Happy Birthday Harvest Glasgow

If we were honest when we arrived at Strathclyde University at 8:45am four years ago today we would have been unable to tell you how many people would come to that first service. We would have told you that we had now idea how many, indeed if any people, would come along in the weeks to follow. What we were sure of is God's promise that His Word does not return to Him empty (in fact Isaiah 55 was the first passage I preached to the church) and that Glasgow needed a church of uncompromising commitment to Biblical truth and systematic preaching of God's Word allied to worship that was compelling, contemporary and Christ-centred. In reality the survival of a church whether a plant or an established church is always about God's sovereignty rather than our sense of personal certainty.

What we have seen is God transforming lives, growing people's love for Him and one another, a church family growing, people investing in their walk with God as a community project, a great hunger for God's Word, people loved, cared for and helped. We have seen salvation, repentance, the Gospel heard, the Gospel clung to. Our church family sees service as a get to not a got to, the call to depend not despair. We understand in a deeper way that we need to preach the cross to ourselves just as much today as we did when we came to trust Jesus for the first time. We have known the blessing of being part of Harvest Bible Fellowship and continue to rejoice in that sense of family that spans the world. We are blessed, blessed, blessed!

As we look back we are so thankful for the many ways that God has demonstrated His goodness to us. We are no longer at Strathclyde University, having moved to the Fotheringay Centre in Pollokshields because God has something better. The reality is that so much of the short history of our church family is a story of precisely that- God has something better for us. I have learnt so much. Over the next couple of weeks I'm going to blog a series of things that I have learnt specifically. In the meantime check out a couple of videos which tell the stories of the past couple of years. God has been so good to us.

The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.All your works shall give thanks to you, O Lord, and all your saints shall bless you! Psalm 145: 9-10

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