Ever imagined how a child prodigy, on top of the world touring with rock groups, could end up in the pits of skid row? It's a fascinating tale of talent, choices, and divine intervention, all wrapped up in the journey of our guest, Bobby. A living testament of how our choices can shroud God's gifts in darkness, Bobby's life went spiraling downwards into sin. But, that's not where the story ends. Through the grace and truth of Jesus, Bobby rose, using his talents to increase in ministry and truth.
Hold on, the ride isn't over yet. The next part of Bobby's journey is steeped in the power of identity and God's grace. Imagine experiencing life from the vantage point of a prodigy to the depths of skid row, only to finally find redemption and identity in Jesus. Bobby's life is a powerful narrative, reiterating that God's correction isn't rejection and how lost years can be restored. We'll explore the inspiring stories of how Bobby shared God's love and hope; it's a testament to resilience, faith, and limitless potential for redemption. So join us, as we delve into Bobby's life, his trials, triumphs, and transformation.
Thanks for Listening, and subscribe to hear a new episode each week!
Ever imagined how a child prodigy, on top of the world touring with rock groups, could end up in the pits of skid row? It's a fascinating tale of talent, choices, and divine intervention, all wrapped up in the journey of our guest, Bobby. A living testament of how our choices can shroud God's gifts in darkness, Bobby's life went spiraling downwards into sin. But, that's not where the story ends. Through the grace and truth of Jesus, Bobby rose, using his talents to increase in ministry and truth.
Hold on, the ride isn't over yet. The next part of Bobby's journey is steeped in the power of identity and God's grace. Imagine experiencing life from the vantage point of a prodigy to the depths of skid row, only to finally find redemption and identity in Jesus. Bobby's life is a powerful narrative, reiterating that God's correction isn't rejection and how lost years can be restored. We'll explore the inspiring stories of how Bobby shared God's love and hope; it's a testament to resilience, faith, and limitless potential for redemption. So join us, as we delve into Bobby's life, his trials, triumphs, and transformation.
Thanks for Listening, and subscribe to hear a new episode each week!
The following program is sponsored by Ron Meyers Ministries.
Speaker 2:It's time now to get the hell out of your life. A weekly broadcast with real people sharing real struggles and offering real hope. Today's show will encourage, inspire and empower you to face life's challenges with a bold confidence and renewed hope. Now let's join our host, ron Meyers. The Provider.
Speaker 3:Hello, my friends, it is so good to be with you today. Have you had some time with Jesus this week? And I'm not talking about going to church, I'm talking about just you, sharing what's on your heart, maybe sharing some mistakes, some sins, some things that have happened in your life. It's not that you need to do that for forgiveness, because if you are a Christian, you have been forgiven past, present and future but what it does, it's healthy for you. Sometimes we have to get things off of our chest and sometimes we have answers. I mean, we have questions that would need answers. So I encourage people to have a regular dialogue with Jesus, whether it's with coffee, driving to work or walking along the beach.
Speaker 3:Today I'm going to share a story with you of a man that was actually a child prodigy and the world was his. He toured on with rock groups across the country, but something happened to him and he ended up on skid row. But today he's doing well and his story is a reminder that God has given each of us talent, skills and abilities. Now it is the choices that we make in life that determine where we end up in life. Now we're not puppets on a string. God doesn't control us, but he does want us to live the kind of life that Jesus died for, In other words, the abundant life, using your talent, skills and abilities.
Speaker 3:You know, somebody was telling another person a couple of days ago that you must decrease for Christ to increase. That's not true and I'll tell you about that later on in the monologue. God doesn't need you to decrease, he needs you to increase so we can be a difference maker in this world. But now back to the story. My story, Bobby, is one that wow. He decreased in the world because of sin, but when he met Jesus he increased in truth, in ministry, and I think, and I know you're going to enjoy his story. Here's Bobby story.
Speaker 4:Well, at a very, very young age, five or six years old, I started piano lessons and I started climbing up on the piano stool and I wrote a song called the Son of Abraham. I was raised Catholic and, to tell you the truth, at that age I didn't know Abraham from Peyton Manning, but for some reason I wrote this song called the Son of Abraham and my mother heard me singing this particular song on the piano every day. And then she got out the Frank Sinatra records, the Judy Garland records, the Al Jocelyn records, and she started training me every day after school to sing along with these records, because she was a big fan of Judy Garland and all the all the Broadway shows and the old standards. So I started singing these songs around my hometown of Evansville, indiana. And one thing led to another. I went to Chicago and I was running up on the Ted Mac Amateur Hour, and one thing led to another and I found that we found ourselves in New York at the Johnny Carson Show, the Milton Burl Show. I came to Nashville, I did the Grand Ole Opry and it just I was a legend in my own mind by the time. I was 10 years old, singing these old standards. And then the Beatles came on the Ed Sullivan Show and I sit there on that Sunday night and I said Mom and Dad, that's what I want to do, and they didn't agree with that decision. So they kind of pulled the plug a year later on my musical career and because I had a big, big void to fill from that euphoric feeling of show business and traveling the country and I became addicted to applause at a very young age and, as you might have heard or you might know, it doesn't really work out good for a lot of child stars. They usually end up going through something.
Speaker 4:So I ran away at 16, started playing in rock and roll bands, wound up in Hollywood in 1980, and then the party started they call it the Glitterfield Halls of MTV and I got, I started, I moved in with some guys in Hollywood in 1980, and they went to work for Ozzy Osbourne and they become great friends of mine and the whole 80s rock music scene was a lot of. It took place right there in North Hollywood, which is a San Fernando Valley, and I played all those gigs around town with all the well-known band poison, miley Crude, guns N' Roses, randy Castile played for Ozzy for 13 years and so the touring started, the party started and in the 80s there was a pandemic cocaine problem and we were snorting cocaine. It was a social thing. However, I didn't know the seeds that I was planting. Same thing with alcohol.
Speaker 4:The drinking became a social problem, but later on it became alcoholism. The cocaine became an addiction. The lifestyle became an addiction. My life was all about me, ron, me, me and me, and it led to a very, very dark place.
Speaker 4:The pandemic cocaine problem had actually led into trying to relax at the end of the day, and the heroin became popular. It became popular in Seattle, it became popular in Los Angeles and it was a way of just unwinding and sedating yourself from all the hoopla and the gigs and the accolades. It was life in the fast lane and all of a sudden this heroin kind of slowed it down. But in the meantime the addiction that it brought it took over my life. Heroin became my mom and my daddy, my girlfriend, my career, and the people in Los Angeles recognized this and a lot of those people gave up on me. So the gigs throughout the 80s got smaller and smaller and by the 90s I went to Michigan because the classic rock scene became big around the country. So I was doing a lot of classic rock shows with Mountain and Quiet. Riot was actually considered classic rock and that's where I became addicted to heroin in Detroit and ended up taking a bus back to Los Angeles in 1998 and went down into Skid Row, purchased some heroin and went to sleep behind the roller bushes and stayed there behind that roller bushes for actually a year before I got me a cardboard box. I was downtown Los Angeles in Skid Row for nearly eight years and what. I would like to take a minute and just paint a picture of the darkness that I was set free from. When you're homeless, ron, you don't bathe for a year at a time. You stand on the side of the freeway with a sign that says I will work for food and you stand there all day, all afternoon and most of the night, to feed this addiction of heroin. There's a big downtown Los Angeles. Heroin is very, very easy to get. It's sold on every street corner and when you're addicted to heroin you have to be close to it, so it just takes over your life.
Speaker 4:I injected heroin eight to 10 times a day. My arms were so scarred with needle injections that I had to revert to my legs. So I would take the needle, stick it right through my blue jeans into the muscles of my legs every day, five to 10 times a day. Well, my body was totally scarred. I had poison oozing out of my legs. Bus drivers would see me on a corner waiting for the bus and they would notice that I was who I was and they would drive light on by. So I started waiting on buses. That never came, and when I would go to the hospital, they would. They would for such things as scabies or fleas from sleeping on broken down mattresses. They would make me stand on the sidewalk. So this this idea of life I had in the 80s of being this rock god. For lack of a better turn, I had became a broken man pushing a shopping cart with aluminum cans, standing and begging on the side of the road for eight years.
Speaker 4:And one day, near death, a homeless man came up to me and said Bobby, you are dying, you need to pray in the name of Jesus. And Ron, I looked at him and said dude, I know who God is, I'm a Catholic. And he said well, bobby, how's that working out for you? And right then he pulled out that Bible and started showing me verses about speaking the name of Jesus out my mouth. He told me, ron, that there would be a cashless society one day. And that's what got my attention, because all my dealings with people on the side of the road to get money for my addiction was always cash. So I thought to myself, wow, if there's no cash, how in the world am I going to afford my, my, my heroin, that that I live off of and keeps me, keeps me moving around? So God used just the right things to to capture my imagination to find out more about this man named Jesus.
Speaker 4:So this man named Mark that was talking to me came by my camp every night and I ended up calling him Jesus. I would ask my friends. I said, hey, have you seen Jesus tonight? And they go no, he hadn't been around a couple of days. And then a couple of days later he come back and we would read verses, just easy verses. Like I am the way, the truth and the life. No one goes to the father except through the son. So this, this word of God, was getting on the inside of this broken heroin homeless man myself. And one day, in a dumpster I was hiding from the police and I was injecting heroin and I was eating pizza garbage out of the dumpster and the ants were biting me on that inside of my throat and I couldn't scratch him lawn and I had came to the end of my rope, like where God's office usually is, and I cried out in the name of Jesus, send me some hope. I just needed some hope. I was broken. I couldn't do it anymore. You couldn't do it.
Speaker 4:And the only thing that I could virtually yell out of my mouth while I was breaking in this dumpster and crying my eyes out was if you're real, in the name of Jesus, send me some hope, because that's what this guy had told me to speak his name out my mouth. I came back to Indianapolis to visit my family. All the relationships were renewed. I actually met Jesus in 2008 and I was saved. And when I got back to Indiana, I continued my walk and my music just started changing from from writing songs like baby, baby, you're my baby, baby, honey, honey, you're my honey honey. And then I just dove a little deeper and these songs started coming and the clergy around town and people that have mentored me, they started coming to my house and they said, bobby, where are these songs coming from? And I told them I just. And one man told me one day. He said, bobby, when there's an earthly brokenness, there's a heavenly openness, and I never forgot that. But when God does a big thing in you, he does it because he's got a big thing to do through you, and my life flipped upside down. I told this story on many Christian TV programs our par 700 club, start and farm, the ministry cardboard box ministries, and it just hasn't stopped around. When it looks real dark, there's someone out there. What it actually does run it causes one to start looking for the light switch, and that light switch, in my case, was flat out Jesus, and I might I might as well say this I've had no triggers. I haven't had a drink of alcohol. My heart did a 180 and the desires of my heart changed, and it all started just by walking through that door that said Jesus on it. It just changed my way of thinking. Revelation started coming to me about things that I missed and where I actually was on this planet, and it just I just got to know. Let me just live back up and just tell you what really happened in 2007.
Speaker 4:While in that dumpster, I cried out in the name of Jesus send me some hope, I'll see you. Very next day, a man knocked on my cardboard box by the name of Mr Esperanza and he said I'd like to put you on a bus to a rehab in Phoenix, Arizona. I got on that bus, ron, and when I got to that rehab, they told me that Esperanza in Spanish actually means hope, and that's the way God communicates with you he's showing me beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was pursuing me and that he loved me. And I just started reading the word and finding out. I didn't understand a lot about the Bible, ron, but I noticed there were some red parts in the back and I just started reading them red parts. And when I got to that rehab they had me on 140 milligrams of methadone One day. I just decided you know what, I'm not going to take this methadone every day and I started decreasing on my own. 30 days later, I was cigarette-free, alcohol-free, methadone-free for the first time in 40 years.
Speaker 3:Hallelujah.
Speaker 4:I was 100% clean. I was 55 years old when this happened.
Speaker 3:There's people listening right now that are dealing with addiction of some sort in their life, and what would you tell that person?
Speaker 4:I would tell that person to simply open that Bible and get alone with Jesus and just learn about Jesus, read the Scriptures, read the Proverbs. When I read verses like my people are being destroyed for lack of knowledge. I was being destroyed and the knowledge I was missing was about Jesus, and he'll give you back the years that have been wasted. All these verses started speaking directly to me. But if you don't open that book and surround yourself with people that know the real Jesus and through them Jesus will love that hell right out of you. So many times I wish that I could just start over and reprogram and reboot my brain. So I didn't know anything about drugs. I was looking for that freedom, and where the Lord is, there is freedom. And who the sun sets free is truly free indeed. And I found out who I was in him and that he was my dad. It's as easy, ron, as you just need to find out who your daddy is, and once you do, your thinking starts changing. And remember correction is not rejection. See, I had that mixed up. I thought correction, the people were rejecting me, but it's actually a better way for God to show you how to deal with things.
Speaker 4:It's a one-step program. Admit to yourself you may have missed a memo or two and you find out about this man 2000 years ago, by the name of Jesus, who went to the cross and gave his life so that we will have a life more abundantly. And if you can receive that love, it's a done deal. He will love that hell out of you and he starts eliminating your termites. Because, ron, one thing I do know for sure we all got a lot of termites. I had no idea that there could be joy. I just had no idea. It's just taken me by surprise. And it never ends, it happens every day. It's life more abundantly. It's exactly what the word promised.
Speaker 2:You're listening to Get the Hell Out of your Life with your host, ron Myers. Real stories, real struggles and real hope. What's?
Speaker 6:your story. We're looking for stories of hope and overcoming life struggles with God's grace. Your story validates God's love, mercy, restoration and forgiveness. We want to help you share your story with the world. Visit our website, thepromoterorg, and click on the Share your Story link and submit your story. Your testimony of God's amazing grace will change a person's destiny for eternity.
Speaker 5:That man is Jesus Christ, For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whosoever believes in him shall have eternal life. Jesus, what will you do with him? He knocks on the door of your heart. When you open that door, your life will change forever. Became that the world may have life and may have it more abundantly. Ask Jesus into your heart and discover what living is all about. Call 1-888-Need Him.
Speaker 3:Welcome back to Listeners, bobby. What an incredible story, and he is such a gracious man today. If I call him up and talk to him and see how things are going in his life, he's making up for lost time. Sometimes we have to remember that those years that we missed out on because we were just away from God, god can restore Everything back to us. God can do in one year what it might have taken us Five years to do, because God has a plan for you, god has a plan for me, and when we acknowledge Jesus, he goes into high gear for us to become who he created us to be in life.
Speaker 3:I heard someone this week talk about you must decrease for God to increase. In other words, they were insinuating that we have to lower ourselves, we have to decrease, and then God is going to increase. Well, first of all that the context of that statement in the Bible was John the Baptist. His ministry was coming to an end and he said I have to decrease because there's a greater one coming, meaning Jesus, and he will increase. His ministry was going to increase. So if we believe that we must decrease, well, how are we going to ever rise to the potential that God has given each of us.
Speaker 3:Now I don't know about you, friends, but even before I knew Jesus, I was a go-getter. I wanted to make my mark in the world. I wanted to be the best at whatever I did. I wanted to do things in life. I read, I studied, I went to conferences, I listened to the zig-zigglers, all the motivational gurus, earl Nightingale for some of you older folks out there and it just helped me Go in that direction.
Speaker 3:Well, the thing is with Jesus, he's the same way. He's an encourager, he's a Empowerer, he's an inspirational list. You know when the truth has set us free and we are totally forgiven past, present and future and he remembers our sins no more. That gives you and I the power to become who he created us to become. We're not running around with guilt and shame and woe is me. No, he increases your power. He increases everything, because the bigger you become and what you do in your life, the bigger the reflection is of Jesus. I've never met anybody that has really been sold out to Jesus. That doesn't give him all the credit. I mean, have you watched some pro football lately? I love it when they go to the end zone and point up to the sky. They are referencing Jesus, god, and the amount of people that will say at the end of the game I want to thank my Lord and Savior. You know that's awesome.
Speaker 3:Let's respect a person's faith, even if it isn't Jesus. That faith in their life is very important to them. And when your faith is important to you, as it is with me, then you have a tendency to have faith in everything you do and you have good outcomes. And when the outcome isn't so good, you know you make a mistake. You get set back. That faith allows you to see that. Well, that's one way. I can't do it. Let me try another way. Friends, we are living in a time where we cannot have distractions out there. Jesus needs you to be so tuned into him.
Speaker 3:At one time I managed a Christian radio station for American family radio. We were on the Gulf Coast. Our frequency was 91.7. Now, if you tuned into 91.5, you wouldn't have got it. If you would have turned into 91.3, you wouldn't have got our station. You had to tune into the frequency and, as a believer, when we asked Christ into our heart, he resides inside of us. Then we are tuned into his frequency. We hear his voice, he hears our voice and that's why I recommend Conversations. It can change the whole trajectory of your life. I mean, things begin to happen in your life and you say, wow, I'm a lucky guy. No, you're not a lucky guy or a lucky gal. You are a blessed individual highly favored. So the thing I want you to remember with today's show is this that god loves you, god has a plan for you, and god will never leave you. He will never forsake you, and when you give your heart to jesus, he will give you your destiny.
Speaker 2:You're listening to get the hell out of your life with your host, ron Myers. Real stories, real struggles and real hope.
Speaker 6:What's your story? We're looking for stories of hope and overcoming life struggles with God's grace. Your story validates God's love, mercy, restoration and forgiveness. We want to help you share your story with the world. Visit our website, thepromoterorg, and click on the Share your Story link and submit your story. Your testimony of God's amazing grace will change a person's destiny for eternity.
Speaker 2:Getting encouragement is important and it helps us overcome our fears and gives us the courage to face life's challenges. To receive weekly messages of encouragement, all you need to do is text Inspire to 888-527-1223. That's 888-527-1223. Our messages are intended to inspire and empower you on your life journey. Remember, life is more enjoyable when you're inspired.
Speaker 1:Ron will be back in a minute to close out today's show. We want to remind you today of the last words of Jesus it is finished. What is finished, the finished work of Jesus, refers to the complete and final accomplishment of salvation through his death and resurrection. It means that Jesus has done everything necessary for our forgiveness, redemption and reconciliation with God. Through his sacrifice on the cross, jesus paid the price for our sins once and for all, providing total forgiveness and cleansing. This finished work of Jesus means that we no longer need to strive or work to earn God's favor or forgiveness. We can rest in the assurance that our salvation is secure and that we are fully accepted by God because of what Jesus has done for us. Now back to Ron.
Speaker 3:O'Fran, my time is up and I have a new resource on my website, the promoterorg, to tell us die the last words of Jesus, and there's some questions in here that are asked. One is can I be gay and still be saved? Another question is do I need to go to church? You know some questions that a lot of us get the wrong answers in church. So check this resource out. It's a free download and I think you'll enjoy it.
Speaker 3:In the meantime, remember this if you have a story to share, what has God done in your life? You know, when you share your story, you validate God's love, mercy and forgiveness and you will help someone else that is struggling like you were at one time in your life. I love to share my story and I do have my story in a book. It's called the Promoter. I would love to send you a copy. It's absolutely free. Those details are on my website at the promoterorg, until next week. This is Ron Myers, reminding you that I love you, god loves you, and if you haven't gotten the hell out of your life yet, what are you waiting for?
Speaker 2:Today's show was produced by Ron Myers Ministries, a listener-supported ministry. For a copy of today's broadcast, please visit our website, thepromoterorg, and would you prayerfully consider making a tax-deductible donation so that we may continue to share stories of God's amazing grace with the world. And join us next week for another broadcast of Get the Hell Out of your Life. Real people sharing real struggles and offering real hope.