Granger Smith strode into the room smiling, looking about as relaxed as a person can be while also possessing an incredible sense of urgency to share a message with eternal consequences.
Smith stopped by the K-LOVE studios recently to discuss life after walking away from a successful country music career he spent 30 years trying to build. He also wanted to discuss what he called “11 toxic beliefs that kept me from the living water of Jesus.”
“Our lives are short, we don’t have much time,” Smith said, explaining his decision to leave country music at the top of his game for a life of preaching the Gospel. “There’s not enough time to entertain. I don’t have much time left.”
Smith, who grew up in Georgetown, Texas, watched the example set by his parents, who both loved the Lord. He grew up around church and always knew who Jesus was, but a focus on secular success and a comfortability with keeping the Gospel at an arm’s length as he entertained crowds as both Granger Smith and his contrived alter ego, Earl Dibbles Jr., had him living a far different life than the one he knew God wanted from him.
“I don’t think anyone would’ve looked at me during that era of my life and said, ‘Oh, Granger just needs Jesus,’ in a way that they would’ve felt sorry for me. But I also don’t think those people would’ve said. ‘Man, Granger loves the Lord.’”
He said as he stood on stage and watched adults and kids alike, sing back to him songs that didn’t glorify God, and as he began to take inventory of his life, he knew it was time to make a change.
“That is the moment every born-again believer must face,” Smith said. “He must reconcile his old self and who God has called him to be in the new self and how he's acting in relation to those two things. ‘How am I acting?’ I believe this. The Lord saved me in this way, gave me a new heart. And so what are my actions flowing from this new heart look like? A Christian always says, "Oh, I hate that. I hate that my old self is still showing through.
“I hate that I still sin. I hate that I still think about these stupid things. I hate that my pride is still wanting me to lash out at this person or to be angry with this or to be impatient here. I hate that,’” he continued. “‘Lord, help me. Lord, save me. Lord, clean my heart. Lord, you save me. You are so patient with me. Will you teach me that patience with this person at work?’ And so that journey, that's the Christian life journey that never ends. It gets better. We should see a progressive sanctification where you could look back and go, ‘It was slow, but it was progressive. Things were getting better.’ But sanctification in and of itself will only end when we meet the Lord in glory.”
God had been working on his heart for a few years, but it was a life-altering moment on June 4, 2019, he calls the “hinge” of his life. It was on that day that he found his 3-year-old son, River, floating lifeless in the family’s swimming pool. It was one of those jarring moments that caused him to look through the grief to determine what he wanted his life to reflect.
But his wasn’t an immediate conversion. Smith recalls sitting on a tour bus in Boise, Idaho, six months after his son’s passing, considering taking his own life because the grief was too much to bear. He wrestled with that tension for a few more months when, on March 1, 2020, just as the world was shutting down to grapple with the COVID-19 virus, Smith found new life in Christ.
“I count that day as my conversion,” he said. “And then sanctification began, and everything has changed since that day.”
Today, that conversion has taken him from the comedic redneck Earl Dibbles Jr. to a guy who passionately quotes Charles Spurgeon and breaks down Charles Finney’s role in the history of altar calls in the church. He is enrolled in the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and working as a Baptist minister, preaching at various churches and ministry events.
“I’ll go speak at a men’s group and they go ‘We came because we remember you as Earl Dibbles, but I just can’t imagine how Earl Dibbles is now getting up here and telling me the Gospel.’ And I just say, ‘Don’t we serve an incredible God?’”
The man who says he admittedly once viewed God “more like Morgan Freeman on a cloud, like the happy uncle with a checklist, like a Santa Claus God,” is now passionately warning people of what he deems toxic beliefs that kept him from experiencing an abundant life with God.
The New York Times best-selling author penned a new book, “Poison In The Well: 11 Toxic Beliefs That Kept Me From The Living Water Of Jesus.” In it, he challenges readers on topics such as being a “nominal Christian,” comfortability in the American church, the dangers of not being rooted in Scripture, the folly of making idols of careers, relationships, hobbies, or entertainment. He also stresses the importance of connection in Christian life and takes on the notion that people can be Christians just because they are born into a Christian family but haven’t made their own profession of faith.
“The old saying is grandparents believe the Gospel, children assume the Gospel, grandkids reject the Gospel,” Smith said. “That's kind of the cycle. Then the kids of the rejectors, the great grandkids, oftentimes think there must be something more out there. There must be a deeper purpose than this. My parents just had nothing. There must be more. And then they remember the faith of their great-great-grandparents, and then they have this personal relationship. That's not systematic, but that's an overall idea of what happens. America it's there.”
Through his seminary studies and church connections, Smith comes across as a man deep in theology, eager to share what he is learning at every turn. He has befriended people of strong Christian faith from around the world and credits them with teaching him about what it means to live with a faith that could cost them everything.
“Growth doesn’t happen in comfort,” Smith said. “It happens in commitment.”
In the book, Smith also details a sobering dream he had, where he believes he came face to face with God. It was a moment that shot him up out of bed and prompted him to record a voice memo of what he remembered about the dream into his phone.
“I just got chills thinking about the dream,” Smith exclaimed. “That dream impacted me profoundly because it was after the Lord saved me and after I had begun a sanctification process and after I began to think about taking Scripture seriously, and that sounds crazy for a Christian to say, but it's part of the process of maybe he's calling me to follow Him in a real tangible way, not just say it, but what if faith really was an action that we acted upon like love. And this dream really solidified that to me.”
For those wondering if Smith has laid down his guitar for the final time, he dropped a surprise while visiting K-LOVE. He has been putting Scripture to music. It’s a passion project he began just for his children.
It sounds like my old stuff maybe, but it's to Scripture. Important Scriptures that I think help shape an understanding of who God is and our relationship with him,” Smith said. “It started with just me doing this with my kids and they loved it. And then other families found out we were doing it and they're like, ‘Can you send us some of those?’ And I was like, ‘Well, hang on. I’ve got to record them.’ And then I started recording them and I was like, ‘Maybe I should do this for Spotify.’ And so I've been so blessed, so nourished. The Lord has blessed me and nourished me through heavy meditation of his Word, micro-focused on one section and two verses, putting melody, singing it a thousand times to make it right.”
To follow Granger Smith’s journey, visit his website, www.grangersmith.com.