UPDATE 07 - Guest Post from the Bradleys
Hey everyone! We have a guest post this week from the Bradley family on how their family prayed that God would give us this building. I hope you find this story as encouraging as I did! - Stephen
We are the Bradley Family: Harrison, Kaitlin, Miriam (age 5), and Arthur (age 2). We have lived in the Port Richmond neighborhood and have been members of Liberti Church Riverwards for the last 5 years.
We love Liberti Church and like many other members we have longed for our church to find a place to call our permanent home.
When we found out that Liberti was looking at and then planned to put in an offer for the old Portside Arts building we were so excited. That building had been a somewhat silly but also sweet part of our lives for the last year without us ever having been inside it. You see, we live on Belgrade Street and pass 2531 Lehigh Ave. every day on our way to school and every Sunday on our way to church. We affectionately referred to it as “Rainbow House” because Miriam loved the rainbow of colorful fish on the outside of the building. Every day we would drive past and say hi to our Rainbow House and it just became something that made us smile when we saw it.
Harrison and I (Kaitlin) had been praying already for the new building search and where God might lead us. Upon finding out that we had put in an offer for 2531 Lehigh Ave. we knew we needed to include our kids in praying for the building. So every day instead of saying hi to Rainbow House we would take that opportunity to pray for the building together as a family. We would turn down the radio and while we sat at the light at Belgrade and Lehigh we would pray that if it was God's will that He would give us this building for our new church home. We prayed this way every time we drove past the building and if we forgot Miriam would remind us that we needed to pray. Her prayers were small and short, “Dear God, please let us have Rainbow House for our church, thank you!” but what a joy it is to know that he hears even the smallest and quietest of prayers. It was truly a joyful and emotional moment for us when we drove past Rainbow House with her and prayed with her, “Thank you Jesus for providing this building to us. Thank you for hearing our prayers and giving this place to use to make our church home! We thank you and we praise you for this amazing gift you have given to us!”
Now every time we drive past Rainbow House we are reminded of how much God loves us and how he listens to our prayers. It became a lesson in faith that has enriched our lives in ways we never imagined. We discovered in this rhythm of praying together that God is calling us to trust him for all our needs and our desires and that it's important to include our kids in making our requests known to God. It gave us a unique opportunity to pray as a family and it has encouraged us to pray together as a family more.
We now pray that God would use this building to bring many to faith in him. That someday when people talk about this building it won't be because of its colorful exterior but because it's where they met Jesus and learned that he loves them more then they could ever imagine and that he hears and answers our prayers.
We, like so many at Liberti, look forward to our first Sunday in the new building and we pray that God continues to provide for all our needs for the renovation journey ahead.
- The Bradleys
