Bio
So you want to know something about me?

I’m president and janitor of a struggling business. I know the challenge of wondering how we will pay our bills. With a loving wife and six ordinary kids, I understand the stress of trying to be a husband, a dad, and a businessman. I am personally acquainted with anger and unforgiveness and pride and fear.

But I also know the power of God to transform a normal existence into something worth living.

My spiritual journey began when I was just about four years old. That was when I heard about Jesus and readily responded. I then began my first evangelistic crusade attended by one little brother—who had threats of hell visited on him with such persistence that he finally yielded to the pressure, probably to get me off his back.

Exactly what that first spiritual experience meant is hard to say.  I do know that God was rousing me, preparing me to hear more of the truth—and giving me a first earnest desire to tell other people the truth about Him, too.

In fourth grade, I plunged unwittingly into a spiritual crisis. My parents determined that the public schools weren’t the best place for us boys anymore and transferred us to a Christian school. This was dramatic stuff at the time, and my grandparents were highly skeptical of the change. I resisted too. I had friends at Penryn Elementary just a few minutes from my home in northern California. To be tossed into a new school, with no friends, half-an-hour away from home was earth-shattering.

And I had some catching up to do. Dad tutored me on the multiplication tables over the summer and applied creative mnemonic devices to help me break past my lock-up factor. I still remember that 6 X 7 = chocolate cake. And by some remarkable gyration of the mind, that chocolate cake = 42.

But the real crisis was not the commute or the new friends or catching up on academics. Mrs. Thumann, our teacher, ushered a startling realization to the center stage of my consciousness: Jesus wanted complete control of my life.

Now a nice connection to God through Christ was a pleasant thing. But the idea that Jesus really wanted absolute dominion was something else entirely.

Believe it or not, I was already forming my own ideas of money and marriage and life according to Robbie Robbins. And I said “no.” I wanted Jesus, but I didn’t want Him meddling with my plans. So I clung, white-knuckled to the pew in front of me and excluded critical parts of “I’ll Go Where You Want Me to Go” when we sang that song at church. I knew that I wouldn't go where God wanted, and I didn’t want to lie. . . .

On the outside, I think everything looked about the same. I rocketed through school studies, and by the end of fourth grade was up at the top of my class. But I couldn’t shake the awareness that God wanted more of me than I was willing to give. In fact, He wanted everything.

It was after two years of intense inner struggle, when I was in sixth grade, that I finally said "yes" to the claims of Jesus, and my life has never been the same. I knew that I was called to God, called to communicate His truth—and I was finally willing to obey, whatever the cost.

Communicating God through my life has been my beacon ever since. With this goal in mind I attended The Master’s College in Newhall, California in 1985–86 and then served on the staff of the Advanced Training Institute in Oak Brook, Illinois from 1987–1995. This was the objective when my wife Melissa and I moved back to our western roots in 1995 and established Glass House Company, a tent-making business in stained and leaded glass.

Turns out that “making tents” was more involved than I imagined. Add six children to the mix and an unending supply of critical needs—and I struggled to keep my head above water, let alone communicate God’s truth to anyone else.

But I’ve found that God is still available to the busy businessman and the harried housewife—right in the middle of everything. In fact, He delights to show Himself to anyone, in any circumstance, who seeks Him with a whole heart—a heart that holds nothing back from Him.

Here is the exciting thing: When we see God, nothing stays the same, not even the annoying normalcy of everyday living—because seeing God changes us.

I am in the process of being changed by Him, and invite you to join me on the great adventure of living ordinary life on an extraordinary plane—by considering our astounding God.

Rob Robbins
Ferndale, Washington
[email protected]

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