Recovered

by Robby Gallaty

  “Good point. Let me write it down.” I summoned the waiter for another one.

  “You’ll lose the napkin, right? But you’re wise to take notes. Once you leave here, you’ll forget most of what you’ve heard, no matter how closely you pay attention.”

  I nodded. I knew he was right. This wasn’t like history class back in high school—everything David taught me seemed to relate to how I lived every day.

  He continued, “Try to remember, you’re not learning for you.”

  “I’m not?”

  “You’re learning for the next guy, the one who comes behind you.”

  I looked over my shoulder at the busy restaurant, then turned back to David. “The thing is, nobody’s coming behind me,” I said. I felt like a period instead of a comma at this point in my journey. Who wanted to hear what I had to say?

  “Maybe right now there’s nobody, Robby. But someday there will be. The message came to you because it was on its way to somebody else. It always is. The people who shared it with you—they got it for the same reason. It’s like a relay race. Everybody’s either handing off the baton or fumbling it.”

  I learned at that point that the dullest pencil is better than the sharpest mind.

  I was always anxious to write things down, but another part of me wanted to sit and reflect on what he was saying. David saw the big picture, which was new to me. He had an eternal perspective of everyday things, and for me, that was mind-boggling.

  He took a sip of his tea and said, “Robby, I want you to pray about something. I want you to explore whether God wants you to go to seminary, here at New Orleans. God has gifted you to preach and teach his Word, so you should pray about a degree in preaching.”

  This time I looked long and hard before leaping. A seminary degree was about the last thing that would have occurred to me. “David, I don’t even know good English,” I said.

  “You’ll be fine. Moses made that kind of argument when God called him. ‘I can’t do it. I’m not good enough.’ And God always has the same response. If he wants you to do this, he will equip you for the task. Think of it this way: the next four to eight years of your life will equip you for the next forty years of ministry.”

  David was an encourager. He always believed I could do things I doubted I could do. He was Paul to my Timothy.

  In only our second meeting, David announced we were going to memorize Scripture.

  “Okay,” I said. “I can probably handle that. Which verse?”

  He laughed. “Verse? Verses. Passages. Whole chapters!”

  “Wait—no,” I stammered. “You don’t understand, man. I can’t do that.”

  I proceeded to give David a five-minute education on the effects of drugs and alcohol on the brain. “If you do all the drugs I did, for as long as I did, your mind is like a big basket with a hole in it. Stuff just leaks out the bottom. I can hold a little info, but not a load of it. No way I can memorize long sections of the Bible.”

  David listened patiently as he ate his lunch. He allowed me to finish, then said, “That’s fine. We’ll just do four verses a week. You can handle four verses, right?”

  “If you say so.”

  I felt like a guy with a broken leg being told he could slam dunk, but I really wanted to go along with anything my new friend asked me to do. Not only that, but I loved the idea of whole passages of the Bible making their home inside my head. I just figured it wasn’t possible.

  We started with Romans 1, the opening chapter of Paul’s masterwork on faith and salvation. For me, even memorizing a few verses was like trying to master advanced quantum physics—even in small pieces, it was daunting. I spent hours reading and rereading the verses. Then I’d write them down, repeating the phrases out loud. After that, I’d speak the words onto my Sony tape recorder, then lie back with my eyes closed and listen, playing the tapes over and over, trying to match my voice in reciting the phrases.

  Little by little, I found I could recite the first chapter of Romans. And we kept right on going. We moved to Romans 2 and then Romans 8. We came to a verse about there being “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” I needed that one. This may have been the hardest work I’d ever done—but it was the most satisfying. I knew having those majestic words of the apostle in my head would renew an abused, ramshackle brain better than anything in the world.

  All this time, I also had an abiding passion to share the gospel with my parents. Of course they were still churchgoing Catholics, and they were glad that at least my new obsession wasn’t likely to kill me, as the last one was. In other words, Jesus was a safer drug. They’d heard me speak to homeless people and to a tiny handful of bayou Presbyterians last Easter. They knew I was all in with my faith.

  But that was the thing—I’d been all in with plenty of other pursuits. It could be magic or medication, jiujitsu or Jesus, one passion was the same as another. To my parents, it was just another age, another stage.

  Not only that, but I wasn’t exactly tactful in the way I shared my faith with them. I confronted them on their Catholic teaching, weaponizing my theology. “Why do you think Mary, the mother of Jesus, is a co-Redemptrix with Christ?” I would ask. “Show me one verse in Scripture that backs up that claim.”

  Or, “Jesus said to call no man Father, so why do you call your priest Father Bob?”

  Or, “Where do you find Purgatory in the Bible? Let me read you a couple of verses that say Jesus gives us full access to salvation immediately after death.”

  You can imagine how well the confrontation method went over. They would just sigh and try to change the subject, or they’d ask me to leave, if it came to that.

  You can’t badger people into the kingdom of God.

  But by Easter of 2004, maybe I was beginning to grow up just a little bit in my faith. I decided to stop the debates. They weren’t working. If anything, they were damaging our relationship. The Holy Spirit never seemed present when I was confrontational. So I decided to try something different.

  My family was all together for Easter—Mom, Dad, my sister, my uncle, my aunt, and grandpa. I asked for everyone’s attention and, without explanation or introduction, I began to recite the opening to the Epistle to the Romans:

  Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle and singled out for God’s good news—which He promised long ago through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures . . . (hscb)

  I don’t think anybody in the room understood what I was doing, or that what they were hearing was a straight Bible passage. I watched their eyes as I spoke from pure memory, and I saw a lot of knitted brows and lack of comprehension. As I went on, however, they began to realize where these majestic words came from.

  But they’d never heard a passage of the Bible spoken this way. Ever.

  I’d lived with those words for months and months; doted on them. I’d planted them in my mind, watered them, tended them, and watched over them to make sure they were taking root. I knew those words intimately, as I knew the features of my own face or the houses in my neighborhood.

  The words of Paul’s letter to the Romans flowed out of my mouth easily, with the right accents at the right places, because they were much more than words to me by this time. David and I had explored them, inspected them, turned them inside out together. I spoke the mind of Paul and the inspiration of God with meaning and feeling.

  I kept on going, since no one stopped me. I moved through the chapters, and the faces shifted from confused to impressed to, finally, deeply moved. In some way, time itself seemed to stop and listen. By the time I reached the soaring finale to Romans 8, the room was completely silent, fully absorbed. My mom and sister had tears rolling down their cheeks at this point.

  There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death
. . .

  No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord! (vv. 1–2, 38–39 esv)

  I finally finished speaking, and rested with a smile, appreciative of the attention I’d received. My family remained silent for a moment. I knew that somehow, that simple act of recitation had changed something between my family and me. For the first time, I believe they understood that Jesus was more than the next fad in line. He was my life.

  They knew that all those other pursuits were empty attempts in the single quest to find what I now had: a living relationship that filled my being and made me complete, in the same way these words from Romans had filled me in their presence.

  I could finally answer Paula’s question. I knew who I was. Robby Gallaty had an identity.

  And now, my parents saw it too.

  What I came to understand on that Easter Sunday was that the Word of God truly is far sharper and more powerful than any two-edged sword. Debating and salesmanship come up empty. Logic and persuasion accomplish nothing. But the Word of God needs only to be released. When you have a lion, you don’t boast about what it would do. You set it loose. You let it roar.

  That day, the Word of God was turned loose, and it roared in our household. No one got saved that day. But seeds were planted for a future harvest.

  Chapter 17

  Ignorance on Fire

  As the new year began in 2004, I became a student at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary (NOBTS). I’d lived all my life in and around this city, but I was hardly aware of NOBTS. It was quiet and Baptist; the city was festive and Catholic.

  David Platt had sent me there, or at least toward praying in that direction. That was okay by me, because there was no way they’d accept me, right? I figured I still had Bourbon Street written all over me. Not to mention that I was less than a year removed from drugs and alcohol.

  Dr. Chuck Kelley, the school president, eventually heard my eye-opening personal testimony. I asked him after graduation, “Dr. Kelley, I’ve always wondered. How is it you let a guy like me into a place like this?”

  He laughed and said, “Based on your transcript, you were just another William Carey guy—good Baptist school. You didn’t exactly fill us in on what you’d been up to ever since.”

  “You never asked,” I said.

  He laughed.

  The church needs a few students with degrees from the sin world. Sin is an important topic for us. The Bible has its share of sin experts, and the church is supposed to be a hospital for sinners. I knew going in that I’d be an outlier, given the life I’d led. I expected to walk through the seminary corridors and see clusters of students discussing the finer points of Pauline theology, or maybe debating End Times theories. Going to seminary would be just one step below hanging out with the Apostles themselves—these folks might not have visible halos, but they’d be front-row saints.

  David Platt was my model of what to expect. But I didn’t see a lot of his vision and passion for the gospel on my first few days. It was more like a law school or med school, a typical post-graduate institution. “Hey, David,” I asked, “where does the early morning prayer group meet?”

  “Prayer group? There isn’t one.”

  I persisted. “Where are the guys on fire for Jesus?”

  “Robby, you’ve got to remember, these are people who mostly grew up as devout believers, the same way I did. Their faith isn’t brand-new to them like it is for you. They have more Bible knowledge; you have more passion. You don’t know much, but you’re utterly psyched about the parts you do know.”

  My nickname in those days was “Ignorance on Fire.”

  “I guess,” I replied. “But when I see a guy falling asleep in class, I want to get in his face and say, ‘Wake up, dude! You’ve got the gospel—the greatest news in history—right there in front of you! How can you be dozing off?’”

  “Can’t say I disagree. But I think most seminaries and Bible colleges are like this. Most churches, for that matter. By the way, do you want to start meeting for prayer and discipleship before school starts?”

  I was in. David and I agreed to Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7:00 a.m. We wanted to see gospel passion spread throughout this campus.

  Since David was the assistant to the Dean of the Chapel, he was given a key to Leavell Chapel. For two weeks, just the two of us met for Bible study and accountability on Tuesdays and an hour of prayer on Thursdays. We simply knelt on those stairs, crying out to God to revive us, revive our fellow students, revive our city. Only years later did I understand how special those first few weeks were.

  Shortly thereafter, a small but faithful group of guys joined us for Bible study and prayer every week. We focused on our campus, the students’ relationships with Christ, and our impact on the world. Twelve to fourteen of us met twice a week, and we didn’t sit around, sip coffee, and shoot the bull. We were studying God’s Word and on our faces praying.

  One day I was walking to that chapel, which was just a block or so from Highway 90 and, just beyond it, I-10. I looked up at the steeple and realized I was standing within shouting distance of the place where my Mustang had been wrecked, four and a half years earlier.

  It seemed more like a lifetime. My path had taken a few sharp turns since then. There I stood by a wreck, facing a steeple, with a highway in-between. There was powerful symbolism in that memory. As I gathered with friends beneath that cross, I began to learn what real prayer was all about. What I learned in my classes was valuable; what I learned in the school of prayer was priceless.

  That spring I began to think about what I was going to do for the summer. This is always a big question for seminary students. The idea is to go into the “field” and get some solid experience, usually in a church setting or at camp. Alternatively, you could stay on campus and study, but most students choose to take summer positions.

  I was offered an opportunity that sounded like a blast. The Southern Baptist Convention offers CentriKid Camps for third to sixth graders. They take place all over the nation, and I had a chance to travel and preach five times a week along the East Coast. It would offer me valuable experience ministering to children, lots of preaching time, and of course, the pleasure of travel.

  But then another possibility materialized. A campus minister named Tim LaFleur, from Nicholls State in Thibodaux, was looking for a preaching student from the seminary to go with him to New Mexico for the summer. There was a huge camp and conference center there at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. All through the summer, there are programs and special weeks of all kinds—opportunities to work with people from churches across the West.

  I was also making plans to guest-preach at Jeremy Brown’s church in Madisonville, about an hour and a half from Baton Rouge. My friend Rebecca from college—one of those girls who had prayed for me—called me out of the blue. She told me she knew I wouldn’t be too far away from Baton Rouge, and she had a friend she wanted to introduce. She’d be bringing her to come hear me in Madisonville on March 15.

  This, of course, sounded an awful lot like a blind date for a preaching event. I wasn’t so sure how something like that would work out—how exactly do preaching and dating mix? Maybe that was the Catholic in me . . .

  There was so much going on in my life at this point that I wasn’t much interested in dating. I was finally experiencing the growth and the biblical understanding I had craved.

  I would find out later that Kandi—Rebecca’s friend—wasn’t too excited about this thing either. She was willing to go along with it, but it probably seemed weird to listen to the proclamation of God’s Word while sizing up a preacher as boyfriend material. Blind dates are awkwar
d anyway, about a hundred percent of the time.

  A few minutes before the service, I walked to the front of the worship center and greeted the girls. We talked for a few minutes, and I had to admit I was impressed with Kandi—how she carried herself, how her smile set me at ease, how intelligent she clearly was. She was unlike any Christian woman I’d ever met. She had everything any guy could ever pray for, and more.

  Kandi had a different perspective of me. She was under the impression I was there as part of the Power Team, there to tear phone books, and not to preach the Word. For months, I’d been back in the gym; I walked in at six-foot-six, 285 pounds.

  By the end of the night, I felt that talking to Kandi was like being with someone I’d known for years. Later I found out that she felt the same way about me. The awkwardness vanished for both of us, just like that.

  I said to the group, “Would you guys like to come to a room in the back and pray for me before I preach?”

  They agreed, and a small group of Rebecca, Kandi, my friend Brian, whom I referred to as Big Bill, and I, did just that. We prayed together that God would use my time in the pulpit to change people’s hearts. Kandi still enjoys pointing out that she had the opportunity to pray for me on our very first date, and on every day since. And I enjoy pointing out that, within a two-day period, I met the two people most influential in my life: Kandi, whom I would marry, and Tim LaFleur, who would mentor me.

  Back at seminary, Tim invited me to preach at BCM (Baptist Collegiate Ministries) the following night. It would be an interview of sorts, to help him decide whether to offer me the summer position in New Mexico. I preached the same sermon I’d just delivered the night before, “A Recipe for Revival,” based on this Old Testament passage:

  “If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” (2 Chron. 7:14 nkjv)