In the movie What A Girl Wants, a fatherless North American 17-year-old flies to England looking for her British father whom she’s never met. When Daphne finally encounters her father, his initial response is ‘Sorry, not interested.’ As Daphne sadly picks up her bags to leave, her father has a sudden partial change of heart.
Sadly many young people feel disconnected from their fathers. Some have never known their fathers. Many feel a longing for a close relationship with their dad, but fear that this is impossible. Will their father really be interested?
I am so grateful to have a growing relationship with my own 94-year old Father. He has shown me time and again that he is deeply interested in my life and activities. I remember when he volunteered to be our baseball umpire, one of the most painful jobs that a loving father can take on.
Canadians are so polite. I have noticed that many Canadians will politely avoid any conversations related to politics or religion. “Sorry, not interested”. Imagine if one of us were having a crisis and decided to pray to God only to hear him say “Sorry, not interested.”. We assume that God is naturally fascinated with our lives. And we are right. God never finds us boring, irrelevant, or stupid. God cares for us as his own offspring, his own personal creation, made in his very own image. The Father is deeply interested in each one of us.
Thank God that we are not just a statistic, a number, an accident. Our Father sees us as deeply valuable. Each of us are people for whom Christ died. Each of us are wonderfully and fearfully made.
Let us give thanks for our earthly fathers, but most of all for the Heavenly Father who loves us with an everlasting love.
Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, BSW, MDiv, DMin
-an article 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 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.
Did you know that suicide has become the No. 2 killer of teenagers in North America? Suicide is a taboo subject that no one wants to talk about. It may frighten us; yet it has to be faced. In North America the suicide rate for male teens aged 15 to 19 has increased to 3 times the 1967 rate (2 ½ times increase for females).
So what can we do about teen suicide? How can we get the help to teens who really need it? Well, first of all, we need to know what the causes of suicide are. Why do people do it? Experts say that there are five main causes of suicide:
Severe feelings of guilt and hostility towards others
Punishing others through suicide
Emotional illness (35% of suicides involve severe depression and temporary insanity)
Physical illness such as cancer (40% of men who commit suicide and 20% of women)
Losses such as death of loved ones, or financial ruin
Camus, the famous philosopher, once said that there is but one philosophic problem and that is suicide. It revolves around life’s apparent meaninglessness, despair, and absurdity.
I think Camus has a point. You see, life sometimes can feel very unfair, very abusive, and very cruel. Life can often destroy your dreams, and make you wish that you’d never been born. For some people, they never feel any suicide temptation. Some others feel it very infrequently. There are others who feel these emotions on a regular basis. They may have never acted on those feelings, but the feelings still haunt them.
Every time those feelings come, it becomes a major struggle to once again choose life and renounce the powers of death. The suicide temptation is often an addiction. Anything becomes an addiction when it controls our lives, when no matter how much we dislike the activity, we seem to return to it again and again. I believe that Jesus Christ, through counseling and prayer, can break the power of any addiction. But it’s not easy. There’s no such thing as a quickie cure.
The root of addiction is none other than fear and guilt. All addictions, whether to suicide or whatever, are fed by bondage to fear and guilt. The more fearful we become, the guiltier we become, the greater control the addiction to suicide gets over us.
The cycle may go like this. Say you’ve had a very depressing week, your teacher flunked you, your parents grounded you, your girlfriend dropped you, your baseball coach cut you, and your car died on you. In the midst of this depression, you may begin to feel; “What’s the use? I wish I wasn’t alive”.
Suicide addiction can easily set in at this point. First of all, you feel guilty that you just felt that way. Secondly, you may feel fear that those feelings will become worse. So you just try to avoid these suicide feelings and shut them out of your mind. But it doesn’t work and you just feel more guilty. Winning over temptation by mental avoidance never works.
Another thing that increases the suicide addiction is that when we feel guilty about these feelings, we’re too embarrassed to have God around. We feel too unclean, too unspiritual; so without fully realizing it, we ask God to leave the room and wait outside until the temptation is over.
This, of course, makes us feel even more rejected and guilty. Then we feel abandoned by God just when we need him. The old saying, “If you don’t feel close to God, guess who moved?” is still true. But we tend to say to ourselves; If God abandons me when I really need him, why bother to fight it. I’m not worth it. Why resist it?”
So then we take the other step of self-abandonment. We abandon ourselves to the hopelessness of wallowing in our suicide feelings, and to an ever-increasing vicious cycle of fear and guilt.
How then does Jesus break the addiction of suicide? Jesus breaks the addiction by breaking the power of guilt and fear. By dying on the cross as the forsaken one, as the abandoned one, He exchanges His cleanness for our uncleanness. He was abandoned and forsaken so that we need never feel abandoned or forsaken. You may remember that He died on the cross, saying ” My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus became grieved and distressed, saying “My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death”. In Gethsemane and on the cross, he took our agony, our guilt, our depression, our fear, so that we don’t have to be stuck with that garbage any more.
The Bible says that Jesus has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). That means that Jesus allowed Himself to feel the awful pull to death and suicide, and then he broke its power on the Cross. In an allegorical sense, you could say that Jesus “committed suicide” on the cross so that we don’t have to.
As a result you don’t need to punish yourself anymore. Jesus took your punishment. You don’t need to condemn yourself anymore. “Now there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1). You don’t need to be consumed with fear any more. “Perfect Love casts out all fear.” (I John 4:18)
Some of you reading this may be secretly struggling with suicide feelings. Some of you feel very guilty and fearful about it. I challenge you to give these feelings to Jesus and accept his offer of forgiveness.
I challenge you to seek professional counseling and really give Christ a chance to do some long-term personal healing. “Choose life that you may live in the love of the Lord.”
The Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, Rector, BSW, MDiv, DMin
-previously published in the Abbotsford News and 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.
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 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 