‘I was high on drugs but could not stop talking about God’

As Bobbi Kumari’s face comes into view on my screen, I think to myself that she is possibly the most beautiful person I have ever met. And my immediate – unconscious – response is to feel intimidated. But intimidating Bobbi is not, and, in the hour or so that we chatted via Zoom, I landed on exactly why I had such an extreme reaction: Bobbi radiates Christ from within and her outward appearance fully embodies what lies beneath. 

Challenging the lies around sexuality

Bobbi trained at London College of Fashion, has a fashion management degree and her own clothing line. And yet the first thing we talk about is nothing to do with whether black is the new black; we go straight in at the deep end to discuss the spiritual attack Bobbi has faced while preparing her Sacred Sexuality Conference*.

She says: “I’m definitely feeling the heat with organising this conference. In the first few weeks of beginning to pioneer it, I could feel a certain level of warfare. Navigating in this realm of sexual intimacy is definitely a lonely walk, because a lot of people don’t want to touch this stuff – even amongst Christians, you can tell they don’t really want to go there. And you get a sense that you’re actually breaking ground. So it definitely is tough.”

I recall seeing an Instagram post** advertising the conference, which is pretty explicit in stating that there are “lies” the world tells us about sex – and the sex industry, intimacy, porn, gender and other topics we avoid discussing in church or church settings. It appears to be controversial and I wonder how Bobbi feels to be making a stand in quite an untapped area in the Church.

“There’s still quite a lot of shame and awkwardness attached to it. So, yeah, it’s definitely hard ground to break. But I feel such a grace for it. Like, I know that I’m called to it, so it’s good and I see so many breakthroughs and so many lives changed. And because of that, even though there is warfare, it’s all good. 

“I know it’s stuff that Christians really don’t want to touch and I know it’s offensive to the world. But I don’t care. You know, I really, really don’t care in the sense that there’s too much at stake. There are too many lives that have been destroyed by this. So I’m still pushing through whatever the consequences might be.”

At the age of about 16, I decided that Jesus was spoiling my fun

Finding faith – and then turning away

Bobbi speaks with a passion that reveals her understanding of the calling God has placed on her, and so I ask about that faith journey. 

“I was brought up in a Hindu home and I remember at the age of eleven that I could never really get my head around Hinduism. I’d sometimes do the celebrations and dress up in all the clothes for the festivals and stuff. But I could never get my head around this idea that we were worshipping statues. And I wondered: ‘How can these statues hear you? How can they see you when they’ve got no eyes or ears and they’re, you know, made out of metals?’ 

I’d be high in clubs, but I could not stop talking about God

“Then about six months later, I was twelve then, someone knocked at my door and invited me to church and they told me about Christianity and this living Saviour. As soon as they told me that I was like: ‘Oh my gosh. I want to know this God because he can see and he can hear.’ And so I became a Christian when I was 12. 

“But by that time, I’d already been molested, I was already drinking, I was already smoking, I was already sneaking out of my bedroom window. And so even though I was going to church, and I was now this Christian, I was also at the same time living this double life of really perverse things. At the age of about 16, I decided that Jesus was spoiling my fun and I decided not to be a Christian anymore. Then followed about ten years of pure hedonism.”

While Bobbi’s Hindu parents had had no qualms about her going to church they themselves did not attend. However, this changed when, “while I was backslidden”, the same woman who had knocked at Bobbi’s door when she was twelve now led her mum to the Lord. 

A new path

But Bobbi was still on her own path: “Now I’m in my 20s; my life is a mess. I’ve had two abortions; I’m all over the place. But my mum began to pray for me. And then one day, she asked me to go to a prayer meeting at her house. I went just to honour her.

I ended up having an encounter with the Lord there, which brought me back into a journey with him again, after about twelve years. That started me back on the track to come to know him as an adult. And then I actually surrendered my life fully to him, about four years after that first encounter at my mum’s house.”

We reflect that the journey of faith is not always as straightforward as: said the prayer, accepted Jesus and lived happily ever after. Bobbi’s openness about her own story is proof of that and the work she does now has also taken its twists and turns to become what is today. 

“So I got saved at 28 and I had a fashion degree but I barely scraped through the course. I was high on drugs every day, and drunk. I literally did not care about studying whatsoever. But as an Indian, going to university is really your only way of not living at home; you have to study. It was basically just my passport to freedom!

“I had this degree in fashion management that I did not care about, but I had obviously encountered God at my mum’s house – although I didn’t change overnight. Jesus was now under my skin, even though I was still drinking and sleeping around; I’d be high in clubs, but I could not stop talking about God.

One night in a club, I think we’d taken ketamine and I could not function at all. But I remember having this conversation with a girl in a toilet, about teaching, and she said: ‘You should become a teacher.’ When I actually got saved, and I said to the Lord: ‘What do you want me to do with my life?’ I felt he reminded me of this conversation from when I was off my head on ketamine! 

What God places in my heart to do is always bigger than what is coming in

“I looked into it and discovered I could only teach in the area of my degree so I ended up becoming a fashion teacher. Because I had never actually committed to my studies, God used those eight years as a fashion teacher to train me, while I was training my students.”

Learning to rely on God

Bobbi’s experience is a fascinating insight into the way God works and can speak to us no matter what situation we are in. But her decision to step out in faith doesn’t end there. God still had much more for her, as he asked her to really put her trust in him. “After eight years of working as a teacher, the Lord literally one day said to me: ‘You’re about to resign.’” 

Having never experienced this for myself, I ask Bobbi if it was an actual audible voice. “Yes. It was an audible voice and it came at a time when I had lost my passion for teaching. I didn’t want to be there anymore. Because I was such an evangelist, I was preaching everywhere in school, praying with all the students and getting in a lot of trouble. 

“I knew that I needed to leave that school but I was just waiting on God to give me the green light. So when I heard him say: ‘You’re about to resign’, I resigned. But he never told me what to do next!” 

I ask if she had any second thoughts about her decision during this period of uncertainty. “In that moment, I immediately thought: ‘How can I live without this salary?’ I did wrestle during that resignation period because the school kept offering me positions that it made no earthly sense to refuse. But I also knew I was more scared to not be in God’s will than to live without the salary.”

Her obedience to trust God led to Bobbi simply turning to her talent: fashion. “The only thing I felt peace about was creating, so that’s how Living in Light began. It started with me producing four pairs of trousers and I created a fashion line and then, over time, people began to buy my clothing. Then that turned into an image consultancy and fashion workshops. That developed into me ministering about intimacy and then I started a podcast. Every single time the Lord would just breathe on something, and it would get added under the Living in Light banner so the vision kept growing and growing.”

Talk about living by faith. “Yeah, absolutely. And even though at the moment I have a regular salary – which I haven’t had for ten years – I’m still living by faith. Because if the Lord said to me tomorrow: ‘Bobbi, you’re going to resign’, I’d be doing the journey again. And even with organising this Sacred Sexuality conference, all of it is by faith. With every bit of money that comes in, it’s never like: ‘Oh, I’m comfortable, I can rely on that.’ Because what God places in my heart to do is always bigger than what is coming in. So that journey of faith never really stops.”