Celebrations (#3 in series)

Every day we went fishing I witnessed my kids celebrate every fish caught, whether they caught it or someone else did. There would be yelling, such as :"Yay Jaron, Eli, Sara or Kris, You did it, you caught a fish...that's awesome!" It didn't matter if the fish was 2 inches or 6 inches long, they supported each other. Yes occasionally there were a few times when someone would be mad that they hadn't caught a fish yet but someone would encourage them to keep trying. We saw that a lot when it took Kris a few days before he caught his first fish!
Honestly this was the first time I have seen this happen in our family. You know how kids are, if someone gets something they all want it. The fact that they were all supporting each other and were not demonstrating the constant jealously attitude was great!

Celebration! We need to praise the Lord through all things and in everything give Him praise. The Word of God tells us that if we do not praise Him the rocks will. It also tells us, "Let everything that has breath praise the Lord (Ps 150:6)!" In our church on of the oldest members just recently became a grandma again to a precious baby boy. We celebrated with her! What a blessing, God is increasing her family! When friend bought a new house we celebrated with her! When one of the kids in our church worked hard in school and made the honor roll, I watched the other kids celebrate with him! When our power was restored we celebrated...even Kris yelled, " Thank you Jesus!"

We were created for fellowship with Christ, we also were created to praise Him. Praise is an attitude of the heart! Last week we had reason to flip out and get mad, we lost our power which caused us to lose all the food in our fridge and freezer. On Friday our tire was punctured and it had to be replace and then Sean realized that the other back tire needs to be replaced. On Sat. our dryer died and with a large family a dryer is an essential tool that is used daily. On Sunday morning I CHOSE to stand and give God praise no matter what comes our way! We really could have been upset about the food issue but God provided our daily needs and we gave HIM praise for that. Thank you Jesus! Now here's something to shout about...we were just given $125 specifically to cover part of the food that we lost! Isn't God great! Had we chose to blame God for the storm and the ultimate loss of our food we may not have been blessed. We totally believe that it was because of our sacrificial praise that God has supplied.

You see we have to chose to praise Him! Last week was tough and we could have been grumpy and yet because we chose to see God's goodness and praise Him for who He is and what He has done we were blessed. Choosing to praise the Lord even for the small things is a conscious decision. You have to choose to celebrate or be grumpy. In the body of Christ we all need to celebrate with each other's accomplishments, great and small. We all need that support, sometimes it comes from family and friends, other times it comes from the knowledge that Jesus Christ is sitting next to His Father praying for you! We all need to be anchored to something and my hope is YOU are anchored to the cross!

Today I choose to celebrate all that He has given me, great and small! Do You?

Lord I thank you for all things! I give You praise no matter what! I will not let the rocks cry out for me today, I will not let the trials and dissapointments steal my joy. Today Lord I choose to honor You in all I do and it starts with giving You praise for the flowers You have created, for the home You have provided and for the family You have blessed me with! Thank you Lord!