It was there I met my prayer partner, Jody Blaylock. He was a modern-day E. M. Bounds or Andrew Murray. Jody visited our church one Sunday morning. He had moved to Morgan City from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, so he was also new in town. We immediately hit it off. He asked me a question that would change my prayer life forever.
He asked, “Do you have a prayer partner?”
“Yes, I love to pray,” was my response.
“I understand that, but do you have someone you pray with regularly who holds you accountable to pray?”
I had never been asked that before. Sure, I prayed with friends in my grandfather’s home shortly after getting saved, and with David every week on the steps of the chapel at New Orleans Seminary, but I never had anyone with whom I regularly prayed.
Jody invited me to meet him the next morning at 7:30 a.m. in the McDonald’s parking lot. I assumed we would meet up to drink coffee, eat an Egg McMuffin, and talk for a while. But I was wrong. Heading into the McDonald’s, I noticed someone motioning to me from inside a vehicle. It was Jody. When I sat down, he asked if he could call his friend Doug to pray with us. “Sure,” I said.
We never made it inside the restaurant that day. We prayed in his car in the parking lot for almost an hour. After finishing his prayer, Jody concluded by saying, “Okay, brother, I’ll see you next week—same time, same place.”
I walked back to my truck saying to myself, “What about the coffee and the Egg McMuffin?”
For the next four months, we prayed together every Monday morning in the McDonald’s parking lot. Later, because of changes in our schedules, we prayed by phone rather than in person.
I was learning so much at this time. I thanked God for showing me I was designed for the pastorate despite all my self-doubt. And I knew that wherever the Lord may lead us in the future, the first subject we’d raise would be discipleship—discipleship and missions would define us, and we’d be all about building fully committed followers of Jesus.
Kandi and I went on to have a wonderful three years in Morgan City before accepting a call to Brainerd Baptist Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
As busy as those early years of ministry were, I thought frequently about my mom. My dad and my sister had come to faith, but there was unfinished business in my family. I just knew that sooner or later, Mom would be saved as well. I would keep praying until it happened.
I called Mom regularly and told her all the exciting news from Morgan City—people coming to Christ, long dormant faith being reignited, marriages being redeemed, young people sharing their faith at school for the first time. I wanted badly to paint a picture for her of this world of a living, redemptive Jesus. But she remained resistant.
Mom never quite seemed to grasp the need of every man and woman for salvation. She would say, “Robby, you needed to be saved. You had so many issues in your life. I’m glad you found God, because it’s been good for you. But I’m just fine the way I am.”
“It’s been good for me because it’s good for everyone, Mom. It’s necessary for everyone.”
“Robby,” she said, “I’ve always been a good person. I’ve never gotten into any trouble, and I’ve been in church all my life.”
“Of course. But going to church doesn’t make you a Christian. And being good is not going to work. The issue of salvation is living up to God’s perfect standard. And nobody in this world can do that—not based on how we live, even if it seems that by some standard, we’re ‘good’ people. How good is good enough to be saved?”
“I don’t know.”
I continued, “The standard for God is infinitely high—it’s perfection. You can be the best wife, the best mother, the best anything, but you’d still stand before God as a sinner—just like me, just like everybody. Mom, I’m off drugs. I try to be a good husband. I help people. But I’m no more righteous in God’s eyes now, based on my actions, than I was when I was utterly messed up! I’m just more socially acceptable. When I stand before God, that won’t cut it.”
“That’s hard for me to believe, Robby.”
“There must be a moment when you accept the gift of God, through his grace, and go from death into life. What Jesus did on the cross is create a way for you and me to be fully forgiven. I said I wasn’t any more righteous by my actions, but now, in God’s eyes, I’m completely accepted because of Jesus’ finished work on the cross. He lived the life I couldn’t live and died the death I should have died. He traded his perfection for my sin. Yours, too.”
By nothing else but her patient love and the work of God, she listened. She just couldn’t see it. All I could do for her was to keep praying.
God was answering all along, because he was nurturing the seeds that had been planted. And one day in 2010, the harvest came. She was listening to a song at Spring Baptist Church in Texas—the gospel song, “Born Again,” by Ron Hamilton. I’d never have guessed God would use a song. He moves in mysterious ways! Seeds send forth their shoots and break the ground in their own time.
In that moment as the lyrics to the song came across, she simply believed. Praise God.
Here’s what I learned.
Once I had confronted my parents and tried to argue them into salvation. That was a terrible idea.
Then I had gently reasoned with them, and that had worked at least a little better. No one got angry. And finally, through our conversations and his own reflection, Dad entered the family of God.
For Lori,
