Dear ATI families,

These are the final 2010 dates for the Journey to the Heart!

Dates:

• October 9-19, 2010
  (Young Men) Apply >>
• October 23 – November 2, 2010
  (Young Ladies) Apply >>

Testimonies:

“For the first time in my life I experienced God. God is alive! He is real. I felt the power of His Spirit that week. We would pray for hours, crying out to God, and it would only feel like a few minutes. It was the most beautiful experience of my life, and one that I will never forget.

It was on my Journey to the Heart that I learned how to have a personal relationship with God. You cannot experience the power of the Christian life until you lay aside and choose to remove anything and everything from your life that will hinder you from serving God with your whole heart, soul, mind, and strength. Choose to be rid of the things of this world. Choose to be surrendered to the Lord, and the power of Jesus will be made evident in your life.

For the very first time in my life, I had hope, hope for the future and hope for my life. I now had something to live for.

I am not telling you that the moment I found God, that my life fell into place, that I never had struggle again. Jesus says, “Take up your cross daily”. It is a personal choice for me, everyday to surrender my will to God and trust Him. I struggled for many months with surrendering everything to God; I struggled with bitterness toward the ones that had hurt me, especially the young man that I had left behind.

It has now been over a year since I first stepped on the plane to Chicago. I can say with all sincerity that God has given me freedom from my past. My desire is to know God, and in doing so, lead as many as possible to Him.” ~ Olivia

“Before I went on the Journey, I was having a hard time reading the Bible. It was really becoming boring, and I was not enjoying it. When I went to the Journey, I learned about not just reading the Bible, but really meditating on it, and asking God to show me what it means.

When I read about having an “enlarged heart” (see Psalm 119:32), I realized that in order to have my heart enlarged I must fill it with things of the Lord, one of them being His Word. When I came home I decided to read the book of John, even though I have read it before. I wanted to get my love for reading the Word back into my heart. I also decided to start memorizing the Psalms, and have actually really enjoyed it. It is a challenge that helps me want to stay in the Bible, and meditate on it!” ~ Carleigh

When Henry heard the message on Exposing the Lies of the Enemy by Paul and Jenny Speed while on the Journey, he realized that a painful memory from the past had triggered a lie that was controlling his life. Click here to hear his (and other’s) audio testimony!

For more testimonies and information, visit our blog: Living the Journey

Do you want to make a mark in the world of the internet?
Even students with no previous web development experience should consider attending Web Design I & II from October 12-22. These courses will be taught by Richard Ritchie, 10-year director of the Computer Education Department at the Indianapolis Training Center. You will gain training in biblical wisdom while learning the fundamentals of web development. After this course, you will be ready to communicate your message to the world through your website!

Details:

• Web Design I
  October 12–16, 2010
• Web Design II
  October 18–22, 2010

Class Descriptions:

Web Design I

Master simple but effective web building techniques as you learn how to hand code XHTML and CSS with free text editors, such as Notepad® and Scintilla® . This practical training will demystify HTML, introduce CSS, and facilitate user-friendly navigation. In one week, you can go from web-language-illiterate to finishing a basic site!

Web Design II

This course builds on Web Site Design I, with intermediate web site design techniques for web authoring, CSS, graphic design, and image editing. Students familiar with basic website design will benefit from additional training with Adobe Dreamweaver® and free text editors. Learn to design web graphics, and get an introduction to PHP. Practice developing dynamic websites that include user-filled forms, database integration, and adjustable page templates.

Visit Verity Institute’s website for more details about the courses and to register online. {link to http://www.verityinstitute.org/training/graphicdesign/}

"As an aspiring young web designer I had spent many tedious and frustrating hours scouring web design books or trying to reverse engineer a section of code from a web site I liked. It was time to get some real training! Enter Web Site Design I & II. During our training many dark mysteries of HTML, CSS, and other subjects were unraveled…Tables no longer, CSS opened a new world to me. I would be remiss to not directly commend to you Mr. Ritchie. He is intelligent, engaging, and a good teacher. The teacher makes or breaks the course, and Mr. Ritchie made it fun and productive. Whether you are a hobby webmaster or serious about making money in this field, the Web Design courses will be a rewarding investment." — John Lovette, 2007 participant

Punctuality is, on the surface, rather uncomplicated: not easy perhaps, but simple enough.

“Be where you’re supposed to be, when you’re supposed to be there.”

What is so hard to grasp about that? Nothing. All of us know it merely an art of thinking ahead and planning, giving your self time to prepare your food, getting enough rest, having your clothes cleaned and pressed. So that when we tell some one that we will be there we are there, appropriately dressed, fed and in our right mind.

Although we place great importance on punctuality is it perhaps only practice,

Practice in keeping the real appointments of our lives. Let us, for a moment, note the obvious: life is so much more than we see at the first glance.

Life is a mosaic being carefully fitted together by an All Knowing God…a tapestry that He is weaving every day, one thread at a time. We are the threads, the precious stones….

As our great Lord is weaving the masterpiece are we attentive to Him? Have we taken the time to think ahead, to be prepared to meet with Him, to rid ourselves of distractions so that we have the time to be groomed, to be prepared stones, perfectly cut and polished, the threads, vivid, delicate and strong?

We are appalled at the thought of “standing someone up” but why? It shows a major lack of character.

It is proof that something or someone, is or was, more important than the person that we gave our word to.

How many times does this need to happen before it is safe to say that you do not love that person?

In the same way how many times do we need to put God off, failing to meet with Him at appointed

time: “I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find me.” (Prov.8:17)

in the appointed place: “…before the testimony, where I will meet with you.” (Num.17:4),

before it is safe to say that you don’t love God all that much.

“Some wish to live within the sound of Church or Chapel bell;
I want to run a Rescue Shop within a yard of hell."

That saying was characteristic of C. T. Studd. In 1878, a visiting preacher asked the young man, a well-known cricket player, if he was a Christian. When Studd knelt and thanked God for salvation, peace and joy flooded his soul. Unfortunately, he did not share his faith with others. As a consequence, he became spiritually cold. For six years he lived a life which he described as "backslidden." The love of the world crept in.

In 1883, Studd went to hear Dwight L. Moody speak. His soul was stirred afresh. Immediately, he began to tell others about Christ. Studd would later say that he had tasted all the pleasures of the world, but none gave him so much pleasure as bringing his first soul to trust in Jesus.

Two years later, C. T. Studd sailed for China to join Hudson Taylor as a missionary. He dressed like a Chinese, ate Chinese food, and learned the Chinese language. While in China, he turned twenty-five. Under his father’s will, that is when he would inherit a large sum of money. Reading the Bible and praying, he felt convinced he should give his fortune away to show the world that he relied not on money but on a living Lord. The Lord, he was sure, would bless him a hundred-fold in non-monetary ways and provide him sufficient money to live on. "If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him," he argued.

On this day, January 13, 1887, before he even knew the amount he was to inherit, he wrote several large checks for George Muller’s orphan work and for missions. It turned out there was still some money left. Studd gave it away. He gave the final £3,400 to the woman he was about to marry as a wedding gift. But Priscilla Livingstone Stewart was as sure of God as her husband. She determined to "start clear" at her wedding and gave that sum away, too.

Naturally, they ran short of money often after that. Yet they found God faithfully supplied them. "Funds are low again, hallelujah! That means God trusts us and is willing to leave His reputation in our hands," said C. T. Studd on one such occasion.

The Studds served in China and India and toured in behalf of the Student Volunteer Movement. Leaving his invalid wife in England, C. T. sailed to Africa to open mission work in Sudan, the largest unreached area in the world. In spite of heart attacks, he worked there to the end of his life. Priscilla was able to rejoin him for only one year before she died. Studd became an autocrat who would brook no opposition.

C. T. Studd’s answer to critics who said he went overboard in his zeal was simple:

"How could I spend the best years of my life in living for the honors of this world, when thousands of souls are perishing every day?"

There is no argument that there are many kinds of false prophets in our day. Because they love to disguise themselves, they are sometimes difficult to discern. But one thing is sure,

“Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.” (Matthew 7:16-17)

Have you ever thought about the type of fruit that results from watching movies? As we observe the fruit in our lives, whether good or evil, we might be surprised at how much we are actually influenced by them.

Why would I, as a kid, pretend my bike was a horse, the shed a jail, my hand a pistol, and the backyard a vast expanse of prairie? Was it not the desire to be like the heroes in those wild-west or frontiersmen films?

Did not my younger siblings and I climb all over the house and pretend to accomplish dangerous fetes in an attempt to reenact the accomplishments of mountain-climbers? This kind of fruit is not morally wrong; but it gives you an idea of how much a movie can impact actions.

But then there is the story that my dad tells of when he was a kid, jumping from a 12 foot building because he wanted to be like Superman. The fruit? Hilarious now, but distressing then, the result was a seriously sprained ankle.

I asked a young teenager one time what it was that motivated him to do so much exercise in hopes of being a weightlifter. More or less, the answer was because he wanted to be like so-and-so in this-and-that film who did such-and-such amazing things. Movies have the potential of changing an entire future.

As for myself, I won’t even attempt to count the number of times I’ve quoted some catchy phrase from a movie during a conversation for the sake of being funny. And how many times do I hum a tune or theme engrained in my head from a movie I’ve seen many times before–or even once!

What more needs to be said? Can I go as far as to say that movies have an impact on behavior like no other median of entertainment history has encountered? What movies are impacting us? What are we doing right now because of something we have watched in the past? I’m not saying movies are false prophets; a movie is no more a false prophet than a person is. The point in question is the message being proclaimed. What

fruit is growing, what actions carried out, what words being spoken, what tunes being hummed that have originated from the fact that we have simply seen a movie?

A friend of mine, who was telling me how he had recently decreased the amount of movies he watched, used the following criteria for discerning what movies to keep and which ones to toss out:

What commandments are being broken without consequence?

What violation of a commandment is being condoned?

Does it in any way deride the Trinity?

A few more criterions that have been helpful for me are:

What statements are being made in jest that would otherwise be inappropriate?

What personal convictions are not being upheld?

What standard of music is being condoned?

Is the message worth the time and emotion of watching the movie?

May we be encouraged to discern the false prophets of our day by considering the fruit that is evident in our thoughts, words, and actions!

Dear ATI families!

We are excited to announce the dates for the

2011 Regional Conferences

Big Sandy – April 26-29, 2011

Nashville – May 31-June 3, 2011

Sacramento – June 28-July 1, 2011

Indianapolis – August 2-5, 2011

“But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant: Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.” Mat 20:26

The call to be a servant is one of the greatest callings
given to mankind, but yet it is also one of the most difficult to accomplish. Christ’s ability to reach so many lives in the short amount of time He had, while holding no political or positional status in the world’s eyes was due to exercising this command.

I can’t help but think of the great impact Jesus had on all the people from the least to the greatest because He was willing to humble Himself and to help the most helpless.

Christ’s example of this command is the foundation of how every follower of the Lord Jesus Christ should live out their lives. I believe the key to fulfilling this call from Christ is by applying Psalm 51:1; “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, Oh God, thou wilt not despise.”

By humbling ourselves and by being willing to yield our spirit, soul and body to the Lord’s disposal, God will be able to use us as servants to fulfill His purpose and calling for our lives. We must never despise or forget this awesome opportunity to reveal the character of Christ through the life God has given us!

Elizabeth Fry was born in Gurney Court, off Magdalen Street, Norwich, Norfolk, England to a Quaker family. Her mother died when Elizabeth was only twelve years old.

As one of the oldest girls in the family, Elizabeth was partly responsible for the care and training of the younger children.

At the age of 18, young Elizabeth was deeply moved by the preaching of William Savery, an American Quaker. Motivated by his words, she took an interest in the poor, the sick, and the prisoners. She collected old clothes for the poor, visited those who were sick in her neighborhood, and started a Sunday school in the summer house to teach children to read.

She married Joseph Fry on 1800 and moved to St Mildred’s Court in the City of London. They had eleven children in all.

Prompted by a family friend, Stephen Grellet, Fry visited Newgate prison. The conditions she saw there horrified her. The women’s section was overcrowded with women and children, some of whom had not even received a trial. They did their own cooking and washing in the small cells in which they slept on straw. Elizabeth Fry often as in said in the book of prisons volume three that she actually stayed the nights in some of the prisons and invited nobility to come and stay and see the conditions they lived in.

She returned the following day with food and clothes for some of the prisoners. She began a system of supervision and required the women to sew and to read the Bible. In 1817 she helped found the Association for the Reformation of the Female Prisoners in Newgate. This led to the eventual creation of the British Ladies’ Society for Promoting the Reformation of Female Prisoners, widely described by biographers and historians as constituting the first “nationwide” women’s organization in Britain.

In 1840 Fry opened a training school for nurses. Her program inspired Florence Nightingale, who took a team of Fry’s nurses to assist wounded soldiers in the Crimean War. She worked tirelessly on behalf of those women who were condemned to death, trying to get their death sentence reprieved and dealing with their distress.

For more than twenty years this work continued, based simply on her response to what God had done for her.

Matt. 5:47-48  And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

Here the word “perfect” is not calling us to be without fault but to be complete in how we live, be consistent or without hypocrisy. We are not to treat some people one way and other people another way; we are to treat every person the same. Giving a perfect greeting is something all of us can do in every situation. We are not to be excited only when we greet a good friend; we are to greet the clerk at the grocery store, the teller at the bank, and the young man who stops by our house selling something as though they are our dearest friends.

But we are not to just give perfect greetings to everyone we come in contact with; we are to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. God has 3 parts which are all perfect. Therefore, since we are made in the image of God (in 3 parts), we are to be perfect in all 3 parts: spirit, soul, and body.

As born-again Christians, Christ has already made us perfect in our spirit. Our spirit is complete;
there is nothing lacking.

However, there is a continuous battle in our soul. To make it perfect it must be “transformed by the renewing of your mind (intellect–must revert back to original position under the spirit), that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, (complete) will of God.” –Rom. 12:2

God’s will is exactly what we would choose if we knew all of the facts. Since we don’t know all of the facts, how do we learn and obey God’s will? It is only through the fellowship of our spirit with His Spirit that we learn God’s will. We don’t know all of the facts so we must take our mind off the throne (renew our mind) and yield to the Spirit’s promtings. Meditating on God’s Word is the process by which our mind is renewed. Through meditation, we move His Truth from our head to our heart. If we don’t meditate on the rhemas He gives us, we have gained knowledge but we do not receive the wisdom needed to properly apply it, and our intellect remains on the throne. One thing God has taught me in recent months is the importance of meditating on His Word not once or twice a day when I read the Bible, but all throughout each day. Since our minds are not always busy with work, there are many opportunities each day to do this. When we meditate on God’s Word throughout each day, He reveals to us ways to apply the insights He gives us to our lives.

Finally, be perfect in your body because it is the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19).
And “the Lord is in His holy temple” –Hab. 2:20

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” –Rom. 12:1

The Old Testament temple was glorious, and God cared about every tiny detail of how the temple was built, furnished, and used. How much more does He care about how we do this with our bodies. We are to use our dress, words, and actions to present our bodies perfect in Christ. As the temple of the Holy Spirit, we should strive to present our bodies as worthy to host a holy God. In the same way, we are to interact with others whether they are long-time friends or people we have never met, no matter their outward appearance including dress, words, and actions.

“Therefore be perfect, even as your Father which is

in heaven is perfect.” Matthew 5:48

David Livingstone was born on March 13, 1813 in Blantyre, Scotland, near Glasgow. He became a doctor and a missionary, and devoted much of his life to exploring Africa. He helped Europeans learn a lot about the continent of Africa.

Livingstone was one of the first Europeans to explore the central and southern parts of Africa. He first went to Africa as a Christian missionary in 1841, when he was 27 years old. He decided that the best way to teach Africans about Christ was to move about and see as many people as he could. That is how he became an African explorer.

He married Mary Moffat in 1845 and she (and later their children) came along with Livingstone on his early explorations. In 1849, he led a group of Europeans across the Kalahari Desert and discovered Lake Ngami. Two years later, he again travelled through the Kalahari with his family.

He continued crossing the continent of Africa during three different time periods: 1852-56, 1858-64, and 1866-73. In 1856, he travelled on the Zambezi River, and became the first European to see the spectacular Victoria Falls. He also became the first European to cross the entire width of southern Africa.

These accomplishments made him very famous in England. He wrote a book about his experiences in Africa and traveled around England giving speeches in 1856 and 1857. Livingstone went back to Africa in 1858 and is credited with the discovery of Lake Nyasa in 1858, the Chilwa River in 1859, and more of the Nile River.

In 1866 David Livingstone went on an expedition to discover more of the Nile River. While on this expedition he was lost and no one heard from him. In 1871, a New York reporter, Henry Morton Stanley, led an expedition to find him. When they found him, Stanley said those famous words, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume."

In May, 1873 after Stanley left Livingstone to learn the customs of an Indian tribe, Livingstone was found on his knees, dead in prayer. His body, along with his personal items and papers, were sent back to England. This journey took almost a full year. He was buried in Westminster Abbey in London in April, 1874.

As part of his travels, David Livingstone learned more about African customs, geography, and the slave trade than any other European. David Livingstone’s expeditions helped the world learn about the continent of Africa.