Ps Andy ends the three week series on God of my Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow this week speaking about God of my Tomorrow. Tomorrow is unknown to us but not to Him! We embrace our tomorrows by faith. The funny thing about fear and faith is that it takes the same effort and energy to do either one of them!

Matthew 6:25 tells us not to worry (NIV) "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes.......... Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life". Realize also that our tomorrow starts today. What we do today impacts our tomorrow. In Malachi 3:10, scripture actually says we can test God on this (NIV) "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it". So, decisions we make today impact our tomorrow.

God is our God of Today, He was our God of Yesterday and He is our God of Tomorrow. We can have peace of heart knowing God has our back at all times.

Ps Paula continues the there parts series God of my yesterday, today and tomorrow, this week focusing on God being our God of Today!

She refers to the same passage in Hebrew telling us Jesus Christ is the same yesterday today and forever and in a world that is always changing. Often we experience situation where people do not treat us the same, but God is the same every day. Lamentations 3:22-23 tells us "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness".

PS Paula goes on to talk about how Psalm 118 tells us that this is the day that the Lord has made, rejoice and be glad in it. We need to rejoice in the days we have and not mourn what we dont have. Ps Paula goes on to encourage us to pick God today. Make today matter. Don't procrastinate, don't put off what we can do now. Today can be a fresh start for us. We may want what we want but there's something wonderful about surrendering to God because when we surrender to God we realize that everything we were holding on to is foolish and doesn't satisfy us and certainly is not causing us to be who God wants us to be. 

This is a must listen challenging message about how we will live our today!

Ps Sean begins the new year with the first of a three part series looking at 'God of My Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow'. This first part looks at God of My Yesterday. Sean uses scriptures from Hebrews 13:8 and Revelation 1:8 to illustrate how God is the same yesterday , today and tomorrow. He is the Alpha and the Omega, He has an all consuming view of time which we tend to see as a linear progression.

Ps Sean speaks about how our yesterdays do not dictate our future, how living in the past can lead to robbing us of our future, how we need to cut away from the past in order to live in God's richness by faith. In Philippians 3:13-14, Paul speaks about "pressing onward toward the prize God has for him".....but he is in a prion cell whilst writing this, shackled! He was not holding on to the past, he was pressing on towards God. Often the main things holding us back are ourselves or others if we allow them to. Learning to hand out the past to God is a journey of trusting God with faith. Sean ends with three key points...

• God can forgive yesterdays failures (Isaiah 43:25, Hebrews 8:12, Psalm 103:12, 1 John 1:9, Romans 8:1)
• God can heal yesterdays hurts (Psalm 34;18, Luke 4:18 - Jesus' mandate was to set the oppressed free!)
• God can deliver us from yesterdays disappointments (Joel 2:25)

Psalm 77:12 is what we need to meditate on (NIV) "I will consider all your works and meditate on all your mighty deeds.” Let us walk in the fullness of strength God has for us as we position ourselves for 2025.

Ps Andy speaks today in the period after Christmas and before the new year. Using the theme of Psalm 84:5 (NIV) "Blessed are those whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage", he examines how life moves from one place to another often. This may be a physical move, a change of relationship, many things, but one key ingredient is for us to keep taking steps of faith and growing in Him. A pilgrimage often involves moving to a place of unknown, many stories in scripture illustrate this. As we walk with Him, we become transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory - 2 Corinthians 3:18.

Our pilgrimage from 2024 to 2025 is to carry on growing in God. God is fully committed to growing us into who we really are. We just need to ensure we don't carry on living in the "old skin" so to speak.

Andy speaks of three common roadblocks to pilgrims....

• Fear of unknown (we need to walk by faith)
• Our limited view of our potential
• The way others see us

Additionally, three keys to pilgrimage are..

• Celebrate and commit to the next
• Build strong behind us, build a legacy to life
• Always plan to exit well

Final thoughts.....the way we leave affects the way we arrive (as we move on in our lives). Also, it will cost us our future to live in the past. Let us remain conscious that we all have an appointment in Zion - 2 Timothy 4:8 (NIV) " Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing".

At the Portsmouth Congregation Carol Service 2024, Ps Sean delivers a message describing the real meaning of the gift give at Christmas.

Ps Andy ends the series we have been looking at recently where the character of God has been an enlightening message. Today he speaks about firstly the attributes of God. God is infinite, self-sufficient, Omnipresent, Omnipotent, Omniscient and omnibenevolent.

Ps Andy then looks again at the characteristics of God which are the hallmarks of His behaviour. We see these exemplified by Christ's behaviour described by the scriptures. When we understand God's character correctly, it affects our expectations of Him. The character of God is revealed by his word and also His Son. Hebrews 1:1-3 (NIV) "In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways,  but in these last days He has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also He made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After He had provided purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven".

Everything we need to know about the character of the Father we can gain by watching Christ! But God places us in his Son, so that our identity now is that we're a people who were once separated from God, but now we are in Christ and Christ now lives in us. The life that we live should be Christ-like. If we live a Christ-like life, the world sees the character of God Through the way we now live.

So, the character of God is revealed by His word. The character of God is revealed in His son. But the character of God is also revealed through our lives. When we understand that we are now in Him and He in us,,,,,,the life we live now must be to demonstrate His character!!

Following from previous weeks where we have been hearing about the character of our Lord, Ps Andy this week speaks about how we can put our trust in God.

People may let us down, but God never does. Nearly 200 times, the Bible teaches us about the trusting nature of God. One of the key things that makes God trustworthy is that He cannot lie. God is love. God cannot lie. The devil is the father of Lies. God is the father of truth and righteousness, honestly and integrity.

Numbers 23:19 tells us (NIV) "God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?" When He promises, he's going to do something, He will always do it because His name and His person are on the line so to speak. We can have confidence in God because He cannot lie. Because of this confidence we can also put our trust in Him. Trust is where we turn our belief into action. Faith and trust go hand in hand.

The ultimate example of trust in God was Jesus upon the cross. Ps Andy delivers an exciting message punctuated with real life stories and scriptures to explain how we can put our trust in God.

Following the last few weeks where Ps Andy and Gina have spoken about the character of God, Paula continues today speaking about the Goodness of God.

God's love for every single one of us is unconditional, his love isn't based on the things we do. It's based on the fact that He made us and He loves us full stop. We need to throw away thoughts telling us there's a chance that maybe God does not love us! The Bible lets us know that we can trust His goodness to meet us in every situation we face knowing that God is good. This is foundational in our relationship with him because it affects how we see and respond to difficulties in life.

Ps Paula details how God is Good all the time, irrelevant of our performance, backed with scriptures and at the end of the message with two young guys doing a run round the church illustrating how God's goodness is always following us (Ps 23 - Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life......).

Ps Andy continues from where Ps Gina left off last week by speaking about the Love of God. God is Love, His love is unconditional. Romans 8:38 tells us...  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Ps Andy delivers an awe inspiring message that ends quoting the hymn:-

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases

His mercies never have come to an end

They are new every morning

New every morning

Great is Thy faithfulness, O Lord

Great is Thy faithfulness

God's love is steadfast, unchanging and is new every day for us!

Ps Gina speaks about the importance of knowing the character of God. She begins by re-telling how important it is to know the character and trustworthiness of people who act as child minders and then relates this to our lives today.

She goes on to explain how in we are bombarded by untruths about the nature of God from just about every angle in modern life and how in fact this is identical to the way in which the serpent beguiled Eve in the Garden of Eden. Many institutions, media, even religions will mock Jesus and tell lies about our God in these days.

How do we refute all this? We need to know the word of God. The Word of God describes the character and true nature of God from Genesis through to Revelation. We don't need to know chapter and verse necessarily, but we do need to know the Word of God then our mind is filled with The Truth, we can refute any lies coming into our minds and live a free life honouring God.