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
