Every Sunday Is A Party

by May 29, 2017

We gather as a church every week to celebrate. Harbor’s Sunday gathering is a party. Our Ewa community group on Wednesday nights is a party. Our Kapolei group is a celebration. The gathering of God’s people, the church, is meant to be a party. That’s how Paul saw it, as a place where people are just constantly celebrating. That’s what Paul says in Ephesians 1:3: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. He’s starting off this letter with blessing, with exciting praise. He wants to praise God, to celebrate God. And he’s got his reasons. He goes on to list several reasons that we should be a people who celebrate. We focused on 10 of them together as a church. These 10 reasons to celebrate are the things under the surface that we sometimes don’t think about when we gather, but they are why we gather to celebrate each week:

  1. He Chose Us (1:4-5)
  2. He Makes Us Blameless and Holy (1:4)
  3. He Loved Us (1:4)
  4. He Adopted Us (1:5)
  5. He Lavishes Grace On Us (1:6-8)
  6. He Redeemed Us (1:7)
  7. He Forgave Us (1:7)
  8. He Gives Us Wisdom and Insight (1:8)
  9. He Saves Us (1:13)
  10. He Seals Us (1:13-14)

When you look at all of these how can we not celebrate? How can we not praise God for how glorious He is? These blessings, these reasons to celebrate, are ours each day. When we gather together as a church, we’re saying that these are things that we are celebrating together. How exciting is all of that! I mean if these things are really true about your life right now, shouldn’t you be ready to burst in celebration all the time? Absolutely you should!

But, these things aren’t going to excite everyone. Not everyone is going to celebrate them. Because these things haven’t happened in every person’s life. Did you notice who he said all of this applied to? Look again back at verse 3: God has blessed us in Christ. In Christ. These blessings, these things to celebrate,  are given to every person who is in Christ.

Are you in Christ? Is he your savior? The king of your life? If he is, you have all of these reasons to celebrate. If you’re not partying each Sunday, if there’s no joy in your heart as you sing and listen to God’s word, you’re just going through the motions, it’s either because you’ve never put your faith in Christ, or because you’re more focused on the cares of this world than you are all of the blessings that you have through Jesus.

At Harbor we are going to have 10 Days of Celebration. As a church family, we’re going to celebrate one of these things per day in Ephesians 1. I’ll be sending out an email reminding each person what we’ll be celebrating, and giving a few verses for us to meditate on. If you’d like to join the party, send me an email and just say “10 Days of Celebrating,” and I’ll include you each day. Join the party!