Gary Grant

This blog post has a few risks about it: nevertheless I feel compelled to write it and to share it as widely as I know how. How is your appetite ?  Not for food, but for spiritual things ? For Jesus ? I remember a day when I wanted to be so close to Jesus that I would have done anything, in fact I did...I became a Salvo Officer...I chose to walk away from so many comfortable things and to follow Him and do my level best to try and help others find Him. I have discovered along the way that sometimes that devotion seems to have gone luke warm... that I am not as hungry as I once was, and also,  I look around me and others are seemingly walking away from Jesus as well. When I ask the question about how hungry you are for Jesus, what goes through your mind ? I invite people to pray together, and have done for 20 plus years... and its not ever an easy pick up...people don't want to pray together it seems.  There is always some excuse or reason not to. I think I have heard them all... I

A few years back I was the senior minister (Corps Officer) of a great corps (church for those non salvos). I started well I think and was true to my calling and identity and character in who God had shaped me to be.  It’s often like that as a Pastor, we do start well usually, its a blank canvas and the story is yet to be written. As there are in every church or group of people, there were those who loved me, and certainly there were people who did not.  I call them the critics and every church has them.   They are the ones who don't agree with you and your strategies, don't like your style of preaching...or simply just don't like you.  Dont think you are any more special than the next guy, we all have had these people in our ministries, even when things were going well.  They are still there.  They always are.   Even if they are not so vocal to your face. Jesus had them.  They killed him.   At times, I confess I also have been one of them and so have you.  We all have. You

Holidays are a good time to rest and reflect and reconsider a number of things in your life. It is interesting to me that after one week I feel my mind unclogging and relaxing and it is also interesting to me that in some ways as this is happening, I am becoming a little more optimistic about the future and my future. This morning in my quiet time I was reflecting on people in my life who have molded and shaped me in one way or the other..I am going to list them here, and I want them to know, so if you know them and can the message to them, will you do that for me please ? In my mind you give honour where honour is due. Sooooooooo, in no exact order, here are the names of people who have influenced my life over the past 60 something years....( apologise if I miss your name, there are so many) Richard Gilchrist, my first YP Band leader.     A great encourager ...thanks Richard for doing this journey with a bunch of children back then. For teaching us music and for me to how to play a co