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Body-Builders |
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Issue 20 from |
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In this issue ·
Living in the Light of the Word — 3 How to Live in the Light of the Word ·
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 twentieth 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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“PASTORAL
EPISTLES” starts on Monday in Dunfermline (4th September) More |
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You can now subscribe a friend to Body-Builders
(and please do!). Just click here.
Your friend will first receive an e-mail offering the chance to
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LIVING IN THE LIGHT OF THE WORD — 3 HOW TO LIVE IN THE LIGHT OF THE
WORD |
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For the last two issues, we’ve focused on this passage: 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. 24Put
away perversity from your mouth; keep corrupt talk far from your lips. 25Let
your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you. 26Make
level paths for your feet and take only ways that are firm. 27Do not
swerve to the right or the left; keep your foot from evil. Proverbs
4:20-27 Get the heart right and everything else should drop into
place. Ignore the heart and seek to
deal only with behaviour, and ultimately we will lose. Dealing with behaviour can mow the lawn of
our lives, clear away the leaves, and neaten the edges, leaving us
cosmetically “coiffured” and temporarily tidy. But it doesn’t deal with the seeds and the weeds and the other
root issues. Life still flows from
the inside out. Last issue we dealt with the root — with When, Why
and How to Guard the Heart. In
the light of that, we must now choose to walk it out in practical
terms. Having dealt with the root,
it’s a series of choices we now make. The remainder of the Proverbs passage gives four aspects
of practical outworking, concerning our mouth, our eyes, our feet,
and our direction. Concerning our mouth, uncorrupted
speech Here is verse 24 in various translations: Put
away perversity from your mouth; keep corrupt talk far from your lips. (NIV) ·
Put
away from you a deceitful mouth and put devious speech far from you. (NAS) ·
Put
away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you. (ESV) ·
Put
away from you false and dishonest speech, and wilful and contrary talk put
far from you. (AMP) ·
Never
say anything that isn't true. Have nothing to do with lies and misleading
words. (GNB) No perversity, no deceitful, crooked or dishonest
speech. To use the well-worn legal
phrase, “The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” No devious talk, lies or misleading words. A major thing for us as brothers and sisters in the
Church of Jesus Christ is how we speak to each other. It’s partly in the area of simple truth,
but also in the area of corrupt and corrupting speech. In Ephesians we read: “Do not let any
unwholesome [or corrupt] talk come out of your mouths, but only
what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may
benefit those who listen” (Eph
4:29). The word translated
“unwholesome” or “corrupt” is literally “rotten”. A rotten word may have been ripe once. So if it’s not true or not helpful or not edifying,
don’t say it—and don’t listen to it—for that’s destructive. We say, “I couldn’t help it — it just slipped out.” Wrong!
You are in control. It
may well have “slipped out”, but take responsibility. “I couldn’t help it” is an excuse, and
it’s not true. People have often said to me, “If I’m thinking
it, I may as well say it!” And
they’ll sometimes add, “After all, I don’t want to be a hypocrite.” I tell them they’re self-absorbed. If I’m holding a gun to a person’s head, I
may be thinking about pulling the trigger. But whether or not I go ahead and do so makes a major
difference to the person concerned!
Your thoughts affect mainly you. But words hurt and crush and wound. We can feel like a pressure cooker, and as the pressure
mounts we want to blow! The motivation
to blow out the words is selfish — “If I get my thoughts out, I’ll feel
better.” And we may well feel
better. But who has been damaged in
the process by our “words of release”? The matter of corrupted speech affects us all. When we hear these things, we can all
be convicted. Why? Perhaps because the Bible says: “If
anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep
his whole body in check.” (Jas
3:2). None of us is perfect, so we
all have things to work on. “… out of the overflow of the heart the mouth
speaks” (Mt
12:34). Therefore, out of a guarded
heart, we can take responsibility and choose to live in the light of
the Word as regards our speaking. Concerning our eyes,
undistracted focus Proverbs 4:25 - “Let your eyes look straight ahead,
fix your gaze directly before you.” The Psalmist prays, “Turn my eyes away from worthless
things.” (Ps 119:37). The New
Testament exhorts us to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of
our faith, and on the unseen and the eternal (see Heb 12:2; 2 Cor 4:18). It’s easy to be distracted. Sometimes we see people walking, looking away and looking
around, frequently bumping into things, always having to apologise — “Sorry,
I wasn’t looking where I was going.”
Really it’s so simple: we stay focused by looking straight ahead. So the racehorse runs in blinkers. If all it sees is the course ahead,
there’s nothing to distract it. Because we know that in the end he sank, we can easily
forget that Peter actually walked on water!
He got out of the boat, and took his first tentative steps in response
to the Lord’s word to him — “Come.”
And then he walked on the water all the way to Jesus. So why did he sink? Perhaps it was about focus. As he drew closer to Jesus, he didn’t have
to focus so intently. He could still see
Jesus and also look around. When he
saw the wind and waves, he was afraid, moved from faith to fear, and started
to go down. There’s awesome power in
concentration and focus. We said that one of the gates of the heart was the eye
gate. What holds our gaze is what
we think about. It’s also true that
what we gaze on is what we become like. By maintaining our focus and keeping our gaze fixed
directly before us, we can choose to live in the light of the Word as
regards our looking. Concerning our feet, unwearying
stability Proverbs 4:26 - “Make level paths for your feet and
take only ways that are firm.” If we take the first part of this together with Isaiah
26:7, “The path of the righteous is level; O upright One, you make the way
of the righteous smooth”, we could say that level paths are places where
the righteous walk, for God makes the way of the righteous smooth. We need to choose to walk right. Look carefully then how you
walk! Live purposefully and worthily and accurately, not as the unwise and
witless, but as wise (sensible, intelligent people) (Eph
5:15 AMP) “… and take only ways that are firm.” Why unwearying stability? Because when we’re weary, we’re either tired
and looking for shortcuts, or bored and looking for the thrill of
danger. In either case, our feet can
take us where we really shouldn’t go, in ways that are not firm. The sign says, “Keep off the grass.” But we think, “If I walk across the grass,
I may get there quicker; and there doesn’t seem to be anybody about … . I think I’ll give the grass a go.” Why is the sign there?
It may have been put there by someone particular about protecting his
grass. It may have been put there by
a spoilsport. That’s the conclusion
we’re quick to jump to. But it also
may be that in the midst of the grass is a hidden swamp, and the sign is
there for our protection and safety!
In that case in ignoring it our tiredness or boredom would have caused
us to take ways that are anything but firm. By considering the right course and taking only ways
that are firm, we can choose to live in the light of the Word as
regards our walking. How do we live in the light of the Word? Concerning our mouth, uncorrupted
speech. Concerning our eyes,
undistracted focus. Concerning our feet,
unwearying stability. We have one more aspect to consider, but we’ll save that
until the next issue. George Alexander August 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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It’s nearly September and another season is about to begin. Time marches on. The new course module “Pastoral Epistles” starts on Monday (September
4th). For more
information, click here. In 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, and Part 2 was Guarding the Heart.
Now Part 3 is entitled How to Live
in the Light of the Word. 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) Issue
19 (Living in the Light of the Word — 2) 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 is “Pastoral Epistles”, and commences on Monday 4th September. For information, click here. If
you’re within striking distance of Dunfermline, you can register 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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