“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.”
“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
