WEST MONROE, La. (BP) – When Duck Commander called, Bryan Rucker had resorted to days of getting high and drunk. An illegal multi-state drug pipeline that earned him $60,000 a month ended when he was imprisoned for his part in a deadly drug deal.
Freed from prison, Rucker lived in chaos.
“I’m just trying to feed my kid, and I don’t want to sell drugs to do it,” he said at the job interview he managed to secure with the company founded by the Phil Robertson clan. “To my surprise, a day later they ended up calling me.”
Rucker would eventually become a cast member of the long-running television series Duck Dynasty. Today, he directs Celebrate Recovery at White’s Ferry Road Church of Christ in West Monroe, La., the Robertsons’ membership.
Rucker shares his testimony in the latest short film produced by the Texas-based I Am Second evangelistic ministry. Rucker’s story was released in concert with the film “The Blind,” which tells the Robertsons’ story of struggle and triumph.
The Robertsons showed him something new.
“They just kind of started showing me love. They told me that they cared about me, they gave me responsibility,” Rucker said, “and that was stuff that nobody had ever done before.”
Rucker started working for the Robertsons for $8 an hour in the Duck Commander warehouse. He began attending White’s Ferry Road Church with the family, listening to sermons and inserting God where he desired. Phil baptized him in a denomination that views baptism as a sacrament necessary for salvation.
But Rucker was living a double life.
“I would go and I would talk about Jesus Monday through Friday from 8 to 5, where if somebody asked me to come speak,” he said. “But then I’d go home and I’d drink. I’d smoke weed and sleep with women.”
Duplicity was unsustainable. He was arrested for driving while intoxicated and illegal drug possession. He wondered why, having Jesus he presumed, he was in jail once again. And why just three days before he was to be featured on Duck Dynasty?
“And then it hit me,” he said in his I Am Second testimony. “God was like, ‘Either you’re for Me or against Me.’ There’s no gray area. You can’t ride the fence. You can’t go around and proclaim me and then be caught up in all this sinful behavior.”
Failed chances had been his life’s story, Rucker believed. The Robertsons bailed him out of jail, retained his employment, enrolled him in Celebrate Recovery and checked him into a sober-living home.
Yet failing, he was kicked out of the home and fired from Duck Commander.
It was Kay Robertson who pleaded successfully with White Ferry Road’s Celebrate Recovery to give Rucker one more chance at the sober-living residence.
“God, whatever you want to do, I’m in,” Rucker said he confessed. “But it was from that place of humility that I was able to learn so much about what God wanted for my life. I started walking in this authentic relationship with Jesus.”
A supervisor at an addiction treatment center heard Rucker speak. She thought he’d make a great addiction recovery counselor. Rucker thought it was a dumb idea. He shared it with the Robertsons, who had rehired him. They threatened to fire him if he didn’t at least try.
“They gave me grace. They never gave up on me,” Rucker said of the Robertsons. “That really impacted my life. It helped me to understand more what the love of Christ was like, because they were the conduit of that on earth for me.”
Rucker became one of the most sought-after addiction counselors in Louisiana, he said, opening the door for him to lead White Ferry’s Celebrate Recovery.
“The sober-living houses that I once lived in, I now own.”
Hear Rucker’s story at IAmSecond.com.
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