The Family of God

No matter where I go in the world, I have family. It's just one of the amazing blessings that comes from God calling me His child; I don't just get an awesome Father and a perfect brother, but an entire family of brothers and sisters. This morning we worshipped with the Concord Street church here in Orlando and it was wonderful to meet so many people I will get to spend eternity with! We visited with a lot of the UCF college students during lunch; I hope we can hang out with them again later this week.

I have visited churches in California, Arkansas, Oregon, Nebraska, Texas, Arizona, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Oklahoma all the way to Nicaragua and Ghana and now Florida. The family of God is amazing. God truly knew what we needed when He set up the church. We can't do this on our own. We need each other to encourage and challenge us. As a body, we don't have to be alone. We are part of something bigger, something greater. The church is a family spread all over the world. I love visiting churches because we already start with something in common: we are united as a body in Christ. Distance, language, race, nationality, age doesn't matter.

I am always encouraged by meeting with God's church and this morning was no exception. Concord St is a large, thriving congregation. There's a Spanish congregation downstairs and the pews are filled in the auditorium. But even with all they do, they want to do more. Which is why we are here to help. Orlando is seen as a tourist place first, but there is a lot of poverty here, too, as we saw yesterday.

The sermon today was...if you would believe it...about letting your light shine :). Seems my post yesterday was an introduction to the lesson this morning. It's something we all need to actually think about. We need to make conscious decisions to let our light shine through our actions. And as the preacher pointed out, that can also be in what we chose to expose ourselves to with media and how we spend our free time. We need to let our light shine 24/7. 

-ej