Heaven on Earth...

Our verse this week is Matthew 6:10
"Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven."

I picked this verse to begin our new series on PRAYER, and since this is the part of the Lord's Prayer, and when Jesus was teaching on how to pray, I thought this would be a good place to start.... well God wanted to teach me more...

This past Sunday Night at church we hosted a Neighborhood Fellowship, this included our congregations, our Hispanic congregation, and the folks from the run down hotel across the parking lot. I must say that I was really excited about this concept because I feel like churches don't usually do a good job of reaching out to others, but this was a great example of us being willing to do it!

Well, we had planned for the youth to set up everything at 5pm while the rest were bringing food and setting up the buffet. So around 4pm, the Hispanic church was finished with their service and were playing soccer as they do in the gym, and it was so much fun for our youth and congregation to see part of their culture.
After a while we set up for the meal and the Hispanic congregation went on through the line, and then right after that the people from across the parking lot came and then our youth went through the line while others from our congregation helped clean and serve!

As time went on, the separate groups came to be one. It was no longer three groups, but one. One group of people brought together by Christ's love being shared! Our youth did a great job of meeting the kids and adults they did not know and playing with the kids, and after about an hour and a half, it was clear that no one wanted to leave. In fact there were even a few families that stayed until we had almost cleaned everything up and were just standing around!

Everyone was grateful, including the hosts! God was with us! It was as if God's kingdom had come, and his will done, on earth as it was in Heaven!
Even for this one night, which we are already planning to do many more times, Heaven on Earth was shared by all!