I had to come to terms with the fact that every single day my old self would try to rise up and give in to drugs again. Or try to make life all about Robby and his ego, rather than God and his glory.
That old Robby has to be watched constantly, because he has all kinds of ideas to get the shackles back on my hands and feet. He would love to build a new prison in whatever form.
An old preacher named D. L. Moody once said, “The problem with a living sacrifice is that it keeps crawling off the altar.” I’d presented myself as a living sacrifice to Christ, but I didn’t understand the “living” part.
How was I able to live these two lives at the same time? I didn’t see it as a “put-on” to share the gospel with Christy or preach to kids, all the while getting high. I was in denial.
And the addiction was building again. My nervous system was always calling out for more. I can remember snorting in a hotel room before preaching—not even keeping the two lives separate anymore. I was witnessing while drunk, preaching while high. Jeremy just thought it was Crazy Robby. I never talked to him about it, but together we saw the crowds grow smaller and smaller. Maybe he sensed in his spirit that something wasn’t right. The season of Gallaty-Brown Ministries was drawing to a close.
I realized I was no longer listening to God. Once his voice had been like a song in the back of my consciousness, whose Artist I’d finally identified. Then, as a new Christian, that song was pure joy in the forefront of everything I was doing or thinking. Now, the song fell silent. God wasn’t speaking to me anymore. I cried out to him—had he deserted me in disgust? That couldn’t be. Not the God I knew. Instead, I was confronted with a choice.
“Choose,” God was saying. “Choose your path. Will you follow me, or will you stay on that road to self-destruction?” From here on out, I sensed, maybe my life would no longer be spared. Maybe one day, my parents would have a door broken down and once again make their way into an empty, cold apartment; they’d find my wasted body, alone and surrounded by the substances that finally took my life away.
One of our final bookings was at Kosciusko, Mississippi. There were four hundred students in attendance. I came out, said a couple of words to the audience, and began with a classic trick, involving a nervous volunteer from the audience.
Pick a card, any card. When you’ve seen what it is, place it back in the deck. Notice I don’t touch it or see it. Okay? Now, I want you to write the suit and the number on a Post-It note. Got it? Now fold up the note, and place it here in the ashtray. Can you light it on fire? Here’s a lighter. Everyone notice: it has burned to ashes.
I reached into the ashtray with my right hand and held it up to show the audience the ashes all over my hand. I then rubbed my hand over my left forearm—where the King of Hearts appeared burned into my arm.
With a little preparation, it’s a great trick that nearly always wows the audience. Nearly always. But this time, at the triumphant moment, I showed my forearm and a girl in the crowd shouted, “That’s of the devil!”
This had never happened before. I looked around at the nervous faces of the kids, many of them moving from smiles to questioning. I thought, The invitation won’t go well tonight.
And it didn’t. I couldn’t help but think about the ski retreat in West Virginia, and what that room felt like—the presence of the Spirit so heavy it was overwhelming. Tonight was nothing like that. I thought of a verse in the Old Testament, “The glory of the Lord has departed.”
It’s of the devil.
We got fewer bookings. When we did have one, the numbers were small. I felt ineffective. I stopped hearing from Jeremy—not until a year later, when he called to invite me to preach at his church, did we speak again.
I felt all alone again. I was also broke, the settlement money all gone. Hard heads need hard lessons, but I also know that if it had cost a million bucks, the price would have been cheap. I could stand to be broke; what I couldn’t handle was the wall that had risen between God and me.
On one of my routine morning daiquiri runs, Christy the bartender came to faith in Christ for the first time. After a month of sharing the gospel every morning, she finally prayed to receive Christ. I remember her handing me a Large 190 Octane daiquiri, the strongest they make, and saying to me, “For someone who knows so much about Jesus, you sure don’t act like it.” To her, my act must have seemed like a put-on.
Her words stopped me in my tracks.
In the process of using me to lead her to the Lord, God used her to bring me back to him.
Now I decided I was ready to walk away from drugs for the third time, but this time it had to be for good. Forever. I might stumble, I might make mistakes, but not this particular stumble. Not in this area of my life. Drugs and drunkenness were over. I chose Jesus, and my body was going to be a proper temple from here on out.
This time there would be no clinics. No rehab. I would depend totally on the power of God. I had a ceremonial ritual by my bedside, showing myself that I was sacrificing all my paraphernalia once and for all. I cried out once more to God, “Don’t take your presence from me!” Only by his sovereign grace could I succeed in being the person he wanted me to be. It was by his power and love that I made a personal covenant to no longer put myself in position for the devil to take me down. I prayed for a long time, wept, and repented to the depth of my soul.
This was a direct, miraculous transformation—not something that occurs for everyone. Since then, I’ve worked with thousands of people dealing with addictions, and I know this kind of deliverance is rare. Most of the time, someone struggling shouldn’t hesitate to seek professional help from doctors or a special clinic. God works through those means as well, just as he works through insulin if you’re a diabetic.
My situation was unique. All I know is that, when I rose from the bed, I was again a changed man. Jesus had calmed the storm, so that my system was quiet once more, and the presence of God had returned. From that day to this one, for more than a decade and a half, I’ve been sober. More important even than sober, I’ve been honest about my utter weakness. No more illusions of being bulletproof. Like Paul the apostle, who speaks to me so powerfully through the Scriptures, I know I’m the “chief of sinners,” and I have no option but to live in daily dependence upon him. Not annual. Not weekly. Daily.
Yes, Jesus saved me once and for always. Once that occurred, on November 11, 2002, it was a done deal. My eternal fate was sealed. But there’s eternal salvation, and then there’s the physical world, where I have to live. Every day, as long as I make my residence here, I have to get out of bed and put on Christ even as I put on the day’s clothing. The Bible commands me to “put on Christ like a garment” (Gal. 3:27 hcsb). In another verse, I’m told to “put on the new self, the one created according to God’s likeness” (Eph. 4:24). Later in Ephesians, I’m told to put on battle armor. Every day is spiritual conflict. The good news is that in God’s power, every single battle is winnable. And the war itself, ultimately, has already been won on the cross.
No one explained things like that to me when I first became a Christian, but I get it now. There’s a reason Paul used that word picture over and over, the idea of getting dressed. I have to start early in the day and take in his grace rather than the impulses of my flesh. If I want to live in his freedom and be liberated from servitude to sin, that’s what my life has to look like.
For several dangerous months, I lived two lives. Mercy was extended to me. I’m eternally grateful for his grace. Today and every day, from here onward, I plan to put on Christ and fight the good fight.
Chapter 16
Here I Am, Send Somebody
Life had become very quiet, a rarity for me. I’d gotten off drugs for the final time, with a new understanding of temptation’s power and my weakness.
Before the preaching opportunities dried up completely, God opened the door for one last message on Easter Sunday. I
was invited to preach at a little church called Creedmoor Presbyterian, just down the road from Chalmette in Toca, Louisiana. There were usually about twelve people in attendance, but when my whole family showed up to support me, it almost doubled the average crowd.
There was something different about standing in a traditional pulpit to preach instead of talking to students and using magic tricks. I spoke way too rapidly, stumbled over my words a few times, and realized I was no master of the pulpit. Still, it was exciting to be preaching in a church on Easter Sunday—especially when the doors swung quietly open midway through the sermon, and here came three of the four girls from William Carey—Julie, who had introduced me to T-Bone, Rebecca, who lived in Baton Rouge, and another. Julie had kept the other girls informed on my activities and had brought them along for emotional support. They drove two hours to hear me preach. I could feel their encouragement from across the room.
As I preached, I realized the girls started to cry. The more I preached, the more the girls cried. I thought, Maybe this preaching thing isn’t working out for me.
After the service, there were hugs and tears all around. I asked Rebecca, “Why are you girls crying?”
“Robby, you didn’t know it, but we were praying for you all through college. We prayed you’d get saved. We just had a feeling about it, thinking about all the ways you could serve God if he ever got hold of your life. Four of us made a commitment to pray for you every day, and now, seven years later, when Julie told us you were preaching—we just had to come and see it for ourselves. God has shown us a miracle this morning.”
I tell people now to keep praying for the person you know who is the farthest from God—you never know just how God is going to answer that request.
Later, the deacons asked me to consider becoming the pastor at their church. I wasn’t ready to be a pastor. I learned at this point I needed to be discipled before I could make disciples. But I’ll always remember Creedmoor Presbyterian Church. It’s not there any longer—just a forlorn patch of trees and rubble on Bayou Road. Hurricane Katrina leveled it, along with the town of Toca, where it was located.
It’s easy to look back, recall that first Sunday morning sermon, see again those girls coming through the church door, and realize God was trying to break through to me.
After that, opportunities to preach pretty much dried up. I was broken but at peace, a young Christian wandering his way along in the faith. My ministry venture with Jeremy had played out. The cash settlement was all gone. I prayed, took stock of my life, and decided I needed someone to come alongside me. I felt the need to connect with people like me—those who were done with partying and ready to become serious about spiritual issues.
I got together with a few friends from my old life, Brian and Brandon, who were now believers, and we began to meet for prayer and Bible study together. My grandfather was living with my parents at this time, so he allowed us to pray in his otherwise empty house every day. While our group sought God together, we also celebrated our sobriety and found ways to serve God. On Friday nights, after an hour on our faces in prayer, we’d hop into my Cadillac and go looking for unsuspecting lost people, in order to share our faith with them.
Naturally, we cruised by our old stomping grounds. These were our people, young adults like us who were still seeking meaning and purpose through pleasure and sensuality. We felt a genuine burden to see them discover the love of God the way we had.
Maybe we were a little reckless. I remember an occasion when we spotted a couple of guys walking down the street, probably from one bar to the next. There were four of us in the car. We cruised by the two guys, made a sharp U-turn, and screeched to a halt in a parking lot just behind them. We threw open the four doors of the black Cadillac like a Cops episode.
The two guys freaked out and took off, running for their lives. “We come in the name of Jesus!” we bellowed as we set off in hot pursuit.
We caught one of the guys, got him calmed down, and started telling him about Jesus rather than reading him his Miranda rights. He looked from one of us to the other, figuring maybe he was out of his mind. Then he started to chuckle. Then he started to listen and to respond. We showed him his need for Christ, and he prayed with us.
Somewhere in the midst of all this, his friend wandered up nervously. Hearing what we were talking about, he said, “I’ve heard about Jesus. But this is the first time I’ve ever seen him pull up in a Cadillac.”
This was our Friday night routine for several months. In a way, it was just as crazy as the Fridays when we were partying, just a whole lot less common in New Orleans. A lot of amazing conversations came out of that period. We were a street Christian militia, attacking from the front lines.
I was a fairly new believer who told everyone about Jesus. New believers tend to be the ones with the most enthusiasm, the ones most likely to lead others to Christ. They’re unashamed and unrestrained in their enthusiasm. Nobody has told them to keep their faith politely hidden. It’s a shame that as time goes on, we too often learn to hide from the needs of the world in our churches and fellowship groups. Sadly, many have gotten over being saved. We forget that at one time we were lost and needed salvation. We have become so institutionalized and domesticated that we overlook and look over the people Jesus came to save.
Even though I was zealous to share my faith, I had learned from past mistakes never to go out alone or venture into my old environments. No one is immune from falling. What takes years to build in the form of a testimony can be lost in a minute to sin.
I was still longing to grow as a believer. I was now learning enough to know how much I needed to learn—just wise enough to know I lacked wisdom. I was going to church and that helped. I had people to pray with, a community to grow with. But I needed that committed mentor. My friend Julie compared me to a sponge. “You’re just soaking in every drop, but you need somebody to disciple you. Your growth needs to be solid and intentional. You’re a Timothy who needs a Paul,” she said.
“I guess,” I said, with a vague understanding of who Timothy was. “But where do you go to get a Paul?”
“You pray for it,” she said. “Just tell God what you need, and keep asking. No matter how impatient you get, keep right on asking—that’s the main thing, not the words or the form. He will answer you. Why wouldn’t he answer that kind of prayer?”
So while Isaiah’s prayer was “Here am I, send me,” mine was more like, “Here am I—send somebody!” I figured he would have to be a special kind of believer, loaded down not only with wisdom but heroic patience. But surely he was out there.
One Sunday I was at church, praying as the service ended, when a guy walked up to me. He looked like he was about fifteen years old—like the kind of kid who’d love my magic tricks. It turned out he was only two years younger than me. His name was David Platt.
“Hey, man,” he said, offering his hand. “I’ve seen you praying around here. I heard you were looking for someone to meet with you to grow as a believer. I was wondering if you would be interested in hanging out once a week to talk about the Scriptures, memorize the Word, and pray.”
I responded enthusiastically.
“Why don’t you pray about it?”
“Already did that. When do we meet?”
I could tell he was a very intense guy, and he was surprised by the degree to which I was ready to hit the ground running. We began to talk about times and places, and this began a weekly tradition of meeting for pizza or General Tso’s chicken, and talking over the Scriptures and life.
My story was an eye-opener for David. He was a product of the Atlanta suburbs. He’d been raised as a Baptist and been taught the gospel. He didn’t have a fiery conversion experience like I had. He’d gone to high school, then college, then seminary, without playing college basketball, performing as a magician, learning Brazilian Jiujitsu, working as a bartender-comedian, or becoming a hard-core drug
addict. As a student at the University of Georgia, David was already preaching all over the country. The most exciting highlight of his life probably happened in the seminary library, where he was working on his PhD. This made us somewhat of an odd couple.
“You’re telling me the truth?” he asked as I gave him the short version of my own journey. (I get that a lot.) David was studying here in town at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. While I’d been living out an un-filmed Reality TV life, he’d been learning a powerful command of Scripture. While I understood the power of sin from personal experience, he understood everything the Bible had to say about it. So we had some incredible back-and-forth conversations. This was a transformational relationship in my life. Julie had been right. God answered my prayer in a fantastic way.
In the fifteen years that followed, David became pastor of a megachurch at the age of twenty-six, he became president of the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, helping to transform that organization, and he wrote an international bestseller, Radical, which created a whole movement and started a national conversation.
Now he’s back in the pastorate, in Virginia. After all this activity, he’s moved from looking fifteen to about twenty. I joke with him about his baby face, but his faith was anything but childlike.
Each week, I’d drive by the seminary and pick David up. We’d have lunch, then I’d drop him off for his next class. Over the meal, I’d take in every word he spoke and realize I needed to preserve it. I’d start scribbling furiously on a napkin. Soon I’d have to ask the waiter for another napkin. Finally David watched me jotting, tearing a hole in the thin paper with my pen, and said, “You know, they make these things called notebooks. They’re not hard to find. I find them to be superior to napkins.”
Recovered Page 14