My family were not particularly
religious. As I grew up, visits to church were limited to weddings, christenings
and funerals or “matches, hatches and dispatches” as they were known. I
hit my teen years just as the “rock and roll” cycle was coming out of the
“Teddy Boy” phase of Elvis and Cliff into the group era of the Beatles
and the Stones. I quickly realised that having a guitar round your neck
attracted girls so, as I needed all the help I could get, I got my dad
to buy me one.
The strange thing was, I
discovered that I actually had the knack of being able to play it so I
taught myself the requisite amount of chords required to start a group
– three, or two if you were desperate.
This set me off into years
of semi-professional and, eventually, professional work playing guitar
in the entertainment industry. Despite enjoying every minute of the
next twelve years or more, I stopped all this and got a “proper” job at
the age of 26 until, divorced and fed up I had a mid life crisis at the
age of 38 and started up again. Two years later I met Jesus and within
a year of that the band I was in miraculously fell apart around me. Soon
after this I started playing regularly at church. I had realised by this
time, of course, that it was God who had given me the “knack” as a gift
and I dedicated it back to Him to use for His Glory.. Since then He has
used it regularly to reach out to others through playing, writing, arranging
and producing music.
All the glory goes to God
for the many, many things he has done with my gift over the last fifteen
years. My prayer is that you will be as blessed as I am by this new
thing that He is doing through this website. It is providing the
next steps for me on what has been an incredibly exciting walk with the
Lord Jesus.
