Family Church Portsmouth

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.

On this Remembrance Sunday, Ps Andy speaks about a theme of Extreme Generosity. Many people laid down their loves for the sake of others, for the freedom of generations they would never see or know. The world of the generous gets larger and larger, but the world of the stingy gets smaller and smaller. God our Father was generous to the extreme in laying down the life of His son for our salvation. PS Andy goes on to speak about the nature of the heart of a generous person and how generosity is not purely related to finances, but time, attitude, many facets of our lives. Its also about how we use our words, how we serve, how we forgive. Do we do these things begrudgingly or with a joyful heart.

Listen to this inspiring message linking the them of Remembrance Sunday to the sacrifice of Jesus for our souls to the ways of our hearts.

Following from the previous two weeks where Ps Andy has spoken about Jesus being both the Author and Finisher of our faith, Ps Sean this week looks at what happens when we are in the middle of the journey from the start towards the finish. These are the times when doubts, uncertainties, problems, troubles, sin and all manner of issues crop up to distract our life away from being God centered.

Using the stories told in Mark 4, v 35 onward, Ps Sean describes the situation where Jesus' followers have been listening to parables, watching miracles and now Jesus is asleep in a boat after saying "let us to go the other side" (of the water). The waves kick up, the disciples wake Jesus from his sleep as they are full of worry about being drowned. But, Jesus had told them they were going across the water, and go they would, come a storm or no storm. Jesus' promises are always kept. He never lets us down, even when we are mid journey and begin to worry over something.

Ps Sean speaks further about us leaning into the character of God and leaning not unto our own understanding (Proverbs 3:5). He also speaks about how we can acquire greater faith in God. The Bible gives us this instruction in Romans 10:17.

Listen to this challenging message about how we must lean upon the one true God by having faith in His character through His word!

Pastor Andy continues from last week speaking about Faith. However, we can have faith in people, all sorts of things, but the faith Ps Andy speaks about is Faith in God. It is through God's sacrifice of his only Son that we have salvation, it is faith in our Lord's promises not just as the Author but moreover the Finisher that Ps Andy shows us is the key ingredient here.

God is wanting us to put trust in him, why?, because He is trustworthy. We trust Him as the creator of the universe, but also his promises - when He gives us a word, He puts his own name on that word to fulfill it. When Jesus said to the people in the boat, we're going to the other side, a storm came but it wasn't really the issue because Jesus had given the word as the author - ie He had given a promise and it would be fulfilled (storm or no storm). The reaction needs to be to thank Him, even when it looks impossible, we don't know or cant see how it can be fulfilled. We move from standing with the author seeing things that haven't happened yet to standing with the finisher. Faith in God positions us at the finish line even when we are still in the race!

Ps Andy further expands on this by speaking about the faith journey that Abraham had, and ends suggesting 4 key lessons....

• Faith is usually a journey, which rarely ends the next day
• If God needed our help He would ask!
• Faith is never reasonable, we may need to wait for it to make sense
• Faith is always real before we see it 

Pastor Andy begins a few messages speaking about Faith. He wants to encourage in in our journey of life as we live in times where our faith may be challenged by everyday events.

The Bible recognizes Jesus as the author and the finisher of our faith. In the book of Revelation 22:13, scripture speaks of Jesus being the alpha, and the omega, the beginning and the end. Jesus causes us to be able to believe in God and see things happen where we're left saying "thank you God, that was you, not me"!

Andy spends time explaining how Jesus is not just the author of promises about our lives, but is also the finisher of the same promises also. We need to live our lives from the standpoint of the finisher, not just the author of the promises for our lives. Looking at Hebrews 11, we gain insight into many hers of scripture who lived by faith in God. Later, Andy will focus more on Hebrews 12 where the focus is turned more toward ourselves and how we live our lives.