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A Country Music Star’s Review

Wednesday, January 31st, 2024

REVIEW OF LIKE A RIVER

By Granger Smith

First, you need to know I am not a County Music (CM) fan. A few years ago (like 20-30+ when I did listen to CM), I was very picky whom I listened to. I even wore a cowboy hat! But after about 4 years I went back to my roots of rock ‘n roll and metal. So you might be wondering why in the world I would read a book by a CM star? To be honest, it sat in my Amazon cart for several months because I couldn’t bite the bullet. But I finally did and I’m here to tell you I’m glad I did.

Granger Smith and his wife, Amber, had three children:  London (7), Lincoln (5) and River (3). Lincoln and River were best buds so they were off playing together and Granger was helping London with a new gymnastics routine. His career was a shining star getting brighter by the day. This particular day, one day before the CMA awards, he was with London, when he suddenly noticed the boys were quiet. River had wandered off from his brother and Granger found him face down in the family pool. Despite efforts by him doing CPR and the EMS there was no hope. They rushed him to the hospital but his long time without oxygen gave them no hope. They donated his organs and allowed him to pass naturally.

This book is Granger’s efforts to process his grief and to share the lessons he learned with us. I cannot even begin to imagine what it would be like for him, or for any other parent in a similar situation, or for any parent having to say “Goodbye” to a child. As you can imagine Granger’s life from that point on was a roller coaster. He admits faking it and lying on stage and telling people he was okay (typical for most of us). He also found himself going down the rabbit hole of marijuana usage to help him deal with the nightmares (PTSD). Then the dark night of the soul where he had a loaded gun ready to end it all. Shortly after that dark night and his decision to follow Jesus, he approached Amber about having another baby. But she had had her tubes tied and so the chances of that happening were slim. Oh, the miracles of modern medicine. They implanted an egg but Amber had a miscarriage. With one frozen embryo left they tried one last time. This time God blessed them with little Maverick.

The book ends with Granger telling us that he has given up the road traveling and singing CM to attend Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he is pursuing a Master’s Degree and preaching. I like what he says: “Other than that, my future is none of my business. What a freeing feeling that is.” (p.184)

I did enjoy this book. It wasn’t a sordid “tell all” like many of them could do. Instead, it was a “God came through and I want to share my testimony with you” book. His story of losing River is heart-breaking, but to see what God has brought out of this is truly inspiring.  He was honest; he was real; and it was well worth the time reading. (He still didn’t convert me to CM).  🙂

#ItIsFinished!

Thursday, March 30th, 2023

I suspect all of us from time to time have heard or even used the expression, “Famous last words.” We use them to sorta say, “Yeah. So you say.”  “I’ll clean my room” or “I’ll take out the garbage” or “I’ll clean the garage.” And we say? “Yeah, yeah, yeah, famous last words.  As I prepared for this message and was thinking about Jesus’ last words, I decided to do a little research, aka Google it, on famous last words.  🙂 I found some irreverent ones. I found some thoughtful ones. I found some ironic ones. And I found some sad ones.  (I would encourage you to look them up yourself).  I’m actually going to give some examples during the introduction part of my sermon.

Jesus’ words “It is Finished” are loaded with meaning, often misconstrued. Each of Jesus’ last words tell a story, a truth, to know and remember. My desire this Sunday is to explain what that phrase means and why it is so important for us to get it right.

I just want to say this: In His dying moments, the mind of Jesus was filled, not with hopeless despair, but with a sense of accomplishment. His imminent death was not something inflicted upon Him by others, but something He Himself had achieved! That is why He could say, “It is Finished.”

Please tune in if possible. In person or via live stream.  Our services are at 9:00 and 10:45. They are live streamed on the church’s FB page and also YouTube. You can find those links at the church’s website.  I’m looking forward to preaching on these last words of Jesus.

 

#BloodofJesus

Wednesday, April 13th, 2022

After preaching on The Cross is Still the Cross this past Sunday, and knowing this is “Holy Week” i.e. the last week of Jesus on earth before His crucifixion, I was struck by the words to an old hymn.  Honestly, I am not into many hymns because much of what I sang as a youngster fit more in the Spiritual songs genre. But there are some hymns which are real diamonds…diamonds we ought to mine and never forget. Here is one of them:

“What can wash away by sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus/What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus/

Chorus:

O precious is the flow that makes me white as snow/No other fount I know, Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

For my pardon this I see, Nothing but the blood of Jesus/ For my cleansing, this my plea, Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Nothing can for sin atone, Nothing but the blood of Jesus/Naught of good that I have done, Nothing but the blood of Jesus/

This is all my hope and peace, Nothing but the blood of Jesus/This is all my righteousness, Nothing but the blood of Jesus/

O precious is the flow that makes me white as snow/No other found I know, Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”

Words and music Robert Lowry

A blast from the past. But what a punch! Remember this truth as you celebrate the death of Jesus this week.

#NeverTooLate#Song

Thursday, April 1st, 2021

I was on my way to the office this morning (Thursday) and was listening to Kutless. I have been listening to them lately and I’m sure I heard this song but never paid much attention.

Until this morning.

I realized how pertinent it was given the meaning of this whole week. The day we honor tomorrow (Good Friday). The day we celebrate on Sunday (Resurrection).

And the ache we have in our hearts for those we know and/or love who have continued to push Jesus away.  I know I do.  I offer this to you to be encouraged to not stop praying and hoping. It is never too late until that last breath is breathed. Until then…

Here is the song.

#Story#Replacement

Monday, March 29th, 2021

Perhaps you have heard this story before. Maybe not. Since I have never read Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities I can’t say I have except in a passing glance. But I used the following story in my sermon yesterday and since it is the week leading up to the crucifixion and resurrection, I thought I would start your week off with a thought-provoking story.

A man named Charles Darnay is condemned to die by the guillotine.  In our vernacular, all means of appeal had been made. The verdict kept coming back “Guilty.” “Condemned.”

As he sat in his cell and thought about his wife and child, he heard the shuffling of feet in the stone passage, a turning of a key, and a quick open and shut door. With a finger to his lips, Sidney Carton stood face-to-face before Darnay with a slight smile on his face. This man had come to trade places with Darney. Carton, an innocent man, is willing to go to the guillotine so that Darnay can be free to live and rejoin his family.

After the exchange has been made, and prisoners are gathered to be taken to their execution, a little seamstress approaches him. “Are you dying for him?” she whispered. “And his wife and child,” he replied.

Sidney Carton died so that another might live. But as great as his act was, it still does compare with what Christ has done for us.  You see, Carton died for 3 people. Jesus died not for just three, not for a hundred, but millions upon millions of people. Jesus died mercifully for a humanity caught in rebellion against God. By His death Jesus reconciled us (made us friends) with God.

Romans 5:8 says, “God demonstrates his love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Think on that truth as we begin this final week leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus.

#Density#OopsDestiny

Friday, February 26th, 2021

In my favorite movie, Back to the Future, there is a scene where George McFly gets up the courage to ask Lorraine to the “Enchantment Under the Sea” dance. He is not very good with words or women and his first foray is telling Lorraine “You are my density.” When she shows her confusion, he restates it by saying, “I’m George, George McFly, and I’m your density. I mean, your destiny.”

There are two things which are certain…or so we hear: “Death and taxes.” I’m pretty sure that is an accurate statement. The death rate is 1/1. And I’m pretty certain taxes are not going away any time soon. Death is a predator that tracks us all down. We can’t outrun it no matter how much kale we eat, how many medicines we take, how many vitamins we shove down our throat every day, how many diets we try, how many botox injections we get or plastic surgeries we have performed, or how much we work out. Death comes to call and it is time to leave.

But death doesn’t have to have the final say. It is a fact of life, but what it says when we are gone is determined by the One who holds the keys to death and hell.  So death leaves us with two pictures: death will either render life meaningless or it will render life meaningful.

My sermon is from Ecclesiastes 9:1-10.  I’d love to have you join us in person or online. But most of all I’d appreciate your prayers.

#SpeakUpandOut#ItisTime

Wednesday, February 10th, 2021

As the title suggests, it is time to speak up and out. I have rued speaking about politics on purpose.  In the long run, it serves no purpose. Talking heads will want to believe what they want to believe. My wife has asked me on several occasions, “Can’t people see that what he is doing is ruining our country?” I nodded in the affirmative to her thoughts about the country but then simply replied, “Nope they can’t because they don’t want to. Big tech and the liberal media only tell people what they themselves believe or what they want people to hear.” We saw that since the first impeachment (farce) of a trial and we saw it the whole 10 months leading up to the election.  (And please don’t get me started on that).

But I have another “bone” to pick. All this talk of science during the whole pandemic as though science was the end all. Science had/has all the answers.  “Science says this or science says that.” If science is so right on that subject, why is science so wrong on another subject?  Cases in point:

The current administration has signed into law that transgender males may participate in female sports. Science says that gives the males an unfair advantage because of the testosterone which is running through their body. But we suddenly push science aside for the sake of political “woke-sim.”  Can I say how much I despise that word “woke”?  Even athletes like Martina Navratilova, a known and out-spoken lesbian,  has gone on public record that it is a bad thing. “It gives the transgender athlete an unfair advantage,” she says. Oh, she took some heat on that one for sure. She isn’t alone. Even Billie Jean King spoke out.  And many others.  It is unfair that woman/high school/college athletes will be punished by the travesty of allowing males to compete as females. So we kick science to the curb for the sake of being PC (a word we no longer need to use since we have “woke”).  Have I told you much I despise that word?  🙂  Oh, and if you think this is not backed by big money then take a gander at this articleThat ought to chill you to the core.

Another “Kick science to the curb” scenario is the recent vote to allow babies who survive abortion not to receive medical help, i.e. just let them die. The fact that they are breathing even science will admit means they are alive.  How can babies be denied life-saving means, especially when a botched abortion was meant to take their life to start with? I am beyond stumped with that. And I am beyond livid when it comes to abortion and now this?  I submit to you there will be some lawmakers who will cringe when they stand before the Judge of all and have to give an account for their actions.  I seem to remember Someone saying we “need to become like children to see the kingdom of heaven” and “it would be better if a millstone were tied around our neck rather than cause one of the little ones to stumble.”  Of course, I suspect many or most of them don’t care what God thinks. And for a supposed pastor to vote for letting them die? I do not want to be in his shoes on Judgment Day.

I have other thoughts but will keep them to myself.  🙂  I will also now climb down off my soapbox and be on my way.  I ranted long enough.  Oh…by the way…these are not political issues; they are moral issues. On those I will speak.

#4Truths#ClingTo

Sunday, November 1st, 2020

I mentioned in my last post that I was deeply influenced by 4 truths taught in Jesus Revolution by Greg Laurie and Ellen Vaughn. Before I share those 4 truths, I think it is important to give you the backstory to them. Greg and Cathe Laurie are the parents of two sons. The oldest, Christopher, had gotten into drugs and the way of the world. But one day he recommitted his life to Christ and it was real. He became a good husband and father. He also worked alongside his dad, who was and is the pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, California.  One day they were waiting for Christopher to show with water for a ministry they were doing when it became later and later. Finally Greg received word that Christopher had been killed in a car accident. He said he collapsed on his front porch and and wept. But as he wept he said, “You gave him to me in the first place, and now I give him back to you.”  Would the faith they absorbed during the Jesus Movement days and practiced since the ’60s sustain he and Cathe? The reality of faith didn’t anesthetize the pain. Trusting Jesus wasn’t an emotional Xanax. But faith did make the pain bearable. 

They knew four truths, not just intellectually, but deep in their souls. These truths were what they could hold on to in the midst of their storm.  Here they are:

#1- Life is full of trouble, just as Jesus had promised.  John 16:33 comes to my mind when I think about this.

#2- They knew God loved them.  I personally think this is where we get tripped up the most. Sometimes we think we are owed something because of the life we have lived-both good and bad (our childhood for example). We might be going through a tough season-mentally, physically and spiritually-but we have the assurance of God’s love.

#3- They knew Jesus wept with them.  Ask for a memory verse in a contest and invariably someone will says, “Jesus wept.” We chuckle (although it is old) but have you ever considered the power in that short verse?

#4- They knew God can be glorified, in some mysterious way, by human suffering.  Job was able to say, “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” The Lauries were able to say that as well.  The proof is in the fruit.

So much there.  Unpack it some more on your own. Want some help? Feel free to contact me.

#SearingLoss#HowLong?#WhatNow?

Friday, October 30th, 2020

Pastor Greg Laurie is a well-known pastor in Riverside California. He has pastored Harvest Christian Fellowship for over 40 years. As you can imagine he has been through probably about everything a person can go through but he will tell you the hardest to deal with was the accidental death of his son in a car accident.  He and his wife, Cathe’s response prompted me to add this sermon to my Q & A series.

C.S.Lewis once wrote:

“God whispers to us in our pleasure, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain; it is His megaphone to rouse the deaf world.”

I know there are those who have experienced such searing loss that it still affects them many years later. The loss of a child. The loss of a child at birth. The loss of someone you love by suicide. The loss that sears so deeply it is burned into your soul.  I must confess: I’ve not had that type of loss. I’ve lost my mother to cancer at the age of 71.  I lost both my in-laws but felt the loss of my father-in-law the deepest. I have lost friends in the churches I have served. I have seen my long time male friend bury his father and son.  But I’m not going to pretend I understand the ache of searing loss.

This Sunday my sermon is What about Searing Loss? and I will be using Job’s experience as an example. I will also be taking the four truths that Pastor Greg said held them together and expanding on them. I also plan to share those 4 truths with you in a post next week.

This will be a gut-wrenching sermon for some to hear. I am asking you to pray for extra wisdom for me and extra grace for those listening-in person and via live stream. Thanks.

#NoPlaceToHide#Book Review

Tuesday, July 28th, 2020

After reading I’ve Seen the End of You by surgeon Lee Warren, it was a no-brainer that I would read his first book, No Place to Hide.  I have to admit that I had absolutely no idea what to expect. All I knew about it was he was a surgeon in Iraq and had to deal with some PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome).  PTSD is very common in combat soldiers and it manifests itself in multiple ways. It is also found in accident victims-accidents of many different kinds. I was particularly interested because there are several men in the church I pastor who were in either Desert Storm or Iraq and suffer from PTSD, from mild to severe. A friend of mine has it due to watching his best friend die almost literally in his arms after a horrible accident involving a 90+ year old man ramming his car into several cyclists while on an MS ride.  (And he got off almost scot-free due to $$$$).

Here is my review of No Place to Hide:

I have never been in armed conflict. I turned 18 during the Vietnam War but was in Bible college so I was exempt. BTW: that was not why I went to Bible college. I was virtually illiterate about the news and Vietnam. I think my parents knew I would have been toast if I had signed up for the military because I could not find a job after my Freshman year in college and my uncle (un-brave soul that he was) took me to a recruiting station. My mom was contacted by the recruiter and she discouraged it.  Anyway, I have only read or listened to the horrors of that conflict as well as Desert Storm and the Iraqi invasion. To say my eyes were opened would be an understatement.  Lee was a brain surgeon with a successful practice but he received his papers to go to Balad Air Base for four months.  I will spare you the gory details but to say his time at Balad was a vacation would do him a great injustice. It would do all those who served in any capacity a great injustice.

While at Balad he was required to treat our military personnel, but also innocent Iraqi citizens, and our enemies, terrorist bombers included. The descriptions of what some of our personnel went through were enough to give me nightmares if I had allowed it. Innocent citizens punished for making a living by becoming translators or voting was enough to make my blood boil.  And to make it worse was for all medical personnel giving their best to save the suicide bombers and others responsible for much of the bloodshed on their own people was almost more than I could stand.  I just can’t understand that kind of hate, especially that which was done in the name of a “peaceful religion and God (Allah).”

I had to wait until close to the final 40 or so pages before Lee was discharged to read about the PTSD. While in Iraq his marriage fell apart (it was already heading there before deployment), and he came home broken and bruised, but missed greatly by his children.  It was after all of that and his marriage to Lisa that his PTSD hit him hard. I’m not going to go into detail about it. There is no need to. I’d just say, “Read the book.”

But I will tell you this: if you did not respect our men and women of the military before, you will after reading this book. It does not matter if they were in combat or a doctor in a field hospital, they went through horrendous conditions that I cannot fathom. Plan to be challenged. Plan to have your eyes opened. Plan to find respect for our military personnel. Plan to have tissues  handy. But also plan to see Dr. Warren give praise to God for bringing him out alive and able to minister as a top brain surgeon.