He was calling out to me, demanding my attention. It was something like becoming aware of distant music that was there all along, part of the background noise. Then you stopped and took notice.
It happened for me because he had been on my mind lately. During the worst of my addiction, I’d fear for my life. I’d cry out to him, “Don’t send me to hell!” For me, God was merely the judge who rapped the gavel and declared your sentence, frown on his face. I viewed him as an authoritarian dictator out to chastise me every time I got out of line. That and nothing more.
Now I knew he was someone who spoke—someone trying and trying to get through to me. He’d been doing it—well, maybe all my life. I just hadn’t stopped, tuned in, and let his voice come through. I’d been in too much of a hurry, too self-involved. If I didn’t know who I was, how could I know who he was?
If he wanted so badly to get through to me, maybe he was more than a gavel-pounder. I wanted to know his message now—really know it.
I felt him pouring all kinds of thoughts and feelings into my mind. He made me see my life for what it was. I was absolutely incapable of living the way I should, and sin has consequences—I believed that. I’d tried to carry the burden of my own sin through detox. But now I knew it was about more than the drugs in my system. It was about a deeper burden, one I couldn’t carry.
Jeremy Brown, my old friend from college, came into my mind—Jeremy, who had loved me as a friend, then shared his faith with me in a way that actually made sense. Jeremy knew how to hear God’s voice. I’d tried to imitate his actions, but I hadn’t known his Lord. I couldn’t, because I had no conception of my sin in those days.
Now I was broken. I knew what it meant to be overwhelmed by the darkness of my own heart. I had nothing to fall back on in this world, no place to find hope.
Jeremy had asked me to pray with him, phrase by phrase, and he’d helped me understand what I was saying to God. But this was different—I was crying out in pain from the depth of my soul. My attitude with Jeremy had been, “Sure, okay, I’ll try this thing.” Back then, Jesus was an addition to my life, just one more color in the spectrum. He never became my life. Now I was utterly lost, desperate. Jeremy had said all of us are sinners, all of us are unworthy, and finally I felt the meaning of that. I owned it. And that was the greatest difference.
Ever since that accident with my Mustang, when everything began to go wrong, I’d pointed my finger elsewhere. I’d blamed circumstances. I’d said, “If only this or that hadn’t happened, I’d have it all together right now; if only this person hadn’t done that, I’d have been fine.”
The blame game didn’t work for me now. I owned my sinfulness, and because of that I experienced God as real, as a person and not a concept or abstraction. He was calling me home.
He seemed more real than anything in the world at that moment. He was a loving Father who wouldn’t give up on me, who would go to any length to rescue me. I thought of my parents, watching me suffer through detox, wishing they could take my pain for me.
Hadn’t God done something like that? Hadn’t he taken my pain? Didn’t he let his Son carry my burden on the cross?
I let the tears flow as I thought about the idea of him loving me that much. Why had I only seen him as an angry judge?
For the next twenty-four hours, I wept, I prayed, I owned my wretchedness, and I called out to God. I told him that Stockbroker Robby wasn’t good enough; DJ Robby and Jiu-Jitsu Robby weren’t good enough; none of the Robbys were good enough.
If I understood this thing correctly, only Jesus was good enough. I had detoxed myself, carrying the burden of my drug addiction. I suffered, I made it through, but Detox Robby wasn’t good enough, either. I’d felt nothing but emptiness at the end of it all. Only Jesus could carry that burden, and he carried it on the cross. For the first time, I realized it was my sin that Jesus bore on the cross.
So many of Jeremy’s explanations came back to me now, as if they’d been seeds planted in hard ground and were just now finally breaking through the dry soil of my understanding.
The only other thing I can tell you about that night is that it was a highly supernatural experience. I think I felt like the apostle Paul may have when he described Jesus showing him the third heaven (2 Cor. 12:2–4). It was just for me, so words will not convey what took place.
For every one of God’s children, it will be different. I only knew he had invaded my life, once and for all, and that nothing could ever be the same again.
I must have dozed off at five in the morning, and when I woke up, a few hours later, I realized everything was different. My emptiness had been filled to the brim, and joy was flowing over the sides.
Immediately I had the idea to write down my prayers, to journal them, and I recorded them furiously, almost scratching through the paper with my pen. The words that were swirling in my mind were Be still and trust in me. It was only later that I came across Psalm 46:10, “Be still, and know that I am God” (esv). I’m sure I’d never heard those words before, but now they came to me and filled me and molded me. I was the least “still” person
