 My name is Everett. I grew up in a non-Christian home just outside of San Francisco, California. Throughout my life, I really didn't even think much about God, didn't even think much about spiritual things. It was mostly just sports, friends, school. I really started exploring things in high school as I started to wonder, is what we learn in school that we come from apes, that we came from a random explosion billions of years ago, the Big Bang Theory. Does this really explain reality that we live in? And I began to investigate and read and philosophy and explore different belief systems. I was fascinated with the mind and psychology and mental health things because there's such a, you know, a pandemic of mental health issues. I began to meditate in a Buddhist way of emptying my mind, clearing my mind to relax because I was really just seeking the best way to heal. Psychology, as I started to research it and study it, I realized there's a cap on what psychology can explain because where did the mind come from? Where did we come from? You know, if God is real, then clearly that's an important element of somebody's mental health. I ended up going to college in Colorado at Boulder, which is one of the actual hot spots of New Age. Yoga studios everywhere, you know, healing, psychics, meditation area, like it was incredible. It's not only naturally gorgeous, but I saw like a spiritual value to it. So I went there and I began to get even deeper into these New Age philosophies, which is really just ancient religions, ancient spiritualities, mostly from the East, packaged and branded in a new scientific psychology way. Traveled to China, traveled to Thailand to study in Qigong and study in yoga and Muay Thai martial arts. I was exploring, I was trying to find the truth and when I found the truth, I wanted to go fully for it. Throughout this time, there was one guy who actually was Christian that I knew about and I had totally forgot about him, but I was one day at lunch with my friend and I got a FaceTime call. In this FaceTime call, I look at it and I'm like, who is this guy? His name's Luke. I'm like, he's in my contacts, but I didn't really think much of it. And I go home later that day and I message him because I realized, oh my gosh, is this is the guy freshman year who said, do you believe in God? I was like, huh, why is he calling me? And I texted him and he's like, dude, I didn't FaceTime me number one and number two. I don't FaceTime people at all and you're many years back in my texts. Like, I don't know how that happened. And I'm like, okay, maybe this is the universe guiding me to study Christianity. So I did Bible study with this guy for multiple months and he was just preaching the raw gospel to me. You know, the wages of sin is death. Jesus Christ came and lived a perfect sinless life, died on the cross that we might believe in him and have eternal life. And I thought it was just a fairy tale. I thought the Bible was just a fairy tale, but he was an incredible guy, such an honest guy. And I truly believe he was not lying to me when he said that about the FaceTime. Time goes on. I'm like, hey, I'm gonna study by myself. I start realizing there's the spiritual reality that we live in. We're other beings. The spirit guides, they call them in the New Age. They're guiding you to higher consciousness, to ascend your soul through the lifetimes of this existence because reincarnation is one of the core beliefs of Eastern spiritualities. Found a guy online named Bob Larson who's casting out demons in Jesus' name. And I was like, whoa, this is pretty incredible. Like there's clearly something going on here and this guy's got some supernatural abilities because I was training in psychic things, astral projecting, deep meditation, all these different types of things because I wanted to grow in my psychic abilities to be able to help people. That was the whole motive, the intention to be able to help people with these supernatural abilities. And I saw this guy online. I'm like, this is incredible. He's using this crucifix and he's saying Jesus. But I think maybe there's something else here. And I started seeing actual demons tormenting people in real life when I was trying to help people, guide people, help people heal, give them advice and such. And it came to a point where there was a moment where this person who had demonic torment actually manifested a demon right before me. And this demon was literally speaking to me. But all my meditation, all my light skills, all my different energy I thought I harnessed wasn't working. It was just laughing at me. And I just remember in my mind like, say Jesus, say Jesus. But I didn't say Jesus. I didn't want to be seen as like some Jesus freak, literally. This experience really shocked me because it wasn't just, okay, is this maybe bipolar? Is this maybe a schizophrenic disorder? Is this maybe dissociative identity? Can psychology explain this? Or is this a literal demon that I was talking to from another dimension? Like through the person, because this whole concept was so new to me and so incredible, I needed to know. Bob Larson happened to be in my town in a month. I saw a seminar. The power of God was literally displayed. People were set free. One woman literally had the same demon I thought that this person had, in my experience, cast out of them. And the coincidences were just adding up. I was like, man, the universe is really guiding me into this. And I meet with Bob Larson one-on-one and he tells me the raw gospel again. And during this, we're debating all these religions, spiritualities for 45 minutes. And during this, I just start to feel this sense of sin. I started feeling the greed in my heart. I started feeling the lust. I started feeling the deceit inside of me. And I knew that like, is this really the truth? Jesus Christ just believing in him and you're saved and you have eternal life, just the simple fact. It was just this knowing that came upon me, but it was a decision to believe. It was a decision to make that choice to believe. And I told Bob, I said, I'm ready. And he led me through a simple prayer. And at the end of this prayer, I literally began to just weep and wail and crying at almost at the top of my lungs, louder than I've cried in 10 plus years of my life. And everyone was hugging me and around me. Everyone was crying. And it was the most powerful experience because I was feeling God's love and God's forgiveness over me. And all of my guilt and all of my like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry God was just instantly forgiven. And he's shown me where he was in my life and where I had refused to listen to that voice and how he'd been guiding me. And everything was up to that point. And it was just the most powerful experience I've ever had, more powerful than any psychedelic experience. And so much healing took place there. It was the most beautiful thing in my life in that time period after I decided to give my life to Christ. And now today I'm serving here at Hungry Gen with the whole Hungry Gen family. I'm married to an amazing life and my life has just been so, more healing has taken place as I've sought God and sought the scriptures of the Bible than any new age modality, than any psychedelic drug, than any sort of meditation or hypnosis, soul type thing, psychology, methods, anything. Just seeking after God. And I wanna tell you, if you were engaged in similar belief systems or similar ideas about the world and you were really with a good heart just seeking truth and you're seeking healing and you're seeking the right way to live. I wanna tell you Jesus Christ is the way. He is the truth and he is the life. It's all in him. The Bible says that in him, all things consist. Everything you need is in Jesus Christ. And if you wanna make that decision today to follow Jesus to say, hey, I wanna decide to follow the truth because the Bible says if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. If you wanna make that decision today, just repeat after me. Say Lord Jesus, come into my life. I confess you as Lord of my life. And I believe that you raised from the dead and died for my sins. Show me your way. Show me the truth and reveal who I am in you. From this day forward, I decide to follow you with all that I have into eternity. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.