Gary Grant

Change my heart oh God,  Make it ever new... Change my heart oh God May I be like You. You are the potter I am the clay Mold me and make me This is what I pray As I listened to this music this morning, and read my devotional book I was touched deeply by the presence of the Lord as He spoke quietly into my heart... I want my life to be authentic and true, to be making a difference to those around me for Jesus... to attract people to Jesus and not me.... ( I am not that attractive).        Jesus is. Saturdays seem to be the day for Me to blog.... and I am ok with that... This past week has been a bit crazy with “screen time”. A lot of video chats, conversations, discussions prayer and a few laughs also.... In the middle of that also. Some scammers trying to get my attention,  the online world is crazy.... at times, and it needs to be countered with the love of God that changes our hearts, and changes our mind. It’s one thing to...

(I placed this pic in for varying reasons... and those who have read this will know why) Well its basically been a month with this incredible change in our routine and living. I know it has not been easy for many, and I personally haven’t found it easy either, but I can honestly say so much has changed for me personally in that month.  I am not going to bore you with all the change in my daily routine, but I will tell you that my spiritual quiet time has doubled, and that just causes me to ponder, if my prayer life and study of the Word and worship has been limited because of my busy-ness.  Because now I am not quite so busy I have more time to pray....and that is an amazing thing isnt it ? We have lots of time to think, and ponder life, and I truly do wonder if anything will change for us in the long term... if honest, I reckon we will all just fall back into the ruts we were living and functioning in,  oh yes we will be grateful for a routine t...

One of the interesting things these days is the intentionality of people, especially in the church, to try new things. New forms of ministry are emerging, but not just that, people are more intentional about contact. Today I received an SMS from one of our key guys to just check in and see if I was ok... I never hear from him any other time. Fantastic. So the big question is what will we go back to when its over ? One of the worst things we could do is go back to the same old same old.... mostly that hasn't worked for years. We did an online prayer meeting last Saturday, we had around 100 people connect in, normally in the physical prayer gatherings we get around 30 - 40. The same at a Corps prayer meeting recently online... normally they get 5 or 6, but this time online it was 11. And what about outside the church....  people are walking as families more, they say hello when they walk past... normally I don't even get a grunt from those walking past me...

Yesterday Jules and I travelled around 7 -8 hours on the road just checking in briefly with our Officers in the Gippsland region of our Area. The day before we also checked in on the Officers of the Mornington peninsula ...most were very pleased to see us, even though from around 3 metres distance.  It was a crazy day, a day I have not driven as far for a very long time... around 500-600 kms yesterday... it got me thinking as we start to self isolate from each other and start to think creatively how we can still minister and serve suffering humanity. Which is seriously suffering right now. None of us are immune from this insidious virus, threatening death to any might succumb to it. but as Christ followers our faith and hope is not found on this earth, it is found in Jesus and the future that awaits His children is an eternal hope in heaven, free of fear, free of tears, free of pain and suffering ... full of peace and hope and love and grace. Jules and I stoppe...