As a young university student, Robin Khoo was looking out for a side gig so that he need not depend on his mother for pocket money. 

So he joined Prudential with a friend in late 2014 to try his hand at selling insurance at roadshows. It was “pure hustling” but the hard work brought him $10,000 to $20,000 in income a month.  

The allure of well-remunerated work made him defer his communication studies in UniSIM one semester after another, until he eventually dropped out of school completely.  

Being competitive in nature and hoping to be a top insurance agent, Khoo would be present at roadshows five to six days a week. There, he worked on his persuasion skills and put his modelesque looks to good use to clinch deals.  

By 2015, he was earning some $30,000 a month. In terms of the volume of sales he was bringing in, he was ranked sixth overall in the whole of Prudential and the number two rookie there. 

Success got to his head.  

“I began to think that money was everything. I felt like I was God and I enjoyed showing off,” said Khoo, now 29.  

With all the money that was rolling in, he lavished himself with materialistic goods. All the luxury brands were suddenly within his reach, whether it was a $28,000 Rolex watch, accessories from Hermes and Cartier, or shoes, bags and shirts from Louis Vuitton. He also purchased a white Mercedes-Benz cabriolet to zip around in.  

Wild and worldly

He felt entitled to relax and enjoy the fruits of his labour, so a colleague brought him to the casino at Marina Bay Sands to gamble in January 2016. He put a $100,000 deposit with the casino and started with relatively small bets of $500.  

He was drawn to the casino every day as he made five to six thousand dollars each trip he made there. Within one month, he had made $100,000 from the casino, doubling his initial deposit to $200,000.  

“I started to lose touch with reality. Things were getting dangerous because with such easy money, I lost the motivation to work. After all, why did I need to work so hard just to earn $30,000 a month?” said Khoo. 

The bets began to get bigger and bigger. Every bet he placed needed to be a minimum of $5,000 or else he would not get a kick out of it.  

His gambling also extended beyond the walls of the casino into the murky world of online soccer betting and private poker games. He recalled once placing $80,000 cumulative bets on a single World Cup match in 2018.  

He was a party animal who enjoyed the “wild and worldly” life.  

It did not help that he was also a part-time model – after being talent spotted by Teens magazine when young – and he moved in circles of the well-heeled who enjoyed the “finer” things in life.  

So if he was not found at the roulette tables in the casino, he would be out partying and womanising in famous clubs, house parties, opulent hotel rooms or on board private yachts.  

At work, favour also seemed to be with him, though he was coasting and had lost much interest in it. He had a buyout from another insurance firm, and he moved into management where he started his own agency and had his own team of 30 people under him.

Yet his good run at the casino ended, and slowly he was losing his savings to fund his gambling habit. To bolster “good luck” for both his work and gambling activities, he and his colleagues would visit fortune tellers who would advise them on what they could do to prevent bad things from plaguing them.    

Eat seven cherry tomatoes every day, was one instruction. Khoo did it dutifully. Another asked him to place an orchid in the corner of his room. As he did not have green fingers, he had to head out to buy a new orchid every week.  

“My savings of a few hundred thousand dollars were almost gone and I was desperate. Whichever god there is, I will try. Then I remembered that when young I believed in Jesus. Why not try this God again?” he said.  

Deeper into destruction

When he was 12 years old, Khoo had followed his brother to church. However, he had no real relationship with God then and simply went through the motions of attending church.

It was just a place for him to make friends, play captain’s ball and chill at the cafe. Two years later, he stopped going to church.  

Despairing of his mounting debts and desiring to get help to kick his gambling addiction, Khoo confided in his best friend, Bruce, also an insurance agent and a believer who had backslidden from the faith.

Both of them walked into a church one Sunday in 2017, not knowing that it was Easter Sunday.  

The Easter Sunday sermon was on the prodigal son, a story in the Bible on how a father lavished his extravagant love on his son who went astray and returned home one day, thinking that he was only worthy to be his father’s servant. However, the son received a welcome befitting of a son upon his repentant return.

The message spoke to Khoo and he and Bruce began to attend the church regularly.  

“I started to get to know the character of Jesus and to understand who He was and His love for me,” said Khoo. “I was growing spiritually but did not experience the power of the Gospel enough to kick my bad habits away because the messages in that church focused on hypergrace and forgiveness and did not emphasise the fear of God.”  

So he continued living a double life, partying and gambling throughout the week and coming to church on Sunday, reeking of alcohol and nursing a hungover. Sometimes, he slept through the sermons.  

Not only did he not experience freedom from his gambling addiction in the few years that he returned to church, he went deeper into a destructive lifestyle.

How did I land myself in such a state? 

One night, as Khoo was leaving the house that hosted a private party, he looked back and saw shadows of people sitting around and shaking their heads from being inebriated. It was a pathetic sight to behold.  

“I looked at them in disbelief and asked myself, eh Robin, how did you get yourself in such a state? Whenever I saw movies and watched such scenes of intoxicated people, I would tell myself that I would never be like them. Yet now I was one of them,” he said.  

“At first I was happy living such a life. But gambling, partying, money and sex only gave me temporary joy. When I was alone at night in my condo, I had the time and space to reflect and I realised that all these things felt empty. I was aimless and lonely,” he added.  

The hollowness of all that he was chasing in life and all that he prided himself on only hit home when he began losing all that he once thought was important.  

He thought he was a model of competence at work but now the agents under him were leaving as the team’s performance had been declining.  

He thought he would have no problem finding love, but the one girl that he wanted to settle down with, instead of having one-night stands, turned out to be a better “player” than he.  

He thought that he could count upon having the money to last a lifetime, but now he had lost over a million through gambling. It had eaten up his savings and left him with a mountain of debt.  

He sold his watch and car, and endured his mother’s disappointment when he approached her to borrow money.  

An unlikely messenger

At this lowest point in his life, he encountered God in the form of the owner of a car workshop. 

Khoo was sending in his car for a final servicing before selling it off. The car workshop owner, himself a believer and ex-gambler, knew something was amiss and signalled for Khoo to come into his office.  

“Usually, all that is needed was five minutes to collect the car but this time he ministered to me for one hour. That day, however, he delivered a stern warning to me which I knew was from God,” said Khoo.  

The car workshop owner did not mince his words. He told Khoo that if he did not “stop his rubbish” and change the way he was living his life, he would be in a dire state in 10 years time, or even end up wasting his life in prison sooner rather than later.

The warning was a wake-up call for him as he did have friends then who were going in and out of jail.  

The car workshop owner then took him to the miracle service at Lighthouse Evangelism church last year.  

“There were a lot of old people because the service was meant for healing. But the message of the service delivered by Pastor Ronny was so fresh,” said Khoo. “He spoke about sin and the need for repentance and the consequences that may follow. 

“That was what I needed – a smack in the face,” said Khoo. 

From then on, he stopped partying and doing drugs. He admitted that the gambling, however, took some time to stop.

In order to stay rooted in God, he began reading three chapters of the Bible every day and sought to use the word of God to renew his mind.

For example, he would cling on to 1 Corinthians 10:13 whenever he felt tempted to go back into his former lifestyle. He would also fast to cleanse himself and seek the favour of God.  

Winning souls, not bets

He also felt a draw towards full-time ministry.  

“I didn’t want to live for money anymore. I wanted to do something eternal and win souls,” said Khoo.

“I’ve lost a lot of worldly wealth, but I don’t have any regrets because my fall brought me back to God. So I am learning to store my treasures on heaven, as it says in Matthew 6:20: “Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal.” 

In September last year, Robin was lounging on his sofa alone at night and chanced upon a show called “Nothing to Lose” on Netflix. It is a biographical drama that traces the rise of a Brazilian evangelical leader and business titan Edir Macedo.  

Robin could relate to the main character of the show and he felt God speaking to him in many parts of the movie. In particular, he felt God confirming his call to go into full-time ministry.  

As the movie unfolded, Robin began praying aloud to God: “Thank you, God, for confirming my calling.” 

When he opened his eyes and looked towards the TV screen, he saw that Mr Macedo was doing the same thing, saying: “Thank you, Father” three times before telling his wife in the next scene that God had confirmed his calling.  

Robin was stunned and thrilled at the same time.  

“What just happened?” he thought. “I just said something and it was repeated on TV. Could that not be God? We can’t box God up, He can certainly use anything for good, even Netflix!” 

To equip himself for further ministry work, Robin signed up for Tung Ling Bible School in January this year and spent three months in a community that sought God and studied His word. 

Meanwhile, his insurance sales continued dropping. With a newly found conscience and higher ethical standards, Khoo no longer used pressure tactics to sell policies or recommended people policies that did not meet their needs.  

“I felt God closing this door and was keen to explore working in church. My church was receptive to it,” said Robin. 

Then Covid-19 struck and many plans were derailed. His church is no longer taking in new interns or staff at the moment.  

As he is still paying off his debts, Khoo has taken on other sideline jobs, including selling mooncakes and Christian apparel (a “Fear of God” clothing line) to make ends meet.  

During the Circuit Breaker period, he was once so bored that he gave in to the temptation of online gambling once again.  

“I beat myself up when that happened because I thought I was doing a good job of being ‘clean’ for the last nine months. It was a humbling experience and I began to see the need to be accountable to people such as my girlfriend and cell group leader,” said Khoo.  

“The slip-up made me realise the importance of the physical church and how I need to be continually vigilant. I am still a work in progress.”  

In the meantime, he continues to trust and seek God for his next steps, whether it is in ministry work, in the marketplace, or a juggle of both.  

His friends and former colleagues who have known him in the past, upon seeing his dramatic turnaround, started enquiring about the reason for his transformation.  

In sharing with them his story, he has since led about 20 of them, both backsliders and new believers, to Christ and the church.  

They tease him about his new Instagram handle – badboypreacher – but know that it tells his genuine story.  

“I was once a huge mess but God has turned it into a message,” he said. 

“God doesn’t care about your past, no matter how wretched you are. The ‘worser’ your past is, the greater the impact.”  

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