Global Sunday | Andy Elmes | 29th May 2022
Pastor Andy speaks on Global Sunday in Family church where we have embraced all the nations and cultures represented within the church family.
Twenty five years ago, Pastor Andy opened a church with local Portsmouth people. He prayed the prayer of Psalm 2:8 (NIV) “Ask me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession”, not knowing exactly how this might be fulfilled! Today we celebrate the fifty different nations who have made Portsmouth their home. How good is God!! Family Church is not a British church, or an English church. We are an ‘All Nations Church’ made up from people from Australia, across to Europe, to the breadth of Africa, from Ghana, from South Africa, from Nigeria, the Philippines, the world over.
Whilst we represent all the different nations of the world, have different ways of praise, different ways of worshiping, we do have one major common theme. We are part of one Kingdom. What brings us together isn't the strategies of men, but the strategies of a common King – King Jesus.
Scripture gives a glimpse of heaven….when this life is spent and Jesus Christ has returned and collected his church. Revelation 7:9-10 (NIV) ‘After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.”’ When life is gone we shall all be together serving one King in one Kingdom, so let this begin now and remove racism, segregation and other like falsehoods from life. We are all equal in His sight.
Let heaven break out in Portsmouth; let your Kingdom come in us and through us. Let the light of unity in this house and this church represent a different sound to the sound of the nations of this world. Let us live to love God with all of our hearts and live to love each other with all of our hearts. Let us live to see the kingdom that cannot be shaken, overthrown or removed reign in the here and now. Amen.
