Fire in our hearts - The Jesus Army

FIRE IN OUR HEARTS THE LORD TOOK HOLD OF BUGBROOKEthe Scriptures he failed to see a vegetarian Jesus, so he gaveit up — much to the relief of the dogs!Rufus also burned his mystical books. But the house quicklyfilled with black smoke and they all rushed into the garden!The police soon got interested in all these hippy comings andgoings, and at two in the morning the innocent freaks werebusted! In came the law with a search warrant but all theyfound was a pile of Jesus leaflets and One Way tee-shirts.Perplexed, they sniffed out a jar of herbal tea and took it awaytriumphantly for testing. As soon as the door closed, the hippiesall rolled around laughing. Rufus had only just disposedof his last ‘grass’ plants.By now John Thom was established in a house at Almond Closeon the Bugbrooke estate. There he gathered some unlikelycharacters: a biker, an ex-monk, the eccentric chap with thebadges, and a fairly normal Christian lad, who had turned uplate one night on the back of his dad’s Honda 50. It was acrash course in relationships; for John it was a crash coursein leadership.He also manned the ‘Jesus Lifeline’ telephone and recordeda new message late every night. ‘Phone every day. Drive gloomaway!’ was the motto and up to sixty people a day left a recordedresponse to the message — some none too savoury!Amidst all the excitement we needed to steer a firm courseand see what God was doing. One thing was clear to us — anew society was emerging whose roots were not in an oldtradition but in a new work of God.There was a great mix. Students from Oxford began to visitus, three or four lay preachers had joined us, and God was84