"ATHEIST MEETS JESUS - AND SEES THE BATTLE OVER HIS SOUL - Christian testimony"

I'm looking at my sister, she's praying for me with her eyes closed, and it's just this kind of awkward scene. And then I start getting angry, and I don't want to be there anymore, and I want to leave, and I kind of try to get up and go, and I can't move. But my sister is still praying, you know, like she knows something else is going to happen. And as she's praying, I start to smell this awful smell, and I still have my eyes closed, but sort of in my spirit, I can begin to see there's these people coming. But this one in particular was very, very tall, and he comes slowly into the room, and he's sort of standing in the doorway. You know, he's wearing dark-covered robes, if you can call them that. But I see him there, and it's this funny feeling of like, I should be afraid of you, but I'm not afraid of you. And not only that, but I know who you are. Fourth of July weekend, 2010, is when my whole life changed. I'm going to share that story with you. So I was born in Portland, Oregon, raised in Washington State in the U.S. I was raised in a Christian home. We were a Lutheran family. We went to church on a regular basis, Wednesdays, Sundays, evenings, you name it, we were in the church building. It was very much a part of our lives culturally. But there was only one problem, and that was that I had never actually met Jesus. I was religious by culture, not because I had met Him. My process of coming to know the Lord is a long one, and it actually starts with my sister denying the faith. I have an older sister, she's two years older than me. In high school, she begins to question her faith and the faith of our family, chooses to not identify as a Christian and instead pursue other things, pursuing Buddhism, pursuing the occult, spirituality, all different things. And she begins to practice these other faiths in our house. And when that happened, stuff started happening in the house that no one could explain. I remember actually some very keen memories of waking up in the middle of the night, and you're thirsty, and you go to the kitchen, and you're trying to go get a glass of milk or something, and then feeling like someone was following me around the house. And I would turn around to see who was there, and there wouldn't be anyone there. But I would have this feeling of fear that someone was right there behind me and was going to get me. I wouldn't know until many years later why that was the case. But the more my sister practiced these things, the more strange things happened in our home. She ends up being diagnosed with some mental illness, chooses to go to university, goes to university. You know, for me and my family, it was sort of like, oh, that funny sister is finally out of the house. So what ends up happening is several years later, I'm pursuing a life just like anyone else. So I rejected the faith when I was in high school, went off to college, and I lived a life just to gratify all my desires. Anything that I wanted, anything that I took pleasure in, I just pursued after it. So for me, it was relationships with women. It was pornography. It was drinking and partying. It was pride, wanting to be successful. I was a college track athlete. And so that was my whole life, and I really had no desire to find anything else. And so I felt like I really had everything, but then at the same time, I didn't. And the more I pursued this lifestyle, the more I was pulled down, the more I felt empty in my heart and wanting to fill myself up and to get the things that I wanted, thinking it would make it all better. It was actually at the lowest point of my life, what I would say just in my relationships and the choices that I was making, I got a phone call from my sister. This is the same sister that everyone thought kind of went crazy. And she calls me and says, Greg, I've met Jesus. And I was taken aback, like, what do you mean you met Jesus? I know the struggles in your life, the things that you have pursued. You were adamant against the church. You pursued all these other faiths. You struggled with mental illness, all these things. And what do you mean you met Jesus? And so she told me her story. She told me the story of pursuing the things she was pursuing, meeting a friend who introduced her to a local church and there at the local church, entering into a somewhat of a counseling relationship with one of the pastors there. And that pastor was able to explain the gospel, was able to talk to her and help her process things in her life. And what ended up happening is that pastor identified that there were spirits at work inside of my sister that was not the Lord. And over the course of several meetings and several months and through prayer and all these things, she ends up being delivered from all these spirits. I believe it was six spirits were cast out of her. And when they were cast out, she came back into her right mind. A lot of the things that she had struggled with, with depression or or really radical mood swings, whatever it was, it all just sort of left. And she's explaining this to me and she's explaining that the pastor told her the gospel. And after she was delivered, the pastor explained that it was Jesus who set her free from all these things. It was Jesus who transformed her life, delivered her and has now provided a way for her to be saved, to be forgiven, to be new. And I'm just sitting there on the phone and confused, I would say, was the emotion I felt, confused by the story I was hearing, frustrated that my sister, who I once thought was kind of crazy, is now acting very still kind of crazy, but in a different way right now about the gospel. And and I just didn't know what to do with it. And then she said, Jesus wants to introduce himself to you. For me, that was a line that was crossed. I didn't want to meet Jesus. I wanted to continue running after women. I wanted to continue doing the things that I was doing. I didn't want to give up my life. I love my life. And so when she said that Jesus wants to meet me, that that was not good news for me. But my sister actually continued to pursue me. She loved me. She sent me messages on my phone. She would call me. She would encourage me. She would tell me that Jesus is real, the gospel is real, that he really does want to meet you. And whenever you're ready, Jesus will come and he'll introduce himself to you and you can meet him and have an opportunity to come into his kingdom. Again, this this language is weird to me at the time, but she was very consistent at it. About a year goes by and we're coming up to Fourth of July weekend. This was the year was 2010. And my family was doing, you know, a typical celebration that, you know, we Americans do on the fourth. And then my sister shows up. That was crazy because she lived in California. So she drove over 10 hours to come to this family holiday. And when she gets there, she says, I came because God told me to come, because I think that he wants me to pray with you and that he wants to introduce himself to you now. And I was like, I don't know what to do. I mean, this is a year, a year of her pursuing me, a year of her telling me all these things. And now she's here. And I kind of felt cornered. And it was funny, actually, the way that she did it. I was actually had a plate of food and I was going through the food line and she comes up and says, oh, Greg, I'm supposed to pray with you. And I was kind of mad at her. Like, what do you mean? Do you want to take time to pray? Like, we're here to celebrate the Fourth of July. I just want to eat my cheeseburger and eat my chips and watch fireworks later tonight and just be left alone. And and she said, no, Jesus wants to meet you. And he sent me here so that that could happen. And, you know, I actually told her, yes. And I sort of did it, I think, just to get her to leave me alone, because I didn't believe that God was real or that if he was real, that he obviously didn't care about me. And so I thought, you know, OK, what's what's two minutes? She'll pray for two minutes, nothing will happen and then I'll move on with my life. And so I agreed to it. And we went down to a quiet place and we we sat down and my sister says, OK, I'm going to start praying. So I said, OK, and just kind of sat there quietly. And, you know, I didn't really know what to expect. I was raised in the Lutheran Church. And so praying to me was, you know, a written prayer, maybe the Lord's Prayer, maybe maybe something else. So I was kind of waiting for her to to pull it out and start reading. And she did it. She she laid hands on me and she closed her eyes and she just started praying. And I was so confused because I didn't understand anything that she was saying. And the more that I listened to her, the more that I realized she's not speaking any she's not speaking English, she's speaking something else. It doesn't sound like really anything that I've ever heard before. She's just sort of speaking gibberish, but she's very she's very serious about it. And if you could see the picture, I'm looking at my sister. She's praying for me with her eyes closed. And it's just this kind of awkward scene. And then I start getting angry and I don't want to be there anymore. And I want to leave. And I kind of try to get up and go and I can't move. I'm just sort of stuck. But it doesn't make any sense. Why would I be stuck? No one was touching me other than my sister's hand on me. And, you know, I'm I'm a big guy. I'm I'm over 6'4", you know, 220 pounds, you know, and yet I can't move. And and so I just sit there and my sister's praying. And so I close my eyes and then I begin to realize that I can understand what she's praying now. I can't understand what she's saying, but I knew the language that she was speaking. I mean, it was the same sensation, like if you're sitting in the airport and the person next to you is speaking Russian on the phone, you don't speak Russian. But when you hear it, you know what it is. That was my experience. So now I'm beginning to hear her and I'm beginning to hear that she's speaking a real language. And then I begin to realize that it's a language I've heard before. And then I know what language it is. She's speaking Hebrew, modern Hebrew. And I was so shocked because I mean, I know my sister. I know that she's she's never studied Hebrew before. She she can't speak this language. How is she praying in a language that she has never learned before? That that does not make sense. And I begin to kind of feel afraid. And then as I feel afraid, I begin to feel a presence in the room that I had never felt before in my life. And it was this mix of of like beauty and perfection. And yet at the same time, I felt fear. I felt sort of naked, sort of unclean, sort of like I shouldn't be in this presence. That's that's how I felt. And it was funny at that moment that I'm having this experience. My sister stops praying, looks at me and says, oh, Jesus has come. It's like what? She's like, Jesus is here. He's here in the room. And and you are encountering his presence and you don't know what to do and you feel afraid. She was actually describing the way that I was feeling and I hadn't communicated the way I was feeling. And she says, Greg, it's OK. He's here because he is the Lord. He loves you. He died for your sin. He is here because he wants to get to know you. He wants to offer you life. He wants to know you. He wants you to believe him. He wants you to surrender everything to him and follow him. That's why he is showing himself to you. And I just kind of sat there and I said, well, OK, well, what do you want to do next? You know, and she said, I think we're supposed to keep praying. And so this time, you know, she closed her eyes and laid her hands on to me. And I closed my eyes and I just begin now what I know is praying. God, is this real? Is this really you? Are you actually real? And so I am praying these questions, these seeking questions. And my sister is praying. She's praying again in tongues. She's praying again in Hebrew. I'm seeking now what's real. And again, the presence of God comes. And again, I feel this weird blend of like perfection and righteousness and yet justice and uncleanliness and unrighteousness. Dirty is how I felt. All at the same time. And then I just was like immediately start start weeping. And I start saying out loud, I know you're here, but I'm too dirty for you. I'm too dirty to be in your presence. And my sister's just continuing to pray. And I'm encountering the spirit. And in my spirit, I hear him say, I am Jesus. I am here for you. I died for you. I get to determine what is clean and unclean. And because of what I have done, because of my sacrifice, I will make you clean. You are clean, clean to me. If you surrender your life to me, I'm like, I heard him. I heard him in my heart. I heard the gospel in my heart. And I remember just saying out loud, OK, OK. And I'm in tears. And I'm just I'm saying, OK, OK, God, just just just take my life. And I felt his peace come. I mean, immediately I felt his peace and I felt joy and I knew that he was there. And but my sister is still praying, you know, like she knows something else is going to happen. And and as she's praying, I start to smell this this smell. That's just it's just a bad smell. You know, it's sort of like rotten eggs or like even like methane gas, like like the stuff they put into into gas. Like you use a cooking stove in your house and they put a smell into it so that when there's a leak, you know that there's a leak. That's kind of what it smelled like. It was just this awful smell. And and I still have my eyes closed, but sort of in my spirit, I can begin to see there's these these people coming. I know now that they're fallen. They were fallen angels. But but this this one in particular was very, very tall. And he comes slowly into the room and he's sort of standing in the doorway. It wasn't a normal doorway. It was it was kind of one of those wider, taller doorways that separates a kitchen to a living room. And he is so tall. The back of his shoulders is higher than than the crossbeam of the top of the door. And I can see his shape. And, you know, he's wearing dark covered robes, if you can call them that. But I see him there. And it's this funny feeling of like, I should be afraid of you, but I'm not afraid of you. And not not only that, but I know who you are, like I'm familiar with this, this fallen angel. And at first I didn't feel any fear, but then he begins to like approach me and he's he's sticking out his his hands sort of. And and he grabs me and he starts shaking me and I can hear him speaking. He's angry and he's saying, Greg is mine. He's mine. He has served me. He has followed me. He loves me. You cannot take him. You cannot have him. He is he is mine. And at that point, I felt fear. I felt like he was going to take me away. And and that, you know, what happened with Jesus wasn't, you know, wasn't done yet. That that I wasn't really Jesus is that somehow this this demon, this fallen angel is going to be able to take me away. And I grabbed my sister's hand and I yell out and say, don't let him have me. Don't let him take me away. And my my sister, without without taking a moment, just turned, opened her eyes. And I have my eyes open at this point. And she rebukes this this demon and says, I rebuke you in the name of Jesus. Get out. You cannot have him. He is the Lord. He is bought by the blood of the lamb. You have no rights to him. Leave now in Jesus name. And then he left. And it was like this this crazy moment where I encountered now for the first time in my life, that battle between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness. And it was like not a battle. It was like the enemy had no more power. And as soon as the name of Jesus was spoken, that fallen angel, that demon knew that there's nothing that he could do. That he was he was powerless. His his power was made empty by the cross is what we read in the scripture. And I hadn't even read that scripture yet, but I encountered it. I encountered this demon fleeing at the name of Jesus. And I still kind of had this fear in me. And my sister, just perceiving what was happening, just turned and said, you need more of the Lord's presence. And didn't even give me a moment to ask questions. I mean, she didn't quote scripture to me. She didn't explain theology to me. She said, you need God's power. She laid her hands on me, said, receive the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus. And then it was just like, boom, the Holy Spirit came upon me like fire on top. And all that fear, remember, I had that fear that was in my heart as the Holy Spirit comes upon me. The fear is like draining out through my feet. The Holy Spirit is coming in. And I go from being afraid, like I'm going to be snatched out of Jesus's hand to being a secure child of God. And the transformation from fear to peace, anxiety to stillness in his presence, to joy was immediate. I still remember to this day what it felt to be consumed with the love of God, to be consumed with his joy. That I knew now that I'm his. And I knew that because of what he did for me, that I was secure in him, that he would guard me. He would protect me. He would mature me. He would help me. He was there with me. I had his presence in me. And, you know, my sisters took a little time to explain what had happened. And I started asking questions like, what do you do now? What do I do now? Now that my life is changing, what do I do? And she said, you know, you need to read your Bible. Go find your Bible, start reading it. You need to start praying, start talking to Jesus, start having conversations with him and then take time to listen. He'll speak back to you and then get yourself plugged into a Bible believing community, a community of believers that are following Jesus who can help you, who can help you grow, who can disciple you. That's that's what you need to do. And she said, you know, I want to pray one more time. And I think God wants to speak to you about what he wants to do in your life. Later, I would, you know, I would read Paul's letter to Timothy and I would I would read how Paul is telling Timothy, like to remember and stir up the gifts that were given to him at the laying of hands of prophecy. And this is exactly what happened. My sister laid his hands on me, begins praying in the spirit again, begins singing in the spirit and then begins prophesying to my heart and saying, you know, in the name of Jesus, God is going to use your story. He is going to move you around to different places. He's going to lead you to different people. And you're going to be able to share this story. God's going to use your story to strengthen the church. And he's going to use your story to bring people to bring seekers who don't know Jesus into his kingdom. But you have to trust him. You have to follow him. He's going to help you. He's going to equip you. And then it ended. You know, we got up and left. We went back to our Fourth of July celebration. And this whole time I'm now watching fireworks processing how I just met the living God. Right. Like I will never forget that day and that evening and and the time following. And, you know, I went back to normal life. I was I was working as a groundskeeper with a local city municipality, you know, doing upkeep at local parks. I was just a normal guy doing a normal job. But now I knew Jesus. I knew God. I just pray all the time. And after about a week, I started kind of wondering. I'd heard stories about people being filled with the Holy Spirit and speaking in other languages. You know, I don't know if it was from my past or if the Lord just planted in me or I don't know how it got in there. But it was just something I started to pray about. And I remember I asked God, why hasn't this happened to me? Like I met you. I met your grace. You transformed my life. You you banished this demon. You filled me with the spirit. Why? Why don't I have a prayer language? And I'll remember this to this day. I was sitting in the truck, this work truck, and the main guy driving was not not a believer. And I'm in the passenger seat just praying. And I I feel like the Lord told my heart, I've given you my spirit. I filled you with the Holy Spirit. Everything is already there. Just listen to the Holy Spirit and speak. So I say, OK, Lord. And I was just quiet for a moment. And then as I'm listening for the spirit, I begin hearing him. And I begin hearing this language in my heart and I could hear it. And then I had the urge to speak it. And, you know, I'm in this truck with this guy who doesn't know Jesus. And I don't know what to do. Should I there? Should I not? Right. I had just come into the faith. This is I'd only been a Christian for a week. And so I asked him to pull the truck over. And, you know, I told him I saw some stuff that needed to be cleaned up. And so he pulled over. I got this leaf blower on. Start up the leaf blower, start blowing leaves and just open my mouth. And I just began praying in the spirit. And I would pray and then I would laugh and then I would pray and then I would cry and then I would pray and then I would laugh. And it was this just the the overwhelming presence of God's peace, God's joy, God being there. God's delight in my life that I had surrendered to him. You know, he says in Zephaniah, I believe the Lord rejoices over you with singing. And like and that is what I encountered. I encountered the Lord's presence, his rejoicing, overflowing in the spirit through my praise and my prayer in the spirit. And I just I just worked and used the leaf blower. And so no one could hear me. Right. Because I was just a new believer and just just praying and praying and praying. And, you know, thank God for the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Praise God for being able to pray in tongues. It is such an amazing experience, an amazing connection with the Lord. And, you know, now I've been following him, you know, for 13 years now. You know, I'm a pastor and I've been able to serve him and use my story all through the United States and even other countries abroad, Asia and now in Europe. And, you know, I have seen God's faithfulness and I am just so incredibly grateful for him. He did this in my life and I wasn't even really seeking him at the time. It was just like he just chose to reveal himself to me. And in that moment of encountering him, he brought me to the place of repentance. He filled me with his spirit. He gave me gifts to use, to serve, to love him and love the body and believers and to be a witness to other people that don't know him yet. And, you know, I am just so grateful for what he has done.