Country Star Granger Smith Leaves Music For Jesus: 'I'm Just So Excited'

Country singer Granger Smith stunned fans when he announced last year he would be retiring from music to pursue ministry — a fascinating, new calling he’s now actively living out.

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“I’m just so excited about it,” the musician recently told CBN Digital, expressing elation over how he plans to serve the Lord. “I have so much joy just even thinking about it.”

Smith said he’s already begun speaking before audiences about his Christian faith. While he once traversed the nation and world sharing his music, he now plans to carry a different message.

“I’m used to air travel; I’m used to hotels,” he said. “But I have a different message to give, and it’s a life-giving message. It’s one beggar — me telling another beggar where I found bread.”

Smith said he wants to share his journey to faith, explaining how he was once hurting and in a “really bad place,” but how he found hope in Jesus.

“I don’t know what the future looks like five years down the road, 10 years down the road,” Smith said. “But, right now, immediately, it’s writing books, it’s taking speaking engagements, Lord-willing, when the right ones come around, it’s attending seminary, and it’s going to church on Sunday mornings with my family, and sitting under teachings of my pastor.”

Watch Smith discuss his plans:

This latter point might seem a bit basic regarding what Smith hopes to accomplish, but considering he’s long been a traveling musician and on tour, being home for church on Sundays typically wasn’t possible. With his newfound focus, all of that changes.

Smith also discussed his recent memoir, “Like a River: Finding the Faith and Strength to Move Forward after Loss and Heartache,” a book chronicling how he handled grief and sorrow and found faith.

Smith’s family made headlines in 2019, when the singer’s 3-year-old son, River, died in a drowning accident. It’s a topic at the heart of his book.

“The book’s called ‘Like a River,’ and so it starts with losing my son to drowning in my backyard when I was there with him,” he said. “A lot of times, when I was talking about writing the book and people would say, ‘You’re writing a book? What’s it about?’ And I would say, ‘Well, it’s about losing my son.’ … And as I continued to write, I learned, ‘Well, that’s not really what this book is about.’ It’s really not. That’s how it opens and the catalyst to it — that’s how the curtain opens — but really, it’s about me dying and me being reborn and the new path that followed.”

By sharing his harrowing story, the country crooner hopes to help others navigate their struggles and come out on the other side. While Smith had always considered himself a Christian, he said tragedy and heartache finally brought the message home.

Smith said Scripture has transformed his heart and mind, relishing in the ability to discern the character and being of God through the Bible’s illuminated pages.

“We have the Word of God revealed in Scripture; that just blew my mind,” he said. “I know I don’t have to search for the clouds or have some kind of spiritual experience in some kind of dark desert. I could actually just sit on my porch with a cup of coffee and open up the Bible and turn to any book and see who God is as revealed on those pages.”

Smith continued, “That changed my life then and it continues to change it.”