Foreword by Roberts Liardon, author of God’s Generals, for our new book God’s Firestarters, now available in Amazon in both eBook and print “Each of us are alive at a specific time for a specific purpose — not born by accident or by mere physical choice. We are born when God decides that this is our time to live and do a specific work on the earth. The range and variety of all our individual assignments is greater than our natural minds can comprehend. But this one common factor we can be assured of: God is always seeking for a man or woman to do His will and help change the heart of man. That’s what makes Ed and Janice Hird’s book God’s Firestarters so compelling. Within these pages, you’ll find 20 unique journeys, spanning six centuries, of individuals who powerfully fit that description. These men and women, along with their families, forged through a wide range of challenges and hardships together without giving up. Each in his or her own way helped bring the fire of God’s truth to hungry hearts and to places barren of a move of His Spirit. Each had a part to play according to his or her own giftings and assignment. And as a result of their strength of conviction to follow Jesus Christ and obey what He had asked them to do, each in some way advanced God’s Kingdom for generations to come. Some of the men and women included in this book you will likely recognize; others may be unfamiliar to you. But in each chapter, the Hirds have succeeded in drawing out little-known details that bring color and depth to the journeys of these “firestarters.” You’ll see that, despite their many differences, they were all simply men and women who chose to do whatever God asked them to do, despite their own missteps at times and regardless the cost.
As you read, keep this question before the Lord in your heart: Why did You put me on the earth for such a time as this? You may already know part of that answer. Or perhaps you are only beginning to realize how critical it is that you seek the Lord for the answer. That’s the key — to ask Him for the answer. When we begin with God, every work we attempt is completed with the accuracy of Heaven. It’s a spiritual law you’ll see played out again and again in the pages of this book. We all have our place in the Body of Christ. Some are called to lead; others must hear from God that they are anointed to follow. Regardless, it requires more than desire to fulfill the will of God — it takes spiritual strength. And in the lives of the people represented in these twenty powerful stories, you’ll find evidence of that strength in a variety of forms. Don’t read these stories lightly. Determine to allow the lessons learned by these godly men and women to become a “course” in your own school of the Spirit to help you stay on track. You have your own part to play; you have your own story to “write” for the annals of Heaven. So, through it all, just determine to keep on building your spiritual strength and walking out your own purpose in God. You’re going to make it — despite any past missteps and regardless the cost! Roberts Liardon, author of God’s Generals book and video series
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Underground Missionary – Engage — Click on Light Magazine to read our article on Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
To purchase any of our six books in paperback or ebook on Amazon, just click on this link. To receive a personally signed copy of any of our books within North America, just etransfer at ed_hird@telus.net, giving your address. Cheques are also acceptable.
We are grateful for these two endorsements by the Right Rev. Dr. Felix Orji and Rev. Dr. Medad Birungi of our upcoming book “God’s Firestarters: preparing our families for coming revivals”. The book is now at our publisher Larry Luby of His Publishing Group in Dallas Texas. “I have known Dr Ed Hird since 1992. His life and ministry have been dedicated to Jesus, the renewal of the Church, and the strengthening of the family. In this masterpiece, he and Janice once again point us in the direction of the necessity and means of renewal and awakening through sharing the stories of men and women who came face to face WITH God and hence experienced his reviving fire. This is a powerful book. Read it and you will be renewed by the Holy Spirit as you pay heed to his voice.” —The Rt Rev’d Dr Felix Orji, Diocesan Bishop Anglican Diocese of the West. Coordinating Bishop of CONNAM. “Spiritual Fire-starters are people lovers, risk takers, tireless workers and servant leaders who are characterized by wet eyes, bent knees and a humble spirit crying for revival. This is what this book is all about, and the anointing Rev Dr Ed & Janice Hird carry. I highly endorse this book.” —The Rev Dr Medad Birungi Zinomuhangi, PhD Founder & President of World Shine Ministries, Uganda.”
To purchase any of our six books in paperback or ebook on Amazon, just click on this link. To receive a personally signed copy of any of our books within North America, just etransfer at ed_hird@telus.net, giving your address. Cheques are also acceptable.
Your prayers are welcome for our upcoming book on revival God’s Firestarters, which Bill Glasgow is currently working on the formatting and layout. It will soon be going to our publisher Larry Luby in Dallas Texas. Our plans, God willing, are to have it out in time for Christmas shopping. To whom might you like to give this revival book? http://www.edhird.com Here are a couple of endorsements to consider from Bishops Silas Ng and Alfredo Cooper: This is a book this world desperately needs! As it says in the book of Jude verse 3, “I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people.” Thank you, Dr. Ed and Janice for giving your readers to know how the Holy Spirit kindled the fire of those holy people in the past several hundred years through their witness of their family, especially relationships of husbands and wives in the twenty chapters to set on fire so many people to live for Jesus that He is our Lord and King. And, most important, to set us on FIRE! –Rt. Rev. Dr. Silas Ng (Chief Bishop, Anglican Mission in Canada)
Ed and Janice Hird create a spirit of excitement and expectancy in “God’s Firestarters” with their realistic portrayal of giants who moved the church in the Spirit. Revival through fiery preaching, yes, Holy Spirit anointing, yes, but also with roots in family life, marriage tensions, quirks and tempers, faith, much prayer, service, learning, study, holy and sacrificial living. The united picture gives us a sense of what it would take to know God’s visitation very realistically sparked among us today. –Bishop Alf Cooper (Chile)
To purchase any of our six books in paperback or ebook on Amazon, just click on this link. To receive a personally signed copy of any of our books within North America, just etransfer at ed_hird@telus.net, giving your address. Cheques are also acceptable.
We have many great memories of the late Maureen Harrison who was a spiritual mother of the remarkable renewal at St Simon’s North Vancouver. It was a joy to go on our first Mission trip with Maureen and team to Honduras in 1994.
Why do we resist putting to death our own selfishness?To purchase any of our six books in paperback or ebook on Amazon, just click on this link. To receive a personally signed copy of any of our books within North America, just etransfer at ed_hird@telus.net, giving your address. Cheques are also acceptable.
John Owen. “Secondly, God allows man to be tested to show himself to man. Until we are tested,see think that we are living on our own strength. It is however, God alone who keeps us from falling by his preventing grace. We might say, ‘All men may do this or that, but we will not!’ When the trial comes, however, we quickly see that only God’s preservation upholds us. So it was with Abimelech (Gen. 20 : 6), God withheld him from sinning. God also reveals his renewing grace through our testings. Paul, in His prayer for deliverance from the thorn in his flesh, found God’s sufficiency and renewing grace (2 Cor. 12 : 9).
We do not realise the power and strength that God puts forth on our behalf, and the sufficiency of his grace, until we compare our trials with our weakness. God’s power and grace are then seen clearly in our lives. The effectiveness of an antidote is not realised until one has been exposed to the poison. The preciousness of a medicine is revealed by the presence of the disease. We will not know the power of grace until we feel the power of the testing. We must be tried, to realise the glory of being preserved.”
~ John Owen
To purchase any of our six books in paperback or ebook on Amazon, just click on this link. To receive a personally signed copy of any of our books within North America, just etransfer at ed_hird@telus.net, giving your address. Cheques are also acceptable.
We hear a lot about essential workers and essential services in these COVID-19 times. At 7 pm each night, many of us have been cheering for them, as we bang on our pots and pans. The late Dr. JI Packer, God’s essential worker, helps us rediscover Richard Baxter’s essential writings, not just for mortal life but more importantly for eternal life. What might it be like to cheer for God’s essential workers, including our theologians, pastors, evangelists, and missionaries?[1] Both Baxter and Packer knew from personal experience that physical death is not the worst thing that can happen to us. Both faced sickness and possible death early in life, but fixed their gaze on Jesus Christ in those difficult times. Packer, who did his Oxford doctorate on Baxter, helped us rediscover Baxter’s brilliant emphasis, derived from Rupertus Meledenius: “In Essentials, unity; in non-essentials, diversity; and in all things charity.”
Many believe that J.I. Packer, born in 1926 and passed on July 17th 2020, will be remembered as the principal theologian of the 21st Century. Packer and Baxter each had the same puritan passion for knowing truth, seeing it as our first duty.[2] Both represent the best of Puritanism without being ‘puritanical’.[3] Baxter in the 17th century commented: “I never discover a Truth in my studies, but it is as sweet to my mind as a feast to my body…I spend my time, and strength and spirits in almost nothing but studying after Truth.”[4] Many people nowadays dismiss theology as non-essential ivory-tower speculation. We live in an anti-rationalist culture that worships one’s feelings and denies any objective truth. Both men believed that the mind actually mattered, that reason and thinking were gifts from God that helped us discern truth. Their love for truth gave them a respect for the arts, sciences, history[5], as well as theology.[6] In Baxter’s day, theology was seen as the Queen of the sciences.[7]
For both men, knowing God with our head and heart was essential.[8] It is not enough to just know about God academically. Baxter held that “he is the best scholar who hath the readiest passage from the ear to the brain, but he is the best Christian who hath the readiest passage from the brain to the heart.” Dr J.I. Packer also warned against “hardness of heart and cynicism of the head.” Being heavenly-minded for Baxter and Packer was the key to making the most lasting impact on planet Earth.
Recognized by Time Magazine as one of the twenty-five most influential evangelicals, Dr Packer is best known remembered for his most popular book Knowing God. In reading Dr Packer’s doctoral thesis, I discovered that Packer’s Knowing God classic is an unpacking of the wisdom of Richard Baxter.
Jesus prayed in John 17:21 that we would be one as the Father and Son are one that the world may believe. While Baxter and Packer were both ordained Anglican clergy, they had a deep love for the wider body of Christ. That is part of the reason that Packer has served since 1979 at Regent College, a interdenominational college. Baxter called himself ‘a mere Christian’, expressing the truth that God’s people go beyond the bounds of any one denomination.[9] Both showed us that unity in the Essentials of the Gospel is essential to reach the world for Christ, such as the creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. Are we willing to repent over our division and arguments over non-essentials? We can all agree to the full deity and humanity of Jesus, his virgin birth, his death for our sins, his physically rising from the grave. By contrast, the precise way that we baptize, celebrate communion, organize our church leadership, or sing worship songs are not essentials worth splitting over. Both men knew that not every Christian congregation has to be exactly the same, as sameness crushes creativity and spiritual intimacy.
After the heart-rending English civil war of 1647, Baxter felt called to be a peacemaker. [10] All his writings sought to promote “in all things, charity (love).” As Packer put it, Baxter “meddled much with Controversies…to end them.” It was Baxter’s respect for truth that kept him from ‘undignified wrangling’.[11] Even though he was often banned from preaching and forced out of town, Baxter stayed gracious and Christ-centered. Both Packer and Baxter were deeply charitable and humble in times of great controversy.[12] While neither liked controversy, both had the courage to take a stand for gospel truth when waves of conflict occurred. Even when recently needing to say no to false teachers, Packer spoke the truth in love. He never became vindictive and negative. At age 93, he is finishing well, staying focused on the goodness of the gospel essentials.
Our prayer is that in this COVID-19 pandemic, that we like these brave Christian men, Baxter and Packer, might rediscover what is essential, how to celebrate diversity, and the urgency of charitable love in all circumstances.
[1] The Gospel and church are deemed in our COVID culture as a nonessential service, unlike pot stores.
Peace Arch News April 23rd 2020, Tom Zillich, A33 “…now would be the worst time to curtail people’s access to those substances which have helped them deal with their anxiety.”
[2] JI Packer, The Restoration and Redemption of Man in the Thought of Richard Baxter, Oxford Doctoral Thesis 1954 (Regent College Publishing, Vancouver, 2002), 96, Packer commented regarding Baxter, “To the end of his life, he could never understand how his fellow Christians could love truth do little and seek it so half-heartedly.”
[3] Packer, Thesis, 95 (Baxter)…was anima naturaliter Puritana, the incarnation of Puritanism at its purest.”; Thesis, 98 Packer “…a Puritan thoroughbred…Baxter was the most consistent Puritan of them all.”
[5] Thesis, 68 Baxter “History is a very profitable study, if it be used for the right ends, and be rightly chosen. It is a very great help to understand the Scriptures, and to know the former and present state of the church; and to see the wonderful works of Providence, that otherwise would be lost to us.” XI:213
[6] Thesis, 95 (Baxter) “…to take all arts and sciences for his province so that he might himself construct the hierarchy of truth and show, according to the Puritan blueprint, how all this comes from God and leads to God.”
[7] Thesis,64 Packer: “Fundamental to all Puritan thought was the seventeenth-century version of the Medieval doctrine that all knowledge is a unity and all sciences, physical and moral, form a hierarchy at the head of which stands theology.”
[8] Packer, Thesis, 86, ‘Baxter never tired of reminding his readers that “Heaven-work and Heart-work are the chiefest parts of Christian duty”; “true religion…consists in heaven-work and heart-work, in the love of God and man…” Cure of Christian Divisions (1670) 209, 408, et al.
[9] The title of CS Lewis’ best-selling book Mere Christianity is taken directly from Richard Baxter.
[11] Thesis, 97 Packer: “He was exact in definition and accurate in usage; and his respect for truth and sense of responsibility for it kept him from undignified wrangling.”
[12] “What a gracious man”, I (Ed) thought as Dr J.I. Packer spoke. In the midst of a raging North Carolina snowstorm, he was giving a morning devotion at the Anglican Mission Winter Conference on John 21, in which he identified with Simon Peter’s growing through failure. The first time we ever spent time with Dr Packer was in 1979 in a student residence on the University of BC campus where we literally chased noises in the heating system. Dr Packer came across so humbly and natural, despite his worldwide reputation.
P. S. Click this Amazon link to view for free the first two chapters of our new novel Blue Sky.
“I’m afraid there’s been an accident…”
Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.
Sandy receives shocking news that her children aren’t safe, which brings back haunting memories of the trauma she experienced as a girl. Then, the unthinkable happens…
A brutal attack puts Sandy on the brink of losing everything she’s loved. Her faith in God and the family she cherishes are pushed to the ultimate limit.
Is healing possible when so many loved ones are hurt? Are miracles really possible through the power of prayer? Can life return to the way it was before?
Blue Sky reveals how a mother’s most basic instinct isn’t for survival… but for family.
If you’re a fan of Karen Kingsbury, then you’ll love Blue Sky. Get your copy today on paperback or kindle.
-The sequel book Restoring Health: body, mind and spirit is available online with Amazon.com in both paperback and ebook form. Dr. JI Packer wrote the foreword, saying “I heartily commend what he has written.” The book focuses on strengthening a new generation of healthy leaders. Drawing on examples from Titus’ healthy leadership in the pirate island of Crete, it shows how we can embrace a holistically healthy life.
To receive a personally signed copy of any of our books within North America, just etransfer at ed_hird@telus.net, giving your address. Cheques are also acceptable.
-Click to purchase the Companion Bible Study by Jan Cox (for the Battle of the Soul of Canada) in both paperback and Kindle on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca
-Click to purchase the Companion Bible Study by Jan Cox (for the Battle of the Soul of Canada) in both paperback and Kindle on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca
To purchase any of our six books in paperback or ebook on Amazon, just click on this link.
P. S. Click this Amazon link to view for free the first two chapters of our new novel Blue Sky.
“I’m afraid there’s been an accident…”
Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.
Sandy receives shocking news that her children aren’t safe, which brings back haunting memories of the trauma she experienced as a girl. Then, the unthinkable happens…
A brutal attack puts Sandy on the brink of losing everything she’s loved. Her faith in God and the family she cherishes are pushed to the ultimate limit.
Is healing possible when so many loved ones are hurt? Are miracles really possible through the power of prayer? Can life return to the way it was before?
Blue Sky reveals how a mother’s most basic instinct isn’t for survival… but for family.
If you’re a fan of Karen Kingsbury, then you’ll love Blue Sky. Get your copy today on paperback or kindle.
-The sequel book Restoring Health: body, mind and spirit is available online with Amazon.com in both paperback and ebook form. Dr. JI Packer wrote the foreword, saying “I heartily commend what he has written.” The book focuses on strengthening a new generation of healthy leaders. Drawing on examples from Titus’ healthy leadership in the pirate island of Crete, it shows how we can embrace a holistically healthy life.
To receive a personally signed copy of any of our books within North America, just etransfer at ed_hird@telus.net, giving your address. Cheques are also acceptable.
-Click to purchase the Companion Bible Study by Jan Cox (for the Battle of the Soul of Canada) in both paperback and Kindle on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca
-Click to purchase the Companion Bible Study by Jan Cox (for the Battle of the Soul of Canada) in both paperback and Kindle on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca
To purchase any of our six books in paperback or ebook on Amazon, just click on this link.
Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.
Edhird's Blog 