Restoring Health through Medicine and Prayer -HIRD

By the Rev. Dr. Ed Hird

 

In December 1980, I lost my voice for eighteen months due to Spasmodic Dysphonia.  My GP told me that I would never preach again.  My father-in-law the Rev Dave Cline, at the time, was the Order of St Luke the Physician (OSL) Warden for BC and Yukon.  Desperation led me to join OSL where I devoured every book that I could find on healing.  I particularly appreciated the insights I gained from filling out the OSL study guide on Jesus’ healing miracles.  Later I even became an OSL Chaplain.  On May 25th 1982, I had successful throat surgery and was able to speak again.  During the surgery, I had a twenty-four hour prayer vigil.  Healing prayer and healing medicine belong together.  Every three months, I have Botox treatments that help maintain my voice.

 

Every time I preach is a miracle.  My goal is to be like the tenth leper who came back and gave thanks.  During the eighteen months of voice loss, I read sixty books on speaking and writing.  God birthed a passion for writing and communication during my darkest time.  I realized that even without a voice, I still had much to say.  My ‘voice’, particularly about healing and wholeness, was meant to be heard.  Since that time, I have written over four hundred and fifty newspaper articles and have recently published my sequel book ‘Restoring Health: body, mind and spirit’ on Titus.  Many people don’t realize that the book of Titus is Paul’s health instruction manual to unhealthy pirates.  The book of Titus gives us the keys to healthy churches, healthy families and healthy lives.  Paul’s key emphasis to Titus again and again was holistic health/soundness: healthy faith, healthy doctrine, healthy love, and healthy endurance.  Health for Paul was not just physical.  Paul insisted on health in every area of Titus’s life as he impacted the Cretans.  The very Greek word for both health and soundness is ‘hygiaino’ ὑγιαίνω from which we get the modern term ‘hygiene’.  Many people do not realize that soundness and health are the same biblical concept.  When a heart is healthy, the doctor says that it is sound.  The book of Titus was not merely about healthy/sound doctrine.  Health for Paul was holistic, embracing our whole life in body, mind and spirit.

Over the years, I learned that the healing ministry needs to be integrated into regular Sunday morning worship, not just put in a midweek corner for the few.  I will never forget the night that Lee Grady, former Editor of Charisma Magazine, prophesied about St. Simon’s North Vancouver being a well-spring of healing with healing teams being raised up for body, soul and spirit restoration.  Every worship service at St. Simon’s, whether traditional or contemporary, has a team ready to pray for healing.  Keith Bird, OSL Canada editor, said that Restoring Health “presents to us ‘modern-day pirates’ a challenge for becoming whole in body, mind and spirit.  I didn’t want to put it down.”  Imagine how wellsprings of holistic healing, Titus communities throughout Canada, might revolutionize our toxic Canadian pirate culture.

The Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, Rector 
http://edhird.com 

St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver
http://stsimonschurch.ca  

-an article for the December issue of the Order of St Luke the Physician Canada newsletter ‘The Canadian Healer’.

Restoring Health: body, mind and spirit - HIRD

By the Rev. Dr. Ed Hird

Who in their right mind would want to be sent to a toxic island where everyone was a pirate, including the grandmothers, grandsons, and everyone in between?  Who would want to be sent to an island where all islanders were liars, evil brutes and lazy gluttons?  The Island of Crete which my wife and I visited had been a pirate stronghold for over 800 years.  While in Crete, we learned about Titus who was just the man for the job.  He did not flinch.  Titus taught toxic Cretan pirates how to become radically healthy: how to love, how to lay down their lives for another, how to be the faithful husband of but one wife, how to be gentle and patient.  He taught the female pirates how to be best friends with their husbands and their children.  This is true health.  If the wisdom in the 45-sentence book of Titus can revolutionize a pirate island, it can even transform a pirate continent like North America.  Signs of our North American toxicity include gun violence and the insanity of the shooters, obesity when there is no shortage of food, and a wealth of communication tools while many are no longer talking any more.

 

Is it a mere coincidence that the late Steve Jobs defined Apple employees as pirates, even raising a pirate flag with the Apple logo as the pirate eyepatch?  It is better, said Jobs, to be a pirate than join the navy.[1]     In the 1999 movie Pirates of Silicon Valley, Jobs accused Bill Gates of ripping him off by producing the Microsoft Windows mouse-based graphical user interface.  Gates, the wealthiest person on earth, memorably said to his outraged fellow pirate Steve Jobs: “we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it."[2]  Ironically Jobs loved to quote Picasso’s comment: “Good artists copy. Great artists steal.”  So do great pirates. 

Titus was a first-century go-getter.  He reminds me of my father, Ted Hird, who always gets the job done.  At one of my father’s retirements, his company, Microtel, gave him a statue of a horse in memory of my father’s billing the company for a dead horse.  Working in Newfoundland for three months with the snowy roads sometimes impassible, my father hired a farmer’s horse to drag the telecommunications equipment up the hill. The microwave tower was finally finished, but the horse died.  Titus-like leaders make things happen against impossible odds.

If the toxic Cretan pirates can become healthy, anyone can become healthy, even North Americans.  Dr. Brene Brown, whose TED talk has been seen by over sixteen million people, said that we in North America “are the most we are the most in-debt, obese, addicted and medicated adult cohort in (our) history.”[3]   In an age of many regrets, Titus is a symbol of hope for healthy leadership in the twenty-first century.  With the huge global changes happening, the need for healthy leaders like Titus has never been greater.  A key solution to our North American toxicity is rediscovering Titus, the epitome of integrated healthy leadership.  Titus planted significantly healthy communities by identifying and training indigenous leaders in every one of the over hundred Cretan cities.  The book of Titus gives you the keys to healthy communities, healthy families and healthy lives.

The book of Titus calls us to become whole people – in mind, body, and spirit.  That is the theme of my brand new book ‘Restoring Health: body, mind and spirit.’  So often we North Americans are toxically fragmented in areas of our lives.  We need the Great Physician to give us a full check-up to determine whether our lives, our marriages and families, our churches and communities are sound and healthy.  Many of us are out of balance in our health emphasis, neglecting either the body, the mind or the spirit.  Too many good people have bought the lie that they can eat anything they want and not bother to exercise.  The Bible says that our health choices have consequences.  We reap as we sow.  People who neglect their bodies lose the ability to travel cross-culturally as they get older.  People who neglect their minds go stale and have nothing worth saying.  People who neglect their spirits go shallow and self-absorbed. Healthy leaders embrace their bodies, minds and spirits for Christ’s sake.

My prayer for those reading this article is that we will choose the way of holistic health in every area of our lives.

The Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, Rector

St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver

Anglican Mission Canada

http://stsimonschurch.ca

-an article for the November 2014 Deep Cove Crier

-Ed’s brand-new sequel book Restoring Health: body, mind and spirit is available online with Amazon.com in both paperback and ebook form. In Canada, Amazon.ca has the book available inpaperback and ebook. It is also posted on Amazon UK (paperback and ebook ), Amazon France (paperback andebook), and Amazon Germany (paperback and ebook).

Restoring Health is also available online on Barnes and Noble in both paperback and Nook/ebook form.  Nook gives a sample of the book to read online.  Indigo also offers the Kobo ebook version.

-In order to obtain a copy of the prequel 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 PAYPALusing the e-mailed_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

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[1] Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs (Simon & Schuster, New York, NY, 2011), p. 145.

[2] Andy Hertzfeld, “A Rich Neighbor Named Xerox”, November 1983; Martin Burke, Pirates of the Silicon Valley movie, 1999. http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=A_Rich_Neighbor_Named_Xerox.txt

(Accessed Feb 1^st 2014)

[3] Dr. Brene Brown, The Power of Vulnerability, TED Talk, June 2010, https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability/transcript  (accessed June 22^nd 2014).