Cheerful and personable, Robbie is often seen today with a smile on his face. He is a team-player, working with others outdoors. You can find him, chainsaw in hand, getting vegetation back under control.
But teenage years were not easy. Robbie recalls that ‘at the age of 14 things took a downward turn, I felt like my life had no meaning and I wasn’t going anywhere. The more my thought dwelled on it, the more depressed I became. The feeling of being trapped hit hard.
‘I tried to find comfort in my new found love for music – maybe this could fill the void I felt in me. But although it helped a little, I’d always end up feeling sad again.’
At the age of 15, Robbie joined the Air Cadets. He discovered an environment with ‘all manner of language, crude humour and many other worldly things.’ This was very different to how he’d been raised.
To this point, Robbie had been going to church ‘to keep my mum happy’ and for this reason others knew him as a Christian. Robbie could play the part when he wanted. He was able ‘to act in the right way and say the right thing’ but he knew that he ‘was far from a Christian and far from God.’
Robbie had a decision to make. He didn’t want to pretend any longer. He could either turn to God and follow him or be open about rejecting his upbringing. Robbie ‘suddenly felt the pretending over and I was “ready” to live like everyone else.’
By 17 Robbie had started college. He recalls ‘being bombarded by the pleasures and ideas’ of the world. Robbie wanted to enjoy them. But he wasn’t happy.
As Robbie recalls, ‘my conscience was heavy and I wasn’t happy with how things where. I started to drift from my family to spend more time with friends, and the more depressed I became the more I tried to comfort myself with what the world offered me. In all this there was this constant feeling of guilt as if someone was poking me in the back telling me how I was in a hopeless state.’
Robbie picks up the story: ‘Then one Sunday evening in 2019 my brother, for what seemed like no real reason, said he was going to the evening service of Grace Baptist Church.
‘Thinking it would be nice to see the people there I went along too. This went on for a while. We kept going back, again and again, until one evening in August which began just like any other evening.
‘However, I heard the good news about Jesus for what felt like the very first time. I don’t remember what the service was about, I just remember sitting there with my eyes open to the sin I was living in as if the Lord had shone a light into every dark corner of my life and showed me the sin that was in my heart.’
Robbie also understood the good news. He knew that God loved him, had sent Jesus to die in his place and offered him forgiveness.
So, as Robbie recalls: ‘that very night when I got home I asked the Lord to forgive me.’ Robbie was changed: his gloom lifted.
‘I know I am far from a perfect Christian and I can never be one. But I put my life in God’s hands.
‘I know that there is no peace and no salvation from sin but through his son, Jesus Christ. Jesus died for sinners like me. I can find peace in him, and I try to live my life as God commands and intends with his strength.’
