Fire in our hearts - Jesus Army

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