Celebrating Joyfully Another Week

 In our culture we celebrate all kinds of things by having festivals that can last several days or even a week. We have festivals named for flowers, like the Dogwood festival or the Yellow Daisy Festival. Some places have Renaissance Festivals where they do Medieval activities. Of course, there are festivals to celebrate Spring and Fall. People turn out to have a good time together and to celebrate. However, are those things really the most important things in life to celebrate? 

King Hezekiah led the people of Judah back to the Lord, reopened the Temple, and celebrated the Passover meal and the Feast of Unleavened bread for the first time in a long time. This celebration usually lasted one week, during which the people celebrated their deliverance from Egyptian bondage. (II Chronicles 30:23) "The entire assembly then decided to continue the festival another seven days so they celebrated joyfully for another week." I wonder if believers today would ever set aside two weeks of their year to celebrate the Lord joyfully together? I think it would do us all some good if we would.

I am old enough to remember when churches would have revivals for a week at a time. Some churches even had more than one revival a year These meetings were joyful and exciting. People we happy to come together to seek the Lord and celebrate His salvation. There were even times when people we having such a great revival that they extended it to last another week, like the people of Judah did in Hezekiah's time. I pray we would get back to the joy of gathering together for extended times to celebrate the Lord.

Now, it is hard to have a one day revival and have the congregation come back for a Sunday evening service. Why is it so different? I know we are busy, but I don't believe that is the reason. I believe we have lost the awe of being set free from our sins by Jesus's sacrifice for us. I believe we are not focused on Him, but on ourselves. I think these things are why Christians are not very joyful today. They are just acting out of a sense of duty, instead of joy. I pray we will get back to the place where we love assembling as a church to celebrate Jesus more than anything else we do in life. Then, God will be able to really pour out His blessings on us.

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Tomorrow, I intend to read II Chronicles 31-33.