The Salvation Army-A signpost to a life?

So David comes up to me and he looks kind of pleased with himself.

His eyes have a hint of a twinkle shooting out of his corneas like a laser beam.

His smile is equally as sharp.

David is in his sixties and has endured a mostly torrid life. This includes periods of street homelessness, alcoholism and other social deprivations.

He hands me a brown Manila envelope.

A day or so ago he told me he wanted to write down his testimony and give it to me. His writing skills are severely limited and I knew that would take a monumental effort.

Never the less, he handed me the carefully written document.

The writing was barely legible, and the words did not always make sense, but I have deciphered it the best that I could.

I want to share it with you, Dave says it's OK.

When I became a Christian in February 2003, when my wife died, I found out that I couldn't cope in life anymore. I turned into a alcoholic. Then the Council threw me out of my bungalow. I couldn't pay the rent. I lived on the streets. I went to see my daughter but she said there was no room for me. I slept for two nights on my cousins couch. One sunday I was walking around Durham City Centre when a man started to talk to me. He was Salvation Army man. He took me to the major at the Salvation Army Hall. I told him my problems. The major gave me an address where I could get a flat. I lived there for four months then the Landlord told me he was selling the flats so I had to go. I was able though to go to my sister's house and she took me in. My sister got me a job as a cleaner at the electricity board. Then in a church where I went for coffee morning offered me a job as a cleaner. The people were very kind. I was grateful. I began to pray. I got baptized at the Cathedral by Bishop Martin. I went to an Alpha course and I am saved. I now go to prayer meetings on Mondays and Sanctuary 21 everyday. God saved me.

As I read this, Firstly it moved me deeply, secondly It confirmed in me what an important role Christins have in society today.

And the those of us who are part of the Salvation Army, can be devastatingly effective as we flood this world with practical and spiritual kindness.

This simple encounter and action by a Salvationist in the street was pivotal in pointing this man to Jesus and ultimately to a better life.

As the Corps I lead continues to be shaped by God, I think more and more that the Salvation Army is a signpost to a life.

A better life.

Especially as people encounter Jesus, and see Jesus in us.

Jesus says I am the way the truth and the life, no-one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:6)

Even as I write that scripture down I am drenched in the weight of responsibility we have to point those who need a savior to him.

The only way to deal with his is this is to make sure our relationship with God is sound.

The world desperately needs to see Jesus in us. Our very lives are signposts to a life.

Here is a common but still a very big question for us to day.

Are we sign posting people to the way the Truth and the life? Are we Looking for encounters with people who do not know Jesus?

David's highly simple story is a testimony as he puts it. It's an example of the power that we hold to change lives. That power is the power of the Holy Spirit in us. It's also an example of how he was sign posted to the way, the truth and the life.

And for him that changed everything.

Out of the ordinary?

My early morning Gary-space before I immerse myself in work, was in Costa Coffee this morning, and it was special.

I mostly devour a scripture or two, sometimes I read whatever I’m reading, quite often I just stare into thin air and think deeply about the day ahead, I always have a pray, and of course down a couple of extra hot two-shot skinny cappuccinos.

This morning I was transfixed by the text of the book I am reading at the moment.

I am reading a book called “Alone,” the intense and moving account by Richard E Byrd of his solo six-month polar adventure in 1933 to Bolling Advance Weather Station in Antarctica.

He was on a mainstream expedition with others, but took a decision to do something out of the ordinary. He decided to trek to the advance weather station alone for six months, not because he wanted to carry out any ground breaking scientific study of the aurorals or the weather, but primarily because he wanted to experience just how good true silence and solitude are.

Richard E Byrd was a celebrity of the day, so the papers followed his every move.

So he just left his group and embarked on his lone expedition leaving others to communicate it to the world.

When the news broke out internationally that he had done this, his family and friends sent radio messages to him (that he didn’t get until the expedition was over because a friend in the original expedition took the messages and didn’t want him to read them in case it discouraged him). The messages were sometimes encouraging but mostly highly discouraging, telling him how mad he was and what a disaster it would be.  Newspapers started to make up reasons why he undertook such a mad expedition, saying things like, “He has embarked on six months of serious drinking,” or, “Byrd has been exiled by his own men!” High ranking politicians warned him of ensuing disaster and financial ruin.

His six month expedition was seemingly a bit crazy, and he did nearly die a few times while at Bolling.

Yet he was profoundly changed by the experience. He found his perspectives on life were changed completely and his whole being was enriched by the experience.

Isn’t it funny when people do something out of the ordinary, the “voices of reason” speak up! The mystical stories start, the plainly exaggerated legends begin.

I think of the church and its difficulties in standing tall and present in the world today.

Could it be there are too many voices of reason? When someone is inspired to do something out of the ordinary, the voices crank up, the mystical stories are born, and the legends begin?

I was speaking at a big Salvation Army Corps one Sunday morning. I had been prayed with in a side room before the service, there was a buzz in the hall, pre-service music was happening. We had two minutes before the service started. As usual I got the urge to go to the loo (Too much info I know) so I dashed to the Gents. In the gents was another guy about 75 years of age. He turned and acknowledged me by saying “good morning,” I replied with a “hello.” He then asked me, “Are you visiting today?” I said yes. He continued, “You would be better coming back when our officers are doing the meeting, the guy doing it this morning is one of those weird Salvationists, funny things happen at his Corps.”

That was the nicest thing people have said about me for ages!

The legend was already in full swing!

We do like the out of the ordinary at our Church, especially when it comes to taking risks to reach a lost soul. But guys, I can reassure you I am almost definitely an ordinary guy!

The voice of reason spoke out I was weird! (No comments please!)

I think I find voices of reason are so often voices of safety.

How God needs the church to be out of the ordinary right now.

I’m not talking about how we look, or how we do worship, or any of that sad and stale argument. I’m talking about stepping off the reasonable track in order to rescue those who are dying without a saviour? To be brave enough to be totally unreasonable if we have to be.

Richard E Byrd did something out of the ordinary and it changed his life.

Jesus Christ constantly did many things that were out of the ordinary in order to heal, save and transform lives. The voices of reason made stuff up about him, criticized him and tried to get him back to the ordinariness that stifled the life out of people.

I don’t know about you, but being part of the Church wouldn’t be very exciting ordinarily?

But following Jesus with passion and desire will automatically take us out of the ordinary.

Will Those who think I’m a bit weird say amen?

Plans?

Davy the dog.

Sounds like a kids cartoon show or something!

Davy the dog is a local vagrant who hangs about Durham City Centre. He got the name “The dog” due to his constant referral to an imaginary dog he calls John.

His clothes are filthy, there is an active array of insect life in his matted hair, and his shoes are worn and tattered.

His only possessions are a PAYG mobile phone, a Lady Gaga CD, a broken groundsheet which he uses as a roof over his head, and an old seriously dirty mattress that his mate helped him pull up behind an old wall in an old graveyard where he mostly sleeps.

He drinks litres of frosty jack cider and cheap vodka when he can get it.

His conversation is deceivingly lucid, he sounds like he is making complete sense, yet he is really talking out some really crazy stuff.

But just occasionally he comes out with something really profound even though he doesn’t always mean too.

The other day, I was sitting in a doorway sharing a hot coffee with him when he came out with a quote from mike Tyson the boxer. He said you know what Gary? Mike Tyson says, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

He was referring to his life so far. He then shared a whole host of life-disasters that had occurred in his time so far on earth. He finished by repeating over and over again, “I had plans once you know, I had plans once you know.”

It had me reflecting big time!

Obviously Davy the dog had been punched in the face by his lot in life more than once, so much so he was down and almost out.

I began to think about my own life so far.

How I had been planning and scheming for many years in the earlier part of my life and getting punched in the face most of the time.

I was never in the position that Davy finds himself in, but I was almost down and almost out on more than one occasion.

I grew up in a Salvationist family, fifth generation actually, so the Salvation Army was a world all on its own that I developed in. I was taught attributes such as not buying on a Sunday, commitment to the band, do not let your hair grow down to your collar, shine your shoes, be there every Sunday, and the list could go on and on.

Right up until my early thirties, I lived out that kind of Salvationism. I could do Salvationism but inside my being? I was messed up, falling apart and going nowhere.

But the plan was to look like a Salvationist.

   

Jesus Christ of Nazareth rescued me.

In our bathroom at home there is a little ceramic plate in white with black writing on it, it says life is what happens when we are busy making plans.

And Davy the dog tells me everyone has a plan.

I had a plan, and was always making plans.

I feel like I missed life, life that was happening all around me.

After I encountered the reality of Jesus and began a serious relationship with him, my plans seemed to just disappear. I started to see his plan, especially as I began to see the need that was around me everywhere. I started to realise his plans are my plans. A well-documented verse set deep in the texts of the Bible says, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29: 11)

That’s the thing. Mike Tyson says, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” God says, “My plans won’t harm you but prosper you and my plans have a future in them.”

So when I say Jesus rescued me, I mean when I was going it alone I kept getting knocked down.

Doing the Salvationism thing was not enough.

There was no life in it. I don’t think there ever will be life in that alone.

Since encountering Jesus though, the Salvation Army has come alive for me, it suddenly has a purpose, a reason for its existence, and I have a purpose and a reason for my time on earth and the two match up perfectly because they are lovingly wrapped in the being of Jesus.

As I dodge the knits from Davy the dog’s matted head, I get the strong feeling that God is drawing the Salvation Army back to the Spiritual life. Where a beautiful relationship with God, a deeper experience of God will determine who we are and what we become not a set of human plans.

Because God knows the plans he has for us.

Maybe it’s time to stand up and resist being punched in the face.

What about your plans? What’s happening?

Is it time to step out of the flow of our own plans and into the stream of Gods plan?

A Call to the Salvation Army

So it's one of those mad days.

Tensions were running high.

Mindsets,  damaged by the virulent chargedness of alcohol,  heroin,  and other dark elixers seemed to be in overdrive.

Two guys were arguing over some insignificant issue.  They were about to wade into each other with a menace in their eyes and a venom in their veins until I managed to step in between them.

Another guy was struggling not to vomit after downing three litres of cider before 9am.  Eventually a technicolour yawn did occur!

Then another lady who has just one tooth was crying loudly because she said she had to go to the dentist for a tooth out,  you do the maths!

I don't know.

There is something in the air today.

Mind you it went quiet for half an hour while the City beat police came in for some soup.

As soon as they left?

Back to Ravingmad Salvation Army Corps.

Later on, in walks Ruth, a young girl heavily addicted to drugs.  We hadn't seen her for a while as she's been in Jail.  Her arm was badly injured from a fall.  We cleaned her up and bandaged her wound.  She started to cry,  she was crying for her mum,  who has long lost touch with her. She cried herself to sleep and spent the rest of the day sleeping on one of our couches. 

Watching her sleep,  she looks like an angel. 

A question rises upon  my mind. 

Why do these people get drawn to the Salvation Army?

When we planted Sanctuary 21, we didn't have much of strategy.  We cleaned the building up,  opened the door one day and prayed like mad. We agreed with God we would deal with the whatsoever and the whosoever.

Not much of a plan eh?

But here's the thing.

I honestly believe that in our DNA,  the lifeblood of the Salvation Army is that we are house of justice.

A star in the East.

A champion of the whosoever and the whatsoever.

A warm breast where the poor and the needy,  the outcasts an the forgotten can lay their heads.

The Spirit of God then layed this word on my lips and my heart, and I felt an incredible urge to share this on my Blog.

The Spirit of God says,  get ready for an influx of the broken.  Ready yourselves to do whatever it takes to embrace the poor, the sick,  the Fatherless and the homeless. This is the heart I gave you.  Open your hearts,  open your doors, break open your Citadels.  Make them houses of justice. Make ready for the whatsoever, do not sing and shout about the whosoever and then pick and choose who fits in.  My Salvation is for everyone says the Lord. The Spirit of God says I put out a call to the visionaries who have been re-routed,  you are down but not out.  Return to the ranks, return to where it began.  The march is back on. Listen up! The last will be first.  The tables are set.  They are coming from literally anywhere and everywhere.  Get ready,  return to the track, draw a line on the past,  freshen the now, grasp the future.  I set the Salvation Army through the vision seekers of the past. The track is set. Go immediately to the track I set. You are one with the Church,  you have to be one with each other in order to fight. The Spirit of God says you are my open heart,  my tears, my comfort to the needy.  Get ready.  They are coming.  Go and rescue them in the streets,  the back alleys,  the low places,  the ruins of a world in turmoil.  Stand up and fight not with strategies and programmes,  and even that which is business,  but with open lives,  massive hearts,  brave hearts. I will give you a heart of flesh.  Hearts burning,  bodies willing to die to save the lost.  Get ready.  A wave of favour is coming. The fight is on. You will be justice fighters. An Army of freedom. 

Ruth has awoke and is crying for her mum again. I watch as Dawn and one of our volunteers cradle her. 

It's the Salvation Army,  fighting for the lives of the broken.

It's the only way.

The other side of the Wilderness

The wilderness often gets a bad press.

In the world of Christianity it is often associated with times of spiritual dryness.

Those times when your life seems to have no purpose or even a shape to it. I've even wrote another blog-post last year describing one of my own "wilderness" experiences.

So why am I feeling today the wilderness has some significance?

I picture as I am sipping my coffee today an actual place of wilderness. I was on vacation (I'll use that word seeing as my American readership outstrips my UK readership now! Thank you USA) in one of the Canary Islands, Fuerteventura to be precise. I was out walking, alone one morning. the sun was high and hot, and I walked for about five miles without seeing a single other Human Being. the blackish volcanic ground was dry and parched. whatever plant life that was around amounted to pathetic sun-withered shrubbery that looked so lifeless and brittle. there was miles of dry open space to the right of me, and a vast expanse of crystal green ocean to my left.

It was wilderness.

Yet, even though everything was hot and scorched, there was something tangible you could sense.

Something very real.

Something that seemed to lift my hope levels, yet kind of unnerved me at the same time.

It was the silence.

|Well near silence actually. The only sounds I could hear were my breathing, my footsteps and the gentle boom of the ocean.

In our times of what we would deem as a wilderness experience, when life seems to have no purpose or shape, hope seems flat, and vision seems to be obscured, we can often long for something deeper, something real, something that will bring hope, energy and focus back to our lives.

Read this scripture guys:

Therefore I am going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back the vineyards and will make the valley of trouble a door of hope. there she will respond as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt. (Hosea 2: 14-15)

Judah and Israel were frequently falling out of step with God, in other words falling out of his ways. God allures them, leads them into the wilderness. he says, there I will speak tenderly to her.

You may believe that wilderness is a kind of negative experience, so its interesting that God wants to allure people into a wilderness experience, so he can speak tenderly to us?

It seems to me this gives the wilderness experience a whole new dimension!

The wilderness is a place where all is stripped away, where silence hangs in the air, where physical distractions are at a minimum. It appears this is a place where God can get our attention! Where he has us positioned to really hear his tender voice.

Silence.

Solitude.

Space.

These things are so necessary to reach a deeper encounter with a Holy God.

How are you guys feeling lately? Are we walking in God's ways? Are we encountering Him deeply? or do we maybe feel disconnected from Him somehow, like we are unheard or like he just isn't responding? Maybe we feel he doesn't really speak to us like he seems to speak with someone else?

Here is a question for us to contemplate for a moment.

What are we filling our lives with?

Busyness or its close relation Business?

Stuff?

Maybe God wants to speak tenderly to us but he cant get through the busyness or business so he cant get our full attention.

When were we last in a silent place?

Just us and God?

Silence is crucial to our survival on the Christian journey.

I had an interesting conversation with a homeless guy the other week. I have tried to get this guy to get a roof over his head, but he just won't go, he prefers it on the street. I asked him, "why do you choose to live in a doorway?

His answer surprised me.

"I would miss the silence, I always seem closer to something bigger in the silence."

Could this be the "allure" of the wilderness?

At the beginning of the BBCs ace series "The Big Silence" Abbott Christopher Jamison makes a very provocative statement. He says, "If you want to be deeply connected to God, then you must spend time in silence."

God allured His people by leading them into the wilderness. So he could speak tenderly to them.

Maybe that's a word for someone today?

Maybe you have been so busy lately that your connection to God hasn't been too strong or even there at all. Your relationship with God has been a bit hit and miss?

Maybe a trip to the wilderness, the quiet place, the silent place is in order?

The next few verses of this scripture are so amazing.

There (In the wilderness) I will give her back the vineyards and will make the valley of trouble a door of hope. There she will respond as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt.

These verses are all about hope and fresh energy. When we hear His tender voice there will be hope where there is trouble. where there is tiredness and fatigue physically, mentally and spiritually, He will bring verve and fresh energy. where there is blankness he will restore vision.

God wants our full attention. So maybe its time for the wilderness.

Because there he will speak tenderly to us.

In the silence.