us to be a celebrating company of people that absolutely love you, love your church, love our families, love our work, and uh and are a testimony to the whole world as they look at this being put on display.

I ask, Lord, for this celebratory spirit to be in our midst in the name of Jesus for your glory.

And everyone said, Amen.

Thank you.