photos from the 38th Annual BC Christian Ashram retreat
July 19, 2011
Bishop Charles Dorrington, Keynote Speaker for the BC Christian Ashram retreat. Both +Charles and his wife Claudia have agreed to return for our 39th annual BC Christian Ashram retreat on July 27th to 30th 2012 to share on ‘Moving in Freedom’.
Claudia Dorrington who co-taught with her husband +Charles on the theme of ‘Healing the Whole Person’.
The Rev Josh Wilton of the Table Church, Victoria BC who served as our Bible Teacher on ‘The Life of Jesus’.
Group shot of the BC Christian Ashram retreat
Many delicious meals at Summit Pacific Park from Terry and the kitchen team.
Ready for learning and for fun 
The Christian Ashram youth preparing to do a skit at the Talent Show
Humorous and insightful scenes from the life of King David skit by our youth group
A younger David seeking to placate a grumpy older King Saul
How would you, David, like to marry my daughter Michal?
James Hird sharing his latest song that he wrote at the BC Christian Ashram
The BC Christian Ashram Choir led by Frank Mierau at the Talent Show
Enjoying the talented people at the BC Christian Ashram Talent Show
Frank Mierau leading the BC Christian Ashram Choir
The BC Christian Ashram Choir at the annual Talent Show
Daily Devotional time at 7am each morning focusing on 1 Corinthians 1-3
Rev Josh Wilton gave three excellent Bible studies during the BC Christian Ashram retreat.
The Christian Ashram always wraps up with the session of the Overflowing Heart where people give thanks for what they have received from Jesus during the weekend.
We sit in a circle to wrap up the BC Christian Ashram weekend
Thanks be to God for an amazing weekend! Jesus is Lord!
The Rev. Ed Hird, Rector
St Simon’s Church North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
http://acicanada.ca/
-award-winning author of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’
http://battleforthesoulofcanada.blogspot.com
-In order to obtain a copy of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’, please send a $18.50 cheque to ‘Ed Hird’, #1008-555 West 28th Street, North Vancouver, BC V7N 2J7. For mailing the book to the USA, please send $20.00 USD. This can also be done by PAYPAL using the e-mail ed_hird@telus.net . Be sure to list your mailing address. The Battle for the Soul of Canada e-book can be obtained for $9.99CDN/USD.
-Click to download a complimentary PDF copy of the Battle for the Soul study guide : Seeking God’s Solution for a Spirit-Filled Canada
-You can also download the complimentary Leader’s Guide PDF: Battle for the Soul Leaders Guide
BC Christian Ashram involvement since 1975
June 1, 2011
Gordon Hunter, Percy , and Mary Webster were very memorable speakers. I attended on the personal invitation of my fiancee who had attended the first Christian Ashram in 1974. The deep impact that the Ashram had on her life made me curious to attend and experience a Christian Ashram for myself.
Frank Mierau, David Cline, Ed Hird and Fred Cline singing at the 1994 BC Christian Ashram talent show
Ed Hird serving as Bible Teacher at 1994 BC Christian Ashram
Ed and Janice Hird leading the singing at the 1994 BC Christian Ashram
The Hird family singing at the 1994 BC Christian Ashram
Maureen Harrison, Ed Hird+ and Hilary King sharing about the Honduras Mission at the 1995 BC Christian Ashram
I had the privilege of being the Keynote speaker at the 1997 BC Christian Ashram
Choir singing at the 1999 BC Christian Ashram talent show
Mens Singing at the 1999 BC Christian Ashram
More Mens Singing at the BC Christian Ashram 1999
The Rev Felix Orji our Bible Teacher at the 1999 BC Christian Ashram (soon to be the Right Reverend Dr. Felix Orji, ACNA/CANA Bishop)
The Hird sons singing at the 2,000 BC Christian Ashram
Fred Cline, Ed Hird, John Cline, Dave Cline and Frank Mierau singing at the 2,000 BC Christian Ashram
Bernie Smith from Calgary, Alberta, was our keynote speaker for the 2006 BC Christian Ashram
Choir singing at the BC Christian Ashram
The late John Leeburn was our very talented MC for the BC Christian Ashram Talent Show, who had many hilarious Irish stories…
Frank Mireau leading the 2008 BC Christian Ashram Choir at Summit Pacific Park
The Hird sons singing at the 2008 BC Christian Ashram
Dr Jerry Vogt, our keynote speaker, with some of our young adults at the 2008 BC Christian Ashram
BC Christian Ashram Retreat 2011 with Bishop Charles & Claudia Dorrington and Josh Wilton+
May 11, 2011
B
ishop Charles & Claudia Dorrington, and Rev Josh Wilton will be speaking at the 38th annual BC Christian Ashram Retreat on Friday 6:30pm July 15th-Monday 12n00n July 18th 2011. Bishop Charles is the Reformed Episcopal Church Bishop for Western Canada, Alaska, & Cuba. +Charles & Claudia will be speaking about ‘Healing the Whole Person’. Josh+ is planting the Table Church in Victoria BC, and will be speaking about the Life of Jesus.
The location is Summit Pacific Park on Sumas Mountain in Abbotsford, BC. You are encouraged to put this in your calendars.
Click to view this summer’s BC Christian Ashram brochure: BC Christian Ashram retreat brochure
The Prayer Book: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
August 30, 2010
Three addresses were given at St. Paul’s Church, Bloor Street, Toronto, on May 1, 1999 at a special event organized by
the Prayer Book Society of Canada, Toronto Branch, in celebration of the 450th anniversary of the Book of Common Prayer
by
The (late) Revd. Dr. Robert Crouse, retired Professor of Classics at King’s College, Halifax;
The Revd. Dr. James Packer, Professor of Systematic Theology at Regent College, Vancouver
The Revd. Ed Hird, rector of St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver
“FILLED WITH THE KNOWLEDGE OF HIS WILL” (Col. 1:1-14)
The Revd. Ed Hird
The Revd. Ed Hird was ordained in 1980. He served in the parishes of St. Philip’s, Vancouver, and St. Matthew’s, Abbotsford, before becoming the rector of St. Simon’s Church in North Vancouver in 1987. Ed is the past National Chair of Anglican Renewal Ministries Canada, and has spoken at Renewal, Essentials and Prayer Book Society conferences in Honduras and in various locations across Canada. Inspired by the Essentials movement, he re-introduced the Prayer Book as one of the two main Sunday services in his congregation.
We live in an age in which the knowledge of God’s will is deemed by many to be either unknowable or irrelevant. Our society reminds me of the story of the roving TV reporter who was sent out to the shopping malls on Saturday morning to investigate the problem of teenage apathy and ignorance. Every teenager had the same response: “I don’t know and I don’t care”! And to be fair, teenagers are not the only Canadians suffering from spiritual ignorance and apathy. I remember an adult coming up to me after a sermon I preached in a previous parish. This person said, “I’m totally shocked. I have never made it before to the end of a sermon. I would always just doze off and wake up at the end of the message. But this time I actually heard it through to the end.”
This problem of apathy and ignorance can be traced back to the ancient disease of Pyrrhonism. Pyrrhonism is a system of skeptical philosophy, expounded in 300 BC by the Greek thinker, Pyrrho of Elis.1 The heart of Pyrrhonism is the denial of all possibility of attaining certainty in knowledge. All one is left with is the classic west-coast phrase: “Well, whatever works for you”. With the collapse of confidence in objective truth, our Canadian culture is sinking in intellectual subjectivism and moral anarchy. We have seen a Canadian judge strike down child pornography laws while claiming that our Canadian Constitution and our Charter of Rights somehow protect the possession of child pornography. We live in an age where there “is no king and everyone does as they see fit.” (Judg. 21:25). We live in an age of leadership crisis. It is not just our politicians, our police officers, our school teachers, our military leaders. Even in the Church, yes, in the Anglican Church, there is a profound leadership crisis that is crippling our corporate ability to get on with the task of making disciples of all nations. Perhaps the never-ending “sexual politics” in the Anglican Church of Canada is really a symptom of a deeper leadership crisis.
More than ever, we need to discover afresh what it means to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will and given the power to carry out that will. As J. John at the Canterbury ‘98 Conference put it, “We only have enough time to do the will of God”. So many of us in the Church are like Martha whom Jesus said was distracted by many things, but missing the main one of sitting at Jesus’ feet.
One of the many things I appreciate about the Prayer Book Society is the clarion call to prayer. The Prayer Book Society is not a Colonel Blimp English Memorial Society.2 Rather it constitutes a mobilization of God’s troops to the sacred calling of spiritual warfare through sustained and intensive prayer. If there is anything that we know about God’s will, it is that God wills that we “pray without ceasing”. Let’s be honest. How many of us need to cut back on our prayer life, because it is getting in the way of doing God’s will? Despite any fears that prayer will make us so heavenly-minded that we are no earthly good, the truth of the matter is that only the prayerful and heavenly-minded are ultimately any earthly good. The late Mother Teresa of Calcutta was a living testimony to the intimate relationship between prayer and resulting action.
It is not without reason that the Apostle Paul calls us again and again to “devote ourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful” (Col. 4:2). Prayer is the backbone of all lasting renewal. As Dr. E. Stanley Jones, the famous
Methodist missionary to India put it, “there can be no great spiritual awakening either in the individual or in the group unless and until the individual or the group give themselves to prayer.”3 Dr. Jones goes on to say: “When we feel that there is something wrong and that it is all ending in futility, instead of giving ourselves to prayer, we appoint a committee! If a monument”, says Dr. Jones, “were erected over the dead situations in Christendom, we might inscribe on it ‘Committeed to Death’. We call a committee instead of calling to prayer.” It has been said that the 16th century Reformation began in Luther’s prayer closet. The truth is that all reformation, all renewal, all restoration begins in someone’s prayer closet. Quoting Dr. Jones again, “we find sooner or later that in prayer we either abandon ourselves or we abandon prayer. Prayer will keep us from self-withholding or self-withholding will keep us from prayer.”4
I would encourage you, if you have your Bibles with you, to turn in the book of Colossians to Chapter One, which deals with one of the greatest prayers in the New Testament. I believe that it would be presumptuous to try to improve on the New Testament prayers. Rather, our goal as 21st Century Anglicans should be to model all of our prayers on the biblical pattern of prayer shown especially by Jesus and the Apostle Paul. I remember my rector, Ernie Eldridge, telling me that one of the great strengths of the Book of Common Prayer is that something like 80% of it is straight from the Bible. The prayers in the BCP were written by people who were steeped in the biblical thought forms, and so produced biblically sound and lasting prayers.
Paul is writing here to a formerly great and flourishing city that had been in a recession for the last three to four hundred years. Colossae, whose name means “Monstrosity”, had become a backwater no-name town that had been left behind in the busy pace of 1st century Greek life. Its neighbouring towns, Laodicea and Hierapolis were well-known respectively for their financial and administrative prowess, and for their burgeoning tourist and hot springs industry. They, like Colossae, were located on the River Lycus, a river famous for overlaying its surrounding river banks with thick deposits of chalk. As Bishop J.B. Lightfoot put it, “Ancient monuments are buried; fertile land is overlaid; river beds choked up and streams diverted; fantastic grottoes and cascades and archways of stone are formed, by this strange, capricious power, at once destructive and creative, working silently throughout the ages. Fatal to vegetation, these incrustations spread like a stony shroud over the ground. Gleaming like glaciers on the hillside, they attract the eye of the traveller at a distance of twenty miles, and form a singularly striking feature in scenery of more than common beauty and impressiveness.”5 In some ways, Bishop Lightfoot’s description seems like a parable of the Canadian Church … beautiful, impressive, but calcified and choked up by double-mindedness and fear.
Paul had never personally visited Colossae. Rather, he preached extensively in the coastal city of Ephesus, with the result that his new converts spread the gospel extensively to many lesser-known cities and towns that were further inland. There is a remarkable similarity between the books of Ephesians and Colossians, especially in the structure of Paul’s prayers in both epistles. In both Colossians and Ephesians, Paul centres his prayer in thanksgiving. You will notice in verse 3 how Paul says: “We always thank God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you …”. In a structure similar to that of the Lord’s Prayer, Paul pays the debt of gratitude before he moves into his personal requests. “Thy kingdom come” needs to come before “Give us this day our daily bread.” In the Alpha Course, Nicky Gumbel says that the three key prayers that we can pray are “thank you”, “please”, and “sorry”. Back in 1931, Bishop Lewis Radford of Goulbourn, Australia commented regarding this passage that “a survey of the grounds for thanksgiving revives the spirit of hope, and provides fresh material for petition.”6 The Christian life is not a life of Pollyanna-style positive thinking, but rather that of eucharistic thanksgiving in all circumstances, trusting that God can turn everything that is against us to our advantage, that all things work to the good for those who love him.
Why was Paul so thankful? Verses 4 and 5 
tells us that Paul was thankful because of the great triad of Christian graces: faith, hope, and love. So often when Paul prays, he prays according to the three-fold pattern of the only things that will remain in the end. Faith: their faith in Christ Jesus; Hope: hope stored up for us in heaven; and Love: love for all the saints. As Bishop J.B. Lightfoot put it, “faith rests on the past; love works in the present; hope looks to the future”.7 Does the Prayer Book Society, indeed does the Anglican Church have a future as we celebrate the 450th Anniversary of the Book of Common Prayer? I believe that the answer to both questions is yes, if we will ground our Christian life more and more on the three-fold graces of faith, hope and love.
I will always remember Dr. Robert Crouse’s presentation at the Montreal Essentials ‘94 Conference when he spoke of “despair, that most dangerous of all sins.”8 Satan, the ultimate deceiver and seducer of God’s people, is a past master at the use of discouragement and despair in crippling the saints. He would love us to believe that Anglicanism is beyond hope, that there is no point in praying and working for the restoration of biblical orthodoxy. We can thank our Lord Jesus Christ that he will always have a faithful Anglican witness in Canada, even if someday it may require missionaries from Africa and Asia to come and re-establish the gospel in our own homeland.
The good news found in verse 6 of Chapter 1 of Colossians is that “all over the world the gospel is producing fruit and growing”. 
Lambeth ‘98 was a powerful reminder of that truth with the hundreds of Asian, African, and South American bishops making their presence felt in unforgettable ways. The gospel, as Bishop Lewis Radford put it, is both a transforming force and a travelling fire.9 It is a fire that cannot be stamped out no matter how hard secularists and revisionists may try. Verse 7 tells us about Epaphras, the founder of the Church at Colossae. Some early church traditions make him the first bishop of Colossae.10 Verse 7 describes him as “our dearly loved fellow servant”, as a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf. Both Paul and Epaphras were passionate that the Colossians should be filled with the knowledge of God’s will. Epaphras was so passionate about this that Paul commented in Colossians chapter 4, verse 2 that Epaphras was “always wrestling in prayer for you that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured.” The Greek word for wrestling is agonizomenos which means to agonize. It is God’s will that each of us agonize in prayer for the restoration of faithful Anglicanism in Canada. Wrestling in prayer is the key to being filled with the knowledge of God’s will.
That is why the Rev. Samuel Shoemaker, the Anglican priest who wrote the “12 Steps” and helped to found Alcoholics Anonymous, quoted Colossians Chapter 1 in writing step 11. What does Step 11 encourage us to pray for: “… the knowledge of His will for us and power to carry that out.”
What is the use of knowing what to do, if we haven’t the power to do it? What is the use of studying the Bible if we never do the Bible? What is the use of praying the Prayer Book if we never live out the Prayer Book? The key to doing the Bible and living the Prayer Book is Colossians chapter 1, verse 8: “love in the Spirit”. It is not the love of power that will set the Anglican Church free, but rather the power of love. Dr. Gordon Fee, the well known New Testament Scholar from Regent College, notes that virtually everywhere that the word “power” is used in the New Testament, it is referring to the power of the Holy Spirit.11 Only the Holy Spirit can give us the power to change. Only the Holy Spirit can give us the power to love. Only the Holy Spirit can give us the power to forgive. Verse 8 tells us the secret of lasting renewal: “love in the Spirit”.
In the early days of Anglican renewal, a bishop in northern B.C. fired his dean because some of his parishioners had had the nerve to pray that the bishop be filled with the 
Holy Spirit. If only they had just prayed forthe bishop to be filled afresh or anew, the Dean might have kept his job. Why do all of us need to be filled with the Spirit again and again? (Eph. 5:18). The reason, as D.L. Moody put it, is that we leak. It is always touchy to pray for one’s bishop without sounding like one is trying to give his bishop advice. It is so easy for us to dump all our unmet dreams and frustrations on the back of our bishops. Yet God calls us to bless and not curse. God calls us in verse 9 to never give up praying for each other, and that certainly includes our bishops. Verse 9 is a wonderful way to pray for your bishop, your rector, and your wardens in a way that none of them could possibly object to. Just pray that God will fill them with the knowledge of His will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. All of us need to be filled up, to be more full of God’s grace, peace, joy, hope, and faith so that we will be more full, more grace-full, more peace-full, more joy-full, more faith-full. The point of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22) is to fill us up inside with more of the character of Jesus Christ.
What will being filled with the knowledge of God’s will really do for us? Paul tells us in verse 10 that such filling will result in our walking worthy of God, in our pleasing the Lord in every way, in our bearing fruit in every good work, in our growing in the knowledge of God. Being filled with the knowledge of His will is the key not only to living in the Spirit but also to walking in the Spirit (Gal. 5:25). As our AA friends remind us, it is not enough to talk the talk; we also need to walk the walk.
Yet all of us are powerless in ourselves to change our lives. In fact, no change is possible until we admit in the words of Step 1 that “We are powerless over our (addictions and sins) and our lives have become unmanageable”. The reason why “12 Step” people talk so much about a Higher Power is that our own power, our own resources, are never enough to make a lasting difference. We need, in the words of Luke 24:49, to be clothed with power from on high, the very power of the Holy Spirit. That is why Acts 1:8 
says that “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you shall be my witnesses … to the ends of the earth.”. That is why Colossians chapter 1 verse 11 talks about our being strengthened with all power: in the Greek, “being powered with all power”, with all dunamis, all dynamite. There are logjams in Anglicanism that nothing but the power, the dynamite, of the Holy Spirit can possibly remove. All of us know many faithful Anglicans who have given up in despair and left our church, perhaps returning occasionally for their Communion “fixes”. When we think of the mother/father God/Goddess apostasy that the new ACC “Common Praise” hymn book is leading us into, only the power of the Holy Spirit will be able to lead us out of that syncretistic swamp. Yet with God, nothing is impossible! Would anyone like to become the founders of a Blue Hymn Book Society of Canada?
Dr. E. Stanley Jones holds that “the difference between a river and a swamp is that one has banks and the other has none. The swamp is very gracious and kindly, it spreads over everything, hence it is a swamp. Some of us are moral and spiritual swamps. We are so broad and liberal that we take in everything from the shady to the sacred. Hence we are swamps. A river has banks – it confines itself to its central purpose. The civilizations of the world organize themselves not around swamps, but around rivers.”12
To me, the Book of Common Prayer and the 
Bible are rivers. The new Common Praise hymn book in contrast is a gracious and kindly swamp. The river that is the Holy Spirit confines Himself to His central purpose, which is to fill us with the knowledge of the Father’s will and to give us the power to carry that out. The Colossian Christians were a tiny, faithful minority living in a “new-age” spiritual scene. As with the original Colossian church, one of the greatest challenges facing our Anglican Church is well-meaning interfaith syncretism. In our worship of newness and inclusiveness, we are rushing to replace the riverbanks of our BCP with the neo-gnostic swamp of centering prayer/mantra yoga, enneagram workshops, labyrinths, Jungian-based MBTI personality tests, and invocations of “God our Father and our Mother”.13 Lord, forgive us for our naïve worship of the seemingly new and trendy, and for our disrespect for the wisdom of our Anglican forebears. Genuine renewal is actually about renewing the riches of our inheritance in Christ Jesus, not about uncovering secret “new revelations”. (Eph. 1:18)
Most renewal movements in the past few centuries, including the various holiness, pentecostal, charismatic, and third-wave expressions, can be traced back to the influence of two Anglican priests, John and Charles Wesley, the founders of Methodism. Canadian Methodism was the largest of the bodies which came together to form the United Church of Canada in 1925. Few people realize what a high view the Wesleys had of the Anglican prayer book and of the Anglican Church in general. Even on the verge of being forced to ordain his own preachers, John Wesley commended the Church of England to his leaders as “the best constituted national church in the world”.14 John Wesley also taught his followers that “there is no LITURGY in the World, either in ancient or modern language, which breathes more of a solid, scriptural, rational Piety, than the COMMON PRAYER of the CHURCH of ENGLAND”.15 John Wesley did not just appreciate the Prayer Book theology. He even loved its language, language which he described as “not only pure, but strong and elegant in the highest degree.”16 John and Charles Wesley experienced manifestations of the Holy Spirit that would make the Toronto Airport Fellowship look tame, yet the Wesleys still held up the Prayer Book as a vital tool for orthodoxy and renewal. And John Wesley was even radical enough that he advised all his clergy to administer the Lord’s Supper every Sunday at the main service.17
As Dr. Bard Thompson put it, “It was the way of John Wesley to espouse extempore prayer, yet esteem the prayer book; to give free expression to evangelical power, yet prize the structures of the church …”18 Yet sadly Wesley’s wisdom was largely ignored. His followers decided that they could pray better and with more devotion when their eyes were shut, than they could with their eyes open, praying from a book.19 So they cast aside the Prayer Book and produced the United Church of Canada instead. Wesley drew the balance between the stability of tradition and the dynamism of the Spirit. His followers, however, became progressively less rooted generation after generation. It is so easy to cast aside “the riches of our inheritance”. It is much harder to humble ourselves enough to go back home and start afresh. I remember how hard I tried to convince my Grandma Allen to “get with it” and give up on the Book of Common Prayer. But she was so “stubborn and inflexible” that she died with the Bible and the Prayer Book by her bedside.
Our parish of St. Simon’s had not used the Book of Common Prayer at its main service for over 25 years. When I came back from the Montreal ‘94 Essentials Conference and suggested that we might try doing the Prayer Book on fifth Sundays, some of my leadership secretly wondered if I might have lost my mind. But eventually they came to see in unity what I was talking about.
Reintroducing the Prayer Book as one of our two main services has brought 30% growth in average Sunday attendance over the next two years. I am not saying that it was easy to reintroduce the Book of Common Prayer. Many Anglicans don’t like change, even if it means restoring the riches of their inheritance. There are many well-meaning Anglican clergy out there who would rather die than admit they may have made a mistake in abandoning the classic Book of Common Prayer. Many clergy have battle scars from liturgy wars in the 1970’s and early 80’s. They have finally achieved relative liturgical calm in their parishes and they are reluctant to “open up old wounds”, and disturb the relative truce.
But God’s will for us as clergy is not merely for us to preserve the peace or to be keepers of ecclesiastical aquariums, but rather to be fishers of men and women. Our greatest desire as Anglican leaders must be our desire to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will and to have the power of the Holy Spirit to carry it out. Why else do we pray every day “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done”. What is God’s will? The Bible is clear that God’s will, among other things, is that we go into all the world, preaching the gospel to all creation, and that we make disciples of all nations (Mark 16:15, Matthew 28:19). 1 Timothy chapter 2, verses 4 and 5 tells us clearly that God’s will is that all people be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth, and that there is only one mediator, one bridge between God and humanity, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all.
The leadership crisis in Anglicanism is directly linked to a growing fuzziness of vision regarding God’s will that the lost be found. Many church leaders are beginning to publicly question whether the lost are really lost after all, and whether God really wants to find them. Unless we are convinced that the man Christ Jesus is the only mediator between God and humanity, and that he really gave himself as a ransom for all, not just for 
those raised in the church or in the west, we will not have the power to carry out this great and lasting commission. As Dr. John Stott put it at an Vancouver Anglican Essentials gathering, we claim uniqueness and finality in Christ alone.
If all we do is squabble about liturgical preferences and do not reach the lost, we are a people most to be pitied. The Book of Common Prayer is not an ingrown book. It is a book with a passion that the lost might be found. In contrast to the BAS, the BCP is clear that God wants us to win the world for Christ. The BAS, if you read it carefully, is written in a way that it can either encourage you to do evangelistic mission work for Christ or merely to affirm God in all cultures. The BCP, however, is uncompromising in its biblical stance that “God is not willing that any should perish but that all may come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9) As the former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, said at Kanuga, “Evangelism is not a matter to be debated but a command to be obeyed.” God’s will, as expressed in Colossians 1 verse 13, is that he might rescue (many) from the dominion of darkness and bring (them) into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we might have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. We say each Sunday in the Creed that we believe in the forgiveness of sins. Are you sharing that forgiveness with your lost neighbour, family member, co-worker?
I pray in conclusion that God may fill each of us with the knowledge of His will, that none should perish, that all may come to repentance, and that God may give us the power of the Holy Spirit to carry out his will to the very ends of the earth, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
The Reverend Ed Hird, Rector
St. Simon’s Anglican Church North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
Past Chair, Anglican Renewal Ministries of Canada
http://stsimonschurch.ca
-award-winning author of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’
http://www.battleforthesoulofcanada.blogspot.com
p.s. In order to obtain a copy of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’, please send a $18.50 cheque to ‘Ed Hird’, #1008-555 West 28th Street, North Vancouver, BC V7N 2J7. For mailing the book to the USA, please send $20.00 USD. This can also be done by PAYPAL using the e-mail ed_hird@telus.net . Be sure to list your mailing address. The Battle for the Soul of Canada e-book can be obtained for $9.99 CDN/USD.
-Click to download a complimentary PDF copy of the Battle for the Soul study guide : Seeking God’s Solution for a Spirit-Filled Canada
You can also download the complimentary Leader’s Guide PDF: Battle for the Soul Leaders Guide
Endnotes:
-
The Oxford Dictionary of the Church, F.L. Cross, ed. (Oxford University Press, 1957), p. 1128.
-
Colonel Blimp was a humorous anachronistic figure in the British WW2-based television series “Dad’s Army”.
-
Dr. E. Stanley Jones, Pentecost: the Christ of Every Road, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1930), p. 247.
-
Ibid., p. 248.
-
The Rt. Revd. Dr. J.B. Lightfoot, as quoted in Dr. William Barclay’s The Daily Study Bible: the Letters to the Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians (Toronto: G.R. Welch Co. Ltd.), p. 91.
-
The Rt. Revd. Dr. Lewis B. Radford, Colossians (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1931), p. 3.
-
Ibid., p. 151.
-
Anglican Essentials, George Egerton, ed. (Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 1995), p. 289.
-
Radford, op. cit., p. 153.
-
Ibid., p. 154.
-
Dr. Gordon Fee, God’s Empowering Presence (Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994), p. 35.
-
Dr E. Stanley Jones, op. cit., p. 227.
-
As done in the Canadian Anglican “Common Praise” hymn book (1999), which tragically alters the much-loved “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee” hymn from “God our Father, Christ our Brother” to “God our Father and our Mother”.
-
Liturgies of the Western Church, “The Sunday Service”, ed. Bard Thompson, (Cleveland and New York, Meridan Books, The World Publishing Company, 1961), p. 416.
-
Ibid., p. 416.
-
Ibid., p. 416.
-
Ibid., p. 416.
-
Ibid., p. 416.
-
Ibid., p. 410.
This booklet is published by the Toronto Branch of the Prayer Book Society of Canada. Additional copies can be ordered at a cost of $2 each from Dr. Diana Verseghy, 16 Capilano Court, Concord, Ontario, L4K 1L2.
E-mail: Diana.Verseghy@ec.gc.ca
More Blessed To Give
August 10, 2010
By Rev Ed Hird
Worry, fear, and anger are the greatest disease-causers. They can literally eat us alive, from the inside out. The root of most anger is fear. Many males feel safer and more powerful being angry than in facing their fears. Dr. E. Stanley Jones, best-selling author of 28 books, spoke of the law of self-abandonment by which we are able to say: ‘I do not want anything, therefore I am afraid of nothing.’ Similarly he said that ‘there are two ways to be rich – one in the abundance of your possessions and the other in the fewness of your wants.’
“People”, said ES Jones, “retire to enjoy their wealth. Nothing is more elusive and fatuous. You cannot enjoy your wealth. Your wealth must be creative in creating and in augmenting the joy of others, or else it is ill-th, not weal-th.” Mammon/money drives the driven and lashes the tired. At age sixty-five there are twice as many women alive as men. The medical verdict is ‘high blood pressure’, but E. Stanley Jones saw it as ‘high blood-money pressure’ which drives men mad or to the mortuary.
ES Jones spoke of ‘the two greatest problems of life, namely, money and women’ (i.e. male-female relationships). Counselors tell us that the three greatest causes of marriage breakup are sex, money, and in-laws! Jones believed that ‘our greatest sins are economic sins, sins so hidden under respectability and under custom that we are scarcely aware of them.’ Quoting the counselor Dr. Alfred Adler, Jones commented: “All the ills of personality can be traced back to the fact that people do not understand the meaning of the phrase: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’.
Jones humorously commented that some people suffer from a spiritual headache because unsurrendered wealth is pressing on the nerve that leads to the pocketbook. He tells the remarkable story of Asa G. Candler. Candler kept struggling unsuccessfully with his addiction to alcohol until he heard a Vo
ice tell him to surrender himself. From that hour, he was delivered not only from the desire to drink, but also from the love of money. Asa Candler, who founded the Coca Cola Company, was so grateful to Jesus that he consistently gave seventy-five percent of his vast income to God’s work. Candler believed that ‘the central thing in Christianity is the final and total yielding of the self, its renunciation and rejection and the entire surrender of the life to the will and way of God.’
ES Jones believes that “the greatest singlefactor that keeps people from going on to perfection is the deceitfulness of riches, for no one ever feels that it is a danger to him.” It has been said that we need two conversions: one of our heart and a second one of our wallet. ES Jones told the story of a poverty-stricken boy named Colgate met a steamboat captain who encouraged him to give his heart to Jesus and give one tenth of all he made to Him. The boy promised both, and through his Colgate Toothpaste Company, ended up giving millions to serving others.
Jones believed that abundant living depends upon abundant giving. He knew that outflow determined inflow. If we don’t breathe out, we can’t breathe in and we will literally smother. Similarly, said Jones, if a cow is not milked, it will go dry. How many of us may have gone through times of spiritually dryness because our financial udder needed milking?
Jones once said that ‘wealth is like manure: put in one pile it is a stinking mass, but distributed across the fields it produces golden grain.’ Jones took seriously the biblical call in 2 Corinthians 9:7 to be a ‘hilarious giver’. He knew that it is wrong to give out of fear, guilt, 
or pressure. Only joyful gratitude to God will do. God is always more generous, more self-giving, more loving than we will ever be. I thank God for the many generous people I know who have discovered that it is truly more blessed to give than to receive.
The Rev. Ed Hird, Rector
St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
http://stsimonschurch.ca
-previously published in the North Shore News
-award-winning author of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’
http://www.battleforthesoulofcanada.blogspot.com
p.s. In order to obtain a copy of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’, please send a $18.50 cheque to ‘Ed Hird’, #1008-555 West 28th Street, North Vancouver, BC V7N 2J7. For mailing the book to the USA, please send $20.00 USD. This can also be done by PAYPAL using the e-mail ed_hird@telus.net . Be sure to list your mailing address. The Battle for the Soul of Canada e-book can be obtained for $9.99 CDN/USD.
-Click to download a complimentary PDF copy of the Battle for the Soul study guide : Seeking God’s Solution for a Spirit-Filled Canada
You can also download the complimentary Leader’s Guide PDF: Battle for the Soul Leaders Guide
Connections: The Christian Ashram Retreat Experience
August 3, 2010
By Rev Ed Hird, AMiA (Canada) Bishop’s Chaplain
Recently our Bishop Silas Ng and Rev Josh 
Wilton led us in a four-day retreat called the BC Christian Ashram. Bishop Silas, who has completed his doctoral thesis on micromacrodiscipleship, gave five helpful talks* on how to have a daily quiet time, and the difference which this discipline makes in our Christian walk. A shocking discovery by our Bishop Silas is that less than 10% of Christians have a regular daily quiet time. This serious lack, says Bishop Silas, must be addressed if we are to be effective in church planting and renewal. To assist people in their daily quiet time, Bishop Silas is leading people through the entire bible one chapter a day in his daily prayer blog.
Rev Josh Wilton is the lead pastor of The Table, a new ACiC/AM Church plant in 
Victoria BC. Before being commissioned to churchplant, Josh+ served for four years as our St. Simon’s NV Newcomer Pastor and (later) as Assistant Priest. Josh+ taught on the relevance of the Ten Commandments for our everyday living, focusing on freedom from the idols in our life, and on the need for regular Sabbath rest in our workaholic North American culture.
There is a strong youth and young adult ministry at the BC Christian Ashram, led by St. Simon’s NV Youth Pastor Jill Cardwell. One of the young adults at the Ashram told me that they “enjoyed the chance to get away, 
to refocus on God, to reconnect with old friends.” Basically, the Christian Ashram retreat is about connections: connecting with God and the people around you.
The United Christian Ashram movement has many summer retreats throughout North America and around the world, with the largest one drawing over 800 in the Maritimes. It was founded in 1930 by Dr. E. Stanley Jones in India where he served as a missionary for over 50 years. Dr Jones during his life was the world’s most widely read spiritual writer, with twenty-eight books selling millions of copies.
My wife began attending the BC Christian 
Ashram in 1974 where she was powerfully impacted by the Holy Spirit. Many members of her family have since given their lives to Christ through the Christian Ashram. I began attending 36 years ago, and now serve as the BC Director. You are invited to have a vacation with God throughout North America in 2011.
*The DVDs of Bishop Silas and Josh’s talks are available for purchase through stuart@lightspeed.ca
Rev Ed Hird, Rector
St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
http://stsimonschurch.ca
-previously published in the Deep Cove Crier
-award-winning author of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’
http://www.battleforthesoulofcanada.blogspot.com
p.s. In order to obtain a copy of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’, please send a $18.50 cheque to ‘Ed Hird’, #1008-555 West 28th Street, North Vancouver, BC V7N 2J7. For mailing the book to the USA, please send $20.00 USD. This can also be done by PAYPAL using the e-mail ed_hird@telus.net . Be sure to list your mailing address. The Battle for the Soul of Canada e-book can be obtained for $9.99 CDN/USD.
-Click to download a complimentary PDF copy of the Battle for the Soul study guide : Seeking God’s Solution for a Spirit-Filled Canada
You can also download the complimentary Leader’s Guide PDF: Battle for the Soul Leaders Guide
Faithful Father-in-Law
June 30, 2010
By Rev Ed Hird
My father-in-law David is solid like a rock. I have been married to his daughter for thirty-three years. David jokes that he has never quite forgiven me for taking his daughter away, as she was the lead soprano in his choir. To make up for this ‘theft’, I have paid him back by ‘giving’ him three grandchildren. The nicest thing about grandchildren, of course, is that you can fuss over them, and then send them back home!
Over the years, my father-in-law has shown great wisdom in dealing with impossible situations. When others give up, he keeps on moving faithfully forward. I have experienced my father-in-law as someone who never stopped expecting the best from you. Many times over the years, my father-in-law has opened doors for me to speak in situations that would otherwise have been closed. He is a true Barnabas, a Son of Encouragement.
When I have faced enormous obstacles relationally, financially or spiritually, David has always been someone that I could sit down with and pour out my heart. I am blessed with ‘stereo’ wisdom from my father-in-law and my own father, both of whom live just ten minutes from each other. We live in a culture that is often embarrassed by aging and gray hair, but the Good Book says that ‘Gray hair is a crown of splendor’ and a potential sign of wisdom that comes through often painful years of experience. My father-in-law’s wisdom has taught me to be less afraid of aging and gray hair!
‘With humility comes wisdom’, writes King Solomon in the Book of Proverbs. My father-in-law is a very humble man, so much so that he wouldn’t recognize his own humility. The Good Book says ‘Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.’ There is gentleness to my father-in-law that has drawn many hurting, broken people over the years. People instinctively know that David cares. My father-in-law is both a true shepherd and a true gentleman.
I remember when I announced to my father-in-law that I was going to marry his daughter. Because I said it with a smile, he thought that I was joking! But after I got down on my knees, he got the point. I am one of a rare breed of bridegrooms whose father-in-law actually performed the marriage ceremony. My father-in-law is one of three brothers who became ordained as clergy. So you can imagine all the speeches that we had at our wedding reception. My wedding reception, by the way, was so long that we actually had to have an intermission!
One of the most refreshing things about my father-in-law is that he doesn’t take himself too seriously. Being a wonderful storyteller, he always has a great joke that breaks the ice, and opens people up to deeper spiritual truth. With a twinkle in his eye, David will tell a hilarious story of some mishap that happened as children back on the family farm in Saskatchewan.
It was there in Saskatchewan that he met my future mother-in-law. If there was ever a marriage made in heaven, their marriage was one of them. Filled with much love and perseverance, their marriage inspired many other struggling couples to go the second mile and keep on forgiving. Everything about David and Vera breathed the message of hope and steadfast endurance in the face of great obstacles. Their faith in our Lord Jesus Christ was the open secret of their great love for each other, and for a hurting world. Though it has been ten years now since Vera passed on, she is still fondly remembered.*
My father-in-law has been deeply impacted by the Christian Ashram Retreat movement. I admire people who want to keep growing and learning even into their retirement years. David is always looking for ways to be more loving, more caring, more forgiving, more Christ-like. The Christian Ashram movement is a big part of what makes my father-in-law tick, of what keeps him vital and joyful year after year. If David had one wish for those of you reading this article, I am sure that it would be the desire that you might experience a transformed life through attending a Christian Ashram retreat. My own life has been radically transformed through 36 years of spending each summer at a Christ-centered Ashram retreat with my father-in-law and family. You are invited to join us this summer for an unforgettable three-day BC Christian Ashram retreat on July 16th-19th. Give us a call at 604-533-5509 or ed_hird@telus.net . You will never regret making that phone call.
* David has been so blessed to be given a dear second wife Una by the Lord who has joined faithfully into the Christian Ashram family.
The Reverend Ed Hird, Rector
St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
http://stsimonschurch.ca
-award-winning author of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’
http://www.battleforthesoulofcanada.blogspot.com
p.s. In order to obtain a copy of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’, please send a $18.50 cheque to ‘Ed Hird’, #1008-555 West 28th Street, North Vancouver, BC V7N 2J7. For mailing the book to the USA, please send $20.00 USD. This can also be done by PAYPAL using the e-mail ed_hird@telus.net . Be sure to list your mailing address. The Battle for the Soul of Canada e-book can be obtained for $9.99CDN/USD.
-Click to download a complimentary PDF copy of the Battle for the Soul study guide : Seeking God’s Solution for a Spirit-Filled Canada
You can also download the complimentary Leader’s Guide PDF: Battle for the Soul Leaders Guide
Secrets to a Healthy Marriage
June 4, 2010
By Rev Ed Hird
Reflecting on what makes a marriage work, I was struck by how vital is the gift of forgiveness. My wife, by the way, is very gifted at forgiving, probably because I have given her so much practice. My wife is also very patient and persevering, as I have noticed that often in our marriage, it has taken me a while to really grow and change. The fact that she never gives up on me, and that she keeps on believing the best for me, is a wonderful gift indeed.
I recently read a fascinating book entitled ‘Men & Women: Enjoying the Differences’ by the best-selling author Dr. Larry Crabb. He commented that ‘self-centered living is the real culprit in marriages with problems. Other-centered living is the answer.’ Many of us enter marriage thinking that our spouse will meet our deepest needs. We then feel cheated when they don’t, and begin to close our hearts. How many of us enter marriage with the view that we are there to serve our spouse? How many of us see marriage as a way of serving God? A marriage where both 
partners are committed to serving one another, to ‘washing one another’s feet’ is a marriage in which self-centeredness gets sidelined. What will it take, says Dr. Crabb, to realize that our selfishness is without excuse and that our first job, in our friendships and marriages, is to recognize our selfishness and learn how we can change?
One thing that men and women have equally in common is that we are all equally self-centered and selfish. Little growth in marriages take place, says Dr. Crabb, until we realize that the disease of self-centeredness is fatal to our souls and marriages. Nothing exposes our self-centeredness more clearly than anger. Because our hearts are deceitful (Jeremiah 17:9), we have an amazing ability to justify our own anger and bitterness towards our spouse, while simultaneously excusing our own bad attitudes. Being angry at our spouses can be very attractive, because it makes us feel both powerful and self-righteous. Having counseled dozens of couples over the years, I am continually amazed at the self-deception of many who convince themselves that the problem is their spouse, and that their personal faults are far more minor and merely reactive. Self-centeredness is a cancer that blinds us from seeing that the problem is not merely our spouse; the problem is ourselves.
Our culture is saturated with excuses for 
everything. It is not my fault. It’s my spouse’s, my parent’s, my government’s, or my boss’ fault. A.A. calls that ‘stinking thinking’. Few of us are willing to do a thorough moral inventory of our own personal faults. The bible uses a short, unpopular word for self-centeredness. It calls it ‘sin’. Sin doesn’t mean that we are axe-murderers or child molesters. The heart of the word ‘sin’ is the ‘I’ at the middle. The heart of most marriage problems is self-centered sin.
Dr. E. Stanley Jones, founder of the Christian Ashram, once said that ‘there can be no love between a husband and wife unless there is mutual self-surrender. Love simply cannot spring up without that self-surrender to each other. If either withholds the self, love cannot exist.’ A man and his wife were having painful marriage difficulties. The wife went away to a Christian Ashram, and surrendered her marriage to the Lord. When she returned home, her husband said to her: ‘Well, Miss High and Mighty, what did you learn at the Ashram?’ She replied: ‘I’ve learned that I’ve been the cause of all our troubles.’ She got up from her chair, came around beside him and knelt, folded her hands and said: ‘Please forgive me. I’m the cause of all our troubles.’ At that moment, her husband nearly upset the kitchen table, while getting down on his knees beside her. He blurted out, ‘You’re not the cause of all our troubles — I am.’ There they met each other — and God. Each surrendered to Jesus, then they surrendered to each other and were free. Now this couple, instead of continually criticizing each other, are one in love and forgiveness.
My prayer for those reading this article is that many may find victory through surrender.
The Reverend Ed Hird, Rector
St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
http://stsimonschurch.ca
-award-winning author of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’
http://www.battleforthesoulofcanada.blogspot.com
p.s. In order to obtain a copy of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’, please send a $18.50 cheque to ‘Ed Hird’, #1008-555 West 28th Street, North Vancouver, BC V7N 2J7. For mailing the book to the USA, please send $20.00 USD. This can also be done by PAYPAL using the e-mail ed_hird@telus.net . Be sure to list your mailing address. The Battle for the Soul of Canada e-book can be obtained for $9.99CDN/USD.
-Click to download a complimentary PDF copy of the Battle for the Soul study guide : Seeking God’s Solution for a Spirit-Filled Canada
You can also download the complimentary Leader’s Guide PDF: Battle for the Soul Leaders Guide
-previously published in the Deep Cove Crier
Thirty-six years of faithfulness in BC
September 28, 2009
By Rev Ed Hird
In the spring of 1975, I fell head-over-heels in love with my future wife. Janice and I used to take the bus home together from UBC. I noticed that something was different. Her eyes sparkled. It turns out that she had been powerfully touched by the Holy Spirit at the previous BC Christian Ashram retreat.
That year on the bus, we discussed the person and work of the Holy Spirit. She would often let me ‘win’ the conversation. Seeing her as just a good friend, I had no idea that Janice was pursuing me. When Janice invited me to attend the Summer BC Christian Ashram retreat, I naturally said yes. Being young and impetuous, the discipline of the Christian Ashram of maintaining silence from 11pm to 8am was difficult.
Over the years, I have read all 28 books of the Christian Ashram founder Dr. E. Stanley Jones. Initially I wondered why Dr. Jones seemed to take a while to get to the point. Later I realized that like Nicky Gumbel of the Alpha Course, his focus is helping the unchurched to find Jesus at their own pace. Because Dr. Jones spent over fifty years as a missionary in India, he learned how to be gentle and respectful to other religions without compromising on the essentials of the Gospel.
Jones’ first book was called ‘Christ of the Indian Road’. In 1930 he organized the first Christian Ashram with just three people in attendance. Since then, the Christian Ashram has spread all around the world, especially in North America. The largest Christian Ashram in the world in held in Berwick, Nova Scotia with over 800 participants. The theme of every Christian Ashram is ‘Jesus is Lord!’
In Canada, we have seven Christian Ashrams from coast to coast, including BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland. There are many renewed Anglicans that take part on an interdenominational basis. My wife and I 
have had the privilege of either speaking at or attending four different Canadian Christian Ashrams. While all Christian Ashrams are unique, they share a common framework of Christian community and the disciplines of the Holy Spirit.
Our original speaker, The Rev David Rich, an Anglican priest from Mississippi, was forced to cancel unexpectedly, in light of an unavoidable need for a hip replacement. We were so blessed that our good friend Pastor
Rev Rod Ellis & Pastor David Carson
David Carson stepped in at the last minute as our keynote speaker for the 36th Annual BC Christian Ashram retreat. David Carson’s theme was “Jesus the High Priest: The New and Living Way” from the Book of Hebrews. David is a very dynamic and insightful speaker who left us with many fresh insights into God’s Word. The joy and power of the Holy Spirit was bubbling from David the whole weekend. I have never met anyone so contagiously excited about Melchizedek, and how it relates to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The Rev Rod Ellis of the Church of our Lord, Victoria, our Bible teacher, taught on Nehemiah. He made Nehemiah come alive, showing us how we all need to play our part in ‘rebuilding the walls’.
Throughout the entire four days, there is a 24-hour Prayer Vigil that everyone is invited to take part in for an hour at a time. This non-stop prayer focus seems to really soften 
our hearts to God’s Holy Spirit. The two ‘pillars’ of the Christian Ashram are the initial ‘Open Heart’ session where people are invited to share three things: “Why have I come? What do I want? What do I need?” At the end of the Ashram, we have the ‘Overflowing Heart’ session where people are invited to share what Jesus has done for them during the retreat. In their testimonies, the adults, youth and children were overflowing with love and gratitude to Christ. Many had experienced significant physical and/or emotional healings through the work of the Holy Spirit. I have never been to a Christian Ashram where people were not powerfully healed in body, mind and spirit.
As Director of the BC Christian Ashram retreat, I am so grateful for God’s sovereign hand from coast to coast, renewing and refreshing his people.
The Reverend Ed Hird, Rector,
St Simon’s Church North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
http://stsimonschurch.ca
author of best-selling book ‘Battle For the Soul of Canada’
http://www.battleforthesoulofcanada.blogspot.com
p.s. In order to obtain a copy of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’, please send a $18.50 cheque to ‘Ed Hird’, #1008-555 West 28th Street, North Vancouver, BC V7N 2J7. For mailing the book to the USA, please send $20.00 USD. This can also be done by PAYPAL using the e-mail ed_hird@telus.net . Be sure to list your mailing address. The Battle for the Soul of Canada e-book can be obtained for $9.99 CDN/USD.
-Click to download a complimentary PDF copy of the Battle for the Soul study guide : Seeking God’s Solution for a Spirit-Filled Canada
You can also download the complimentary Leader’s Guide PDF: Battle for the Soul Leaders Guide
-previously published in the Autumn 2009 Anglicans for Renewal Magazine
Why is it so hard to let go?
September 3, 2009
By Rev Ed Hird
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.
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
