When SMOKEY ROBINSON found Christ he found deliverance from drugs

Smokey Robinson has been called a 'genius' by Bob Dylan. Songs like "My Guy" and "Tracks Of My Tears" and "I Second That Emotion" won Smokey world wide acclaim as a pioneer of the Motown Sound. Yet the stream of million sellers and luxurious lifestyle lead to the brilliant singer/songwriter spiralling downwards into a hell of cocaine abuse. Then a friend, Leon Kennedy, took a hand. Calling around to see the singer, Leon challenged Smokey about his self-destructive lifestyle. Smokey assured his friend he was well. "Dopers always lie to cover up," explains Smokey. "I didn't tell him about the stomach pains, the puss passing out of my body, the heart palpitations, the cold sweats". Leon's response was simple and direct. He told the singer he was staying to pray for him. As Smokey told his biographer David Ritz, "Leon stayed and prayed for me all night; he prayed 'til the sun came up; he wouldn't leave me; he stayed at my house all the next day and then insisted we go to a place called Ablaze Ministry. I called Ivory Stone, my close friend and back-up singer, to come along. I'd been in contact with Ivory during these miserable months. She'd been my only source of comfort. A few times I did eat, she was the one who fed me. When she first came to sing with me in 1975, I loved her immediately. She's a warm and wonderful person, physically gorgeous, inwardly beautiful, the kind of woman any man would be proud to call his own. She turned me on to Jesus; she's been a strong emotional and spiritual influence on my life. Ablaze wasn't a church, just a small building in a working class neighbourhood on Florence Avenue where people were up and singing. Everyone looks joyful and glad. It wasn't an all-black holy revival, but rather a room filled with different type people - Orientals, Chicanos, whites and blacks."

The leader of the fellowship Jean Perez began to minister healing to members of the congregation. Then her attention came to rest on the famous singer in her humble congregation. "She hugged me, much as a mother might hug a son. I felt the heat of her breath and she whispered into my ear away from the microphone so only I could hear" remembers Smokey. '"I know who you are', she said. 'I didn't call your name because not everyone recognised you. You look so bad. I been praying for you for a year now. The Lord put you on my heart. He really loves you. You're one of his children. And he sent you here tonight so that I can heal you in the name of Jesus. I know about your puss, I know about your stomach, I know about your heart palpitations'. I was stunned. I hadn't told anyone about any of those things. 'The drugs', she said, still in a whisper, 'have eaten away your stomach lining. If you hadn't come here, you would have died."

Smokey Robinson asked Jesus Christ to forgive his sins and to come by His Spirit into his life. Smokey was instantly delivered from drug addiction by accepting Christ. He had not only been freed from drug abuse but had found a new dimension to his life. As Smokey laughingly remembers, "I left the Ablaze Ministry that night feeling higher than at any moment of my life, higher than I had ever been on coke, so good and so high that I felt I was walking on air. Since that night I haven't touched or wanted any form of any drug. Just like that, the desire left me.... miraculously I was saved. The Lord washed me clean."