2025-11-09 Celebrate in Community

Last week we started a series on the / / Discipline of Celebration, which, because it is so closely tied to giving thanks and experiencing joy, we are calling it Celebration, Thanksgiving & Joy!

Each of those play a part in the intentional life of celebration.

/ / You choose to Celebrate.

Although joy can be spontaneous, You can choose to experience Joy.

And you choose to give thanks, which oftentimes sparks the other two.

We know that psychologically we can actually talk ourselves into a better mood. It’s been proven in countless studies. When you make the choice, and sometimes it’s a very difficult choice, but / / when you make the choice to be grateful, even to dwell on happier things, your mood begins to shift.

And that is as much spiritual as it is physiological because this is how your God, the creator of the universe and everything in it, including you, made you to be. He made you to be able to focus on something other than the shadows when you’re in the valley of death, but to lift your eyes to the heavens, and to focus on His rod and His staff, and to allow him to lead you out.

I wish I could take credit for this saying, I heard it somewhere, and I’ve said it many times before, I’ll say it again, / / if you’re going through the valley of the shadow of death, don’t sit down!

You could say it this way, “If you’re going through hell…don’t stop.”

Last week we talked about living a life of intentionally giving thanks.

We’re just 3 weeks away from thanksgiving, and for some people it takes real effort to feel, and even more to show gratitude.

But what did we see last week:

When we make the intentional choice to give thanks, / / when times are good, when times are just kind of normal, and especially when times are bad, / / we can train our brain and our heart to live in gratitude rather than in despair.

It’s easier when things are going well. / / We give thanks when things are good, because that’s easy!

When things are just normal, that’s actually the perfect training ground to give thanks when there’s maybe nothing particular to give thanks for, or nothing that we outwardly see. So, / / We give thanks when things are normal, because it trains us in a lifestyle of gratitude

/ / SO THAT, when things are hard, when things aren’t going our way, we’re so well versed in giving thanks for who God is and not just what he’s done, that we don’t stay in a place of despair, but we turn our focus and our attention to Him!

When we make the intentional choice to give thanks, in reorienting our outlook on life, we more easily step into or step through doors of opportunity.

/ / WIf I’m not looking for God’s presence because I’m down in the dumps, I’m less likely to experience God’s presence.

But when I take Psalm 100:5 to heart, / / I will enter his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise!, I am reminded that He is of course with me, I begin to thank him for being with me, and suddenly, I’m not feeling so alone.

You go, “Is that just mind over matter? Sounds a little new agey”…

And that would be wise to not want to be new age in our thinking. It would also be wise to not try and just mind over matter your way through life.

But listen clearly to what I said…./ / focus on God, experienced God…

You know what one of the biggest relational problems in society is right now?

People not putting their phone down when someone starts talking to them.

Now, this has always been a thing, it is not new.

If you remember All in the Family you can probably picture Archie Bunker not putting down the news paper when Edith comes in to talk to him.

Tim, the tool man, glued to the TV while Jill is trying to get his attention.

You, me, and everyone else in society today, glued to our phones while someone is trying to talk to us.

Humanity is an easily distracted bunch…

But it’s no different with God, except that God isn’t in the flesh standing next to you waiting for you to put your phone down, but hear me clearly, God is very much next to you, and very much would love if you would put your phone down, or turn off the tv, or whatever it is that is distracting you from genuinely focusing on him.

/ / It’s not mind over matter as much as it’s intentionally choosing the better thing.

This is a story 2000 years in the making…

Do you remember the story of Mary and Martha?

And this is getting even deeper, because what we’re talking about is being completely absorbed in a pretty negative thing, but this story isn’t tv or iphones or computers…

It’s in Luke 10:38-42, it says, / / Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”

The / / NIV says, “Mary has chosen what is better…”

The CEV says, “Mary has chosen what is best…”

The NLT says, “There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it…”

We are like Martha. We get so distracted by so many things.

And the key isn’t to mind over matter it. It’s to mind our manners and focus on what matters.

In the case of human relationships, which are actually suffering because of this, the solution is put the phone down when you’re in conversation. Ask Kelley, I’m not always the best at this… but I do hope she notices I’m trying!

Look at what Scripture says here:

First, in the story it says / / Martha was distracted with serving.

But Jesus doesn’t say she’s distracted, he says, “Martha, / / …you are anxious and troubled about many things…”

Listen to this article I read… / / “We tend to think that we are distracted because of the devices in our pocket, Instagram, Facebook, text messages, phone calls, and the thousands of other notifications beckoning for our attention. But according to the research of two Harvard psychologists, the real problem isn’t our chaotic environments, it’s our minds… This is a big insight with two big implications. For one thing, it shows that distraction is primarily a mind game. If we really want to get focused, if we really want to more skillfully manage the distractions of digital life, the path has to include developing a new habit of more effectively managing our most precious resource: our attention.”

Jesus understood this…The apostles understood this… The early church understood this…

Jesus said, / / “There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it…”

Paul writes in Colossians 3:2, / / Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.

Philippians 4:8 is also one of my favorites, / / …whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things…

think there isn’t just a quick little glance, it means to take an inventory, to calculate these good things in your life.

The early church is full of people trying to get rid of the distraction of this world to simply focus on God. If you’ve ever read anything about or from what we call the desert mothers and fathers, they would withdraw from society all together and go into the wilderness of Egypt and Syria. (I don’t recommend)

The scholar Chris Hall says that, / / The desert mothers and fathers would go into the wilderness as a desperate attempt to “kill the things that are killing us.” - that is how seriously they saw the distractions of life around us.

This is an important point, because for Martha, and I want to suggest, for us, one of the big issues is that we’re actually afraid of the silence, afraid of the quiet, afraid of the empty space where we truly connect with God and people.

I was reading a story from someone who had been in New York City and had gone out of the city to a boy scout camp and while they were getting a tour of the camp the groundskeeper told them that for these kids that are coming from the busy life of NYC, with all of it’s fantastic distraction, it takes 48 hours, a full two days on average, for them to relax. He said, “A lot of them are truly tense at first… frightened, I guess. / / If you’ve never experienced silence before, it can come as quite a shock.”

That might seem like a long rabbit trail from where we started, “Enter his gates with thanksgiving…” But I am more and more convinced that these things we’re talking about, Celebration, Thanksgiving, & Joy require tenacity and intentionality that a lot of people need to learn because they just don’t have it. And that’s not your fault, you probably weren’t taught it.

Like a kid having to actually learn how to be in the silence of a forest for the first time.

Like Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet and Martha overwhelmed with the tasks of life.

Like you and I with the world spinning around us.

Will we make the choice to focus our attention away from what distracts us, what pulls on us for our attention, and give that attention to God in thanksgiving?

I also said something last week that I want to be a launching pad for where we want to go this morning.

It was a quote from Dallas Willard in his book The Spirit of the Disciplines. In talking about the discipline of Celebration he says, / / “Holy delight and joy is the great antidote to despair and is a wellspring of genuine gratitude - the kind that starts at your toes and blasts off from our loins and diaphragm through the top of our head, flinging our arms and our eyes and our voice upward toward our good God.”

So, we read that last week, and that’s I think the primary focus for what we want to talk about today as we look at / / Celebration in Community. You can celebrate by yourself, but let’s be honest, you look funny dancing in the parking lot all alone. You were made to celebrate God in community!

And remember what we said last week, / / the Discipline of Celebration is all about seeing the greatness of God in who He is and in his goodness toward us, which includes the good creation we are surrounded by in both nature and people - especially people.

So, Willard says this, before calling celebration the great antidote to despair, / / “Typically this means that we come together with others who know God to eat and drink, to sing and dance, and to relate stories of God’s action for our lives and our people.”

He makes the point that this is precisely why God instituted such elaborate festivals for Israel in the OT.

And although we don’t celebrate those festivals, because they had Jewish purpose, of which we don’t live under, the early church lived in a constant celebratory mode, while also building in days of celebration of our own. The Church has a sort of “/ / Rhythm of Celebration”

/ / The Lord’s supper, or what we sometimes call communion, was at the passover meal and became a regular practice of the church rather than a once a year meal to celebrate passover. Now they were celebrating the body and blood of the risen savior ever single week.

There was a weekly rhythm.

This is why we have church on Sundays, you know that, right? Because Sunday is the day the disciples met the risen Lord. So instead of the Sabbath being the holy day, and not wanting to be confused with the Jewish faith, recognizing the risen savior, the early church met on Sunday.

You’ve heard me mention the Didache before, it’s an ancient document that is called the teachings of the Twelve Apostles. And it encourages / / fasting on Wednesday and Friday, the Orthodox church instructs this is because on Wednesday Judas betrayed Jesus, and on Friday he was crucified.

They instructed the early church to pray / / the Lord’s prayer three times a day.

Now, I said this last week, one of the things we have to always be aware of is falling into legalism, but also, of not engaging because we want to push back at legalism.

The early church did this as a weekly rhythm… not as legalism, but as celebration.

Every Wednesday we have opportunity to identify with our own betrayal of Christ in our own actions.

Peter would have understood this more than anyone when he heard that rooster crow the third time and Jesus’ words rung through his head, “Before the rooster crows you’ll have denied me three times.”

“Never would I ever, Lord…” Says all of us, right?

Every Friday we have the opportunity to recognize the sacrifice he gave for us.

Kaylee and I were listening to a song the other day about the sacrifice of Jesus and the chorus said, / / “Bring in all their sins, Lay it all on me… Bring in all their sins, every last bill that they owe… The place these souls have found themselves in one of great distress. For even all their righteousness is just a filthy mess.”

/ / Bring in all their sins… lay it all on me!

This is the Jesus we celebrate every Sunday. The one who took all of our sins, all of our issues, and took it on himself to the cross.

Remember I said last week, in Hebrews 10:5, it says Jesus himself thanked the Father, / / “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me!”

It’s like Jesus is saying, “The gift you gave me, of this body, I give back to you, on the altar of the cross - FOR THEM!”

This is what we celebrate! Every week.

Ya, sure, we get ourselves into a series about this that or the other thing. Sure, we make the spiritual disciplines a focus because they are crucial for our discipleship, but we don’t come to celebrate those things. We don’t come to celebrate each other. we come to worship the God who loved humanity so much that he came into this world, clothed himself with human flesh so he could lay it down as a sacrifice, and offer it for the forgiveness of our sins, the redemption of our souls, the gift of eternal life, and that when we recognized that, surrender our lives to him, he seals us and fills us with the gift of His Spirit.

That’s the purpose of church.

Willard actually says, / / “Celebration was also maintained by the church in its established feast days up to the Protestant era and is continued to today by the Roman Catholic and Orthodox communions.”

We have something to learn there!

So, let’s look at three aspects of Celebrating in Community.

/ / 1. Celebrate God Together

I was going to call this, Celebrate when Times are Good, but we already know that, right? God is good…..all the time, and all the time…. God is good.

So it’s really the same thing. And I just spoke quite a bit about that, the fact that this is part and parcel to what we do here on Sundays as a community, we come in and upwardly celebrate what Jesus has done for us. But / / celebration isn’t just “worship”. Celebration is enjoying God and enjoying each other in community.

There really should be something about Sunday mornings that excites us to come in and worship together.

I encourage you, start coming 15 minutes early, get a coffee and smile at someone and hug them. Don’t be in a rush to leave when we’re done. I know the door is there, but it’s not going anywhere, if you stick around and connect with someone for a bit that’s part of coming together as a community.

It’s also where some of the best ministry happens. And I don’t mean active, like, I pray for you, or you pray for me, although, that’s wonderful too, but sometimes a hug and a good conversation and reflecting on the worship and word we just engaged with together is all we need to completely turn our day or week around. And on top of that, even though / / it’s easy to walk into church hoping that WE get what WE need, but the fact of the matter is that YOU are what THEY need.

We don’t come to church just to get what we need, in fact, / / gathering as the community of God is as much about getting as it is giving. In the Didache it says about giving, which, I will apply to more than just money, although that was the original intention and is so powerful, but think of this for a moment in regard to our gather as believers together on a Sunday morning: / / “Do not hold your hands open for receiving and closed for giving.”

Now, you have to hear that in context, because it’s not two statements, it’s one…. Don’t hold your hands open for receiving AND closed for giving.” The community of believers doesn’t work if we come in just waiting to receive while someone else does all the giving.

So take that into our relationships. Take that into our ministry. Take that into our love and care for each other.

Don’t hold your heart open to receive and closed for giving.

Don’t hold your hand open to receive prayer, and closed to give prayer.

Don’t hold your hands open to receive a hug, and closed to giving one.

So, we celebrate God together. We celebrate his goodness together. Willard says, / / “Celebration heartily done makes our deprivations and sorrows seem small, and we find in it great strength to do the will of our God because his goodness becomes so real to us.”

There’s something to learn from the churches of tradition.

Every week communion sets you up for celebration. Sure, we might look at the form and function and go, “Are they celebrating?” and sometimes the answer is not so much - and I would suggest that in the same way we don’t want to fall into legalism, we also don’t want to fall into tradition for the sake of tradition. We can end up just do it because we do it. But again, that’s no reason to not do something.

/ / When we come in heavy, hurting, frail, broken, it is the body of believers around us that should help us get refocused and redirected to the body of Christ offered for us.

In the same way we said last week, give thanks when it’s hard. Give thanks when it’s tough.

And let me give a quick caution. We aren’t denying our situation, or the world around us, or the difficult times we go through. We don’t deny sickness or disease. We don’t deny needing a miracle. We just put in effort to refocus from the valley of the shadow of death to the one who’s walking with us through it.

We refocus from the darkness of the night to the light of Christ.

We turn our eyes from the pain we feel to the realization of the pain he endured for us.

And we are better at that when we do that together, because sometimes I just need someone to help me lift my hands.

Do you remember that story, from Exodus 17. Israel has been led out of slavery in Egypt, and they’re wandering through the wilderness. The nation of Amalek comes out to fight against them, and so they prepare for battle. v 11 says, / / Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed, and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses’ hands grew weary…

Ever feel like that? As long as I’m focused on God, things are ok. Even if they’re not, at least I know I’m winning in Him. But every time I get tired, distracted, confused, dealing with things in my life, I suddenly feel like I’m just losing the battle.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I feel like one moment I’m good and the next it’s like the world is against me.

What’s up with that?

Riiiiiiight… the world IS against me. Remember those three things in this world we face, the world, the devil, the flesh? They’re all out to get you and keep you distracted from lifting your hands to the God who saves.

Thankfully the story doesn’t end there:

v 12, / / …so they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it, while Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side and the other on the other side. So his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.

When we worship together, we fight together, and when we fight together we get to lift each other’s hands toward the God who saves.

When you come in here and you’re hands are heavy, sit next to someone who can lift you up.

When you come in here and your heart is burdened, lean on someone who can encourage you.

AND when you come in here and you feel strong, and confident, and engaged, look for the one who might need you.

2. Celebrate LIFE Together

Jesus says in John 10:10, / / “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

Now, we understand that as both eternal life, and life unto the point we enter eternal life. The word life there means “/ / of the absolute fulness of life, both essential and ethical.”

essential = absolutely necessary

ethical = relating to moral principle

Jesus came to give us the absolutely necessary life we need here and now, while also providing for us the ethical life, the moral standing we need to enter eternal life.

He wants you to live a good life.

Don’t hear what I’m not saying, I didn’t say “THE” good life, as in, having all the things, and what society today would consider “the good life”. Let’s keep that in check:

Hebrews 13:5 says, / / Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have…

Luke 12:15, / / “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

Matthew 16:26, / / “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?”

/ / soul there is the word psyche, it means life, the breath, and by implication the spirit, which can mean both that immortal soul, but also just the natural vitality, even that of plants.

This is why a good number of translations actually interpret that as “life” not soul.

Jesus is saying, “What good is it to have all the things, but not experience actual life!”

What is the Good life?

Acts 2:42, which is a benchmark scripture for describing the beginning of the church and what we in many senses aspire to be, says, / / And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

Only 1 of 4 of those you could maybe argue can be done alone.

How you interpret “the prayers”. But, if we look at the model within scripture, and the early church - as my professors would say, you’re standing on solid ground if you read that as meaning both individual and corporate prayer.

The Didache encouraged the praying of the Lord’s Prayer three times a day, that would probably be alone.

But, we see many times in scripture the people gathering and praying. They pray for courage, they pray for direction, they pray to see who should take on leadership, they pray for Peter’s release from prison. Lots of prayer going on both individual and corporate.

But, the other three, all very obviously community based.

/ / teaching: You can’t dedicate yourself to teaching singularly in that time period, they did not have online services so you could sit at home and not go to church. They were getting together to learn together.

/ / fellowship is the word koinonia, it means communion, fellowship, communication, contribution, distribution.

They are getting together, and doing the thing together.

The most literal meaning here for that word is / / participation.

the / / breaking of bread is most commonly believed to mean a meal that includes the Lord’s Supper as a focus.

They gathered around the table, together, enjoyed each other’s company, and celebrated the Lord’s supper together.

I heard this statistic this past week that is just wild.

First of all, the most effective form of church invitation is still someone inviting a person they know to come to church with them. Not just, “Hey, come to this church.” But “Hey, do you want to go to church with me?”

I will be there, I’ll meet you at the front door…

But here’s the thing. And this is the stat… even that, being the most effective form of, let’s call it / / “invitational evangelism”, is about 30% effective.

There’s a 30% chance the person who is invited actually shows up to church. Which means, for every 3 people you invite to church, 1 might come.

Now, you might think, wow, i don’t like those odds, BUT, ask any baseball player if they mind getting 3 pitches and the first 2 are strikes, but the 3rd is a solid home run?

Another crazy statistic. / / On average, for every 40 people in a church, it will see 1 convert to faith and church attendance per year.

Now, this is the one that I found wild, and this is why we’re pausing here for a moment in talking about celebrating in community…

/ / If you invite someone to church, AND a coffee or meal before or after church, that statistic jumps from 30% to 80%…

/ / “Hey, I know we’ve been talking about God a bit lately. You want to go to church with me this Sunday? (30% chance)… We can grab some lunch afterward as well, my treat. (80% chance)…”

Let me just package that in the most practical of thoughts.

Two things:

You should make it your goal to have someone from your church community over for a meal in the next week or two.

You should make it your goal to invite someone to church and a meal in the next month.

So, it’s obvious that the Discipline of Celebration is closely linked to the discipline of community. But, they work together, and that’s important, because you can get together, and not truly celebrate.

And this is not a spiritual thing in the sense that we might think of something being spiritual.

You don’t have to have a time of worship, or a bible study, or host a prayer meeting to be engaged in this discipline that is very spiritual.

Don’t get me wrong. Feel free to worship and read Scripture and pray together, but listen to what Ecclesiastes 5:18-20 says:

(NIV) / / This is what I have observed to be good: that it is appropriate for a person to eat, to drink and to find satisfaction in their toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given them - for this is their lot. Moreover, when God gives someone wealth and possessions, and the ability to enjoy them, to accept their lot and be happy in their toil - this is a gift of God. They seldom reflect on the days of their life, because God keeps them occupied with gladness of heart.

And so Willard says, / / “…we dishonor God as much by fearing and avoiding pleasure as we do by dependence upon it or living for it.”

Let me ask you: When was the last time you were hanging out with someone and you found yourselves roaring in laughter… you know, that deep belly laugh that’s just good for the soul…

And I’m not talking a revival meeting where the “joy of the Lord” breaks out, but just in wonderful friendship together enjoying the simplicity of life and relationship.

It’s funny. The church has done such a disservice to the idea of celebrating life together without it being “churchy” that both Dallas Willard and Richard Foster in their writings on the Discipline of Celebration, have to clarify that they don’t mean, “Go get drunk and sin and have that kind of a good time.”

We’ve so distanced ourselves from enjoying life outside of church, that we separate the two.

Church is spiritual // Fun is not.

And what happens, for a lot of people - we end up with our “social group” being the friends we hang out with after our kids baseball game, or from work, or whatever else we’re in to, because they like to and know how to have fun. And we see the church people on Sunday because that’s our spiritual time, and maybe another meeting, if we have another meeting to go to…

When what we should be doing, is inviting our church people to have fun together, and inviting our fun people to church to be part of the community of God!

You shouldn’t have to live two lives! But because a stigma has been developed over time that church things have to be spiritual and serious, we aren’t sure if the friends we have fun with will want to be around for it.

This is why Acts 2:42 puts it together. / / They dedicated themselves to teaching AND fellowship… prayers AND sharing meals. Of course, there is a time to be focused and serious, but there must be time to be carefree and fun. And we should not and don’t have to leave Jesus in the focused and serious department.

And don’t feel bad if this is foreign to you. Acts 2 had a MAJOR advantage in that all of the first Christians were all Jews who were accustomed to having a life that centered around celebration, festivals, meals around the table, AND honor of God through work and play and fun and life. That was their culture.

The fact that that we feel like we live in two worlds isn’t our fault.

This is why we keep saying, we are learning what it looks like to be a community of disciples of Jesus in south Florida in 2025… because it’s true. We’re learning.

How do we genuinely develop a loving, kind, caring, fun, God-honoring community that we want to invite people in to?

/ / 3. Celebrate Together through it all

The last thing we want to look at this morning is the power of celebration when it feels like there’s nothing to celebrate or when things are not going our way.

Paul writes in Romans 5:3-5 / / …we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Rejoice in our sufferings?

Super important here, i need you to see this.

/ / Rejoice IN… not rejoice FOR

the word “in” means position

Paul is saying, I’m learning to rejoice while I’m in it.

There is evil in the world.

There is hard stuff we go through.

Scripture tells us multiple times we wrestle against spiritual forces that are against us.

I’m not rejoicing FOR the suffering, I’m learning to rejoice IN the suffering.

Rejoicing FOR suffering can lead to really bad theology and really bad experience.

Rejoicing IN suffering will aid us in the endurance, character, and hope that is being produced in us.

If you remember I quoted Dallas Willard at the beginning when he says that celebration is a great antidote to despair.

Richard Foster says something similar. He says, / / “Celebration also can be an effective antidote for the periodic sense of sadness that can constrict and oppress the heart. Depression is an epidemic today and celebration can stem the tide. In his chapter titled ‘Helps in Sadness,’ Francois Fenelon counsels those who are bowed low with the burdens of life to encourage themselves, ‘with good conversation, even by making merry.’”

He goes on to say it can help because it keeps us humble, normal, and gives us perspective.

Sometimes I just need a good friend to remind me that the world isn’t against me.

As you know I’m in school right now working toward my undergraduate degree in Biblical Studies and Theology. I started at Trinity International University. It was hard at 41 years old to go through all that I needed to go through to register for university. Being from Canada I had to pay a third party company to translate my High School transcript because for whatever reason American’s can’t read Canadian High School transcripts. It was a process, not just the work, but really the mental and emotional push to actually do it.

Well, before my first year is over we all find out that the university is literally shutting down.

They care cancelling all of their undergraduate programs and only keeping their masters and doctoral programs open through their Divinity School.

So now I have to find a new school.

When I found that out I was less than happy. And I was talking to a friend, and just processing how I was feeling, and he said something perfectly relevant.

“The devil didn’t shut down the university because of you. God didn’t shut down the university because of you. You didn’t have anything to do with this and it’s simply just bad timing.”

I know that. But hearing it from a friend in good conversation broke any power of spiraling me out of control emotionally. You’re right, this has nothing to do with me. And it also doesn’t change God’s plan or purpose for me to be in school. I can do this. Get up, look for a new school.

I did, and I’m happy I’m at the school I’m at, AND, it’s not far from this particular friends house. He lives in Boca, I’m at school in Deerfield, and we get to meet up for lunch once and a while. We did just this past week.

When it comes to fighting these types of things in our lives, we’re already sitting in an advantage in that we are living in faith.

In my psychology class this week our focus was on “stress, health, and human flourishing”. It does not go unnoticed in the psychology world that faith plays a major role in these areas of our lives.

They call it the / / “faith factor”, which is basically their inability to explain health and wellness benefits from people being engaged in faith communities.

Of course they don’t distinguish between Christianity and other faiths, and thus, their stats are probably skewed at best because the stats against genuine, Christ following, Holy Spirit empowered Christianity vs any other religion or practice will yield different results.

Nevertheless, I found it very interesting the benefits they highlight. Here’s three areas where they recognize faith community having impact in people’s lives:

/ / Healthy Behaviors

Christianity promotes self-control, right?

Not only do we recognize it as a fruit of the Spirit, which Paul talks about in Galatians 5, but he also says in 2 Timothy 1:7, / / For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.

Peter encourages that we pursue it, 2 Peter 1:5-7, / / …make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.

That is a self-control that promotes relationship and community!

And although they saw that self-control played a factor, they actually noticed that it was not just the specific ‘healthy behaviors’ that dictated people lived longer, healthier lives, but harder to explain, it was doing that in the context of a faith community itself.

/ / Social Support

To belong to a faith community is to participate in a support network. Religiously active people are there for one another when misfortune strikes.

This is secular psychology’s perspective of the health impacts through religious practice.

One study was done with nurses, over 20 years, and they determined that the social support through religious practice of the nurses was the best predictor of good health.

They also note that religion promotes marriage, and healthy and happy marriage at that is another key determining factor for health and longevity.

Let’s take a second to look at God’s perspective on how we should interact with each other.

Romans 12:15 says, / / Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.

Ecclesiastes 3 is a well known passage that puts time in it’s rightful place.

(1) / / For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven…

(4), / / A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

We must make sure in our conversation on “celebration” that we don’t miss the importance and relevance of genuine grief, sadness, mourning. The goal here is not always simply to overcome sadness with joy.

When someone comes to you and is really going through a hard time they might simply need you to acknowledge that indeed their time is hard, and that you are there for them in it.

They may need to know God is still there.

But to try to simply change grief to joy, or depression to celebration isn’t always going to work, and often isn’t what people need.

That’s not to say we let people stay stuck, ok, that’s an entirely different conversation, and I think this whole topic today is actually the remedy for that. Good healthy community, good healthy relationships are what ward off, or give comfort in these situations, that help turn people around.

Yes, we may go through hard times, but when I know I have someone to lean on…

This is why it’s so important to not give in to the urge to isolate.

Sure, take time, I get that. Take a moment. But don’t allow the enemy to convince you that alone is better. It isn’t.

Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 says, (NLT) / / Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble.

The ESV says, / / …woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!

Isolation is kind of like falling and when someone looks to help you, you go, “Ya, I’m good…. I got this… don’t worry about me…”

So, that’s just really important to keep in mind while talking about celebration and thanksgiving and joy, because there is place for sadness, and grief, and loss, and anger, and all the emotions and feelings.

Jesus came to bind up the broken hearted, not tell them to deny what’s going on til it’s gone.

/ / Postive Emotions

So, after all their studies, and controlling for all the things they could, they still couldn’t figure out why it is that studies continually showed religiously engaged people live longer.

They pointed to a few possible reasons:

A stable and coherent worldview

A sense of hope for the long term future, and eternity in the case of the Christian

feelings of ultimate acceptance

the relaxing effect of meditating, praying and other religious activity

What’s the take away in all that?

/ / Healthy community centered around the spiritual disciplines promotes healthy lives.

And that’s not just an unfounded hope, it’s a statistically proven fact.

So, I want to end this morning with taking a personal & corporate celebration inventory.

/ / Do you know someone that you wish was in the community of believers, but you’ve just not gotten to a point where you are going to ask them, “Hey, want to come to church with me?”

/ / Do you wish that you had more friends in the church? (not just acquaintances, not just people you worship with, but genuine relationship)

/ / Do you feel like you have close friends, or even A close friend, that you can cry with, laugh with, celebrate with, and that you would drop anything and everything to do the same for them?

/ / How do you do when someone comes to you in sadness or grief? Do you lean toward, “Rejoice in the Lord always! God is on the throne…” or do you weep with those who weep?

/ / Do you find it easy to laugh at yourself? How seriously do you take yourself? Laughter and Joy are incredible at staving off comparison, rejection, and offense.

/ / Are you willing to see the error of your ideas, or actions, and just laugh about it, WITH FRIENDS?

/ / Be Honest: Do you have apprehension about getting closer to people because you’ve been hurt before?

/ / Do you hide behind being an introvert, while internally hoping for someone to listen, care, and relate to?

/ / Do you hide behind being an extrovert, loud and fun, but shy away from deep, meaningful, challenging conversations?

/ / Who is one friend, relative, co-worker, neighbor, you already have that you can invite into the community of God with you?

/ / Who is one church goer that you can invite to connect with and maybe, just maybe, make a friend?