TLP 385 (COG 9): The Complexity of Celebrating God

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Just what exactly does Celebrating God entail? We want it to be easy for you and your family to use this dynamic resource, and so today we're going to lay out three ways

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Christian families can enjoy celebrating God. Welcome to Truth.

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Love. Parents. Where we use God's Word to become intentional, premeditated parents.

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Here's your host, AM Brewster. In just a few days, the Celebration of God will be going live on iTunes and all over the internet.

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Now, the very best thing that you can do for us is to go to iTunes or Apple Podcast and give us a five -star rating and review.

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And if you just don't use an Apple product, that's cool, then write and review the show anywhere else that you can find it and listen to it.

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We want to get this truth into the hearts of God's people all over the globe so that His universal church can grow in their worship of the

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Savior. The more we resemble Christ, the more we'll turn the world upside down and the more people we'll introduce to Him.

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That, my friends, is a worthy cause. And we also have another worthy cause for you. Many of you have been listening to Truth.

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Love. Parents for quite some time. Well, Evermind Ministries, TLP, and the Celebration of God are all free resources, but they're also all listener -supported resources.

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If all of our audience listen but don't support, eventually we won't be able to continue producing these resources. So, will you please consider how the

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Lord would have you celebrate Him by supporting this ministry? You can click on the five ways to support TLP link in the description of this episode to learn more.

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And now, I give you the Celebration of God. It's been said that the Bible is accessible enough that a child can drink from it without fear of drowning, but that it's also so fathomless that no sea creature alive could reach the bottom.

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God's truth meets the sinner and the saint in their greatest time of need, providing the answers both desire.

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The Lord calls every man and woman and child to come to Him as they are, but He also desires that His people grow and by the power of the

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Holy Spirit be conformed to the image of Christ. So whether you're a new follower of God or a mature believer, the

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Lord accepts your worship. And isn't that worth celebrating? The one true

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God of the universe has existed since eternity past in ultimate perfection. He spoke the cosmos into existence for His soul, honor, and glory.

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He moved heaven and earth to redeem mankind, even though we have nothing to offer

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Him. And He's given us everything we need for life and godliness in His Word.

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He deserves our worship. He deserves our adoration. He deserves our praise.

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I'm your host, A .M. Brousser, and this is the Celebration of God. Welcome back, friends.

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I'm so glad you're here. I'm glad that you either love the Lord or you're at least curious to learn a little bit more about Him. I know this podcast is being consumed by many different people—Christians, non -Christians, people from every continent, people who are single, families, pastors, the old, the young, and everyone in between.

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Listen, I love teaching. I love teaching God's Word. I love teaching people how to keep bees, cook.

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I love training people in the martial arts. I've taught every elementary, middle, and high school course there is.

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I love to teach. And it's my love for teaching coupled with my love for God that inspired me to start

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Evermind Ministries, Truth Love Parent, and the Celebration of God. And one of the resources that's available, about which people often don't think, is my preaching and teaching schedule.

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I love to travel to schools, churches, camps, homeschool groups, and every conceivable gathering of people and teach them from God's Word.

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As a pastor, I'm zealous for the Bible. As a teacher, I'm passionate about information. As a Christian, I love people.

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So if there's any way that I can be a blessing to you and your community, whether that be in person or virtually, I would love to talk to you about it.

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You can go to CelebrationofGod .com to learn more about inviting a speaker to interact with your community. I hope you'll check that out.

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Also, I hope that you'll rate and review this podcast. Wherever you listen, whatever app you use, please take a moment to rate and review the show.

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When people are online looking for how they can know God better or disciple their families or celebrate Thanksgiving in a more meaningful way, we'd love for them to find the

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Celebration of God. And the more people who rate and review, the better chances we have of connecting with searching people all over the world.

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Thank you in advance for what you're going to do. Alright, just another reminder that the CelebrationofGod .com is the place to find our free episode notes and transcripts.

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It's all there to make it easier for you and your family to access, understand and use this material. But Aaron, you say, exactly how much is involved in the

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Celebration of God? You talk about holidays and calendars and even our most average days. How much is this going to require of me?

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Now that's a valuable question and that's what this episode is all about. I mentioned earlier that I love teaching the martial arts.

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I've studied over 10 different martial arts. I have black belts in three of them. And my highest black belt is a fifth degree.

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I've been training in the martial arts since the early 90s and I've been teaching them since I was 15. I really, really enjoy them.

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And in the style I teach, I break the Q level belts, those are the belts underneath black belt, which are the

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Dan level belts. I break the Q level belts into three categories. Four belts make up the beginner ranks, four make up the intermediate ranks and four make up the advanced ranks.

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Well, I've approached the Celebration of God from the same perspective. I want to make it accessible to everyone.

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I don't want there to be any reason or excuse someone may have to not participate. So let me make this patently clear.

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The only way a person absolutely won't participate in even a stitch of the Celebration of God is if they're not

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His child. But every born -again Christian is going to worship and adore and praise and give preeminence to God in one way or another.

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The real question is how much they are going to give Him. Now I know some of you might think

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I'm throwing this out there like a playground challenge. I completely understand. I do look forward to one day unfolding for you how this discipleship program was created.

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But let me spoil it just a bit for you. It has taken over 10 years. That's right. Over the past decade, the

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Lord needed to do some real work in me to get me to the place where I actually started looking at life in a more

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Christ -centric way. And if I know anything about God, He is not going to leave me where I am.

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And I pray that in another 10 years, I'm celebrating God even better than I am today. And that's what this is all about.

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It's about following Christ better today than I did yesterday. It's about baby steps. It's about growth.

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The process whereby we are conformed to the image of Christ is called our sanctification. And doctrinally, we embrace a progressive sanctification.

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That means that we're not going to instantly become sinless the moment we choose to put our trust in God. Nope. Sorry. It is a process.

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And a former pastor of mine used to describe it this way, on this earth, we will never be sinless, but we will sin less and less.

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So I think it's great if you and your family or your church or your disciples ease into this. Remember, we have freedom to worship

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God in the areas He hasn't explicitly prescribed or illustrated. So here are the three levels in the celebration of God.

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Number one, the basic level. We're going to encourage Christians to celebrate, on the personal and corporate levels, twelve of the major holidays.

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But if after hearing the list, you only want to observe five, so be it. Again, there's liberty.

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The basic events and character of God that I and Team Taylor P believe all Christians should love to celebrate are as follows.

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The creation, the creation mandate, the grace and mercy of God, the love of God, Christ's incarnation, the death and resurrection of Christ, the freedom we have in Christ, God's gift of the family,

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God's gift of the scriptures, and God's gift of the church, Christ's return, and family celebrations. You know, the physical and spiritual birthdays and anniversaries.

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Now, we're not going to talk right now about why those twelve in specific or the major and minor holidays are designed to celebrate them, but I've found that most

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Christians already celebrate at least six of those character traits and events. But really, all of these either have or will affect the life of every believer, and I look forward to explaining the significance of the others later on.

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And when you better understand who God is and what He's done, and you're comfortable observing those special days, then we'd encourage you to move to level two, the intermediate level.

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The intermediate introduces even more opportunities for you and your church and your extended family and your friends and your school to celebrate other amazing things about God.

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What about God's gift of family? Yes, we celebrated fathers and mothers, but there are more. What about developing a deeper appreciation of the good gifts

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God has given us like prayer, prayer, work, the stewardship of the earth, the individual beauties of each member of the

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Trinity, the church family, freedom in Christ, and many more? You see, God illustrated for us the content of our celebration when

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He ordained the Old and the New Testament feasts and memorials. He is the subject, and His character and His works are all up for grabs.

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And since God's infinite, we could technically celebrate just one facet of His majesty for the rest of eternity without ever repeating any character trait or miracle.

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Of course, at this moment, the celebration of God does not have a major event scheduled for every day of the year.

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That would be ignoring the rhythm principle we've previously discussed. But there are a lot of amazing things the

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Lord is and has done for His New Testament believers that are worth celebrating. So if the basic celebration of God is two handfuls of celebratory awesomeness, and the intermediate celebration of God introduces even more ways to adore our

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Creator, then what could the advanced level be all about? Number three, the advanced level. As we've already discussed,

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Christians do themselves, their churches, their families, and their communities a massive disservice when we act like God is only to be celebrated on certain days of the year with pomp and circumstance.

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We know now that every choice I make to value God's will over my own is a form of personal celebration.

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But you know what? It's a lot easier to celebrate Christmas than it is to stand up to the sinful temptations in my school or respond correctly to a spouse who's cheated on me.

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So throughout the year, we're going to discuss more mature concepts like how we celebrate God during our morning commute, how we give

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Christ the preeminence on our family movie night, how we shop to the glory of God and eat to the glory of God and pay bills to the glory of God.

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The advanced level is where we're serious about showing God that He's worth it. We're not just going to give

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Him 10 or 20 days out of the calendar. He gets to be king of every day, hour, minute, and second of our lives.

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The advanced level has you and your community truly working toward a nonstop year -long celebration of God.

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Now, of course, none of us are going to do it perfectly. There will be seconds and minutes and hours, whole days and even strings of days when we celebrate our own desires.

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They will come out, but there's a way to celebrate God in those moments too. It's called recognizing His glory, confessing, and repenting.

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Really, the question we have to ask ourselves is, can you really do too much of a good thing? If there's nothing more important, more glorious, more powerful, more life -changing, more redemptive than celebrating

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God in all I do, how could I do too much? And that's the passion everyone here at Truth Loved Parent and the celebration of God want to help instill in you and the people

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God has entrusted you to disciple. Please share this episode on your favorite social media outlets and join us next time as we try to better understand the biblical calendars and time calculations.

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I think you'll enjoy it more than you realize. I'll see you then. If you want to know

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God better, celebrate Him more, and help the ones you love to do the same, subscribe to this podcast and visit

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CelebrationofGod .com to learn more about this dynamic discipleship resource. And remember, the celebration of God is a listener -supported ministry.

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Truth Loved Parents is part of the Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you become an intentional premeditated parent.

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Join us next time as we search God's Word for the truth your family needs today.