God is for party.

Great food, great music, great people, great location…you can find all of those at a worldly party. The only thing that makes the party worldly is the fact it’s not Christ who’s being celebrated.

The world sure knows how to throw a party. The church? You ask the church to throw a party and all the fun is out the window. Why???

The church in “trying” to do the opposite of everything that the world does subject herself to misery. And I don’t mean being locked up for preaching the gospel. I mean self-imposed misery in the hope of proving to others how faithful she is. And that has nothing to do with faith. Faith tells us to rejoice. Faith doesn’t tell us to sit and complain but to rejoice.

No, heaven is not like a funeral home where people are beholding a cadaver in a box and tissues in their hands. Heaven is a place of ever-increasing joy of beholding the resurrected and ever-living savior Jesus Christ. It’s a party that never ends and nobody ever gets tired of dancing and enjoying the meal with their God and their Savior and their Father and their Redeemer.

God is for party. If you are celebrating God, you have no other choice but to party!

Just think back…think about the many feasts that God had prescribed to the people of Israel. Think.

Rejoice in the Lord.

The world knows how to have a party. But what they lack is a good reason to have a party. So their joy is threatened as soon as things go downward.

The church has all the reason to party, but the church denies herself the very right, the very freedom to rejoice before the Lord. And if the church was to party like the world does, and I’m not talking about taking their clothes off or shouting disgraceful words, if the church was to party like she truly has no worries, her joy would never be threatened because her joy is Jesus himself.

Some say, “how can the church ever want something that the world has?” Well, the church was the world before she became the church. Even before the church became the church, God did make his sun rise on her, and his rain pour on her. So even before we had a good reason to celebrate, God had already put onto our heart to celebrate.

You give the world Jesus. You give the world a reason to celebrate non-stop. And by the time the world gets to celebrate Jesus, the world is no longer the world but the church. You can only celebrate Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God.