New Year

Another year has come and gone...

When it comes to new year parties, I often think, why are we celebrating another year of our lives passing? Getting older, the grave approaching - yes I can be a bit morbid at times. But for us as Christians it's all good, because we are a people who can look at the past and thank God or all he has done and we can look to the future and thank Him for future grace and all He will do in our lives. We can be like Paul and be happy with serving God here on earth or worshipping Him in heaven ...the future is bright.
These moments / festivals are great to cause us to consider our lives and to "number our days" (Psalm 90 v 12), so that we can put them in perspective and live our lives in reverent fear of Him, the one we serve. It's a time to put our priorities right if they've been wrong. Put Jesus first ...make Him "number 1" and celebrate in His mercies each day and each year, every moment.

On Friday night I had the opportunity of doing just that and had the priviledge of leading at a Praise party with Jubilee church - London.
"That was where the party was" and "everybody in the church was dancing".
There were about 800 or so of us reveling in God's goodness and grace. He gives us every reason to rejoice. We don't actually need new year to arrive to have wild celebrations, but there are occasions when we have expectations to let our hair down and be unashamedly crazy for the King!

I would love all our meetings to be wild celebrations in God, but I guess in reality they won't be, but maybe in our church calendars we should factor in regular moments when our church meetings are real celebrations, where we expect to let our hair down more than usual. In the old testament we see numerous festivals where God's people would gather and have days of wild partying.
Talking to Tope Koleoso, he spoke about them having "High Sundays" . I like that ..High Sundays of high praise.

Perhaps we should aim/plan to have these more regularly in our church calendar. If
I had my way, at least once a month, but each church will know what they can handle!