| Talking tough about Jesus |
I f you met Arthur White walking along a dark street, you’d probably want to cross the road.
With his huge frame and smart suit, he looks like he’s just strayed off the set of the latest Godfather movie.
If Arthur looks like a powerlifter and body-building champion rolled into one, that’s because he is.
As a World Champion Powerlifter, his 26-year record for lifting 857 and three quarter pounds, remains unbroken.
In addition, he holds nine British titles, six Eur
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| Empty Hanger is full of potential |
Eve gazes up at a seductive red and green apple, her limpid brown eyes full of innocence. She reaches up...  and the rest is history. <BR><BR> Today, Anna Delaney is acting the role of Eve, clad in a barely-there gauze outfit bedecked with ivy and laurel leaves. <BR><BR> The outfit is one of five designed by students at the London College of Fashion. And they’ll probably be in a secondary school near you this autumn. The five outfits are designed to sho...
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| Winning them back |
Ian White finds out how God gave an underworld debt-collector a new purpose in life – helping victims of the sex trade  in Thailand
Once his mission was to inflict pain on bad debtors in the drugs underworld. Now it’s to rescue children sold into prostitution in Thailand.
Streetwise Paul Darbinson, 41, who would freely wield a baseball bat on his victims without batting an eyelid, now helps youngsters escape from their destructive lifestyle, often enforced on them as a way of p
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| New outdoor activity facility |
 The foundation stone of the latest site of a Christian-based youth organisaton has been laid by the Duchess of Gloucester.
The Whitemoor Lakes Centre in Staffordshire is a new 300-bedroom outdoor activity facility for young people from all over the UK. It is the latest project of the Northamptonshire Association of Youth Clubs (NAYC), founded in 1961 by the Revd Harry Whittaker.
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| News in Brief |
 Day of Prayer A country-wide chain of prayer was launched last month which will lead up to a national Day of Prayer at Wembley Stadium in September next year.
The Global Day of Prayer movement started 500 days of prayer at the beginning of August. Churches and individuals can opt in to specific time slots so that every hour of every day is covered, or by setting the alarm on their mobile phones to noon and praying the Lord’s Prayer then.
At the launch event African, Caribbean, Wels...
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| Prayer Corner |
PRAYER CORNER Lord, you know everything about me, the good and the bad. You know the things I boast about  because I feel good about them, and you know the things I hide because I’m ashamed of them.
Thank you for everything good in my life. Help me to count my blessings, and to remember that even in the dark times you are there.
I’m sorry for the things I’ve done wrong; the ways I’ve fallen short of what I ought to be, the people I’ve hurt, the times I’
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| Real Life - The pigeon and the dove |
REAL LIFE By Dave Winfield The pigeon and the dove We stood a short distance from the grave with our hands in our pockets, but near enough to be seen. We wanted to be noticed, and hoped the chief mourner would discreetly slip us a fiver; which he did. Then when the funeral party left, we filled in the grave and decided which pub to spend the money in.
Back at our gravedigger’s shed I sat apart and let the others get on with a card game without me. I was thinking about one of the monume...
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| Dealing with the bad stuff |
Sad and painful things will happen to you even though you are now a Christian. Following Jesus is not a magic formula  that makes difficulties disappear. Suffering is part of the way the world works – that’s just a fact. But a Christian knows something that others do not – when bad things happen you do not have to go through those troubles alone. You are in the company of the God who loves you deeply and endlessly.
Three thousand years ago a collection of songs was gathered,...
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| Gulas and God |
| Martina came all the way from the Czech Republic to find faith I wasn’t born in a Christian family and didn’t know Jesus  for a long time. Everything changed a few years ago.
I used to think that Christians were stupid people who said prayers from a prayer book and didn’t think. I didn’t understand what that all really meant.
I did attend religious education when I was a little girl. However, my knowledge of who Jesus is was very poor.
As a teenager, any desire...
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| Cookbook authors steam past £25,000 target |
 It’s only a cookbook – but it’s raised more than £25,000 for a Christian relief and development charity.
Tearfund volunteers Brenda and Gordon Wilkinson, from West Sussex, launched Recipes for Disaster just four years ago. Within three months they’d sold enough copies to cover all their production costs and to make a £1,000 donation to Tearfund. By the following October they’d sold 3,000 and donated £17,000.
“It was a huge step of fai...
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| Under the influence |
How one woman was rescued from despair and given new hope 
Angie Taylor was a drug addict, alcoholic and prostitute. She served a prison sentence in Holloway Prison, spent years in a psychiatric hospital and slept rough on the streets.
One day she met someone who changed her life forever. “Who else but God would have chosen the drunk on the bench?” she says. “People will tell you you’re no use. But that’s a lie because you are the very one God will pick. He w
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| Good news on the streets |
 “God was always in the background, but I just didn’t know him,” explains Alan Offord of Falmouth. “I was 18 when God became real to me.
“I was leading a scout camp. At night, it was hurtling down rain and thundering. All I could think was, ‘How am I going to lead the scout camp if the weather is like this?’ I was literally shaking with fear.
“My mind went back to somebody who was once preaching. He told how his wife had been poorly for six
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| ASK Y |
Where God-questions are put to the test
This month’s question… So far as God is concerned isn’t ‘being good’ good enough?
Is “good” good enough for God? My answer would be yes. But that it matters what you mean by “good”.
The account in the front end of the Bible, that tells of God making everything, has God expressing his view of his handiwork. Time after time his verdict is, “And it was good.”
Not “goodish&
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| Christians Against Poverty - Barry's story |
When I was in debt, I felt like I was stuck in a rut. I had no sense of hope and felt only frustration and anger. The  creditors were hounding me all the time. I felt as if I was at the margins of society. No one would listen to me or would bother about me. I felt like just a number – it was like there was no future.
It’s been absolutely brilliant since CAP got involved. They took a big weight off my shoulders by setting up a CAP Account for me. All my bills and debt repayments ar
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| Fighting chance for youngsters |
 Is there hope for young people trying to break free of Britain’s growing gang culture?
So far 13 teenagers have been murdered in London, and crime rates among young people have soared. According to the Metropolitan Police, London has 170 gangs with around 5,000 members.
But Patrick Regan, who founded Christian youth charity XLP, believes it doesn’t have to be that way.
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| The shelter of his wings |
For many years our garden has been blessed with a beautiful pair of mating pigeons. We have seen them collecting bits and pieces to make and line their nests. Later we’ve seen them flying back and forth with food for their young, and watched as they taught the fledglings to fly.
Then, one day, my husband called me into the garden. There were a lot of feathers lying around and no sign of the pigeons. Then we spotted one, I think the female, crouched down under a shrub. Thinking she might be i
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| Film and faith |
Two Christians won best film awards at the Tony Blair Faith Foundation’s Faith Shorts film competition recently. .jpg "tony blair sylvia (3).jpg")
The awards were set up to encourage young people from different religions to express their faith through film. Fifteen-year-old Dolly Deeb, from Amman in Jordan, won in the under-18 category for her film Forgiveness, which focuses on her struggle to come to terms with the terrorist attacks that hit Jordan in 2005.
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| Prayer & Psychiatry |
 An Exeter-based doctor and committed Christian has penned a new book that bridges what some believe is a gap between science and religion.
Dr Sanjay Jain is an NHS psychiatrist. He wrote A Psychiatrist Discovers the Life-Changing Power of God out of his dealings with depressed – and often suicidal – patients.
Launched recently at Birmingham’s Renewal Christian Centre, the book has sold well since.
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| Matt's Journey into life |
How can a violent drug addict have changed enough to serve as a Church of England vicar? James Hastings finds out
It’s only a short bridge providing a gentle stroll into the heart of the historic City of York.
But for Matt Martinson, 35, Lendal Bridge represents a journey between two lives that could hardly be further apart.
One centred around armed robbery, drug addiction and unrelenting violence and misery.
The second has its roots in forgiveness, change and an answer to a
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| Four Lions |
 Four Yorkshire-born Muslim men plan a suicide attack on London. Sound familiar? Sound funny? Satirist Chris Morris (The Day Today, Brass Eye) maintains his reputation for controversy in this, his directorial debut.
Fifty two commuters died in 7/7 five years ago. Morris commented on the impact of this event: ‘Suddenly you’re not dealing with an amorphous Arab world so much as with British people who have been here quite a long time.’ Morris brings this jarring realisation ev
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