COG 45: Season of Life | Preparing, Celebrating, Discipling

The months of March through May are the most glorious days of the Christian calendar. God’s people get to spend those three months preparing for, reveling in, and putting to grand use the glorious reality of Christ’s triumph over death and hell. Join AMBrewster as he gives us a mountain top view of the Season of Life and all of its God-centered festivities.

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.

Discover the following episodes by clicking the titles or navigating to the episode in your app:
“COG 11: The Seasons in the Celebration of God”
“COG 14: The Season of Life”

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Episode Notes

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Transcript

Introduction

Can you believe it?! We’ve been celebrating God together for nearly two full Seasons! That’s almost half a year!

We started our celebratory year with the Season of Mercy then moved to the Season of Grace, and now it’s time to prepare for the Season of Life.

But before we do that, I’d like to remind all you dads and moms about Truth.Love.Parent. Since 2016 we’ve been creating free biblical parenting resources. In addition to that, we offer a biblical counseling program and a youth workers training program. We exist to glorify God by equipping men and women to help children become who God called and created them to be.

We have over 400 podcast episodes and specialty resources; you should definitely check it out. Just head to TruthLoveParent.com.

Of course, if you’ve ever followed the links to download The Celebration of God’s free episode notes or read our free transcripts, then you’ve already been to TruthLoveParent.com.

The Celebration of God discipleship experience is one of the free parenting resources created by Truth.Love.Parent. So, if you’re being blessed by this content, find a member of TeamTLP and say “Thank You!”

And if you’d like to say thank you, but can’t find a TeamTLP member, you can rate and review The Celebration of God on iTunes, Facebook, or anywhere else you listen to the podcast.

But, I’d ask that if you can’t in good conscience give us a 5-star rating, please email us at team@CelebrationOfGod.com and let us know how we can improve.

We’d really appreciate that feedback. Thank you.

Okay, so let’s talk about the Season of Life.

Topic

First, if you are new to The Year Long Celebration of God, I welcome you to this dynamic discipleship experience. 

In the description of today’s episode you will find a couple other shows about the Season of Life. And if you’ve never listened to our Introductory Episodes, you really need to — or so much of what I’m going to discuss won’t make much sense.

Second, let’s review the previous Seasons so that we can better understand the flow of The Celebration of God.

The Season of Mercy starts the year because each of the holidays is designed to focus on that attribute of God. God was merciful to us when He created the world, gave us the gift of work, didn’t automatically destroy mankind when they sinned, taught us about consequences, and yet doesn’t give us what we deserve due to our sin.

It’s also the time of year we focus on our Desperation. All mankind needs God. We desperately need God. We need Him for our existence, but we also need to be in an active, eternal relationship with Him if we’ll ever be able to live up to our potential. We need to be saved from our sins. 

And the Season of Mercy is a fantastic time to meditate on our sin and need for forgiveness.

Then we move into the Season of Grace.

Grace encompasses anything and everything that’s better than an eternity in hell. We have no right to complain about even the most difficult earthy experiences because all of them are better than we deserve.

But not only is God infinitely gracious to us in the average moments of the most normal days, but during the Season of Grace we prepare for and celebrate the incarnation of the Messiah during Advent and Christmas as well as the abundant and everlasting love of God during Valentines.

During the Season of Grace our salvation focus turns to glorification. As we remember the first incarnation of Christ and look forward to swimming in His eternal love for all eternity, we’re overwhelmed by the beautiful hope of sinless glorification!

But that time is still in our future. And for those who have not yet realized their desperation, there is still one more important step for them to take.

So, we turn our eyes to the Season of Life. From March through May we look forward to and celebrate the grandest most blessed of holidays. 

The Season of Life starts with Lent, a time of reflection, sacrifice, repentance, and righteous living. Yes, these are traits that should always characterize our lives, but Lent presents a deliberate season to get back into the habit — if we have strayed — and to prepare our minds to bask in the sacrifice of God.

During Lent we also observe the World Day of Prayer, Palm Sunday, Maundy Wednesday, Good Thursday, and Holy Saturday. By the way, if you’re not certain what some of those days are, or if you were pretty confident it was supposed to be Good Friday, I look forward to worshipping God with you this Easter season. We have so many amazing things to discuss.

And then on Easter morning we revel in the magnificent miracle of Christ’s resurrection from the grave and triumph over sin that guaranteed that all who run to Christ may have life and have it eternally!

Beyond that, Resurrection Sunday beautifully sets the stage for Stewardship Day, Mother’s Day, Ascension, and Pentecost. 

It is a glorious three months, and I pray that you will live every day to the honor and glory of our great God.

So that’s the overview of the Season of Life, let us now talk about the specifics of how to prepare for the Season of Life, celebrate the Season of Life, and disciple during the Season of Life.

1. Preparation

By this time, most of you should have an area in your home, church, office, and/classroom dedicated to a Celebration Wall. If you haven’t done that yet, I really want to encourage you in brotherly love to take this step.

No, it’s not required for you to glorify God. But, it is exemplified for us all throughout the Bible. It is extremely important to set up visual memorials to God’s infinite character and deeds. 

Recently, I was reading in my devotions and — once again — came upon a passage where God’s people set up a reminder to God’s awesomeness. Though not everyone took advantage of the memorial, those who loved God and desired to worship Him every moment of every day were — no doubt — thankful for the reminder when they encountered the memorial.

So, I encourage you to choose a place with which you interact on a regular basis to memorialize the character and deeds of God.

As we prepare for the Season of Life, you can visit CelebrationOfGod.com to find a bunch of ideas for decorating your Celebration Wall.

And — of course — the best thing to put on your Celebration Walls is Scripture.

We have a Bible Reading PDF for you at CelebrationOfGod.com with a ton of verses all about life through and life with God.

I recommend you post some on your Celebration Wall, commit some to memory, and daily meditate on others in Preparation to celebrate God from March through May.

2. Celebration

When it comes to celebrating the Season of Life, we will have to be far more intentional than we were during the Season of Grace.

The Season of Grace has three major holidays . . . Advent, Christmas, and Valentines, and one minor holiday . . . New Years. There’s plenty of time to meditate on Grace within and between the holidays.

But the Season of Life is very full.

Easter is obviously the big one, but there are ten other minor holidays and observances crammed into these three months.

That means that — if we’re not careful — we may easily forget about the the theme of the Season. Obviously, all of the holidays relate to the concept of Life in Christ, but we must still be intentional.

One important way to keep our minds focused on the celebration of Life is to revisit the salvation focus of the Season.

The Season of Mercy is about Desperation.

The Season of Grace is about Glorification.

But the Season of Life is about Justification. What is Justification? It’s God the Father declaring that the sinner who puts his faith in Christ forever stands righteous before God. Christ’s righteousness is imputed to the saint, and the saint is declared justified. 

And all of this would be impossible had the Messiah not lived a perfect life, died a substitutionary death, and raised in triumph over sin and the grave.

Had Jesus not lived a perfect life, He would have sinned and, therefore, He would not have had been righteous enough to save Himself — let alone us. 

Had Jesus not died on our behalf, His righteousness could not have been imputed to us. Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin.

And had He not raised victorious from the grave, He would have been impotent to purchase our justification.

If we — at least once a week — worshipped God for the miraculous gift that is Justification, it will be hard not to worship God for the life He so graciously bestows.

Using the Anticipations of Life are also a helpful tool. The theme of life is clearly seen in Easter, but I can easily anticipate mothers day as I think about the method by which God ushers humans into life on this earth.

I can anticipate Stewardship Day as I look forward to exercising Christ-honoring dominance over the animals, vegetables, and minerals of this earth via my fulfillment of the Creation Mandate.

Our future spiritual life can be anticipated as we look forward to celebrating Ascension, and I can anticipate the vibrant life of the church — empowered by the Holy Spirit — as I look forward to Pentecost.

So, all Season long we should meditate on the biblical realities concerning the life God has given us and the expectations He has for that life.

And lastly . . .

3. Discipleship

We’re not completely fulfilling our worship of God if we’re not sharpening each other.

We need to intentionally invite our families, friends, fellow church members, students, coworkers, and anyone else we can imagine into our celebration of Life.

We should read the Scriptures together, pray together, fellowship in Church together, talk about how awesome God is and how what we’ve read and learned about should be put into practice in our daily lives.

Biblical Counselors can use this time of year to remind their counselees about the spiritual life God wants to give them. God’s plan for our spiritual life is the very fiber of their spiritual struggle.

Conclusion

I’m very excited about celebrating Life from March through May, and I’m excited about celebrating it with you.

Please share this episode on your favorite social media outlets so that Christians all over the world can join us in this most glorious Season of worshipping God.

To that end, join us next time on our first episode of Season 3 to discuss the Confusion of the Crucifixion, Part 1.