Researchers have found that 115 million North Americans made health resolutions on January 1 – promising themselves to quit smoking, eat better, lose weight, or start a serious exercise program. But within 2 months, only about 63% were still keeping their number one New Year’s resolution. When one checks a year later, health resolution ‘survivors’ are a greatly diminished remnant.
What is it that gives us the motivation to hang in there when we are seeking to become healthy? I will now have ‘survived’ two decades of consistently going to the gym, at least two times a week. I have often been tempted to give up and crawl back on my couch.
One of my best motivators has been my dear wife to whom I have been married for 43 years. She went to the gym many years before I went and often gently encouraged me to come along with her. My initial impression was that I felt sorry for people who went to weight rooms. They seemed rather masochistic to me. Why would they inflict so much pain upon themselves? I also felt intimidated by the endless variety of equipment with different levers ‘going in a thousand different directions’. My fear was that if I pressed the wrong lever in the wrong direction, I might end up at the physiotherapist for the next year!
One of my most fun activities now is to work out at the weight room with my wife. Every time I see her there, I am filled with admiration that she is taking such good care of herself. I am looking forward to enjoying with my dear wife a healthy, active future fostered by the very weight training that we are both doing right now.
A second motivation for lasting at the gym has been the ‘personal trainer called pain. Since my being ‘rear-ended’ in a November ’99 car accident, my neck and shoulder muscles have become very fine-tuned to reminding me when I need to work out. As long as I exercise at least two times a week, my neck is relatively pain-free, my headaches are down by 90%, and my hips and back are remarkably stable. As a result, my medical costs for physiotherapy and massage therapy are down by more than 80%!
But if I slack off and get too busy, I can feel the area of my former injury tightening up again. The resulting pain and spasms once again will interfere with my work life, family life, and prayer life. Chastened and reminded, I trundle back off to the gym, to my new friends who have been wondering what has happened to me. My personal trainer ‘Pain’ can be a remarkable motivator if I will only listen to it and not just medicate it away.
A third motivator for going for over two decades to the gym has been the spiritual benefits. Modern day life has all kinds of stresses built right into it. I have found that the consistent discipline of weight training has deepened my sense of inner peace. Not only has my pain level dropped; my worry level has dropped as well. Working out actually helps me ‘let go and let God’.
The YMCA and YWCA were birthed out of the realization that all three parts of us need exercising body, mind, and spirit. There is anonymity at the gym that lets one silently pray without any one else really noticing. I have found that there is no better equipment than the stationary bike for truly integrating the merits of physical and spiritual fitness. Over the last two years, the stationary bike and the Book of Common Prayer have become inseparable for me.
The term ‘exercise’ comes from the Greek word ‘gumnazo’ from which we derive the terms ‘gymnastics’ and ‘gym(nasium)’. Exercise is helping me become more disciplined, a better disciple of my Lord Jesus Christ. My prayer for those reading this article is that each of us may become more disciplined in our desires to be healthier in body, mind, and spirit.
The Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, BSW, MDiv, DMin
-previously published in the North Shore News/Deep Cove Crier
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 signed copy 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.
Fighting makes us feel strong. Prayer reminds us that we are vulnerable. Fighting makes us feel in control. Prayer reminds us to let go and let God. Fighting feeds on anger and bitterness. Prayer feeds on forgiveness and peace.
I became a Christian 46 years ago, after 17 years of spiritual hide-and-seek. Being raised in church, I was taught to pray as a child but never really understood the intimacy of a real relationship. As a teenager, my prayer life gradually faded into non-existence. I never rejected God. I just kept God at a convenient distance without even realizing it.
God to me was not untrue, but rather irrelevant. I never rejected prayer. It just slipped off my radar screen into oblivion. I never rejected the Church. I just found it painfully boring and obscure. Though I was desperately seeking for the meaning of life, I had no idea that the Church would have anything to offer in that area.
When I was brutally attacked as a teenager by a gang member, I turned to martial arts in a secret desire for both self-defense and revenge. Fighting made me feel strong. I had no idea that prayer might turn out to be a more powerful weapon. Within a year, I came to know Jesus Christ on a personal basis, and lost the desire to get even. A few years later, I discovered that this bully had gone after someone larger than him who had kicked this bully’s teeth in and twisted a broken beer bottle in his face. Hearing that story taught me that violence always breeds violence. It was better to forgive because there is always ‘a faster gunfighter just waiting around the corner.’ Even with that realization, it still took me twenty years before I finally parted company with martial arts.
When I met Jesus Christ 46 years ago, I was flabbergasted that someone was actually listening. Prayer no longer felt like talking to the ceiling plaster. It felt personal, real, and infectious. I couldn’t get enough of connecting to this new best-friend. There had been an emptiness inside me that skiing, golfing, and parties couldn’t fill. Through prayer, I felt a new inner peace and warmth that even my former drinking buddies noticed.
Going back to church, I noticed that church wasn’t as boring as it used to be. While it may have changed, the big thing was that I had changed from the inside out. I developed a new love and concern for people that I used to avoid and even look down on. Instead of resenting life, I began to wake up looking forward to the next adventure that was ahead of me.
One of the things that troubled me though, as a new Christian, was the infighting between all the different denominations. Why couldn’t the Anglicans, Baptists, Pentecostals, Mennonites, Presbyterians, etc learn to get along and stop competing? Sometimes Christians reminded me of my old life as a non-Christian when I would rather fight than pray.
One of the wonderful gifts of serving on the North Shore from 1987 to 2018 is that denominational bickering is at an all-time low. Clergy and pastors speak well of each other’s congregations and even freely send parishioners to attend other churches. There is a generosity among North Shore pastors that allows them to bless each other instead of cursing each other.
This hasn’t happened by accident. It is the fruit of forty years of weekly prayer by the North Shore clergy, first at Hillside Baptist, then at Valley Church, and now at Sutherland Church. By praying together on the second Wednesday of each month, God has been teaching the North Shore pastors how much we need each other. North Shore Clergy have been learning that they are too busy not to pray. By focusing on Jesus Christ, they have been rediscovering that we are on the same team. Denominations are second. Jesus is first.
Every denomination has its own strengths and weaknesses. Instead of putting down another group for their flaws, we are learning to hold them up in prayer that they may become all that they are meant to be. Presbyterians don’t need to become Anglicans, and Anglicans don’t need to become Baptists. Our real calling is to love each other with the life-changing love of Jesus Christ. Many churches have formed because someone was hurt. We have been learning that it is time to forgive, time to heal, time to pray. Why fight when we can pray? My prayer for those reading this article is that we may rediscover the deep truth that the family that prays together stays together.
The Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, BSW, MDiv, DMin
-previously published in the North Shore News/Deep Cove Crier
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 signed copy 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.
One day of sunshine in Deep Cove/Seymour is enough to make me forget all the other kinds of days. I was raised in the days before skin cancer totally changed our views of sunbathing. Suntan lotion in the 1960’s had little to do with the ozone layer and everything to do with looking more pleasantly roasted. I remember feeling guilty if I didn’t burn! One of my favorite places to catch the rays was on the Sunshine Coast in a little place called Roberts Creek.
My paternal grandparents had left Vancouver in 1959 to becoming a ‘pioneering family’ in a community that didn’t even having running water or electricity. Grandpa Vic Hird, who was a 60-year-old master mechanic and second-generation blacksmith, decided to tent out with his wife Olive while building their own house in the Roberts Creek woods. Each morning they trekked down to Flume Creek with the other pioneers to collect their daily water.
To help his parents build their house, my engineering father, accompanied by his young family, would take the Langdale Ferry many weekends to the Sunshine Coast. My strongest memory of the Sunshine Coast house-building spree was when I stepped on a long construction nail and had to be driven to my Grade One class for the first two months. My Grandfather worked so hard building his house and digging a well through ‘hardpan’ that he suffered a heart attack and promptly decided that he would be dying within a year. For the next 32 years of Grandpa’s life on the Sunshine Coast, we ‘knew’ that Grandpa would be dead within about a year. Surprisingly all the healthy people died before Grandpa Hird.
All throughout my childhood and teenage years, we made our regular Sunshine Coast pilgrimages to visit my grandparents. My grandpa loved the Sunshine Coast for the fishing, and often took us out in the early mornings to catch ‘a big one.’ While I found fishing rather boring, I loved strolling down to Henderson Beach to lay on the sand and swim out to the float. This summer had a surreal feeling as we took our three boys there to ‘re-enact’ my childhood. Dozens of rich memories came flooding back as I watched my boys run up and down the beach, climbing on the endless logs and looking for crabs under the barnacle-covered rocks. I find that there is still something indescribably peaceful about sticking one’s toes in the nice warm sand and counting the sailboats floating by.
When my grandparents both died, we lost the ‘magnet’ that drew our family to the Sunshine Coast again and again. In the past few years however, a number of our Deep Cove friends made the move to the Sunshine Coast, giving us the perfect excuse to resurrect our ‘family pilgrimage’. Our transplanted Deep Covers on the Sunshine Coast also tell me that once you have lived in Deep Cove, you never get it out of your blood. In some strange wonderful way, you never really leave Deep Cove.
Because Deep Cove was birthed originally as a vacation get-away only accessible by boat, Deep Cove still feels a lot like the laid-back Sunshine Coast to me. The miracle of Deep Cove is that being only ten minutes from one of the busiest Metropolises in Canada, Deep Cove still gives one the sense of being countless miles away from anywhere.
Many of us remember the Travel Industry jingle where they sang: ‘I need a vacation, I’ve got to get away!’. I recently learnt that the word vacation comes from the word ‘vacate’….to go away from so as to leave empty or unoccupied. All of us need times to be able to get away, to leave our worries and stresses behind. All of us need to be able to cut off our cells phones and leave our minds and hearts unoccupied with the unending busyness of business. Deep Cove’s laid-back ‘genetic code’ can help us vacate our worries and really ‘let go and let God.’
No matter how dedicated to our careers, all of us need holidays…all of us need times of recreation. When the rush and tumble of September arrives, how quickly our sunny holidays can seem like distant memories. Holidays (or holy days in the original meaning) are not a luxury or an option. They are at the heart of what it means to be re-created through recreation. As created beings of a wonderful Creator, all of us tend to wear out. All us literally need to be re-created on a regular basis. The actual dictionary meaning of going to a local Rec Centre is that we might be re-created, re-newed, re-freshed. My prayer for those reading this article online is that Jesus Christ our ‘Sun of Righteousness’, in whom we were created, will recreate us in body, mind and spirit.
The Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, BSW, MDiv, DMin
-previously published in the North Shore News/Deep Cove Crier
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 signed copy 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.
I often notice car bumper stickers saying ‘One Day at a Time’, and ‘Take it Easy’. One of my favorite bumper stickers is ‘Letting Go and Letting God’.
Popularized by the 12-step movements. this phrase reminds us that excessive striving and drivenness is damaging to our health, our families, and our inner lives.
Our North American culture is becoming more and more frantic and fear-bound, especially in our shaky economic and political context. Is it little wonder that A.A. teaches us that the first step to sanity is to admit that we are powerless over our problems and that our lives have become unmanageable? This admission of powerlessness is very humbling to our ego. It is a real death to our illusions of grandiosity and immortality
The 3rd Step to sanity is making a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God. The heart of Step 3 is ‘Letting Go and Letting God’. Most of us put enormous energy into remaining in control of our own private lives. The idea of surrendering control to anyone, let alone God, can be enormously threatening. Yet the act of surrender can be the most healing step that we may ever take.
The heart of spirituality, in fact, is surrendering our will and lives to God who really cares for us. As Jesus was hanging in agony on the cross, he cried out, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit”. Such a surrender can be our choice one day at a time. Either we commit our lives daily into God’s hands, or we commit our lives into our own hands. Either God ends up at the centre of our lives, or our self ends up at the centre. There is no greater disease than finding one’s self at the centre, the essence of self-centeredness. As Dr. E. Stanley Jones puts it, anything that leaves you at the centre is off-centre.
Self-centeredness is rather like bad breath or body odor. Everyone knows about it but yourself, though you can certainly detect in other people. I have discovered that the heart of my problems in life is not usually other people. Rather it is my own self-centeredness. As a teenager, I tried to live life seeking my own personal happiness. I was never unhappier. I have learnt the hard way that happiness is a by-product of serving others and caring for others in a Christ-like way.
The A.A. Big Book has a passion for honesty as a key to sanity and sobriety. In one section, it ironically comments that blaming others and anger is a luxury that alcoholics cannot afford. You cannot indulge bitterness and finger-pointing and stay sober. The truth, of course, is that none of us can indulge self-centered blaming of others, and stay healthy. Bitterness always eats the bitter person alive.
“The deepest necessity of human nature”, says Dr. E. Stanley Jones, “is to surrender itself to something, or someone, beyond itself. Your self in your own hands is a problem and pain; your self in the hands of God is a possibility and power.” Why is it so hard to let go and let God? Why does our ego so often fight self-surrender with all its might? Because self-surrender is choosing to die to the false self, the self-centered way of living, that the true self might live for the sake of others. “Fears, worries, anxieties, and resentments”, says Dr. Jones, “are all roots in the unsurrendered self.”
Letting go is to surrender to creative love. Letting go is to align ourselves with God’s healing peace in our lives. Letting go is learning to stop and smell the coffee, enjoy the sunsets, rejoice in our children. Letting go is all about learning to slow down in our pressure-cooker world. Dr. Jones comments that ‘the surrendered are quietly creative and actually produce twice as much as the unsurrendered with all their fussy activity.” You may have heard of the old expression: ‘The hurrieder I go, the behinder I get’.
As Bob Dylan once wrote, ‘you gotta serve somebody…It may be the devil, it may be the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody’. The choice is ours one day at a time. We may choose to surrender to fear, to pride, to money, to resentment, to popularity, or we can choose to surrender to God who really cares for us. My prayer for those reading this article is that each of us may learn to slow down, let go, and let God.
-previously published in the North Shore News/Deep Cove Crier
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 signed copy 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.
One of my most fun activities now is to work out at the weight room with my wife. Every time I see her there, I am filled with admiration that she is taking such good care of herself. I am looking forward to enjoying with my dear wife a healthy, active future fostered by the very weight training that we are both doing right now.
A third motivator for going for over two decades to the gym has been the spiritual benefits. Modern day life has all kinds of stresses built right into it. I have found that the consistent discipline of weight training has deepened my sense of inner peace. Not only has my pain level dropped; my worry level has dropped as well. Working out actually helps me ‘let go and let God’.
word ‘gumnazo’ from which we derive the terms ‘gymnastics’ and ‘gym(nasium)’. Exercise is helping me become more disciplined, a better disciple of my Lord Jesus Christ. My prayer for those reading this article is that each of us may become more disciplined in our desires to be healthier in body, mind, and spirit.
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.
The heart of spirituality, in fact, is surrendering our will and lives to God who really cares for us. As Jesus was hanging in agony on the cross, he cried out, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit”. Such a surrender can be our choice one day at a time. Either we commit our lives daily into God’s hands, or we commit our lives into our own hands. Either God ends up at the centre of our lives, or our self ends up at the centre. There is no greater disease than finding one’s self at the centre, the essence of self-centeredness. As Dr. E. Stanley Jones puts it, anything that leaves you at the centre is off-centre.
itself to something, or someone, beyond itself. Your self in your own hands is a problem and pain; your self in the hands of God is a possibility and power.” Why is it so hard to let go and let God? Why does our ego so often fight self-surrender with all its might? Because self-surrender is choosing to die to the false self, the self-centered way of living, that the true self might live for the sake of others. “Fears, worries, anxieties, and resentments”, says Dr. Jones, “are all roots in the unsurrendered self.”
As Bob Dylan once wrote, ‘you gotta serve somebody…It may be the devil, it may be the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody’. The choice is ours one day at a time. We may choose to surrender to fear, to pride, to money, to resentment, to popularity, or we can choose to surrender to God who really cares for us. My prayer for those reading this article is that each of us may learn to slow down, let go, and let God.
Edhird's Blog 