$27,500.
$27,000
$26,500 . . .
Each day my bank account dropped another few hundred bucks. I can remember the day I stood at the ATM and looked at the receipt. I’d drained it to the last penny in less than two months. Right back to where I started, all my personal injury money gone into the Pimp’s pocket.
Now I had to face facts. My addiction was as powerful as it had ever been, my system cried out for higher highs just to be able to feel anything, and my resources were depleted. I’d gone full circle, back to being a pauper with a habit. I didn’t have to ask, “What are you trying to teach me, Lord?” The lesson wasn’t complicated at all. Sin is slavery, and Christ could save my soul—but his saving me was a call to walk away from my old life.
I realized that from that day onward, I was looking at life as an addict. Addictive impulses are forever—whether it’s drugs, drink, or plain old disobedience to God. The addiction is primarily sin, not drugs, and the old Robby still isn’t totally dead.
This is a mystery the Bible teaches us. In one sense, when we are saved, we’re totally saved. We’re completely free from the punishment we deserve for our sin, and the Bible even says we’re free from the power of sin. We don’t have to keep sinning. The old self was crucified with Christ, God’s Word tells us.
But even though the old self is crucified with Christ, we’re told to put the old self to death. So, the old self dies with Christ on the cross, but he keeps trying to get back up day after day, and God calls us to put him to death. That old self will hang around until Jesus returns or calls us home. On that day, we will be free from the power, penalty, and even presence of sin; but until then, we’re all recovering sin addicts, being called day after day to put the old self to death.
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
