Fire in our hearts - Jesus Army

FIRE IN OUR HEARTS
COMMUNICATE!
community life and compassionate street work. Other streams
like Ichthus and Pioneer had developed their own distinctives
and we were beginning to enrich one another.
Flowing with the mainstream was a whole new chapter in
our story. What was now happening amongst us was precious.
I wept to see our church becoming young again. At times we
had been proud and pushy. The sword we wielded had
wounded people unnecessarily. But God had applied it to us.
We had tasted humiliation, rejection, failure; God’s woundings
had caused us to need others, to recognise our mistakes and
weaknesses, to forgive and be forgiven. And through that open
door sprang a new anointing.
Noel’s new vulnerability touched me, his painstaking efforts
at reconciliation and the genuineness of his vision for
Britain. But some Christians elsewhere doubted his motives.
Was it all a cosmetic job? Another ruse to sign people up,
promote ourselves? Cynicism came our way and it hurt —
tremendously.
We held a big Celebration that April in Westminster Central
Hall, London. There we presented our first Jesus Army video,
Fighting For You, along with Reinhard Bonnke’s A Blood
Washed Africa. Also a well known worship leader joined us
for the evening. The next day in Basingstoke, he sported a
sweatshirt with these words:
Dave Bilbrough appeared with the Jesus Army
And survived!
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