THE GLORY DAYS

The following article was recently printed in 'Salvationist' and written by our Senior Leader Ian.

MY wife and I have been blessed in our officership and have enjoyed the opportunity of ministering in many different corps throughout the UK. Each visit has brought us great excitement, as we see the Spirit of God fulfilling his will and purposes.It is wonderful to hear the testimonies of the saints and to see their hunger for holiness. It excites us to hear about people being won for Jesus through corps ministry. We value listening to the people we meet and learning from their experiences.Very often people chat to us about what their corps is doing today. But most of the time they talk about how it used to be. How the hall used to be full. How people once knelt at the mercy seat seeking salvation and holiness. They speak in the past tense. Few seem to believe it can happen today.In our last two appointments we have faced challenging situations where the corps has needed to be reshaped in order to have a growing future. The challenges have been massive and demanding, and - to a certain extent - costly. Yet we testify to seeing, again and again, God's will and purposes being fulfilled. The Holy Spirit is still at work. Of course, it has not been easy, but we thank God for many amazing opportunities. We are privileged people and we should never forget that. However, I cannot get out of my mind the sadness of people continually looking back to the ‘glory days' and missing the opportunities of today. I will never forget our first appointment when, a few months after arriving, we celebrated a new convert. I was horrified to discover this was the first convert in the corps for at least 20 years. Yet that also excited me. God was doing something. I was privileged to be part of seeing someone seek Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. As time went on I was also privileged to witness her children become Christians and, 18 months later, her husband too. Yet, recalling that event fills me with sadness. I expected great joy and excitement among every corps member - just as the Bible tells us there is in Heaven! But when we shared the salvation of our sister there was an empty response. Almost as if some were saying: that does not happen any more! I love history. I get excited reading about what happened in the early days of the Church - including our own denomination. But I am all too aware of the danger of continually living in the ‘glory days'. We can forget what God wants us to be today! God wants these to be glory days. I believe that God does not call us to be defeated people in a declining church. Although I know we will struggle and be seriously tested, I also believe that building the Kingdom of God today can be a vibrant, living, active, joyful experience.However, when I have preached this - on many occasions and in many places - the response, all too often, has been that this was limited to biblical days or it is not what The Salvation Army is all about. I cannot help but preach a living Jesus - a Jesus who is a miracle worker, who saves people, who heals and restores. I have experienced and seen it for myself. I believe in what the word of God teaches me - the ‘glory days' can be the very days we are living in now. We hear too many people running down the Church. Sometimes the criticism is fair because some of us have confined Christianity to the past. Some no longer believe we can see even greater things. So, faced with these challenges, we need to ask: ‘What are we going to do?' There may be empty chairs in our halls, but are these not an opportunity rather than a failure? People may not have been saved for some time, but doesn't that mean we should seek God's will and become the people he wants us to be - helping lead others to the place where they can find Jesus Christ as Saviour? While I would never presume to know God's plan and purposes for The Salvation Army, I cannot believe he wants his Church to continually decline! I believe that sometimes God brings us down to nothing to build us up again. We see that written in Scripture. But, when he does that, he will start something new through a new wave of the Holy Spirit. God's very nature is all about refreshing and reviving - he is also about fulfilling his will and purposes. We have to be willing to allow that to happen - willingly submitting our thinking, agenda and plans and letting God build his Church. I long to see an army of people believing that empty chairs will be filled, souls will seek Christ at the mercy seat and people will be filled with the Holy Spirit. I long to see an army of people witnessing miracles, planting new congregations and struggling because their current buildings are too small. I am excited about today's glory days - but that is not enough. We all need to believe in our minds and hearts that this is the day of salvation, now is the year of the Lord's favour