Saving Souls | Richard Roberts and Lindsay Roberts Ministries

SPRR RICHARD ROBERTS How did you come to grips with that when you were in the middle of drugs and suddenly you realized that your life was incomplete?  What’s the testimony there?

SPKM DON POTTER Well, uniquely, kind of one of the pit bottoms of it is one morning, early in the morning I was laying in bed sort of convulsing from overdoing it all night and beginning to lose all semblance of sanity. And my wife looked me in the face and said, “I’m leaving a person who wants to kill himself.”  And it was the first real shock I ever had. It was sort of like and I could barely talk because I was so strung out and I guess it was sort of the thing of the shocking realization, you know, drugs are very subtle.  They come on very quietly.  And before you know it, you’re acting like something you think is cool.  I don’t know how to put that into clear terms, but when I’m high, you know, I’m this thing that I’ve never been before and everyone thinks  I’m so cool like this.  And it’s like that demon that comes around behind you and gets hold of you and starts convincing you that you are something that you’re not, of course.  Your ultra ego begins to take place and you step into an area that is just totally unrelated to life itself.  The Lord began really at that time, I had a, I had a 92-year-old grandmother, Spirit-filled, who has prayed for me for 30 years.  And

SPRR RICHARD ROBERTS Thank God for grandmothers.

SPKM DON POTTER And that is what saved my life.  Yeah.

SPRR RICHARD ROBERTS Thank God for grandmothers.

SPKM DON POTTER And I have an aunt and uncle who I spent many years when my parents had split up and that kind of thing, and when I was younger my uncle who I stayed with, my grandmother and aunt and uncle, had recognized that at about six or seven years old that the Lord had put a gift of music inside and he lifted me up before the Lord.  He prayed that I would give this gift back to the Lord and it would be to glorify Him. I proceeded to spend the next 30 years trying to do it my own way and being in the music business, which I have for that many years, and the, I’ve been real close a lot of times, real close to becoming whatever the words are, famous, I guess is the only word I can think of now, but the Lord always pulled it short, always held it up, always kept it from being something that I want to be this, I want to be that and money was spent and everyone was happy and suddenly it fell apart.  And there’s been countless times and when I finally came to the end of myself and the drug problems and the Lord came into my life.  He moved like only He can move. I mean, I’d love to tell you it through my intelligence, but it certainly was not.  It was through my total need.

SPRR RICHARD ROBERTS Through your desperation.

SPKM DON POTTER Through my desperation to need Him.  Then we went through a period of two years really of laying music down, which was like pulling my heart out of my body.  But I did.

SPRR RICHARD ROBERTS You actually gave it up.

SPKM DON POTTER Oh, yeah.  I had, I was a carpenter when I first got to Tennessee, you know, the Lord had used; I call it the carrot theory.  He had guided me to Tennessee through all kinds of, well, I’ll be this and then I’ll get this and I’ll sign with this company and I’ll sign with that company and everything. I’ll be just wonderful and as soon as I got there, that disappeared and I was literally thrown into the arms of the body of Christ at that time.  And we had nothing, no money and no job, and I couldn’t get a job right away.  And the Lord had also gifted me with carpentry, which I really enjoy.  And He said, “You’ve got a job.  You know how to work.”  And I spent the next two years as a carpenter remodeling buildings out of music row, of all the places.

And it not only adjusted I shouldn’t say it’s adjusted.  I mean, I hate to tell you I think I’m even humble by a long shot, but it really had an awful lot to do with bringing me to a realization that the gift, any gift that God gives you is a beautiful thing and it is a gift.  You know, I’d love to say I made it up or I worked very hard and I’m now a great musician because I’ve worked hard, because I’m not, that’s not true.  God has anointed it.  And I’ve played in front of people when He wasn’t there and they didn’t like it.  And when He’s there, they love it.