Fire in our hearts - Jesus Army

FIRE IN OUR HEARTS THE LORD TOOK HOLD OF BUGBROOKE
These young prodigals demonstrated that new birth, baptism
in water and in the Spirit were power encounters with
salvation. Alan had a lot of old life to bury. His eyes had grown
so weak from drugs that he wore shades. When he came out
of the water his eyes were healed. Baptism was no mere confession
of faith: it was power.
It was also an exit from the world’s value system. ‘Repent
and be baptised,’ Peter had cried. ‘Save yourselves from this
corrupt generation!’ (Acts 2:38, 40). It was going to be tough,
but Alan was identifying with the people of God.
Around this time we discovered Love Not The World by
Watchman Nee. Nee wrote: ‘Salvation is essentially a present
exit from a doomed order... [In baptism] a whole world goes
down with you. When you come up, you come up in Christ —
in the ark that rides the waves. You have entered a new order
of things.’ 19
Clearly the hippy culture was not the Jesus culture, but neither
was the status quo. Everything in the New Testament
cried revolution, transformation and a new society. ‘If anyone
is in Christ,’ declared Paul, ‘he is a new creation; the old
has gone, the new has come!’ (2 Cor 5:17).
New creation became our theme song as we broke new
ground. New creation called for a reassessment of values that
had been drummed into us from birth. It meant hacking out a
hallowed spot from the tangle of worldliness. It put a question
mark on everything we did simply because everybody
else did it. Television, theatre, sport, vacations abroad, religious
festivals — they all came under the searchlight.
Many questions arose as we glimpsed the magnitude of
God’s will. ‘Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this
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