Life Around "The Fire"
This podcast is dedicated to those wanting to experience a living and real relationship with God as well as growing together in love for one another. We consider that to be a true sign of spiritual growth as we journey along The Way. If this is you then come along with us as we co-operate with God in what He is doing around the corner and around the world!
Life Around "The Fire"
Dr Bill Hurst: Learning To Love When The Holiday Seasons Hurt
The holidays can be loud with joy and still leave space where the heart aches. We sit down with Dr. Bill Hurst for a frank, compassionate exploration of the Christmas blues, the weight of complicated memories, and the quiet courage it takes to choose love when celebration feels out of reach. From childhood years in protective care to teachings that labeled Christmas “pagan,” Dr. Bill charts a path many listeners will recognize: confusion, pressure, and an uneasy relationship with a season that’s supposed to be simple. What emerges is a wiser way forward—treating Christmas not as a test of correctness, but as a practical season for love, hospitality, and gentle witness.
Dr. Bill opens the door to his most painful chapter: the loss of his youngest daughter near Christmas. He shares how faith steadied sorrow without erasing it, how hope reframed grief, and why this time of year can still be meaningful when the chair at the table sits empty. We talk about moving from theological fights to relational presence, welcoming single neighbors and elders with no nearby family, and giving gifts that say “you are loved” with no strings attached. Along the way, we return to a core question that changes everything: did we learn to love?
If you’ve ever felt alone in December, this conversation offers warmth without hype and clarity without judgment. We reflect on becoming light by lifting Jesus with our lives, letting the Spirit guide us from knowing about truth to living it, and using the openness of the season to share comfort, courage, and the nearness of God. Join us, then tell a friend who needs a place to breathe. Subscribe, share this episode, and leave a review to help more people find a hopeful way through the holidays.
Loving Yeshua/Jesus, Loving people... Come as you are and you will be loved!
Feel free to check out our website by typing in lifearoundthefire.com or Life Around The Fire ... We think you'll find some beneficial stuff to look at and apply to your life.
Shalom to you and your home.
Howdy folks, I want to welcome you back to another episode of Life Around the Fire. And today, in our studio, we have a real privilege in that we have Dr. Bill Hurst as our guest speaker today. And he's no stranger to uh Life Around the Fire, but he carries every time he comes, he carries something with him that's that's new. Even though he's not new, there seems to be something fresh. And I believe that it's because he carries with him one of the most tender hearts that I've ever met. One of the most sensitive men to the father's heart that I have met, and I've met a lot of people. And it's it's our privilege to have him here today, and we're gonna be focusing in a little bit on this particular podcast episode on stuff that goes around during Christmas time. And specifically what I mean by that is that sometimes this time of year for people like myself, actually, who have had throughout their life during this season some people call it the blues. Or you just don't feel like yourself, or maybe it brings up memories that are very difficult, and you have to live with those things, and it's kind of a a mixed feeling. Where you've got people around you celebrating, but you on the inside aren't really celebrating. In fact, you'd just as soon be by yourself. And that might be you. I know, as I said, that's been myself, but we're gonna be looking at today this whole aspect of this season and some of the things that we encounter during it, but also some of the things that God has in store for us. That really He gives us hope, He gives us faith, and He gives us love. And the greatest of those is love. But in our in our hope today, in our prayer, is that you'd be really a recipient of something that would help you navigate through this time, that there'd be some wisdom that you'd have that would navigate, that would help you navigate. And so, Dr. Bill, once again, thank you for being here today, and good to have you here.
SPEAKER_00:It's good to be here.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, and during this time of year, you've been in the whole area of ministry for how many years, Doctor? Almost 60. Just I'm I'm 66, so you just just about there how old I am. And I was just recently looking at the fact that Joshua in the Old Testament, when he took over from Moses, Joshua was close to 80 when he took over. And it's interesting that I I I I I I think that our best days are in front of us, actually. And you've experienced some really good things in your life from what we talked about in encountering in your relationship with God some real encounters with him. But also you've experienced a little bit of the difficulties, if I'm not mistaken. And if someone's going through a tough time right now, how what what would you how would you encourage them, Doctor?
SPEAKER_00:Well, the first thing I'd like to do is tell a bit of a story, a bit of history, actually. I was born in 1947, and for five five years I was actually in uh child protective services uh in Canada. It's called the Children's Aid. And uh I did not remember any Christmases before the age of five. At the age of five, I was taken to my grandfather's house, even though I didn't know it was my grandfather. And I was in my in my memory, now let me let me make that clear, in my memory, I was taken there and dropped off. And it seemed like I was rejected. I want to say this, that many mo quite often during this season of the year, any abandonment you've been through, any rejection you've been through comes to the fore. Because the season is touted as a season of joy and thanksgiving, and it is that and it should be that. But often the greatest impact of sorrow happens at this time. So I was with my grandfather and they celebrated Christmas. I was with him for from the age of five to the age of eleven. Then my mom came home and took us boys, just the two of us, and we had some good Christmases and some bad Christmases. But when I grew up and got close to marriage and got married, we celebrated Christmas, but we we didn't sell it wasn't it was Christmas light, let's put it that way. Number one, because we were just struggling in ministry and and learning how to uh be a family. And number two, it's because we had run into some theories about Christmas being pagan. And of course, we didn't want to be pagan, so we backed away from a lot of the stuff that was on at Christmas. And then I we came in contact with a group and went to be with them for seven years. They did not celebrate Christmas, they preached against it, they talked about it not being the time when Jesus was born, and uh Christmas being birthed in pagan roots. And so when we got the left foot of fellowship from that group, we came back, we came back home to our home hometowns, and of course, her parents were not saved. They celebrated Christmas, so we had some interesting times there. But we we we struggled through this whole minefield of the theories around Christmas and around Jesus' birth. And so when when we came to a conclusion after many, many years that we would take it at whatever level the children needed it. Cause you see there's more than just religious and theological construct around Christmas. And we begin to celebrate it as a family time. At first we didn't celebrate it on the day, but we did we got together as family. We used it as family time, we set a day aside for all the family. And of course, as the family gets bigger when you have five ki five kids and a foster child, as the family gets bigger, the event gets bigger just by reason of numbers. And so we had some joyful times and we had some difficult times. But the kids they begin to love Christmas. And because that's the time when they get gifts for it's not their birthday, it's not any anniversary of theirs, they get it just because they're loved. And they knew that the Christmas gifts were because they were loved. See, the issue is, the real issue is, how do I express love? The issue is not, is it Christmas? It becomes a convenient time to do that, but the issue is how do I express love? Is is there a time and a season with my kids, with my grandkids, with my great-grandkids, with those around me that I can express love without them thinking there's an agenda. Now, in the world, Christmas does become an agenda. And we give because we want to get. But the issue really is, do in fact, one dear brother that that we listen to, he's gone to be with the Lord now. But he said when he had a vision of heaven and and he died and went to heaven and God sent him back, but before he did, when he got to the gate, he said the question he was asked was, Did you learn to love? That's right. That's it. Did you learn not not how many souls did you win to Jesus? Not what good works did you do, not how many were healed in your ministry, not how many were delivered, but did you learn to love? You can do all these things, and if you have not love, there's sounding brass and tinkling symbol. So we need to, and and I like the way God put that to him, did you learn to love? We don't come loving, we come selfish. It's part of the fallen nature, and we need to learn to love. And Jesus said, Take my yoke upon me and learn of me. Learn how to love. Learn how he loved, learn how to love as he loved. And so down through the years, we have learned to love. I learned to love my kids, I learned to set them free to make their decisions and to suffer the consequences. The older they got, the more we allowed the consequences to correct them rather than us correcting them. And so, about, I guess it's about 13 years ago now, I was already move in the States, my kids were back in Canada, and I come home from a trip, and we had visitors from another country. I come home from a trip and got on on Facebook just to check my stuff, and I found out on Facebook that my daughter was in the ICU in the hospital. My wife said I looked absolutely white. We had to find places for the visitors to stay while I went up because we didn't know that they could have gone up with us and found a place to found them a place to stay and stayed with us. During that time, I said goodbye to my youngest daughter. And it was, I think it was December 22nd. And it was a difficult, difficult time. Because everybody knows the baby in the family is special. It's not that we love them more, it's just that they're special. And so God took her home to be with him. She never recovered to be able to say goodbye, Dad. We said goodbye to her. I arrived there at three o'clock in the morning. Ten minutes later, the doctor came in and told us what the situation was. She lasted a day and a half. We had to pull the plug in Canada after a certain amount of time. The plug is the decision has to be made to either pull the plug or keep going. And the doctor said her brain was not functioning. So we suffered great loss. That was a very difficult, difficult Christmas. But you know something? The thing that comforted us is we knew where she was going. We knew that she'd been with Jesus, that she was with Jesus, and it didn't take away the sorrow, but it made it easier to bear because there's going to come a day when the family is going to be reunited around the throne of God, worshiping and praising Him for eternity. Plus, in my understanding of the ages to come, there's still going to be a lot of work to do. So we'll be working together for the purposes of God. We have evolved in our celebration of Christmas. When I got married the second time, my wife loved Christmas, has beautiful memories around it, and our house looks like it. And, you know, one of the things we found is when we came to the church here on Christmas Eve, we would have all the single folks over, and especially the older folks who had no place to go and no family close. We'd have them over and we would have a wail of a time. They would thoroughly enjoy it. And several times they left and they said, Thank you. We didn't want to be alone Christmas Eve. It's a time when loneliness, if you're alone, loneliness is more stark and more painful. And so when I was wrestling this through with God, I said, Lord, what about Christmas? He said, There's no greater time to share that when people are more open to the gospel than Christmas time. That's so true. And he said, I want you to take advantage of the season, not put it down, not put people down for celebrating it, but I want you to be able to help them with joy, with comfort, and with their openness to the gospel, even hearing another stage of the gospel, they may not have heard. They may be saved, but they may not know more about him than that. And it's a time to share Jesus in all of his aspects, in all of his glory, and all of his power, and in all of his humility. You see, this is a season of humility. God humbled himself to become a man so that he might show us how to become mature sons of God. That's what why he came. Came to bring many sons unto glory, many to maturity in relationship with him. It starts with initial salvation. It starts with accepting Jesus as your Savior. But that's just the beginning of your journey. And I was listening to a rab a messianic rabbi this week that I happened upon on social media, and he was he said 80, what, 80% of both Christians and and especially messianic Jews do not believe they should celebrate Christmas. He made a point. He said this. He said, although it was never commanded in Scripture for the Jews to keep Hanukkah, Jesus kept Hanukkah. He kept a celebration that was never commanded in Scripture. And he said, There's no reason why we should not use the Christmas season to celebrate the birth of Jesus, to celebrate the fact he was born, to celebrate the fact that a Savior came from heaven to save our souls and to make it so we could be with him for eternity. We need to focus on the positive things of this time rather than on the negatives, and we shouldn't, we shouldn't. I believe we've become distracted with theology. And it's time for us to get back to relationship. One of the things God told me years ago, he said, Bill, I can't when when I created man, the first thing I did with them was come down and walk with them in the cool of the day. I came down to have relationship with them. In the center of the scripture, which is Psalms and Song of Solomon, it's all about relationship with Him. Song of Solomon is leading her into a deeper relationship with her beloved. She is the type of we who know him as our Savior. He, of course, is a type of the Lord Jesus Christ, drawing us into a deeper intimacy with him, a greater desire. He has a desire for you. He desires you more than you desire him. And so why don't you respond to that desire? Why don't you say to him, Lord Jesus, not only come into my heart but lead me into all truth? You know, when when it says that he's come to lead us, the Holy Spirit come to lead us and guide us into all truth, I have to admit something. I don't know what all truth is. I don't know how to walk into truth. I don't know how to manifest truth. I need to be led and guided into those realities. And so our challenge today is not do we celebrate Christmas or don't we? Our challenge today is not do we focus on the negative of Christmas. And I mean, I this could be one of the saddest times of the year for me. But it's become a time of joy because I get to share Jesus, I get to share joy, I get to help people through things that uh through times like I went through back, I think it was 2011.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Why? Because Jesus is the answer. No matter what my problem is, I need to say, Holy Spirit, show me and lead me to the answer that Jesus is to this question. The answer that Jesus is to this pain, the answer that Jesus is to this rejection, this sense of abandonment, this sense of aloneness. Lead me there, lead me to the place where that is no longer ruling my life and ruling my thoughts. But the thing that's ruling my life and ruling my thoughts is how much I'm loved of Jesus. By the way, when you get to the end of the book, Revelation twenty two, it says this, and the spirit and the bride say come. Let him that is a thirst say come. The spirit and the bride are both relationship. God is in relationship. He's not in doctrine. I didn't say he doesn't have doctrine, I said he's not in it. There are theologians that are immersed in doctrine. Much of what they preach is true, but they don't have the relationship to back it up to minister substance to God's people. So I think it's time that we begin to put our priorities right. The priority for us is a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. The priority for us is growing up into Him in all things. And that's even in our attitude toward those that don't agree with us. If we do that, we're going to manifest the nature of Jesus Christ. And what we're going to see, folks, is they shall see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven. One more scripture before I close. Jesus in the midst of everything, it says, and his life, not his words. His life was the light of men. Jesus said, While I'm with you, I'm the light of the world. But then he said, You are the light of the world. I think some of us need our internal globes cleaned so people can see Jesus in us. That's the could I say that? That's the core of the gospel? That people see Jesus in us. And Jesus said this, and I, if I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me. I remember one day years ago back in the, I think it was the 70s, we had a a house group in in Canada. And the Lord said to me, He said, Bill, why aren't people coming? And I was taken aback. He said, Why are people coming? I said, if I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me. Why are people being drawn? The only conclusion I could come to was Jesus is not being lifted up. That's when I began to realize I had my theological concept of what it meant, but I didn't know what it meant in reality. Ever since then I've been praying, Lord Jesus, would you come? Would you so clean up this vessel that you are seen in me and people are drawn to you in me? That should be our prayer, folks. This is a season when Jesus is the reason. Jesus is the reason for the season because he seasons my life with himself. May God bless you.
SPEAKER_01:Hallelujah. You know, there's a story concerning Jesus when uh the disciples or a couple of his followers after his resurrection, and shortly after his resurrection, his followers were going to a location that they had to walk some distance. And anyway, on their way, a stranger came up alongside of them and was asking questions about different things. He goes, What's what's going on? He goes, They said, Haven't you heard? And it's been like living under a rock or something, I'm paraphrasing. And they said, No, no, no, no. So then this stranger continues to talk with them and explain to them from the scriptures all about Jesus, all about what was to take place, had taken place, and was going to take place. And then these these two gentlemen, their eyes were open and they saw Jesus. And after that, he showed after that he vanished from their view, but they said to themselves, they said when he talked, didn't his words just burn inside as he was explaining things. Doctors, you were sharing my the spirit of the Lord and my spirit were just burning on the inside. There was a warmth and a peace and a love that I felt, tangibly felt. And I have the notion that someone's experiencing that very same thing right now. There's something called warmth going on on the inside, and you wonder, what's this? That is Jesus opening things up to you and he's using this simple podcast, this simple message to transform something from the inside out. And Dr. Thank you for being that that that that vehicle, but thank the L really we thank the Lord for accomplishing what he did and how he can over how he can literally take and transform us if we allow him to. But you said something else, and I wanna I wanna cap off with this and ask you to close in prayer, please. Uh and it's this you you said something concerning the children and how if for no other reason, if it would be no other reason than just to give a gift in the name of Jesus and use this as a time that could be right around his time of birth, who cares if it's the exact time of the you know, day on the calendar. Uh those are important, but in this instance, what's more important can be what is transmitted or communicated to the wives of children and how we can make a big difference. And so we have orphans listening to this podcast episode right now who are in various places all around the world, and some in Kenya right now specifically. And Doctor, would you just call us in a word of prayer and and and invite the Holy Spirit to manifest Jesus to us, please?
SPEAKER_00:Lord Jesus, you stopped in the middle of a sermon to bless the children. You had your priorities right. The disciples didn't have it right. The Pharisees and Scribes didn't have it right. But you knew, you said, suffer the little children to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven. And so, Father, we bring the orphans to you at this time of year. We bring the neglected to you. We bring the bruised and the wounded to you. We ask that at this time of year, when Jesus is the emphasis, that they would feel and experience Jesus and His presence. Some of them as children may not know you yet, but may your presence be so strong that they come to you at this time. For a seed planted in good earth will bring forth. We thank you that you plant certified seed. So, Father, we pray in your precious name that that sense of your presence would go out with this podcast, that sense of your love for them, that sense of why the Savior came, why he was born, for without that birth there would be no death, there would be no savior. So, Father, we thank you for your birth. We thank you for the birth of Jesus Christ, your son, and we ask that you would make it real to the people at this time of year. In your precious name I pray. Amen.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you, brother. Folks, we love you. And if there are any thoughts, questions, concerns that you might have, please feel free to drop us a line at life around the fire at gmail.com. That's our email address, or you just type in Life Around the Fire and look us up on the web. We would love to hear from you. In the meantime, God bless you. Adios, amigos.