3 Divorces. Drugs. Women. I thought I Was Beyond Saving...
-
This article has been created from the full text transcript of the TruWitness podcast episode featuring Peter Osselaer. AI has been used to clean the text, but all content is original.
In Peter’s story, he struggles through a childhood of abuse and bullying to three divorces, two bankruptcies, and a deathbed moment that was supposed to be his last — Peter spent twenty years cycling between faith and destruction, convinced God was finally done with him. What he didn't know was that the darkest point of his life was about to become the very thing that brought him all the way home.
-
My very first human memory is asking Jesus to come into my heart at 4 or 5 years old in a little pizza shop in Capitola, California. I always considered that God's greatest gift to me. Who at 4 or 5 years old can even fully comprehend what that means? But I just knew that God loved me.
Then, as I grew older, the bullying started. I grew up as an 80s kid, so no one cared about your emotions back then. The bullying was physical and it was merciless — I've had vertebrae dislocated, I've been jumped. Guys literally kicking you on the ground because they don't like you and you're different. I also grew up in what I call a religious family — and there's a huge difference between religion and relationship. It was all about what you do and don't do to be a good Christian, with the iron rod. I never understood what a relationship with Jesus was. I just knew I loved God. I have memories of being six years old, putting a worship tape into my Walkman and riding my bike down the street, praising Jesus.
But then I entered the real world, where people who love Jesus aren't well-received. The bullying began at school, and the abuse at home. My dad was very abusive, and my mom facilitated it. My dad was a Special Forces Vietnam veteran — a captain in the Army — and he got Agent Orange from Vietnam, which is where his cancer came from. He was on 18 different steroids a day, in so much pain, with so much PTSD. It was like a hair-trigger anger. He truly believed I was trying to separate him and my mom, and it was just a vicious cycle that got worse and worse.
He died in front of me when I was 17, and it was like a big weight was just lifted. I cried one time over that. Then my mom moved to Washington and said, "You're on your own." I joined the Army — I wanted to be an Army Ranger. But I blew my back out in Fort Knox and never even made it out.
I went home, got a sales job, and eventually became the number two selling personal trainer in our division worldwide. I bought into that culture, working 90 hours a week. I became a workaholic. I spent the next almost 20 years going through various sales jobs, wrote a couple books after breaking some international sales records — a lot of success, but a lot of ups and downs. Two bankruptcies, a DUI, assault and battery arrests.
The chaos of my childhood was just the warm-up. I loved God, but I hated the church and I hated Christians. I didn't want anything to do with organized religion. I had fooled myself into thinking that as long as I believed Jesus was the Son of God, I was saved — so me and God were good, and I'd just go live like the world. At least there I was accepted.
That caused so much depression, anxiety, bitterness, and anger. I was looking for all these other things — the drugs, the alcohol, the pornography, the sex outside of marriage — trying to fill the void that only a relationship with God can fill. It didn't work, because I always knew my place was at home with the Lord. I always knew it. Then I'd go back to the church, but the church was still broken. And it was this vicious cycle for 20 years.
In my early 20s, I tried to take my life. I ended up putting myself in a coma for a week in Zion Hospital in San Diego. I woke up with tubes coming out of me everywhere, going, Lord, why did you save me?
My absolute lowest point came in my late 30s. I got drunk, got violent, got into a physical altercation — my hand split open, an infection got into my bones, and I ended up in the ER for six months on my deathbed. They said there was a very good chance I could die and that I was 100% going to lose my hand. While I was in the hospital, my third wife said she'd had enough, filed for divorce, emptied the house and the bank account. I got divorced officially while I was in the ER.
When I got out, I really believed that God was done with me. I'd gone through three divorces, sleeping with so many people, extramarital affairs, drugs, alcohol — just the complete wake of destruction I left behind me. I planned to spend the last bit of money I had partying like I'd never partied before, and then kayak out from Fiesta Island during sunset and shoot myself. That was the most hopeless point in my life.
But then I found out I was going to be a dad. And I told myself my son was not going to grow up with a dad who committed suicide while his mom was pregnant. I didn't want my son to see what I had watched growing up. And I just said, Lord, please take me back. Not for me, please take me back for my son. I want to bring my son up to see a father who loves Christ.
That's when the Bible verse came that the Lord restores the years the locust has eaten. And He just restored me. The depression was gone. The anxiety was gone. It was something that happened inside of me that would be a disservice for me to even try to put into the English language. It was indescribable. Something had changed from the inside.
I started talking to God daily. Not as this God in the sky, but as a dad. Okay, here's what I've got going today. Here's what we need to do. And I started taking time to listen, falling in love with Bible studies, just absorbing them. That's when I finally understood what relationship means: communication, listening, and talking. Prayer is talking. Reading the Bible and listening to teaching is listening. You can't just do one or the other. I didn't understand that, and that's why I was back and forth between the church and the world for so long.
A couple of years ago, I found myself drinking again. It wasn't to numb and cope like before. It was just compromise. I didn't realize what was happening, and the next thing I knew, I was going back to a happy hour every day. One night I ended up drunk, got into a physical altercation, and assaulted people. I went to my pastor and confessed. I said, I need a spiritual rehab, so I rented a house in a beach town in Mexico for a month and went through really bad withdrawals for that first week. I told the Lord, I'm done with the drinking. But these two things — the alcohol and the marijuana — these are my 1%. I'm giving God 99% of my life, but I'm still holding on to the 1%.
In Mexico, God said to me very clearly: You're saved. But if you want to be in ministry, I want your first fruits. I want the best you have to give me. And I said, Lord, I can't imagine getting to the end of my life and standing in front of you and you saying, "You could have done this, I could have used you for this, but you exchanged it for marijuana." So I said, Lord, let me not sleep and let me have stomach issues till the day I die. I want to be in ministry. I want everything I've gone through, all the mental health stuff, all of it, to be ways I can now relate to people and give them hope.
I said, "Okay, Lord, I'm done." And I haven't gone back.
The marijuana, something I had held onto for over 25 years, something I thought I couldn't live without… He just took the desire away. Supernatural. A modern day healing. And when I came back from Mexico, I didn't come back and start a ministry. God put me in a season of patience and waiting on Him. I came back and just waited on the Lord. I joined two life groups, I served, I was faithful with small things. I started a WhatsApp group and just posted daily, and that group grew to almost 30 people getting plugged into Bible teachings. And it just slowly, faithfully grew. I didn't try to get ahead of the Lord.
I've been rich twice and poor three times. I've partied at $10,000 VIP tables in Vegas, feet away from celebrities. I've done all the drugs, all the alcohol, driven the super expensive cars. I've done all of those things. And I can tell you that the best moment I've ever had in the world pales in comparison — it's not even comparable to the joy and the excitement that I have living in a daily relationship with the Lord, and knowing that there's a God who loves me.
Something else has happened too, something I never asked for. There's just this burning desire to love people now. It was like John going from the Son of Thunder to the disciple of love. And it wasn't something I went to God and said, I want to just love people. God did it to me. I came with surrender and I came with brokenness, and He did all the change. I don't want the followers. I don't want the subscribers. I don't want the pedestal or the podium or the pulpit. I just want God to use my life to point people to Jesus — to tell them about the joy and the forgiveness and the peace and the happiness and the mercy that's waiting for you if you just open your heart.
The Lord restored the years the locust had eaten, and it was literally like a modern day healing. The depression was gone. The anxiety was gone. It was something that happened inside of me that it would be a disservice for me to even try to put into the English language. It was indescribable, like something had changed from the inside. I didn't go clean up my life first. He just met me there. That's what I finally understood about who God really is: as a father, I just want to sit in a ball pit and have my son jump into my arms, and that's exactly what God wants with us. My son is now five years old, and I treasure the relationship I get to have with him.
My Advice:
If you're sitting there thinking this could never be your story, I want to tell you it 100% can be your story — because Jesus promises it. But He doesn't promise that everything in your life is now going to be perfect. For some people, your life is going to get harder. The Bible says to count your costs before you follow Him. It's going to cost you something. Think about when Jesus walked up to the lame man on the side of the road and asked him, do you want to be healed? That's what Jesus is asking you right now. Because being healed means now you have to get up. Now you have to walk. You can't be the victim the rest of your life. And to whom much is given, much is required.
The biggest trap I want to warn you about is the 1%. Giving God 99% is good — that's beneficial for your life. But God wants the 1%. He wants all of you. He wants you to be hot or to be cold. But God does not want you coming to Him saying, I'm going to give you my Sunday mornings, I'm going to join a home group, I might even crack open that Bible — while you're still holding on to those things. That's what I did for twenty years and it kept me in a vicious cycle. God wants your whole heart, broken and open, not a negotiation.
The first step is just an honest, raw conversation with God. Think of it like a fitness transformation. It starts with looking in the mirror and saying, I'm tired of this. I'm sick of feeling this way. You do that same honest assessment spiritually and you say, Lord, I'm tired of the depression, I'm tired of the anxiety, I'm tired of the alcoholism. And you leave nothing on the table. No arguing, no pleading your case, no negotiating. Just humility and brokenness. Because Jesus stands at the door of your heart and knocks, and you open that door not through religiosity or spiritual pride — you open it by being broken and crying out to the Lord. And when you get to that place, that's when He responds.