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Body-Builders |
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Issue 19 from |
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In this issue ·
Living in the Light of the Word — 2 ·
NEW – Old Testament Survey
Correspondence Course ·
Feedback For new subscribers: ·
Introducing
“Artios Ministries” |
Welcome to Body-Builders! This is a new series of teaching articles intended to
bless and build the Body of Christ. I trust you enjoy this the nineteenth issue, and I
welcome your feedback. For my latest personal newsletter, please click here. Every blessing, George Alexander For Artios Ministries |
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LIVING IN THE LIGHT OF THE WORD — 2 GUARDING THE HEART |
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Last issue we considered Proverbs 4:20-22 on Life and
Health in the Word. This time we come
to verse 23: Above all else, guard your
heart, for it is the wellspring of life. Other translations would render it: Keep your heart with all
diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life. NKJV Watch over your heart with all
diligence, for from it flow the springs of life. NASB Keep and guard your heart with
all vigilance and above all that you guard, for out of it flow the springs of
life. AMP What is the heart? We can readily give a biological answer about pumping blood
around the body, but our use of the term is much wider. When someone sings, “I left my heart in
San Francisco”, no one thinks that the flow of blood is suspended until the
forgotten organ can be recovered! When
we talk of the heart and giving our heart to another, we’re usually thinking of
our love, our affections. “Losing our
heart” is falling in love; “breaking someone’s heart” is to causing deep
grief; “taking heart” is being encouraged so we feel better. We tend to use the heart for the
seat of emotions and affections in contradistinction to the head,
which is the seat of our rational capability, the place of cool, logical
thought. “Don’t let your heart rule
your head!” is a saying that makes sense to us. And so we bring our concept and understanding to the
Bible, often not realising that the Biblical understanding of the term is
different. In the Biblical
understanding, the seat of emotions and affections tends to be the bowels,
kidneys or other such internal organs, whereas the heart is
more the seat of rational thinking.
You think in your heart.
Recognising this, the Good News Bible translates the above verse as: Be careful how you think; your
life is shaped by your thoughts. Prov 4:23, GNB Yet the affections are not excluded. Rather than dividing us up (like some kind
of spiritual butcher), Hebrew thought views man as an integrated whole. Thus, particularly in the Old Testament,
the heart really is representative of the whole inner person. The flow of life is from the inside out, that is from
the heart out. Get the heart right and everything else should drop in
to place. Conversely, ignore the
heart and deal with outward behaviour, and it’s at best an uphill
struggle—ultimately one we will lose. We speak of following God wholeheartedly, half-heartedly,
or nominally. Jesus, quoting
Isaiah, said, “These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are
far from me.” (Mt 15:8) It’s all
about the heart. And Proverbs 4 says:
“Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” When to guard the heart “Don’t lock the stable door after the horse has
bolted!” We guard what’s worth
guarding before we lose it. But
equally we could say: “Don’t lock the stable door before the horse has
entered!” Don’t guard the heart if
the heart is not renewed yet. It must begin with a radical change. The problem of unbelievers is essentially
heart trouble. The unregenerate heart
is described as hard (Eph 4:18), darkened (Rom 1:21), arrogant (Dan 5:20),
rebellious (Jer 5:23), unrepentant (Rom 2:5), and evil (Gen 6:5). The solution is a heart transplant. “I will give you a new heart and put a
new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a
heart of flesh. And I will put my
Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my
laws.” (Ezek 36:26,27) Change comes from the inside out — it’s deeper than
behaviour. Outward behaviour can be evidence
of inward change, or it can be present in the absence of inward
change. “Man looks at the outward
appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” (1 Sam 16:7) In 2 Corinthians 5:17, we read, “… if anyone is in
Christ, he is a new creation”.
The logical consequence of this is that if anyone is not a new
creation, he is not in Christ. We have a Divine Plumber! In our natural state, whenever we turn on the internal tap (faucet,
for American readers!), out comes dirty water. It’s not that God changes our tap — He connects us to a
different supply pipe of clean water.
While still connected to a dirty water source, we can jump into a
clean pool (perhaps a Sunday meeting), and we’ll soak in clean water to an
extent. But it’ll only be surface,
not heart. Life flows from the
heart, and we must be individually connected. Guard your heart after it’s been renewed! Why to guard the heart What kind of car is your heart? If it’s a clapped-out mini—all rust and no
motion—it doesn’t need to be restored, but changed. If you change it for a brand-new white Rolls, and then go for a
drive in the fields or the stock-car races, it might well lose its shiny
newness! Even normal road driving
gets it dirty. With our new heart,
it’s similar—and even normal life results in the need for regular cleansing. So guard your heart as your prize
“possession”—it’s worth taking care of. Above all else, guard your
heart, for it is the wellspring of life. If life really issues forth from the heart to the rest
of our being, it becomes critically important that we monitor what flows in
to the heart. Computers are funny.
They don’t think, they just act as they’re programmed to. For years I received mail shots from a
publishing company addressed to, “Mr Alexander, Liberty Church”. Then they re-wrote the database programme
to “improve” things, and for several more years I received mail shots
addressed to, “Mr A.L. Church”! You may have a top-of-the-range mail shot programme able
to do all kinds of things and avoid the error above. But if your database information is
corrupted, scrambled letters will result.
From the very earliest days of computers, the acknowledged principle
has been GIGO (that is, garbage in [results in] garbage out). Why should we think the heart is any different? How to guard the heart Picture your heart as a fortress with gates. Then guard the gates! There’s the “eye gate”, the things you
see; the “ear gate”, the things you hear; the “nose gate”, the things you
breathe; and the “mouth gate”, the things you taste. Once you’re guarding your heart in these more obvious
areas, there are two further things to consider: worldly contamination and
lies. Life on a fallen planet can sully us, even if we behave
well. We need on-going cleansing. “… Christ loved the church and
gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water
through the word” Eph
5:25,26 It’s washing with the water of the Word that cleanses us
from stains and spots. As we read
the Word, as we study the Word, as we’re in an environment where the
Word is preached and talked about, as we deliberately obey the Word in
prayer, in worship, in righteousness, we’re being cleansed from worldly
contamination. “Surely you desire truth in
the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.” Ps 51:6 If the truth sets us free, then it’s lies that bind us, even
in the heart. So we guard the heart
by rooting out lies—things we believe contrary to the Word—and replacing them
with truth. And we further guard the heart by holding truth at the
gates, and rejecting as false the lies of the enemy, however tempting to
believe they may be, by the clarity of truth. In this way, we guard our heart and the life flow that
springs from it. 20My
son, pay attention to what I say; listen closely to my words. 21Do not
let them out of your sight, keep them within your heart; 22for
they are life to those who find them and health to a man's whole body. 23Above
all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. (Prov 4) Next issue, we’ll look at how to live in the light of
the Word. George Alexander July 2006 Note: All Bible
quotations are NIV unless otherwise stated. For a printer-friendly
version of this article, click here.
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News and Update |
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The summer so far has been a hot one.
It’s hard to relate to thoughts of cold weather right now. Personally I’m happy for it to continue
for a while yet! This issue I’m continuing the series of articles based on a favourite
passage of mine, Proverbs 4:20-27, under the general heading “Living in the
Light of the Word”. Part 1 was on Life and Health in the Word. Now Part 2 is entitled Guarding
the Heart. All feedback
appreciated. In response to a request, printer-friendly versions of the Body-Builder
Articles are now available. To access
the list, click here. “Old Testament Survey”, the first of the correspondence courses is
now available. For more information,
click here. Apart from correspondence courses, there’s general update information
on the Artios School of
Theology, and links to any
previous issues of Body-Builders that you may have missed. There’s also a link to my latest personal newsletter. If you have difficulty opening these e-mails or if the text looks weird
and you suspect it’s not showing as it was intended to (I know it looks a
little strange in Hotmail for instance), please let me know and I’ll try to
solve the problem. Alternatively, you
could try the web version (click here). I continue to receive more requests to subscribe to Body-Builders. If you have received this e-mail
second-hand and would like to be subscribed, please click here. If you’d like to subscribe a friend,
please click here.
(The friend will first receive an e-mail offering the chance to
subscribe.) Check out www.artios.org
for updates. More news and
developments soon …. Return to top
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Previous Body-Builders |
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You may have missed or
mislaid a previous issue of Body-Builders.
If so, don’t despair! They can
be accessed by clicking the links below: Issue
2 (The Beginning of Life) Issue
3 (Getting the Word Out) Issue
5 (The Purpose of the Church) Issue
6 (Pointers to Personal Purpose) Issue
8 (Laying Hold of the Word) Issue
9 (The Community of Perfect Love) Issue
10 (What Should We Do With Christmas?) Issue
12 (Internal Prosperity) Issue
13 (How To Develop Spiritual Strength) Issue
14 (Building the Walls of Your Life — 1) Issue
15 (Building the Walls of Your Life — 2) Issue
16 (Building the Walls of Your Life — 3) Issue
17 (Up and Down the Mountain) Issue
18 (Living in the Light of the Word — 1) NEW! Printer-friendly versions of the
articles only are now available. To
access the list, click here. |
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Artios School of Theology |
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Artios School of Theology
is a modular course leading to a Diploma in Theology from Artios
Ministries. The first run of the
School, with classes held in Dunfermline, is currently under way. The first
module, Old Testament Survey, had eighteen students enrolled, and was completed
in June 2004. The second module,
“Acts of the Apostles” had seventeen students, and completed in December
2004. That was followed by,
“Gifts and Ministries”, “Spiritual Dynamics”, and “New Testament Survey”,
which finished before Christmas 2005. In 2006, we have done
“Romans” and “Healing”. The next
module will be “Pastoral Epistles”, and will commence in September. For information, click here.
For general information on the Artios School of Theology, please click
here*. “Old Testament Survey”
is now available as a correspondence course (distance learning). The module comes with a notes booklet,
teaching sessions on audio, and email support. The audio teachings are recordings of the “live” class, and are
nominally 20 hours in length. There
is a charge for this course. To
apply, request more information, or ask a specific question, click here.
Other modules are
currently in preparation as correspondence courses and will be introduced
soon. * If you tried this
and it didn’t work, you may have to download an Acrobat Reader first. This is available free of charge from
Adobe. To get it, click here. |
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Introducing Artios Ministries
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Artios Ministries is a new ministry launched
officially in October 2003. The Founder and Director is George
Alexander. For 12 years, George pastored Liberty Church in Dunfermline,
Scotland, before being released in 1997 to a wider teaching ministry. The
aims of Artios Ministries are: 1.
To proclaim the Christian doctrine and principles through teaching,
literature, and other means 2.
To provide Biblical education and ministry training 3.
To promote good practice and sound doctrine in the Church of Jesus
Christ Artios
Ministries is a charitable trust recognised in Scotland as Scottish Charity
number SC 034194. |
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“Artios” is
a Greek word occurring in the New Testament. It means, “complete,
fitted, completely qualified, with all its needed parts”. It
occurs, together with another word derived from it, in 2 Timothy
3:16,17 “All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for
teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in
righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for
every good work.” RSV |
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Contact Information |
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Difficulties or Comments? Just click here and let us know. |
Artios Ministries 13 Whinhill Dunfermline Fife KY11 4YZ U.K. |
01383-739537 (+44-1383-739537) |
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© Copyright 2006 Artios Ministries |
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