COG 14: The Season of Life

Most people believe they understand life, but outside of a relationship with Christ, life is a paradox. Today AMBrewster discusses the major holidays in The Celebration of God’s Season of Life.

The Year Long Celebration of God is a family resource from Truth.Love.Parent., a ministry dedicated to rooting families in God and maturing families for God so they can harvest blessings from God.

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Episode Notes

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Transcript

Introduction

Over the past two episodes we’ve been introduced to the Seasons of Mercy and Grace and their corresponding major and minor holidays.

Today we look at the Season of Life.

But, before we do that, if you’re enjoying this and excited about learning to celebrate God in a deeper and better way, will you please rate and review us? 

It’s alright, you can pause this right now. Go ahead and give us a 5-star rating and even leave a review telling us what you like or what excites you.

When you do this, you make it easier for other Christians all over the world to find us and join in The Year Long Celebration of God.

The more Apple Podcast ratings and reviews we have, specifically, the better chances we can be exposed to a larger and larger audience.

So, please don’t forget to leave that rating!

As with the past two episodes, today’s episode notes and Transcript will be available at CelebrationOfGod.com. If you’ve never been there, you should visit and check back often as more and more resources are added.

We want to equip you to celebrate God to the best of your ability and help others do the same.

Topic

Alright, Spring is the time of year we focus on the majestic gift of life, and we start off the Season with the biggest celebration of them all.

Creation got one week. Christmas gets a little over 40 days. But depending on what you choose to celebrate, Easter gets over 90 days!

And that’s exactly how it should be.

Of course, we’ve already discussed that there are many different traditions and religious holidays that not everyone observes the same way. We at Truth.Love.Parent. and The Celebration of God understand that. Our goal is not to dictate how God would be celebrated, but provide more ways for Christians to celebrate God by themselves and with the universal church.

Listen, you can celebrate the day the Ark landed on Mount Ararat if you like. And you can celebrate that day any day or every day if you so desire. But wouldn’t it be cool if you knew there were other brothers and sisters in Christ who were also praising the Lord for His goodness the exact same time you were? Wouldn’t it be great to connect with those believers and corporately worship the Lord?

I think that would be amazing, and TeamTLP and I want to facilitate that for you.

Of course, we don’t — as of yet — have a holiday dedicated to God’s mercy and grace that kept Him from wiping out mankind, but we do have other holidays that may seem just as new and different to you.

For example, many of you regularly observe Lent, some of you have no idea what it is, and others of you may think that protestant Christians shouldn’t participate in Lent . . . but you’re not sure why.

So it seems that every Season so far has at least one holiday that may require us to do a little learning, squeeze into another’s shoes, and potentially reconsider how it may help deepen our love and admiration of the Lord. 

I think Lent offers some very valuable tools for helping us understand and serve God better.

If nothing else — even if you choose never to observe it — we’ll learn some great things about the Lord in the process of discussing it.

Now, Lent is actually a Preparation for Easter, and it lasts 45-46 days, ending the day before we observe the Crucifixion. That means there’s overlap in Lent and Palm Sunday. Then there’s the observance of the Crucifixion that can fall on any number of days — the study of which I’m excited to share with you later this year — as well as Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday.

Then, and I’m not sure how many of you are aware of this, but — just as Christmas Day starts the 12 Days of Christmas, so Easter Sunday is the first day of Eastertide which spans 50 days ending on Pentecost . . . another amazing holiday many Protestant Christians didn’t know existed.

I believe Pentecost is a powerful holiday to observe because it marks the coming of the Holy Spirit into the world and the official beginning of the New Testament Church.

Now, remember, if these celebrations are all about God, then they need to focus on Who God is and what He’s done. But we should never celebrate the gift to the exclusion of the giver. I believe we should definitely take at least one day out of the year to praise God for the gift of His church, both the Universal Church and the Local Church. But we should never just celebrate “the church.” The church is only a gift from God, and God is the One Who deserves the glory!

Still, while many Christians idolize the church, too many Christians don’t appreciate the Church at all. We need to strike the Biblical balance, and it won’t be struck by debating the pros and cons of the church . . . it will come from knowing and believing God better.

What’s cool about the Season of Life is that the Easter celebration starts the season with Lent and ends it with Pentecost. It’s a full three months preparing for and reveling in the greatest gift God ever bestowed on mankind!

But there are a couple other minor holidays that occur during Eastertide.

For example, I believe Earth Day is a wonderful time for Christians to rededicate themselves to keeping the Creation Mandate. Again, it’s not about celebrating the earth. It’s about celebrating the God who created the earth and commanded His people to steward it. 

That’s why The Celebration of God has Stewardship Day on the calendar. It’s a perfect day not only to discuss a wise and Christ-honoring stewardship of the earth, but also to remind our disciplees about the many things God has called us to steward including time, relationships, money, and His Word.

Then there’s the first Sunday in March which is the World Day of Prayer. Prayer is a life-altering gift from God, one that ushers us into His very throne room, one that dispenses with the need of a priest, and one that continues the conversation God started in the Scriptures.

And as we dive deeper and deeper into the Advanced Level of The Celebration of God, we’re going to learn some amazing and startling things about the place prayer should have in the believer’s life. Prayer is what truly makes The Year Long Celebration of God possible.

After the World Day of Prayer we have Mother’s Day. 

I love that Mother’s Day falls in the Season of Life. It’s one of those beautiful, providential situations where the traditional holidays gorgeously dovetail with The Celebration of God resource.

And, finally, a couple weeks before we celebrate Pentecost is Ascension Day, another miraculous event in the life of Christ during which Christians can celebrate the Kingdom of God.

Conclusion

Alright, let’s take a minute before we finish up to see what have left to discuss in our introductory material.

Lord willing, next time we’ll briefly introduce the Season of Power and make some concluding observations about the Four Seasons and how they can be used to celebrate the four stages of salvation.

And then there’s only one more introductory episode left. Episode 16 is called Your Celebration Wall and provides some more ideas and direction for this extremely important part of The Celebration of God.

Please don’t forget to rate and review!

I’ll see you next time.