Friends
I hope you were able to take the opportunity to pick up the prayer resources I spoke about in my previous message to you all. Thy Kingdom Come this year has focused on the Lord’s Prayer from which the phrase is derived. But what does “Thy Kingdom come” actually mean? We’re not I would suggest, talking about heaven in the abstract or up there/ on the other side of the veil/ in another dimension or however you understand heaven to be when thinking of it as the place we go after death. Instead, we are talking about God’s Kingdom come on earth. Christians believe that when Jesus came to this earth it was partly to announce the arrival on earth of God’s Kingdom.
In my youth I attended a variety of churches of different denominations and some of these were very big on the idea of “bringing in the Kingdom”. Methodism prefers to speak of “working for Kingdom values”, seeing “bringing in the Kingdom” as something which Jesus started by coming to earth and which is God’s to complete. In the meantime, we can work towards Kingdom things – justice, kindness and mercy being good starting points.
At Pentecost, we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit on the early church, giving them the power to begin the planting of churches across the world. The Holy Spirit gave them the strength and the understanding to work for kingdom values and although we may not all be called to plant new churches, or to be martyred for that matter, we can all work for the kingdom in this way, seeking to understand what it is that God has put before us to do, and praying that the Holy Spirit will empower us to do it.
It is with these prayers and this hope that we are launching “Van with a Plan” the Circuit project that takes Lego, toys and craft into the community and seeks to build relationship with children and families in the hope that they too might hear the Word, be empowered by the Spirit and come to worship the living God. I very much hope that you will be there on Sunday at the launch of “Van with a Plan”, but if you can’t be, do please pray that we will be able to show these Kingdom values to the world around us.
God bless, Vicci