Metro Youth Network

A few weeks ago a Soldier from my corps went to the altar to pray. I consider this Soldier a friend, a true comrade in the fight. He has encouraged and sharpened me many times with his quiet testimony and faith. I was compelled to pray for him so I walked over and knelt and began to quietly solicit the Lord beside him. While I was praying I heard him whisper, “I’m sorry I put down your cross. Please put it back where it belongs. I will carry it again.”

Three years ago, on Easter, he stood before our congregation and publicly claimed Galatians 2:19-20 as his own:

For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

* * *

A few Sunday’s ago we had the most impressive Senior Soldier Enrollment I have ever seen; four men and two women were enrolled underneath the Army flag. What was impressive about the group was the look on their face, a look that publicly proclaimed “I know what I’m getting myself into—and knowing—I make this covenant to seek souls and oppose Satan.” It was a great look. They stood, they smiled, they saluted, they prayed, they signed.

When the ceremony ended my Soldier-friend (who I had prayed with the week before) marched to the front of the chapel. The congregation was stirred with fluttering programs, head turns and whispers. I realized that this was an unexpected change to our usual Sunday worship. He had a golf bag slung around his shoulder.

He told us that he was not giving a testimony but rather sharing a confession. He leaned the golf bag against the altar and pulled out an oversized, aluminum driver. He stared at the club and shared his heart. He told us how much he loved golf, how he obsessed over the sport, how he would stay up until 1am to watch Tiger Woods finish a round somewhere in Asia. He looked at the crowd––as if looking in a mirror––and said that he loved golf more than Jesus. He said that he put down the cross that he publicly claimed three years ago and put a golf bag in its place.

He read 1 John 1:5-10:

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.

Then he read the 9th Doctrine of The Salvation Army:

“We believe that continuance in a state of salvation depends upon continued obedient faith in Christ.”

He gave Glory to God for picking him up a third time and for putting His cross where it belonged.

He looked at the clubs and said, “I am dead to these.”

* * *

This is Primitive Salvationism.

So this guy comes up to me and says,
“what’s the vision? What’s the big idea?”
I open my mouth and words come out like this… The vision?
The vision is JESUS:
obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.
The vision is an army of young people.
You see bones?
I see an army.
And they are FREE from materialism.
They laugh at 9-5 little prisons.They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday.They wouldn’t even notice.They know the meaning of the Matrix,
the way the west was won.They are mobile like the wind,
they belong to the nations.
They need no passport..
People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence.They are free
yet they are slaves
of the hurting and dirty and dying.What is the vision? The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes.
It makes children laugh and adults angry.
It gave up the game of minimum integrity long ago to reach for the stars.
It scorns the good and strains for the best.
It is dangerously pure.
Light flickers
from every secret motive,
every private conversation.It loves people away from their suicide leaps, their Satan games. This is an army
that will lay down its life for the cause.A million times a day
its soldiers choose to loose that they might one day win the great
‘Well done’ of faithful sons and daughters.
Such heroes are as radical
on Monday morning as Sunday night.
They don’t need fame from names.
Instead they grin quietly upwards
and hear the crowds chanting again and again:
“COME ON!”
And this is the sound of the undergroundThe whisper of history in the makingFoundations shakingRevolutionaries dreaming once againMystery is scheming in whispersConspiracy is breathing…This is the sound of the underground
And the army is discipl(in)ed.
Young people who beat their bodies into submission.
Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrade at arms. The tattoo on their back boasts “for me to live is Christ and to die is gain”.
Sacrifice fuels the fire
of victory in their upward eyes.
Winners.
Martyrs.
Who can stop them? Can hormones hold them back? Can failure succeed?
Can fear scare them or death kill them?
And the generation prays
like a dying man with groans beyond
talking, with warrior cries,
sulphuric tears andwith great barrow loads of laughter!Waiting.
Watching:
24–7–365.
Whatever it takes they will give:
Breaking the rules.
Shaking mediocrity from its cosy little hide.
Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs,
laughing at labels,
fasting essentials.
The advertisers cannot mould them.
Hollywood cannot hold them.
Peer-pressure is powerless
to shake their resolve
at late night parties
before the cockerel cries.
They are incredibly cool,
dangerously attractive inside.
On the outside? They hardly care.
They wear clothes like costumes:
to communicate and celebrate but never to hide. Would they surrender their image or their popularity? They would lay down their very lives –
swap seats with the man on death row – guilty as hell.
A throne for an electric chair.
With blood and sweat and many tears, with sleepless nights and fruitless days,
they pray as if it all depends on God and live as if it all depends on them.
Their DNA chooses JESUS.
(He breathes out, they breathe in.)Their subconscious sings.
They had a blood transfusion with Jesus. Their words make demons scream in shopping centres.Don’t you hear them coming? Herald the weirdo’s!
Summon the losers and the freaks.
Here come the frightened and forgotten
with fire in their eyes.
They walk tall and trees applaud,
skyscrapers bow,
mountains are dwarfed
by these children of another dimension.
Their prayers summon the hounds of heaven and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.
And this vision will be.
It will come to pass;
it will come easily;
it will come soon.How do I know?
Because this is the longing of creation itself, the groaning of the Spirit, the very dream of God. My tomorrow is his today.
My distant hope is his 3D.
And my feeble,
whispered,
faithless prayer
invokes a thunderous,
resounding,
bone-shaking
great ‘Amen!’
from countless angels,
from hero’s of the faith,
from Christ himself.
And he is the original dreamer,
the ultimate winner.
Guaranteed.

Cory Harrison referenced “The Vision” on Friday night. It is also cited in Stephen Court and Aaron White’s new book “REVOLUTION”.

Read more about it here.