Fire in our hearts - Jesus Army

FIRE IN OUR HEARTS
NEW GENERATION
The secret of Steve’s success? He admired Noel’s spirit,
drank deep of the community vision and was a happy mix of
prophetic spirituality and winning love. His team in London
had a knack of attracting ‘quality’ people and were producing
a new generation of community lovers.
Brokenness, soul freedom and yielding to God were vital
ingredients. Steve had known frequent anointings since our
general outpouring in 1988. They were a rocket boost into
new ministry. Now, at the summer campaign in London, Steve
was doing strange things again in the worship times (like
running backwards with his eyes closed). During the mission
his team was so ‘intoxicated’ that passers-by came in to the
marquee looking for the bar!
We, like many Christians, were discovering a new closeness
to God through what the media were calling the ‘Toronto Blessing’.
In May we’d heard the story of Eleanor Mumford’s visit
to Toronto and the subsequent ‘bedlam’ of laughter, shaking
and ‘swooning’ in the highly-respectable London Anglican
church, Holy Trinity Brompton. The power-wave, connected
with Toronto’s Airport Vineyard Fellowship, was nothing if
not startling. Before long it had spread into hundreds of British
churches and alerted the national press.
Some of the things they reported were pretty bizarre. Roaring
like lions, jerking like chickens and pogoing about like
pneumatic drills didn’t easily fit into the British mindset! Inevitably
evangelicals of a more rational bent questioned
whether this was really the Holy Spirit at work. However research
into genuine historic revivals showed that such manifestations
were not entirely new.
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