This week Emma took us through the life of Jacob, pulling out 4 key stories and lessons that he learned and that we can learn from God being at work in the life of Jacob.

This week Matt used to the story of Abraham (one of the first disciples) to talk about how we learn from God, and about God, by trusting in His word and what He calls us to.

Matt kicked off the new year, and our new bible in two years journey, by looking at the idea that what is created in Genesis 1 is actually a temple and why that is important and what that means for us today and how we connect with God and understand our world.

This last year a group people with a prophetic gifting got together to encourage one another and to listen to God for His church here at Counterslip, and so to encourage us for the coming year. This is the word they felt the Lord has given them for us, His church here, for this coming year.

As we draw our first two year trip through the bible together to a close Jo asks us to join with the psalmist, to look back and to remember that the loyal love of our God endures through all things and at all times.

The people of God so easily forget all that God has done. This week Anna joined king David in reminding us of what might have been "if the Lord had not been on our side" and encouraged us to look to the future with hope remembering the goodness of God that we have already seen.

This week Heidi led us through Psalm 118, showing us how the psalmist journeyed the difficult times by focussing on "who" was with Him, and this being a reason to choose to rejoice.

The bible tells us that our God is not a god of confusion, and yet so often when we read Revelation many of us end up confused! However, last week Matt showed us that to those who received John's letter (the book of Revelation) it made perfect sense through the lens of the Roman culture of their day. In this weeks talk Matt unpacks the other culture that these people were a part of and it's influence on the language of the book of Revelation - The Old Testament story. We'll see how when we know the OT like the early church did suddenly Revelation makes a lot more sense and isn't so weird.

Revelation was written to reveal something to the churches that John led, but so often today when we read Revelation we're left feeling some what confused or weirded out. In the first of a two part talk, today Matt unpacked some of the context of the day which helps us to see that when the churches received this letter from their pastor they knew exactly what it was talking about - and as we discover that we also discover the great message, encouragement and challenge of the letter of Revelation.

This week Matt unpacks the context surrounding these letters from John and Jude to the churches in the New Testament and explores how some of the issues, and counter gospel messages, they were addressing 2000 years ago are still around in the church today, encouraging us to remember and hold on to the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.