My story

Peter studied theology, in the past he used to take & grow marihuana. He also tried heroine, pervitine & LSD. Today he serves God as a preacher. He is a member of the community Maranatha (Presov, SK) Maranatha.

I was brought up in a good family with a traditional catholic faith, but I dint know God personally.

When I was in my teens, I started to rebel against the religion of my parents, as for me it was just a set of moral rules. I was listening music that celebrated completely different values - I was also a fan of several Satanist pop groups. I was meeting friends, whom we drank often with, later we mixed pills with alcohol. I was interested in a philosophy of anarchy, I started to smoke marihuana and I grew it, as well. When I was 19 I tried for the 1st time heroine. From the beginning I was afraid to shoot it, so I just smoked it. Later I tried also pervitine and LSD. My diagnosis was „F19“. That means addiction on more psychotropic and narcotic substances. For me it was important to get out of the bad and grey reality.

When I was 23 I already experienced two stays in psychiatry and also 3 months long therapy at anti-narcotic programme (in Predna Hora, SK). I was caught by police in 1997 with nearly 2 kilos of marihuana; still I had in a cottage more plants, to produce some 7-8 kilos of the drug. Miraculously I was given a 15-month sentence – with condition to 2 years. There was even a short spot on TV news, about the fact that I was caught by Police. Few days after this incident after I had taken enormous dose of alcohol and pervitine I put my hands into voltage box (as I was under inquiry at large). I think the fact that I had survived was God’s protection. At that time I thought that even death does not want me. Few days after this I left for the above mentioned therapy. When I came back, I was decided to change my life – however, it lasted for 5 days only, after that it was even worse than before. I couldn’t imagine life without drugs – rather to dope and die.

In 1998 (it was the year of Holy Spirit) I was invited for an evangelisation meeting “FIRE”. Immediately when I entered there, I felt God’s presence and it was even stronger during the praise. I have realised, that feeling of HIS presence is the ´drug´ I was looking for the whole life. I felt that this is the paradise, not the one I had in drugs. People were praying for me there; when they put hands on me, I understood that the person of Jesus Christ is there in front of me. Not as a hallucination, not as something that can be perceived by physical senses. I understood His presence by my spirit, by my heart – you can call it anyhow – my perception of God was for me more realistic than anything that I called reality until then.

Although I wanted to remain a whizz I started to cry under the power of His Love, my tears were falling as a brook. I stood in the truth of my pure unworthiness and at the same time I felt His huge love. I felt that all the bad was melted away from my life. I told him in my heart: “Jesus, I want you. I want to be yours, please, do change me!” In that moment the Christ’s words came true at me: “So for anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation: the old order is gone and the new being is there to see” (2 Cor 5, 17).

I was set free in that moment and supernaturally healed from narcotics and alcohol, even from smoking. When I was leaving this meeting, I threw the box of cigarettes away. I didn’t have to make any commitment, didn’t need to force myself – suddenly I had feeling, that I had never smoked, have not taken drugs. I was a new person indeed! I was set free from fornication, masturbation and thanks to God’s mercy I have never returned to these sins again.

It may look like I am boasting – well, I would like to boast – as St. Paul said – through the cross of our Lord, Jesus Christ. (Gal 6, 14) Psychiatrists tell that drug addicted people are completely healed only when they are buried. I have to admit – they are right, but I have to confirm the God’s word saying: “we were buried with him, so that as Christ was raised from the dead, we too should begin living a new life”.(Rom 6, 4) It is all about the fact, that HE had died for me and granted me new life. In October it will be 12 years since I was set free and I have been living for Lord.

After this experience I started to attend a group that organised evangelisation meeting, where I met the Lord (Maranatha) and I have been attending it since then. Since I come from Kosice (a city about 30 km distant), now I am participating here in the group called Lighthouse.
About a week after my healing, I was giving my testimony in front of about 100 people from Maranatha. Shortly after that I started to receive invitations into schools and to evangelisation meetings, conferences, into parishes or for confirmands. I had also the grace to tell my story several times in Christian Radio Lumen. Soon alongside my testimony I started to preach, later also forming Word. The leader of our group, Sister Helena, perceived my vocation is to preach. She suggested me to study theology. So I applied approximately 3 years after the healing and graduated at catholic theology in 2006. Since I met our Lord I had many opportunities to preach to thousands of people from bigger or smaller groups and meetings.

Before I completely fell for drugs, I loved riding motorbikes. This is still my only “normal” hobby from the old times. Therefore I would like to emphasise, that Jesus doesn’t take our hobbies that are ok – quite the reverse. I had sprayed a Bible quotation on my motorbike, the verse from John (11, 25): “anyone, who believes in me, even though this person dies, will live”. Jesus Christ” People are often asking me why I have it there and how serious I am about it. And this is the opportunity for me to tell them my story – as they are asking for it themselves.

On 31st Oct 2011 I got engaged to Veronika. We met on one of the evangelisation meetings. We love each other  and in September of this year we plan to get married. I respect her not only because she supports me in the evangelisation service, but she also cooperates with me in this area. The Lord strongly uses her when we are praying for people and their personal needs (we are praying for people mainly to be filled by Holy Spirit).

Well, I had also “dry” periods and time of disappointment. The most difficult for me was the fact, when after 4 years after being set free from drugs, the doctors found in my blood the virus of hepatitis, type C. It was my heritage for the previous way of my life and from some contaminated syringe. I was really down and I asked: “Lord, why are you drawing me the bill for my sins after 4 years? Why haven’t you healed me from this offense?”

The treatment of this illness takes one year, but the success is not guaranteed. The side effects of the treatment pills caused that I had permanently temperature 38°C for one year. I had to live, work and study normally, during this time. Apart from that these pills are affecting also psyche and caused me permanent depression. It happened one day at the end of that treatment period, after a week of tough depression: when I came home from my job, I fell on my bed as usual. As I was lying, suddenly I had a feeling as if God got lost, as if He doesn’t exist. I have experienced various states in my life, but there was nothing worse than this particular one. It was as if in one second all my beloved were died and everything I like was away. Suddenly - there was no point, no reason to live however, the imagination that I wouldn’t live was absurd as well. I do not know, whether it lasted an hour or it just seemed to me to be such a long time. But in that vacuum it came into my mind one of the philosophical arguments of St. Thomas Aquinas: “there is a reason for each moving, it is caused by another moving being and in this chain it is not possible to continue to infinity. In the final result we have to admit the existence of the first “mover”, that is the reason of everything - the perfect and since ages existing being, that is God”. I also thought about a verse from Romans 1, 20: “since the creation of the world, the invisible existence of God and his everlasting power have been clearly seen by the mind’s understanding of created things”. And the most clearly and loudly I ever heard in my heart: “I know that I have a living Defender” (Job 19, 25). Again I was enfolded by His beautiful presence, as if the sun comes out of the dark clouds. As many of His “revelations” also this “hiding from my sight” just confirmed to me David’s words and attitudes: “I say to the LORD, “You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing.”

I am very grateful today for this “learned lesson” (btw – the one-year treatment was successful). Today I know it is real, when I praise the Lord by saying: “I cannot live without you!” Honestly – I am not a mystique, I think I haven’t even come nearer to their experiences. There is a list of my faults I cannot state here – as I would exceed the page-length limit of this story. As St. Paul said: “Not that I have secured it already, not yet reached my goal … I am racing towards the finishing point to win the prize of God´s heavenly call” (Phil 3, 12&14). I have passion to be a God’s tool, a mediator in meeting the living God. People from the world are looking for a living God, for his touch. I am sure, that the sentence: “I thirst for God, the living God” is not just a call of a fanatic 3,000 yrs. ago. This is and always was the call of each human soul. And I do long to help them to meet each other.

In case, you have never done it, please, do stop for a short while and pray:br> “Lord Jesus Christ, thank you for dying for me on the cross and for your resurrection from the dead so that I have new and eternal life. I am putting all my life into your hands; please do lead me in my life and after its end to you into heaven. Amen”

Mgr. Peter Lipták