Can God Really Help Me?

Taariq Patel was dying. Several of his friends had fatally overdosed, and he knew that the drugs that enslaved him would kill him too.

But it was Friday night, and his mom always had food in the fridge. As he rummaged through the kitchen, he heard a murmur in the living room. His mother’s living room was full of about 15 people, digging into the Word. Patel, knowing deep down that he was dying, wanted out of his life of addiction. So, for reasons unknown to him at the time, Patel sat in the back row of the Bible study. As he listened to the familiar Bible stories, he began to wonder, “Can God really help me?”  

Taariq Patel was born in England in 1981 to a father with strong Muslim roots, and a mother who had strayed from her Adventist upbringing. Patel, his twin brother, and their older brother were raised as Muslims. Patel says they grew up reading the Qur’an, learning the Arabic alphabet and prayers, and going to the mosque every day.  

When Patel was one, the family moved to Hartford, Connecticut, where his two sisters were born. They regularly attended the mosque with their father. When Patel was about 7 years old, his mother went through her belongings and found a book in a suitcase that her mother had placed there. The book? Steps to Christ. When his mother read the book, “Her heart just melted” Patel says. “It broke her heart and she fell in love with God.” She decided to get baptized, and when Patel’s father found out, “He threatened her life and showed her the knife he was going to use on her,” Patel says. Despite that, his mother remained steadfast in her decision to give her life to the Lord. The next morning, she got us dressed, and “My dad walked out of the house on Sabbath morning, quiet like a lamb,” Patel says. After her baptism, even Patel’s older brother chose to follow Christ. 

Life in Saudi 

Around this time, Patel’s father was offered a job in Saudi Arabia, and in 1989, the family packed up and moved. Patel’s mother had many spiritual books, and she did not want to leave them behind, so she packed as many as she could. While they were traveling, she felt convicted to dress as Muslim women, which was something she’d never done. “She put on a hijab and covered herself,” says Patel.  

When the family arrived in Saudi Arabia, “A bunch of guys with AK-47s took our first suitcase on the conveyor, unwrapped a sweater, and they found a Bible,” Patel says. But seeing a Muslim family, they let the family through—never realizing they carried suitcases full of the Spirit of Prophecy.  

In the apartment complex, Patel’s mother diligently led the children in secret worships, giving her children Bible studies when her husband was gone. When their father came home, they would hide the books, and pretend they were playing.  

 “My mom used to call us undercover agents for God,” Patel says, “and we took it seriously.”  

The secret worships, unfortunately, were discovered by Patel’s father. He confiscated the books and took them and the children along with him to work. His coworkers would “pick out different confiscated books and start reading them,” Patel says. “They were talking about them. I like to tell people that the Lord borrowed those books because a woman couldn’t go in there.”  

Separation and Hardship 

It wasn’t sustainable to keep the children with him at work, and as soon Patel’s mother was left alone with them, she resumed worships. One day, Patel’s mother finished a worship about Joseph, a boy taken away from his family, and just after the worship, Patel’s father came home and told the boys they were leaving.  

He took his sons to an Islamic boarding school in India. Patel had just turned nine years old. For some reason, Patel and his brothers couldn’t stay at that boarding school, so they went “to one village, to the next… we were just three boys practically by ourselves just bouncing around from village to village.” They bathed in wells, and Patel didn’t brush his teeth for seven months.  

While in India, Patel came down with malaria. Two teenage students carried Patel miles to the nearest doctor. There, Patel was “placed on a table,” and given an injection with a large needle. They held Patel down as he screamed, but that injection saved his life. “I like to think that maybe those two guys were angels that God sent to protect us,” he says.  

For seven months, Patel’s mother didn’t know where her boys were. Islamic evangelists would continually knock on her door, telling her that if she would convert to Islam, her boys would be returned to her. Meanwhile, her children were far away, covered in lice, and sleeping in huts made from cow manure and hay. Her faith did not waver, and in 1990, she asked God for an army to save her children.  

God’s Intervention 

In 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. The invasion caused instability in the Saudi Arabia. Bomb sirens were going off, and Patel’s father extracted the children from India. He took his family back to England. “My mom would always say that [invasion] was an answer to her prayers,” Patel says.  

In England, Patel’s mother divorced his father, and moved herself and her five children to Elmira, New York. “We lived in some grimy places, with roaches and rats, but it was a five-star hotel compared to India,” Patel says.    

Patel was enrolled in the local public school, as the private school was too expensive, and there he became “indoctrinated in hip hop music,” he says.  “It became my identity and my life. I started to smoke weed.”  

The family moved to California when Patel was roughly a sophomore in high school. By this time, Patel had begun smoking cigarettes and “was always high.” He rapped, made music, and sunk deeper into drugs.  

After graduating high school, Patel joined the Army, and during his time in the Army he began experimenting with more potent drugs, “I’d black out and wake up in the morning, wondering why I was in the bushes. I didn’t know how I got there.”  

“I was in darkness,” Patel says, “I didn’t have a father in my life. I carried pain in my heart, and I just had this mindset that you got to tie up your boots and just keep pushing forward, but I was burying things. I was a time bomb.”  

Patel was in a bad place. His digestive system wasn’t working properly. His friends were overdosing. He tried rehab and clinics, but nothing worked. Three years later, “I was drooling on myself in public, and there were holes in my shoes, because I was living just to get high.”  

While Patel spiraled, his mother never stopped praying. “She said to the Lord, ‘You delivered my sons out of Egypt only for them to be slaves in Babylon.’ God assured her ‘I’m not done with your family. I’m going to save your children,’” so in faith, she continued to pray. At this time, Patel’s twin had children, and his mother began to take her grandkids to church. Patel’s mother had married a pastor, and every Friday there was a Bible study in their home.  

Patel, who was using all of his money for drugs, would frequently come over and find food that his mom had cooked. As he sat in the back row of the Friday night Bible studies, he began to hear some of the same stories he had heard as a child in Saudi Arabia, the stories of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He began to wonder, Is God real, and can He really help me?  

“The word of God was like daggers piercing through my foggy mind,” Patel says.  

His mother urged him to go to rehab, but Patel refused. On the verge of losing his job, and with eviction notices posted on his door, Patel prayed. “I started to practically curse God,” he said. “I was going to lose my job, lose my apartment, lose everything, so I prayed. I was disrespectful and rude. I asked him why he wasn’t in my life and then I just started to weep like a baby. I said, ‘God, if you can save my job, I promise I’ll go to rehab and read my Bible every day while I’m there.’”  

An Unbelievable Answer 

The next day, Patel told his HR manager that he was addicted to drugs and needed help. The manager then told him that there was a policy that employees who were struggling with addiction could be sent to a rehab of their choice—and the company would pay 85% of the bill. In addition, once the employee is released, their job would be waiting for them. Once the HR manager and Patel finished speaking, the manager went into her cabinet and pulled out a Bible. “The Holy Spirit has been working in my life,” she told Patel, “and the Holy Spirit wants to work in your life.” Patel was in shock. “I tried to be a tough guy, but I had tears coming out of my eyes. I couldn’t believe it, because I prayed to God that Sunday night to save my job, but I didn’t know that God wasn’t just trying to save my job, he was saving my life.”  

Patel checked into the St. Helena hospital in Northern California—an Adventist hospital—on January 3, 2011. His mom sent him with a lesson quarterly and a Bible, and “I kept my promise,” Patel said. “I wore out the Bible. Within the first week, it never left my hand.”  

Soon, other patients came asking Patel to teach them to pray and read the Bible. There was a Sabbath School program called Vineyards and Friends in the hospital, and Patel would attend. By the end of the program, about 15-20 others were attending with him. Nicknamed Pastor T by his friends in rehab, Patel said, “That year, God changed my life. The more I held onto His word, the more He gave me courage, hope, and strength.”  

When Patel was released from rehab, he connected with a young woman whom he had previously been romantically interested in when he was in 9th grade. “I was shy; I couldn’t talk to her, but in 9th grade, I really had a crush on her. She just always left an impression on me.” They had connected briefly when he was in the military but he hadn’t seen her in 15 years.  

The two reconnected and held Bible studies over the phone—Patel was in California, and she was in Florida. “The Lord would have it that she would be my wife, that I would marry the woman of my dreams. God cleaned me up first. You don’t know what your heart needs, but God does.”  

On January 5, 2013, Patel married his wife, Igdaly, just two years and two days after going to rehab. Patel’s wife was called to work at Pacific Union College (PUC) in Angwin, California. Patel enrolled in PUC, switching from religion to theology after a year.  

To get to the college, you have to drive past the Saint Helena hospital. “Every day I passed that hospital as a student at PUC,” Patel says. During his time in the area, he became an assistant chaplain at the hospital. “I used to go to rehab, and then I became one of the teachers. I would go and share and give my testimony to those who were in the very program that I graduated from.”  

In that very same hospital, Patel’s son, Ishmael, was born. “I tell people that my son was born in the hospital where his dad was born again.” Since then, Patel and his wife have welcomed two daughters, Viviana and Tirzah. 

After studying theology at PUC, Patel completed his Master of Divinity degree from the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary in Berrien Springs, Michigan, in 2019. He served in the Iowa-Missouri Conference for six years before being called to the Michigan Conference in 2024, where he still faithfully serves.