Every Youth: TENNESSEE

How does a boy go from playing little league baseball, to stealing cars, selling crack cocaine, robbery with a firearm, and kidnapping five people? That’s the question Patrick Davis has asked himself over and over again after being in and out of prison and having his brother murdered while he was locked up all before the age of nineteen.

“I can’t say I remember a certain time when things changed,” says Patrick. “Some people say you are a product of your environment. To an extent, I agree with that. But I think a lot of things contributed to my downfall – my father leaving the five of us, the abuse, the desire as a kid for acceptance but never receiving it. I never would’ve imagined one day I would be facing 45 years in prison for aggravated robbery with a gun, and five counts of kidnapping.”

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As he sat in his jail cell awaiting trial, Patrick had much to think about. He pondered the time he and his friends broke into the wrong car only to see a guy come out with a 9mm in his hand. He thought about his overdose on L.S.D. and being comatose for three days. His mind raced to the time he was pushing crack on an opponent’s turf when a rival dealer chased him off and ran his car off the road with Patrick being thrust through the windshield.

“It seemed like at one point there were so many people who wanted to kill me, I didn’t know how much longer I would live,” he confessed. “Sleeping with a gun, the paranoid feelings followed me everywhere.”

Suddenly, the sound of a key in his cell door brought him back to reality. It was a C.O. (Corrections Officer or Guard), “Patrick, I’ve got some bad news for you. Your brother, Larry, was stabbed to death last night in downtown Cleveland.” The news didn’t seem real. As hard as it was for Patrick to accept, his brother, Larry, was gone forever.

Immediately, he went into an animalistic rage, throwing chairs all over the room. It took about ten guards to get him back into his cell. He spent the next month in solitary confinement without having the opportunity to attend his brother’s funeral.

What happened next is something that Patrick says he would never have expected. He had an intimate encounter with the Creator of the Universe. After crying out to God in utter desperation, “Jesus Christ revealed Himself to me in a way I never dreamed was possible. It was purely supernatural. From that moment I was forever changed, and miraculous things started happening almost immediately.”

He began to study the Bible and cultivated a personal relationship with God. He began writing to relieve stress while in prison – a therapy that would ultimately lead to his artistic destiny. “I never had a dream to be a musician. It was therapeutic to me, like a release. I never would’ve believed that only 10 years from the day my brother died, I would be writing this and things would be the way they are now.”

After serving three years in a youth prison, Patrick left the Department of Corrections with a new vision for life. In the last few years, he and his wife Jackie have had the privilege of traveling all over the United States and other countries performing their music and sharing what Christ has done in their lives.

Patrick’s core passion is for people who are where he once was – “the broken, the lost, the outcasts, the rejected and forgotten, the imprisoned, the addicts. Who would’ve thought that one day someone in the United Kingdom would buy my record, or someone in Sri Lanka would be inspired by one of my songs. Or that Australia would welcome me to do a month long tour. Who was I? Just a kid from the streets of Cleveland that society had written off as a lost cause.”

Who is Patrick Davis?

In his words, “I am the rose that grew from concrete. I am a survivor of the cruel streets of southeast Cleveland. I am someone who has shattered statistics, broken the curse, lived through death. I am a warrior who triumphed over my enemies, I beat the odds, I walked through darkness, only to find the light. I’ve engaged in a battle that’s been raging since the beginning of time. I’ve overcome my past, my pain and my struggles. I should’ve died, overdosed, been hit by bullets, been sentenced to life, I should’ve went back to jail, I should’ve stayed in the streets, fulfilled statistics, stayed hooked on drugs, became what they said I would be… nothing. But I became something. He had a plan, a future, a destiny that He placed inside of me since the creation of the world. No bullet could stop it, no drug could sedate it, no person could steal it, no prison could bind it, no demon could hinder it, because greater is He that is in me than he that is in this world.”

Patrick sums up his musical aspirations with these words: “My music is reality, not entertainment. So when the lights go out, you will still hear my voice. The trends will die, the images pass, but His word will continue through the corridor of your mind and soul. It pierces and divides, it rips through lies. It brings men to their knees, the proud resist it, but the humble receive it. Amazing grace how sweet the sound… that saved a criminal like me. I once was lost, but now I’m found. Was blind but now I see.”