Books by Kirsten Birkett

Discover your journal‿s potential to be a tool for spiritual growthKirsten Birkett encourages us to pick up our notebooks and pens and use journaling as a tool to grow in godliness. Writing is a powerful act. It takes time and allows us the space to turn emotions like sadness or anger into joy. The Puritans used diaries as a way to give themselves spiritual counsel. It helped them to remember God‿s mercies, to reflect on how He has been at work, and to be thankful. This book is a helpful guide for those who want to start the practice of journaling, or who want to direct their journaling in a more intentional way. Put pen to paper and create a record of your spiritual life. Chapter headings include:Introduction:How This All Got StartedChapter 1:WriteChapter 2:Write WisdomChapter 3:Write ForgivenessChapter 4: Write ThankfulnessChapter 5: Write PrayerChapter 6: Write WitnessChapter 7: Write BibleChapter 8: The Covid Diaries 2020Appendix: Write as the Puritans Did

The secular world is well aware of the problems of stress. Of recent decades a great deal of attention and research has been devoted to understanding what those who cope well with stress actually do; and, as a result, how to help others learn to do the same things. The psychological construct that has been developed to describe what secular researchers are looking for is ‘resilience’. What the literature reveals, however, is that our created natures thrive on spiritual values. What fosters resilience, the qualities and strategies that resilient people demonstrate, are things like religion, altruism and belief in the good. Sometimes these ideas can sit oddly with the naturalistic, pluralistic framework of secular socio-scientific research. However, within a Christian framework. It should not be surprising that what works is just that sort of lifestyle that God created us to have. Nothing will make Christian ministry easy in this fallen world, dealing with the sinful people that we all are. However we are blessed with resources that perhaps we take too lightly, and could be paying more attention to. We have a gracious God who has revealed truths about the world that make a difference to us – how we feel and how we cope, as well as how we believe and act. Most of all, unlike the secular world, we have a real hope that makes positive thinking entirely rational.Kirsty Birkett is Latimer Research Fellow at Oak Hill College, where she is responsible for Learning Architecture and Educational Development, and  teaches Ethics, Philosophy and Church History. Her many publications cover the whole area of relationships between science and religion. She has also written on psychology, feminism and the family for both a popular and academic audience.

Cultures, for as long as we have had history, have had some sense of magic. This book contends that some of it, at least, is real; it describes what that is, and why the Bible is so negative about it. However, to say 'magic is real' in our contemporary culture could be very misleading. In fact, wrong. For what our culture thinks of as 'magic' - as vague and diffuse as that is - is likely to be very different from what was practised in the Ancient Near East (the things that modern English translations of the Old Testament call, for instance, sorcery or witchcraft) or in the Greco-Roman world (what the New Testament calls magic). It also may be very different from what is called 'magic' or 'witchcraft' in animistic or ancestor-worshipping cultures today.This book unpacks the background and explores the implications of the biblical teaching about the supernatural. There is a supernatural world, and it contains more than just God in Trinity; but Christians should not be afraid of it.Kirsty Birkett is Latimer Research Fellow at Oak Hill College, where she is responsible for Learning Architecture and Educational Development,and teaches Ethics, Philosophy and Church History. Her many publications cover the whole area of relationships between science and religion. She has also written on psychology, feminism and the family for both a popular and academic audience.