Fire in our hearts - The Jesus Army

FIRE IN OUR HEARTSAWAKE O ZION!of tangled undergrowth. The prophet cuts through. Sometimeshis message will appear unkind... but it comes from aheart burning with zeal for God’s church.’ 45Jesus called the people of his kingdom ‘the salt of the earth’.We recognised that if we were to be such kingdom salt wemust never yield up our radical discipleship — even if thatmeant being salt in the wounds of a lukewarm Christianity.We were to sharpen our prophetic edge, not lay down theSpirit’s sword.We were fleshing out the vision. We had set up commonpurses, discipling bands were in progress and people werefinding their ministries. Businesses were established and thechurch and community were growing. The Farm was expanding,with cattle and new land. We now bought Shalom, a farmhouseover the hill from the Farm.Many have patronised the Jerusalem community as an ‘experiment’,but amongst us we were seeing the outcome ofwhat Jesus had promised: ‘No-one who has left home or brothersor sisters or mother or father or children or fields for meand the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much inthis present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, childrenand fields — and with them persecutions) and in the age tocome, eternal life.’ (Mark 10:29-30, italics mine).We certainly had the persecutions, and we were findingmore brothers and sisters, with already well over a hundredchildren!By the spring of 1977 we had opened two more communityhomes. One was in Daventry and consisted of three houses ina row. The other was in a village just over the A5 from the159