My Testimony

Welcome to my Blog. Allow me to introduce myself: My name is Grant Millard and I have been striving to faithfully follow our Lord Jesus Christ for almost nine years now. 

So what happened nine years ago? I'm glad you asked, but in order for me to answer that question fully, we have to go back even further. Back to when I was 7 years old - in 1999 - I made the decision to make Jesus Christ my Savior. I only really knew I needed a Savior, Lord would come later. I had what I call a "John 3:16" theology. I new I didn't want to perish, but have everlasting life, so I decided to ask Jesus into my heart. 

It was soon after that everything about my life would be challenged - with one of the key relationships in every kids life coming to end: my parents. They divorced 5 years later in 2004, and that is where the trials of this teenager began. God spared me of many harsh mistakes a teenager would normally made, but I was emotionally scarred. 

I was stuck believing a lie that no one in this world wanted or cared for me; that people tolerated my presence as opposed to desiring it. When my parents split and my father moved away to his hometown, I believed it was because I wasn't good enough. Those thoughts have fueled a lot in my life, but they manifested at their worst when I was in high school. Suicidal thoughts always loomed in my mind, and at 15 I had a location, and a method of how I would do it, but by the grace of God, I never set a time. 

These would come and go throughout my teens. Looking back, I realize now that God would send a friend at just the right time, or a group of people just when things felt bad. Eventually, the friends the Lord used in my life to make all the difference came when I was 18 years old - they all attended an after-school Bible study hosted by a group called Young Life. I got to know them at school, but when I graduated High School, I began attending the study during the summer. 

Specifically one day, I remember the Bible study leader talking about Matthew 4:4 which says: 

Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.

He then said, since the Bible obviously compares the Word of God - the Bible itself - to food, then we ought to treat it like food. If we eat every day, shouldn't we read the Word every day?

I didn't like that at first. Why should anyone mandate how much I read an ancient text? But it was something that kept coming back into my mind as I'd consider what my life was supposed to look like. 

Hanging out with these people was also interesting. I kept feeling as though they were always . . . happy. The thing was, I knew them. Some of them I was really close with, and it didn't make a whole lot of sense why they'd be this happy. There was a constant state of joy in this group, which made them both fun and perplexing to spend time with. 

It wasn't until I started going to church with them regularly where I found out why they were so joyous. 



I remember vividly sitting in church, listening to the Pastor talk about a passage in Ephesians, and looking down seeing one of these friends flip through the Bible from Matthew, to Genesis, back to another book and then he'd resume listening. In that moment, it hit me: these kids were actively seeking Jesus. They weren't just going through the religious motions, but they truly wanted to know Jesus. 

This concept would be even further manifest in my mind when I read Crazy Love by Francis Chan. Reading that book helped me understand for the first time that Jesus wanted a relationship with me. And that relationship was as real and emotional as a relationship with another person. 

ALL OF THIS was just the beginning of the most incredible journey of my life. God was foaming the runway to bring me even closer to himself. Because just a few weeks after God showed me that He wanted me closer to him, I left the environment of those friends, and would be introduced to people God would use to make the greatest impact of my life. I would leave for college with a renewed vigor for Jesus, and with the goal of figuring out how to truly follow Jesus while in college - the ultimate opportunity for a new beginning. 

August 21, 2011 I left my home in Dayton, OH for college at The University of Rio Grande (pronounced rye-o grand). It wasn't long before I met the man who would become my spiritual mentor, Joe Schenk. 

Joe (pictured above in the center with a 'soul patch' next to a freshman, 19-year-old me) came through the dorms the day I moved in. He came around introducing himself to the new freshman inviting them to a Bible Study on Wednesday nights called S.E.A.R.C.H (Seeking Every Answer and Response Christ Has).

The following Wednesday, I attended the Bible study, and Joe was already there. He made a b-line for me, and sat me down next to him and his wife for the duration of the study. Before it even began, he wrote down my cell phone number. Dave Perry (the only one standing in the above picture) shared his personal testimony with the group at the Bible study, Joe asked me what I thought, and then I went back to my dorm.

A few days later, I got a phone call. It was Joe. He invited me over to a bonfire, and I agreed to go. That said, there were a few strange things about this:

1. The bonfire was at 1 o'clock in the afternoon
2. There was only me, Joe, and one other person (also named Joe) there. And . . . 
3. Joe was burning carpet at this bonfire . . . he apparently just had his living room redone. 

However, the strangest thing to me, was that Joe had a Bible with him at this bonfire. It's my first memory of seeing a Bible somewhere outside of a church, bible study, or the drawer of your hotel room. 

But don't worry, it got weirder. He opened the Bible, and shared a verse with me. Not your typical cliche verse you hear in church like John 3:16, Romans 10:10 or Acts 2:38 . . . but an Old Testement verse, Joshua 1:8

Do not let this book of the law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. 

He asked me what I thought it meant, to which I didn't know, so I made something up. He challenged me on what it meant to find success. I don't remember what he said, but what I do remember is realizing I knew a lot less about following Jesus than I thought - and Joe did. From that point on, I met with Joe every week for the next 4 years. 

He taught me ALL SORTS of things. How to have a quiet time with Jesus and just spend time with the Savior. How to memorize scripture, study scripture, share the word with other people. He did all of these things with me following the focus of Jesus outlined in Mark 3:14,

He appointed twelve that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach.

He spent time with me in pursuit of the goal that I might learn how to see and learn how to follow Jesus by spending time with Jesus. To remind us of Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 11:1

Follow me as I follow Christ.

Joe even had me move into his home with him, his wife Amber and his two girls Rachel and Hannah, specifically for the purpose of watching him live and see for myself how he follows, and fails to follow Christ's example. 

As a result of Joe's example, my life completely changed. My time in the Word of God skyrocketed, as well as how obvious God started moving in my life and causing me to grow as a person. 

In just the first year, even though a lot of my life's circumstances seemed to be falling apart (girlfriend broke up with me, Dad got remarried without telling anyone, my mom's second marriage started to fail) - I had a sense of peace and joy throughout it all. That same peace and joy I admired in my friends from high school. 

In addition to getting through tough times, I also started changing like crazy! God brought things in my life that were killing me. Things like bitterness, pride, arrogance, and anger were exposed, and I was forced to face them and deal with them, one at a time, in the perfect time and circumstance. 

The impurities of my life began to boil up, and out of my heart like silver over a refiners fire.

It was in this time where I learned just how personal Jesus wants me to be with him, and I learn further and further what that means every day. 

Since college, I've moved to Columbus, where Jesus brought the second most important person in my life to me. Second to Jesus himself, my wife Aubrey.  

July of 2016, almost a full year since college, I had dinner with my pastor. He asked me whether I was looking to date or find a girl. It had been a while since someone asked me that, and my own response was surprising. In that moment, I realized that I had gotten to the point, where I believed that if God wanted me to stay single, it meant He had a lot for me to do, and I'd never feel lonely, because I'd always be surrounded by people He had for me to invest in. 

For the first time, I honestly knew in my heart that Jesus was enough. My mission was clear - I was to be used by God to invest in people in the same way Joe and Dave had been for me, regardless of whether marriage was a part of that process. 

Less than 12 hours later, God introduced me to Aubrey Keyse (now Millard) when I went to work the next morning. We went on our first date at the end of August, "dating" by early September, and married on December 2, 2018. 

Marriage has been the most amazing, humbling, and worthwhile thing I've ever experienced. God has used our marriage to teach us SO much about ourselves and how Jesus loves us. I'm sure I'll fill you all in in future posts about this as well. 

The Lord has done so much in my life, and he has made my life more abundant than I could have ever imagined. I've learned that our purpose in this life is to show the World who God is by being image-bearers of Jesus. We primarily do this by becoming more like him and helping others also look more like him. 

Being a disciple is becoming more and more and more like Jesus Christ every single day. That's why this blog is called "Daily Discipleship" - because becoming a disciple happens daily. 

Thanks for being here.