Introducing the Rescued session of cadets

As they begin training to become Salvation Army officers, cadets of the Rescued session share their testimonies.

In September 2014, I entered Cambridge Salvation Army as a shy, broken boy seeking answers, community and a home. I’ve always said a uniform doesn’t define me or my relationship with God, but he told me I needed to become a soldier. After putting it off, I finally took that leap in 2021. In 2024, I told God I would push the doors and explore the calling I’d felt for a few years. He answered in a way I couldn’t doubt. I’ve wrestled with this calling, asking him repeatedly if he really wanted me, with all my flaws – and, for some reason, he does. To 14-year-old me, I’d say: ‘You found a home, an extended family, one that will always support you wherever God sends you. Christ heals your brokenness. You’ll have more questions than answers, but that’s OK, and it will be worth saying yes.’

God has rescued me from…
The grips of a fallen world, from the pain of being separated from him.

I have struggled with anxiety for much of my life. This little voice in the back of my head that tells me I’m not good enough, that no one could ever love me. And this voice has stopped me from connecting with people, and even from connecting with God. But a few years ago, while worshipping at summer school, God showed me the unending and incomparable love he has for me. He showed me that he loved all the things I had hated about myself, that caused me to hide away. As I enter training college, I do so called by God to share the same message: God has unending and incomparable love for you. Love so great he died for your sins, that you may be who he created you to be – a reflection of him and his love.

God has rescued me from…
Anxiety.

I’m sure many of you will agree that life is a roller coaster! I was introduced to the ride in 2002 as the last daughter of the ‘Green family’. Growing up, church wasn’t part of my life but, looking back, I can see how God was still there, preparing me for all that was to come. The real life-change for me came at university, when God called me from a worldly way of life to a Romans 12:1 and 2 way of living. I strapped in for the ride and just look where it has taken me! Now, I’m at the beginning of another exciting journey as I start my training as part of the Rescued session. I’m so thankful for God’s faithfulness through every twist and turn, and for the real joy I’ve found in following him. I’m still listening to him and looking forward to seeing where this next part of the ride takes me!

God has rescued me from...
A life not knowing him – hallelujah!

My testimony is one of invitation and acceptance. My first experience of The Salvation Army was through an invitation to watch a concert at Regent Hall, which I accepted. I was very intrigued as to how the concert would differ from a Sunday service, so I went along, unsure of what to expect, and I met an incredible group of people who would eventually help shape the rest of my life.

I was then given plenty of invitations to various groups, activities and trips, which I kept saying yes to. I would receive such blessings from those experiences that I was able to really explore what faith truly meant to me and how God had been involved in my life before I knew him. Truly, I believe that I was once lost and I am so glad to have been Rescued.

When I first came through the doors of Parkhead Salvation Army in August 2021, I was broken. With the help of prayer, love, compassion and discipleship, God brought me on a journey of transformation, walking through one of the darkest periods of my life. When God first called me to officership, I didn’t want to say yes. I didn’t want to depart from my life plans and I didn’t feel good enough – in my mind I was damaged goods, but God kept nudging me and also making it clear to others that he was calling me. I love that our sessional name is Rescued as it fits my testimony so much. God has rescued me so many times in my life and, statistically, I shouldn’t be the person I am today, but God’s grace is more powerful than statistics and likelihoods. He is the ultimate way maker and rescuer.

God has rescued me from…
The shadow of death.

I am a ‘child of the regiment’. I was born in Catherine Booth Hospital, in Nagercoil, India, to officer parents. My grandparents were officers too. I was going to say that I made the usual route of junior and then senior soldiership, young people’s band, singing company, band, songsters and so on, but growing up in India and going to boarding school added a different dimension to that, as there was no Salvation Army nearby to attend. I was called by God to officership on a bus somewhere between Leeds and Sheffield in 1989, but have spent most of the last 30 years confirming – thoroughly – that my calling wasn’t to accountancy!

When God called me, my main reaction was: ‘What on earth would you want with me?’ God reminds me daily that he has called me because of who I am – even the parts that I find difficult to love – rather than what I am not. Being known and loved, exactly as I am, has transformed my life in ways that I could never fully explain. Being able to accept that love is what has brought me to the point of being able to say yes with all of my heart. God has rescued me. God is rescuing me. God will continue to rescue me.

How on earth do I condense over 50 years of God’s transforming grace into 150 words? God brought the song ‘Cleansing for Me’ to mind: ‘From all the sins over which I have wept.’ I have not always lived as someone who belongs to Jesus. My choices have caused pain, and God’s forgiveness does not make that pain insignificant. Yet Jesus has never stopped calling me back to himself. Again and again, he has forgiven, cleansed and changed me. For nine years I have served as a territorial envoy. Now, in response to such grace, God calls me to make a lifelong covenant with him through officership. Isaiah 43:1 says: ‘I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.’ I know the cost of wandering from him and the joy of belonging to him. Jesus has done everything for me. I am his.

God has rescued me from…
Sin and from fear of what others think or say, freeing me to speak the truth of the gospel in love and without compromise.

Ever since I encountered the love of God in Jesus as a child, and discovered the spacious freedom of the Holy Spirit as a teenager, I have wanted my life to be an image of Jesus on this Earth.

He is the most compelling figure I have ever known, his words are the most truthful I have ever heard, and the life he places before us is the best life I could imagine. Becoming an officer is my audacious, daring and trembling ‘yes’ to that life. It is a leap of faith into the unknown – not holding tightly to my own plans, but trusting the God who promises life in all its fullness.

I believe deeply in The Salvation Army’s calling to go after the last, the least and the lost, showing people the hope found in Jesus Christ. This mission is now my cause, and I sense the deep peace and exhilaration that surrender to his will brings.

God has rescued me from…
The tyranny of self.

I’ve felt God’s calling on my life in different ways over the years and, having followed his will in each circumstance, I’ve been blessed with opportunities to share my faith with many non-believers. I feel like God has been preparing me all my life for this next adventure into officership, and I’m really looking forward to what he has in store for the rest of my life in service through The Salvation Army.

Growing up in a Christian home, I have always known that God loves me and that we are all called to be part of sharing the good news of his love. So many people have never heard or truly understood this incredible truth. In this next stage of my life, I am excited to play a more active part in sharing that good news as an officer in The Salvation Army, and to live out Romans 10:14: ‘How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?’ I’m trusting God to guide me as I learn, grow and serve others.