Fire in our hearts - The Jesus Army

FIRE IN OUR HEARTSON THE MARCHThe night was calm, but the next morning he wept when hesaw a huge tree sprawled over the lawn.In Birmingham they met homelessness, poverty, violence,addiction and loneliness. One woman, whom they were seekingto lead to Christ, died drunk in bed. They saw afresh, asBooth once did, how an army of Christians must arise to meetthe need. The powers of darkness were rampant, the occultran wild, and a great heartcry rose up from these inner cities.The evangelists wept at some of the things they saw.They saw riots, race-hatred and unrest. We longed for amultiracial church, and were saddened by our slowness toreach blacks. Maggie from Liberia was one who found ourfriendship. ‘My life was very sinful,’ she wrote in Lifenews,‘and I had reservations about a white church anyway. I madesure I was out when they called, but they caught me unawares!What really surprised me was that they didn’t mindme being the only black. After that God worked in me, and Ibecame like one of the gang. I knew I belonged.’ 79In Britain the harvest was ripening. We spent eight monthsof mission work in central England, on top of a busy workingweek. ‘God is keeping his soldiers fighting,’ we sang from theSalvation Army song book, but with such a full programmeand the huge increase in raw converts many of us were gettingworn down.Steve ‘Genuine’, the farm strong man and kiddies’ hero,went through a crisis at this time. Once he had ‘seen the kingdom’,Steve had sacrificed his nice background, Christianambition, and degree, for tractors, straw-carting, and cattlerearing.He scorned false spirituality, but now had lost hisinspiration. In his own words, he was ‘the farm slob’. In frus-249