‘Full surrender’ sends Marty to prison to serve as a chaplain
Nearly a year ago, Marty Robinson accepted a job as a prison chaplain with The Salvation Army. Although the offer was from the Salvos, Marty knew that this was the position God had been calling him to for months and preparing him for life. He spoke to Salvos Online journalist LAUREN MARTIN about this experience.
Thinking back to when he was considering taking on his prison chaplaincy role, Marty Robinson laughs and says, “If someone had told me in the job description, ‘Marty, you are going to get emotional in front of some of Australia’s worst criminals, and you are going to be singing to them as well’, I would have said to them, ‘Yeah, no thanks, you can keep your job!’
“But I love this job, and I am so willing to be humiliated for Christ.”
The tattooed, bearded former punk-rocker could easily be mistaken for an inmate, and he readily admits that his life was heading that way until God intervened.
“I basically came to the end of my tether in 2006, and my first ever prayer was, ‘God, if you are not there, I am stuffed; I need to know you’re real’.” The next thing he remembers is waking up in hospital after an alcohol-induced seizure, with the nurse telling him that he needed to go to rehab. The problem was that there was a two-month wait.
But God had other plans, and within the week, he had started the Bridge Program at The Salvation Army Miracle Haven Recovery Services Centre on the NSW Central Coast (which has now been re-located and is called the Dooralong Transformation Centre.)
Marty spent 14 months doing the 10-month program, and during that time, he said he had a “rude awakening, an emotional awakening and a spiritual awakening!” God was doing a good work, but Marty hadn’t fully surrendered. He says that despite being connected with Bonnells Bay Corps for a decade, he was still powering his Christianity “under my own steam”.
Following the call
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, it left Marty jobless, with a workplace back injury that doctors told him he would never recover from.
Facing three surgeries and the very real possibility he would spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair, Marty found himself sitting in an emptying church after a Sunday service, praying: “God, what am I going to do? I can’t provide for my family.”
At that point, one of the corps elders sat beside him and put her hand on his shoulder. She said, “Marty, I believe I am hearing from God; I believe I have a word from God – a strong word – I’m hearing that you will be a chaplain.” It was the third time Marty had been told by someone that he would be a chaplain.
So, he had the surgery, miraculously avoided the wheelchair, and studied chaplaincy.
His first job was right up his alley – at a sober house, running The Salvation Army’s Bridge Program and journeying with residents through the Positive Lifestyle Program.
“But then, you know how God’s got a sense of humour?” Marty laughs. “Well, I was asked to take over the running of the Long Jetty Corps Family Store. From working with alcoholics, addicts and men on parole to managing a volunteer base of little old ladies hanging up clothes, can you believe it?”
But, as always, God had a plan. Marty began every day in the store with communion and prayer. Soon, a Jesus culture spread amongst the staff and volunteers and the store was humming. Sales went through the roof, which provided funding for local mission, and the Good News of the gospel was echoing off the walls of the store and into the streets through word and deed.
It was a foundational experience where Marty realised that answering ‘yes’ to the call to follow Jesus – even into the unlikeliest places – will always bear fruit. “I would never have thought I was suited to work in retail,” said Marty. “But I knew when I was asked to take on that job that God wanted me there. So, I went.
“God was showing me how he changes atmospheres.”
The call to go deeper
An email from Impact Nations inviting Marty to participate in a mission trip to the Philippines was the next big calling in Marty’s life. “I had a really strong urge to go, so I paid for it, and I went,” he says. We visited a prison there, and I saw a blind man get healed.
“And I just burst into a preach and shared my testimony. Every single hand in the place went up to receive Jesus, even the guards … that was the highlight of the trip.”
When he returned, Marty received several missed calls and emails from The Salvation Army’s prison chaplaincy team. There was a job opening at Silverwater Jail in Sydney, and Marty’s name had come up in discussions about who would be a good ‘fit’. The job was his if he wanted it.
At the same time, Marty had two other job offers. Both were in ministry, offering more money, and both were closer to home. “For some reason, at that time, I kept seeing the numbers 333 everywhere,” Marty says. It was strange. It happened when I looked at the clock. It would be 3:33. I saw it on number plates. It happened so many times it was noticeable.”
Despite seeking God for direction on which job to take, Marty didn’t receive a definitive answer, but he chose the job with the “least pay, the longest travel and the hardest conditions”. On his first day as chaplain to the Metropolitan Remand and Reception Centre at Silverwater Prison Complex, he was given a key to his locker – number 333. It was confirmation that he was exactly where God wanted him to be.
Full surrender
The Silverwater Remand and Reception Centre is the first port of call for serious offenders after arrest. Marty works in the isolation cell area. “These are some of the guys who have done the worst of crimes,” he says. “Or they may need to be isolated for mental health reasons, or because they are at risk of violence to themselves or others.”
Marty might have 10 minutes with someone, a few hours, or a few days. It can be a highly volatile environment – every single man that comes into remand is having the worst day of their life. Many of them ask him: “Am I going to burn in hell for what I’ve done?”
“ ... he just lay on the ground, and I lay on the ground [outside the cell] with him, speaking under the door to him.”
“I will sit in front of bikies, and some of the hardest guys, and sometimes grace and mercy will overcome me, and I’ll start weeping,” he says. “One of the hardest guys I ever met said to me one day, ‘What the ‘F’ are you crying for?’ I replied, ‘Because I love ya, mate,’ then he started to cry, and then he started confessing. I watched the Holy Spirit soften his hard heart, and he gave his life to Christ then and there. Jesus is still transforming his life.”
One afternoon, as Marty was in his office, he heard yelling and banging from the prison cell floor. He went down and saw a man in distress, screaming and throwing his body against the cell door. “I couldn’t calm him down, so I sat in front of his cell and started praying. Then, out of nowhere, I just began to sing, ‘Jesus, lover of my soul’ [by Hillsong Worship], and he just stopped and went silent. Then he began to sing the next line, Jesus, ‘I will never let you go’, and then the inmate in the next cell yelled out [the next line] ‘took me – from the miry clay’ ... I had an orchestra! They all knew the words!
“We went through the song twice, and then he just lay on the ground, and I lay on the ground [outside the cell] with him, speaking under the door to him.”
The next morning, when Marty walked in, the inmate was still calm. “I saw a demon cast out that day,” Marty says, recalling the miracle Jesus performed at Gerasenes in Mark 5.
It’s a long way from sorting second-hand clothes at the Family Store, but Marty continues a spiritual practice he began there – to have communion every morning at his desk and surrender his day to Jesus. “I say [to Jesus], ‘Use me however you want.’”
He says this – the full surrender – was missing during his first spiritual encounter with Jesus. Through it all, God has patiently led him deeper, showing him the fruit that comes from submission, showing him that no experience is wasted, and revealing to him the way that the Holy Spirit weaves a beautiful tapestry of love from broken lives.
