Patrick couldn’t do anything without drugs

Patrick couldn’t do anything without alcohol or drugs. He ended up in prison regularly and was on the streets in Tel Aviv for seven years. In a Messianic rehabilitation centre he discovered that Yeshua is his Jewish Messiah. God found him and changed his heart.

Subtitles from youtube video

Shalom. My name is Patrick and I was born to a Jewish family in Holland, but I grew up in Australia and Israel mainly. I came to Israel at the age of nine into a family with no real love at home. There was a lot of love lacking. I looked for love in other places and I found it in crime and drugs and so forth. At the age of fourteen I was thrown out of the house because I was a problematic kid. Even doing my bar mitzvah I was doing my parents a favour that I was doing it. So that was the kind of the relations that we had at home. At the age of seventeen and a half I had such a hate for Israel that I just wanted to leave and I went to Holland, I left Israel to Holland. And that is where my hard drug life started because up till now it was only alcohol, weed and hash from the age of thirteen. When I came to Holland in ‘84 I started with heroin. I finished cook school and I knew that I wanted to cook, but everything I did I was doing actually always with drugs and alcohol, I couldn’t do stuff without it. So I needed a lot of money and I ended up in jails throughout Europe because of this money lust that I had for drugs, I needed it for drugs.

In 1990, my father actually came to take me out of one of the jails in Holland. I was in Holland in jail, finishing a term and I hadn’t seen my father since I was fourteen and I was twenty-three then. So I was kind of in shock that he came to pick me up, but I thought it would be better to come back to Israel because I was not once, I was three times arrested for armed robbery. So praise the Lord that the laws were in Holland quite lenient, so I didn’t get so much jail time but still I thought it would be better to start my life again in Israel and I came back in 1990 to Israel.

And I started working, but again I had my diplomas but I couldn’t do anything without drugs. I started working and I was very blessed, today I could see the Lord had His hand on me. I didn’t really do my best in my studies or anything, but I just had a gift of cooking. Anything I put my hand on, I succeeded in. I went to contests and I won two times third place in Israel in the Young Chef of the Year. And then I went to Frankfurt to the Olympic Ice Sculpture Competitions. I was just very good, I was very blessed in what I did and this created a pride issue in my life. And on top of that, because I was in the papers and I got on to the news, whatever I asked, people they would pay me. Throughout the years I got more and more money. And this again just made my ego stronger and stronger. I thought I was really something. Anything I asked, people would pay me.

But eventually through these big salaries, I lost myself in the drugs. I was just using more and more and more, because I got more money. And one day – after many rehabs, maybe thirty or forty secular rehabs, that I did and nothing, nothing helped me. I was on the streets in Tel Aviv for seven years. I ended up for seven years actually on the streets. But after all these rehabs nobody wanted to take me anymore to rehab. I was just agreeing with all the people that disagreed to take me back to kick off, to rehab.

And one day I met a man, a man of God, named Rod, brought me a Bible on the street. I was living on the streets for years and I met him maybe half a year before he gave me the Bible and we met a few times in a Baptist Church, a Filipino Baptist Church that used to give out food. And I came there for the food and not for the Word, of course. But it was interesting; I was intrigued by these people that seemed genuine. There was something totally different about these Christian believers, that they were in the Orthodox Jewish people. The Orthodox Jew would give you 200 Shekels and just walk through. The Christians wouldn’t give you money, but they would ask you about your true feelings and “How do you really feel? and can I help you with something to eat? Could we sit and read the Bible? Can I pray for you?” And these things made me think different about these people. There might be something there, is the way I thought. Anyway, Rod gave me a Bible and I was reading the Bible a bit. I didn’t remember what I was reading. I used to read like an hour before I met Rod and Rod really thought that I was remembering stuff. But of course God was at work. I was reading the Word, so that was the beginning of the washing of the Word in my life.

Actually three months after Rod gave me the Bible, he took me to a Messianic rehab, which he had told me about Messianic programs, but I didn’t understand what they were. And of course even I didn’t understand that Yeshua is my Jewish Messiah because the Jesus, or the Yeshua, that I could picture in my mind was still the blue eyed, blond Jesus on the cross and that didn’t seem normal for me. It still seemed like that Norwegian god that was here once, they took him away and now you want to bring him back. That was the way I felt. I felt that somebody even wanted to take my identity as a Jewish away. But I soon found my joy in Yeshua because I came to the House of Victory and I was quite sceptic still, but I was reading and I slowly created, or slowly had made a relationship with God through prayer. But still after two months I didn’t know if I wanted to stay there and I hadn’t received really a word or something that I could remember. I remember reading in Jeremiah 31:31 about the new covenant understanding that this is not something that the Christians, as so, have invented, it is written in their Old Testament. Reading the Isaiah 53 and really understanding that this is a human being, this is somebody, and not a nation as it is taught through the Jews, through the rabbis of course.

And then one day when I was reading through the book of John, was the first verse that really stuck in me, because I didn’t remember even what I was reading up till now, was in John 15:16 where God says “I chose you, you didn’t choose me.” This was perfect for me, because I was not looking for God and I didn’t understand even that Yeshua is my God. But it stuck with me for a couple of hours and then I was on my knees in the evening and I said God, “Atah Elohei Avraham Yitschak ve Ya’acov, you are my God, change me, because I can’t do it. I know you don’t like me this way.” And God has changed me. In Ezekiel it is written about the heart of stone changing into a heart of flesh. This has happened to me, I have had that open-heart surgery or that supernatural surgery, it has been changed. I have a very bad history, but God has forgiven me and He has changed my heart and given me compassion to people like myself and others in the dungeons, tied, or people that are in bondage and that can’t set themselves free. God makes ways where we can’t make ways. So praise the Lord for salvation and Yeshua, amen, His Son.