I’ve been thinking these last couple of weeks about celebration. In our culture of shame and blame it can be hard to feel celebratory. But I am coming to realise just how much God loves celebration. It was He who taught the Israelites how to take hold of important events in their lives and those times when they experienced His favour or power. He initiated festivals of remembrance. Altars would be created as a focus of their worship, special banquets would be prepared often with special food or drink to symbolise the significance of all He had done for them. E.g. Passover with its use of bitter herbs and unleavened bread, or Holy Communion with its bread and wine. Festivals would be lavish affairs lasting several days with great banquets, music and dancing. God expected His people to down their working tools and come together in an attitude of thankfulness and praise for His protection, redemption, provision, guidance, victory against their enemies and outpouring of His love. The theme of all the celebration was His love for them, His own chosen people.
And it wasn’t just that He called them to celebrate Him, He also wanted them to know that He celebrated them too as His beloved children. Zephaniah prophesied (Zeph 3:17) ‘The Lord your God is with you, He is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you. He will quiet you with His love. He will rejoice over you with singing. ‘
That word rejoicing is key for us. John said in 1 John 4:19 ‘we love because He first loved us.’ The same can be said about celebration – ‘We celebrate Him because He first celebrated us.’
Knowing He loves and rejoices over us, even with singing, sets our hearts free to truly want to celebrate and rejoice in Him.
Recently I celebrated my 60th birthday. It was a simple affair because I was still recovering from my hip operation, so we suggested a bring and share lunch at our house. But it was an amazingly beautiful time and I really felt celebrated over by the cards, gifts and loving presence of so many dear people. Having not grown up with any sense of being nurtured and affirmed, I found it staggering that so many wanted to celebrate me. But this is God’s heart for all of us. Whatever our experiences in life and the hurtful messages those experiences leave in our hearts, God says to you and me, ‘you are my beloved, my chosen one. I delight in you, you bring me so much joy. You are my very great reward and I prize you and gave everything that you would belong to me forever. You are the apple of my eye and I love to gaze at you as you are always at the forefront of my attention. My love for you will never fail or give up on you. My forgiveness reaches as far as the East is from the West and all I ask you to do is believe how much I love you. I love to spend time with you and I want to tell you things that will fill you with wonder and joy. I wait for you to wake up and I watch over you through the night. There are so many ways I want to lavish my love on you. I see your every smile, I hear your every word. I see the things you do for me that are unknown to anyone else but known to me. Come and bask in my love. All you are and all you do is written in my book, and I rejoice as one rejoices in great riches. You are all beautiful to me and I call you to bask in me and know that my love will quiet your every fear and regret. Let those things melt away for have I not already carried them on the cross for you? Let your life become full of celebration, for letting yourself be joyful in the smallest things enables you to open up like a bud opening its petals to the sun.I love you, my precious child, my beloved’.
That beautiful prophetic word of love came as I was writing this devotional. I won’t add anything more. I simply pray it will sink deep into your heart and you’ll know the joy of God’s love for you and that He is celebrating over you. May that knowing release you into a lifestyle of celebration.
