BrianIngraham.com | ASPIRE

October 27th has finally arrived and our bid is turned in!!!
All bids were due at noon (GMT) today. I don’t know how many bids were turned in or what the offers are. I do know that many people from church showed up in the cold and rain this morning to pray before classes and work.

We gathered for an hour to both ask God for a miracle and surrender our future to God. I feel Psalm 112:7 is true of us today, “He will have no fear of bad news; his heart is steadfast, trusting in the LORD.” It is great to be a part of a people who pray!!! I know people all over the world are praying with us and know God is hearing our prayers.

I have been told it will be the middle of next week before we find out how we stand in relation to this bid. If we will be moving back into the building soon or if we are going to have to wait and see what the city is going to say about the accepted bids plans. There is a good chance that if a bid is accepted contingent on converting the church into flats (apartments) that the city will say “no” and the building will be available again soon. We will see.

I will keep you posted as things develop. Do pray with us!

This Friday at noon all bids are to be in for the purchase of our old church building.  We are praying for a miracle.  Please intercede with me, that God would move and we would get the building!

I love the people in our church!!!

Things couldn’t be more different for our church these last two weeks. We used to be in a huge church building with room to grow. Now we are in a smaller back room of a newer church building with a ceiling you can touch. We have changed both times and locations and yet, we continue to grow and God continues to move. All the people in the church have shown themselves to be faithful, flexible and committed God and to one another.

In this time of change I see what we are made of, and what I see is beautiful.

Father, I thank you for surrounding me with such amazing people who love you and love one another. Lead us forward!

Stephen Irwin has the best blog I have seen pertaining to what is happening at Re:Hope. He has some great pictures of us moving and our temporary meeting place.

Check out his blog HERE

or go to www.irwinvision.com

My son received his football (US – Soccer) shirt yesterday just before practice. After practice he ran up and told me, “Only the fast boys get football shirts because we are fast.” I thought it funny how after just 1 hour of having his jersey he thinks he earned it because of how fast he is.

How quickly we can become askew in our thinking. How quickly we begin to assume that the best things in our life have been earned and not given from heaven. And so I ask myself are their things in my life that have been gifts from God that I have come to believe I have earned?

Last Sunday a man I had never met before approached me at church. Apparently he was doing some research for the Church of Scotland about reaching the emerging generation. When he looked around our church he was struck at how many young people there were and he said, “Most ministers say that the young are not interested in God these days and yet I look around here– How is this possible? How?”

Jim Goll comments on Daniel chapter seven saying, “What Daniel was witnessing here is a vision of the revival of evil… Daniel wanted to look beyond the revival of evil to see the Lords response to it….“

I can see how God’s people in such an extremely post-Christian context, in a time of a revival of evil, and the collapse of many churches, could be driven to giving up hope of the young ever returning to God. And yet, all it takes is the Spirit’s movement. I live in a city where no truer word could be said than the words of Zechariah, “It’s not by might, nor by power but by My Spirit’ says the Lord.”

Keep looking beyond the revival of evil to see the how the Lord is already responding to it in powerful and obvious ways. God is challenging his people to look past what they see and believe that the God they have heard about, the God they have read about, has begun moving in our day like in the days of old.

We have a temporary home!  The great people at Partick South Church are letting us use some rooms on Sunday afternoon and are even giving us some storage space a mere half mile down the road.  I personally am so thankful to them for their flexibility and generosity.

The old church building has a closing date of 27 October where all bids are examined and the best offer is accepted.  Please pray with us, as it seems we won’t be the highest offer but we anticipate being the only ‘clean’ offer.  A developer would offer more but with many restrictions based on planning that may never be approved.  It will be up to the school to decide if they would prefer a bit less now on a ‘sure sale’ or risk accepting a bid that may never pan out.

I know so many of you are praying with us and we are deeply thankful.