COG 24: Celebrating God When the Holiday is Over

The vacation was great, but what about school? Church was enrapturing, but now we need to worship God while we make lunch? Join AMBrewster as he explains how we can continue celebrating the right way even after the holiday is over.

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

The Celebration of God starts with a bang right out of the gate. We have Creation Week and Labor Day. The very next Sunday is Grandparent’s Day, and pretty soon after that is the Day of Atonement.

During that time there’s a lot of updating the Creation Wall, new discussions, activities, special meals, and the like.

But then the end of September arrives and we discover that the next official holiday in The Celebration of God doesn’t come until the end of October. 

We have a whole month with no main holiday focus. What do we do now?

I understand how it’s easy to see The Celebration of God as a liturgical calendar of religious holidays. And though The Celebration of God definitely contains that, that is not all it is.

Remember, our goal is to learn to take our holidays, but also the most average moments of the most normal days and celebrate God the way He deserves.

We focus a lot on the holidays because they’re easy to remember, fun to observe, and there’s a beautiful corporate worship dynamic when we realize that all over the globe other Christians are worshipping God in similar ways the exact same time we are.

On the other hand, I admit that celebrating God on the normal days is significantly more difficult to remember; it also seems far less corporate and fun.

But it’s just as important. In fact, I’m going to argue that it’s even more important.

There are many people who manage to drag themselves to church Christmas and Easter who celebrate self the rest of the year.

Celebrating God on your average Thursday is desperately important to your relationship with God, and will actually make it easier to celebrate God on the major and minor holidays.

So, that’s why the title of today’s show is “Celebrating God When the Holiday is Over.” We, our church members, our students, our kids, our friends . . . all of us need to keep the spirit of worship going even though there is no main holiday on the Celebration Wall.

Now, before I continue, allow me to share two things. First, if you’re new to the show, I welcome you and strongly encourage you to go to CelebrationOfGod.com and make sure you listen to our introductory episodes. They will teach you all about this dynamic discipleship experience. For example, you just heard me reference our Celebration Wall. Well, we have two episodes that teach us what that is, how important it is, and how to make one that’s just right for you and your disciplees. And, yes, the introductory material talks about who and what disciplees are as well.

So, be sure to check out CelebrationOfGod.com.

Also, if you’re not new to the show, please take a moment to rate and review this show so that other Christians from all over the world can find and enjoy deepening their relationship with God.

As always, we will have free episode notes and transcripts available for you on The Celebration of God blog, and with that . . . we’re ready to start.

Topic

Whether you’re listening to this after just finishing September’s holidays or you’re consuming this episode after the first of the year or coming out of our three month celebration of God’s gift of life . . . we’re going to discuss a number of points that will help you keep the celebration of God going after the holidays.

1.  Remember that celebration doesn’t have to be high energy.

Yes, the major holidays are generally high energy commitments. In addition to whatever you’re doing at home, there are likely church programs and extra-curricular activities, picnics, feasts, and the like.

But worship doesn’t have to be singing and decorating and laughing and business. You can — and should — learn how to celebrate God in silence, contemplation, and normalcy.

We need to know how to correctly celebrate God while singing in church on Easter, but we also need to know how to correctly worship Him while taking a test at school or fixing a set of brakes or performing in a theatrical endeavor or drawing blood or reading a book.

One of the most important things to do in any conversation is to define our terms. It will be exquisitely helpful for you and your disciplees to learn that you don’t have to maintain the high energy in order to be celebrating God.

This next point is very helpful to implement before the holidays are over. If you missed it this past season, don’t worry, there are plenty more to come.

2. Don’t stop doing normal life during the holidays.

Let’s say that it’s Christmas time and your whole family is on vacation. I strongly recommend you don’t stop doing normal life.

I hope you’re not planning to stop brushing your teeth for the next week! I would also hope you don’t plan to skip other integral parts of worshipping God. 

You and your disciplees shouldn’t take a break from devotions. 

Whether you’re at home or in a motel, chores and personal hygiene are vital to staying healthy and comfortable. 

And though it may be acceptable to have a movie marathon over break, that shouldn’t be all you do. 

Don’t completely jettison the valuable “mundane” activities that make up an average week. 

“Don’t stop normal life” also goes for what you eat. Yes, by all means, enjoy your food, but whether you’re eating or drinking, you need to glorify God. There shouldn't be a drastic difference between your vacation and post-vacation food intake. Even if you’re eating out, you should be taking care of the temple of God.

Now, let’s imagine that we have children under our care. We just spent two weeks with no school, no chores, no bedtimes, no restrictions whatsoever on what we ate or did . . . and now we’re expected to go cold turkey back into normal life.

First, I’d argue that whether you’re observing a major holiday or not, God is not being celebrated when we live that way, and second, we’re going to make all things associated with “normal life” seem less desirable and harder to embrace.

Did you know that suicide rates climax near the end of the holiday season? People drag themselves through school and work and the drudgery of a life they can barely tolerate all so that can enjoy themselves on vacation.

But the vacation is never as fulfilling as we want it to be, and we come to the end having done nothing else but worship self — only now we weigh more, have less money, and are facing another 350 day stint doing the drudgery of normal life. 

And many of the people who never learned to celebrate God in all things can’t stand the endless cycle and lack of satisfaction, and they kill themselves — their final act of self-worship.

But if we give God the preeminence during the holidays and we don’t neglect the daily-life activities, then we make the transition to a different form of celebration much easier to navigate . . . especially for the younger people in our lives.

Okay, 1.  Remember that celebration doesn’t have to be high energy.
2. Don’t stop doing normal life during the holidays. Continue glorifying God in the personal, quiet ways, hard-working ways even over break.

Here’s something else we can do as the holiday is winding down . . .

3. Talk about normal life before the vacation or holiday is over.

Most of us who work with young children know how valuable it is to give your children count downs. “We’ll be leaving the park in about 5 minutes, kids.” “We’re going to leave in just 4 minutes.” “Alright, you have 3 more minutes. Get a few more slides in.” And so on. 

This is also very valuable during vacation too, regardless of your age or the age of the people with you’ll spend the time. 

Obviously, I’m not suggesting you announce pointless things every minute, but at least once a day your should focus on the upcoming week. 

But don’t discuss it like a threat. Saying to a teenager, “Hey, don’t forget about school next week.” isn’t going to lighten her spirits. But you could say, “I’m looking forward to helping you more this year in your homework. I think we can bring your English grade up from first semester.” 

Focusing on areas where we need to mature is very valuable because we don’t ever want to communicate that maturing in Christ is something we only do in the doldrums of “normal” life.

So, in order to continue celebrating God when the holiday is over, you need to make sure you're living elements of “real life” now. You should also discuss post-vacation ideas to help prepare everyone mentally for the end of break. 

Now, number 4 is for when the holiday is officially over. Two and three were tips for what you should do during the holiday celebration, but now that it’s done . . .

4. Continue the fun into normal life. 

September isn’t that rough, but come January there will be a cleaner distinction between break and normal life. School will be back in session. We have to work. 

But that doesn’t mean you and your community should stop hanging out, doing life on life, having special meals, and enjoying each other. 

Like I mentioned earlier, few people do “cold turkey” well, and this is no exception. 

If you have children, I suggest tapering off the family-fun as slowly as possible. To be honest, some of our families need to ramp up the daily family time anyway. So, if your family time over vacation was 100, and your daily life should be no lower than 40, then taper off the festivities over the course of the first week back and try to find a new average — preferably one that involves spending more time together than you did last year.

Of course, don’t just do fun for fun’s sake. Lord willing, your life-on-life time with your disciplees is a time for you to sharpen each other, love each other for Christ, and build each other up. That’s the spirit we need to continue.

I’m not encouraging us to worship ourselves with our play during the holidays and then drag that into normal life. No way. But if you and your friends can glorify God in your time together, there’s no reason to stop seeing each other just because work has started back up.

5. Transition with a good attitude. 

You are probably a leader of some kind. Whether you’re a pastor, teacher, parent, counselor, employer, you’re a model, a pace-setter. Do not end break off complaining about work on Monday. You are not allowed to have a bad attitude! 

Not only does a bad attitude about normal life reveal that you’re likely not going to celebrate God very well during that normal life, but it also reveals that you probably weren’t celebrating God during the holiday or vacation either!

Praise God (in front of your disciplees) about the blessings of a secure job and a good education. Be proactive, be excited about normal life.

Should our families be allowed to loath God’s will for their lives? Of course not! But we do it so often when we get all depressed because we’ve reached the dreaded last day of vacation. 

We need to set the Christ-honoring example for everyone in our lives.

And that leads us to the final point, but first, let’s review.

1. Remember that celebration doesn’t have to be high energy.
2. Don’t stop doing normal life during the holidays.
3. Talk about normal life before the vacation or holiday is over.
4. Continue the fun into normal life.
5. Transition with a good attitude.

And 6. Remember that the goal of everything we do should be the worship God.

The historical church got itself into a lot of trouble trying to separate the sacred from the secular. It’s actually impossible because we are spiritual beings and everything we do has a sacred impact.

You see, God created us to be worshippers. Not only is it impossible to not be worshipping, but Jesus told us clearly in Matthew 6:24 and Luke 16:13 that we cannot worship two masters simultaneously. We’ll either hold to the one and reject the other or vice versa.

It’s actually very easy to transition from celebrating God during a holiday to celebrating Him during normal life if we’re truly celebrating Him in the first place.

Conclusion

Consider this word picture.

You breath when you run, sing, walk, and sleep. You always breath, and that breathing changes depending on the activity . . . still you don’t stop breathing.

How hard would it be — and physically dangerous — if you tried to make yourself breath during sleep the same way you breath when you run?

How impossible would it be to only breath in church and try to hold your breath the rest of the week?!

I think we try to do the same thing with our worship. We’ve bought the lie that worship is high-energy singing and service and that we’re not worshipping if we’re not in church or deliberately doing something churchy.

But that’s spiritually unhealthy. 

Breath the right way when you swim. Celebrate God the right way when you’re at church. Breath the right way when you walk. Celebrate God the right way when you parent. Breath the right way when you read a book. Celebrate God the right way when you read the Bible. Breath the right way when you run. Celebrate God the right way in school or work.

When you breath naturally, you smoothly move from activity to activity exercising the necessary muscles to make sure you continue breathing in a healthy way no matter what you’re doing.

So we too must focus on our celebration so that we naturally and smoothly move from activity to activity exercising the necessary spiritual muscles to continue worshipping in a Christ-honoring way no matter what we’re doing.

And that’s how you celebrate God when the holiday is over.

Now, if you’re looking for specifics . . . the next two episodes are designed to discuss two important ways we can celebrate God during normal life.

But — in the meantime — please share this episode on your favorite social media outlets, and join us next time as we talk about how to celebrate God at church.