Have you ever noticed how we celebrate so many things in life? My birthday is coming up in September, and I am excited about being able to celebrate this event with friends and family. We celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, birthdays. Celebrations are great, because they are not only fun, but they help us to remember special and important times of life.
This week I came across a blog that talked about how we so often fail to celebrate answered prayer. Here is a quote from that blog (http://www.wackyweavers.blogspot.com): "How often we pray intently for God to reveal/answer us and then when He does, we have almost lost interest in the subject because we have already gone onto another desire to pray for. We don't take time to celebrate in His answers." As I thought about this, I realized it is true.
Not only does this happen in my life, but it happens in the church as well. How often do we lift up prayers to God, but we fail to celebrate the answers; we fail to celebrate with others. And yet, having said this, I am glad that our church did this just last week. We had been praying for a while for someone with cancer, and we found out that the cancer is gone! So we shared it at church last week, and everyone applauded; we celebrated as a church family!
So, the question is, how do we celebrate more? Well, I think that it is important to make a habit of sharing not only your pain and struggles with others, but share the blessings that God is doing in your life. I need to make sure that I am praising God for all that He does, but even more for the fact that He cares about me personally and walks with me. As the psalmist said in Psalm 72:18-19, "Praise be to the LORD God, the God of Israel,
who alone does marvelous deeds.
19 Praise be to his glorious name forever;
may the whole earth be filled with his glory.
Amen and Amen."
