Fire in our hearts - Jesus Army

FIRE IN OUR HEARTS
ON THE MARCH
The night was calm, but the next morning he wept when he
saw a huge tree sprawled over the lawn.
In Birmingham they met homelessness, poverty, violence,
addiction and loneliness. One woman, whom they were seeking
to lead to Christ, died drunk in bed. They saw afresh, as
Booth once did, how an army of Christians must arise to meet
the need. The powers of darkness were rampant, the occult
ran 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 a
multiracial church, and were saddened by our slowness to
reach blacks. Maggie from Liberia was one who found our
friendship. ‘My life was very sinful,’ she wrote in Lifenews,
‘and I had reservations about a white church anyway. I made
sure I was out when they called, but they caught me unawares!
What really surprised me was that they didn’t mind
me being the only black. After that God worked in me, and I
became like one of the gang. I knew I belonged.’ 79
In Britain the harvest was ripening. We spent eight months
of mission work in central England, on top of a busy working
week. ‘God is keeping his soldiers fighting,’ we sang from the
Salvation Army song book, but with such a full programme
and the huge increase in raw converts many of us were getting
worn 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, Christian
ambition, and degree, for tractors, straw-carting, and cattlerearing.
He scorned false spirituality, but now had lost his
inspiration. In his own words, he was ‘the farm slob’. In frus-
249