 Radiant Church presents Radiant Stories, a collection of stories that showcase God's faithfulness to take our hopeless situations and craft them into beautiful testimonies of His power, provision and love. Radiant Stories, I'm on Rittering and we're talking to Bryce Brower today. We'll get right into it. I really just do want to hear your testimony and I know that you have been a musician for a long time and you've kind of been in different circles as a musician and so how that weaves into your testimony what being a musician means to you and what being a prophetic musician means to you. So kind of like quick background with everything that I've been through kind of spiritually. I've kind of like dealt with spiritual warfare a lot through my life. Seeing angels, demons and just kind of going through visions at a very young age that just was kind of creepy. Wow. There was one night specifically that I remember I woke up to just kind of like a tap on my head. This was after my parents, I used to sleep with covers over my head and my parents finally convinced me to remove the covers during the night. So when I did that, I woke up to like a tap on my head and like there was a demon on my pillow. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And so like just being a kid, I didn't really know what to do besides to like kind of like growl at it. Right. And it came back with something ten times worse. So through the covers back over my head just kind of was just wailing and so my brothers, we all shared a room at the time. They went up and grabbed my parents and they came running down. My dad had me draw what I saw. He took that piece of paper of what I saw, crumbled it up and threw it up against our house wall. And it sounded like a cannon went off in the house. Oh my goodness. So it was kind of cool just like looking back, looking spiritually. It was pretty awesome, very scary, but pretty awesome. So then went through some things in my life where, you know, just making bad choices, poor choices, that influenced kind of those attacks to come back. And I started to, and meanwhile I'm still like doing worship, doing things like, and just basically like I drummed just for the love of drumming, for the love of trying to possibly get something out of it, not what I could praise God with even though like was raised in a Christian home and everything. It was, hey, I want to get rich or I want to like just try to do something to make myself known. But even though I would like tell people, yeah, I'm doing this for God's glory. It was, you know, you're just masking it. So, you know, so there was one time I went to, we were hired for a youth retreat and me and my brothers were talking with a friend of ours and I was just kind of sharing just spiritually what I've been through. He just said, well, it sounds like the enemy's threatened to what you'll become once you decide to like fully surrender your heart over to God. And so I never thought about it that way. I never really wanted to pursue more than what my parents would bring us to church, just because it just wasn't for me at the time. Finally just overcame that and started playing at a lot of churches around the area, networking with people. And through that, you just keep getting more calls and more calls like, hey, we need a drummer this Sunday or just trying. I was like, okay, I'm going to try to use everything that God's given me to glorify him. And through that, it's been really cool though to see in a racial perspective. I played with a lot of black gospel people, played with a lot of old hymnal people, played with a lot of stuff that we do at Radiant. It's kind of a mix of everything that is still around. It's kind of cool just to see even though you're young, you're white, you're different. I don't know what else to say, but it was through that I think I've created a lot of different relationships with a lot of different people in the area. And so when you're going around, I feel like there's some relationships that I've either been restored or just reborn through that because now you obviously have scheduled in conflicts. And so well, then that brings about while I'm playing for this person and then they have to call that person to say like, hey, do you really need him? I've seen friendships kind of grow out of that just because drummers are spars. But yeah, it's just been a crazy ride just seeing God restore and connect just multiple generations, multiple races through something that I just thought was fun. You're kind of a special kind of witness within the church. I feel like the Lord has created you to be a relationship builder just like what you were saying. What do you feel like there was a like a recommitting moment where you were kind of walking through the intensity of your teen years and that spiritual warfare coming back again. Was there a recommitment moment where you were just like, I don't know if I can do this, but I guess that I should. A defining moment for me was through another conference that I was playing at they paid for us all to go to this conference in Ohio. That was the first time as an adult I'd say I really fully experienced just the presence of the Holy Spirit. I got to experience just the weightiness of the presence of God. I got to experience like I opened my eyes and like they weren't using fog machines or anything at this, but like everything was just really hazy. The speaker at the time he was talking about sometimes the presence of God will just be so overbearing that you just like your legs begin to shake. And at that time like I was like okay that's weird but then within like five or ten minutes after that my legs just began to just not be able to hold me up and it was everything that I could do to hold myself up. That was pretty much a redefining moment for me. What do you feel like the Lord is leading you into? Do you feel like you are walking in your calling? Do you feel like the Lord is calling you into something bigger? Do you have any inkling? Do you have any dreams that you share with the Lord? Yeah, well obviously just like being a drummer full time would be awesome but I mean that's just a dream. If God wants that for me then yeah I think that'd be cool. But at the same time there's been times where when I started coming to Radiant, Pastor Tony at the time was speaking he was talking about leadership and then I just had something laid on my heart about leadership. And at that time I just started a new job and was overwhelmed but it was a lot of fun to be able to push myself in areas that I've never really had to grow in before from a leadership perspective. And they're coming up to me saying just what a wonderful job I've been doing with the employees that they've put underneath me. Which speaks to the connection portion too that I feel like you're gifted in bringing people together and building relationships. Which is crazy to think of and so I feel like there's a different calling leadership wise that I'm growing in. Continue to grow in both on a professional level and spiritual level. I don't know there's probably still stuff on my heart that needs to work on. We continually grow. I feel really strongly that it is both spheres of your life there is a strong call for leadership and you have a gifting in connection and relationship that's just kind of the theme that I'm hearing. I've never and I've been a part of ministry for a long time and I've never seen like what you and your brothers do in terms of traveling around and getting to know really the heart of the local church. Like I've seen musicians come in and they'll get hired for Sundays and stuff like that that's really cool you know you get to know churches you get paid you know that type of thing you get hired for events and stuff like that but there's a really unique relationship that you and your brothers have built with the local church because Kalamazoo isn't very big. That's really cool Bryce. I think that your journey especially in spiritual warfare and being a seer it's something really scary I think for kids and parents. Is there something that you would want to say to maybe your younger self or you know even a teenager a 16 year old guy that's maybe in the same position as you? You know I think my parents did a very good job in kind of coaching me through that but I would just say to a younger kid that's going through something like that that it's for one you're not alone you don't really know who else is going through that and for me I never really thought that anybody would believe me if I did say something so I would say just to a younger kid express that to your parents and ask for more information make sure you check up on your kid every once in a while to see if they're still having either like night terrors or whatever because it really could just be an attack on the enemy trying to subdue them from pursuing what they want in Christ to a teenager I would say your best decision would be to press in even more so because like Pastor Lee says it, Pastor John says it that just lets you know you're doing something right and so if you can muster the strength to push on and press on eventually it's not that those will go away but you'll know and you'll be able to stand in Christ and say look this isn't going to happen I'm going to sleep tonight or even at 27 I still wake up sometimes and just feel that anxiety of just something hovering over me that's when I just start to pray and it's not an instant like okay I'm headed back to bed sometimes I have to read my Bible sometimes I have to play worship music just keep on pressing in and lay hold of your claim on that room and who is in it and that they're going to be a person for Christ and that the enemy can't come in and try to hinder that and without the pressing in and without the obedience of recognizing what you went through pressing even further into the Lord that choice that you made to say yes to him in the midst of truly the turmoil that you were going through like daily it brought freedom and it brought revelation you know that calling and leadership I feel like that's really special that you have found and a really important piece of the encouragement that you're giving through this it's good thank you for telling me your story I had no idea about any of that I don't know a lot of seers for sure so I think that's really cool yeah it's fun it's fun blessing and encouragement yeah thank you so much for being here this has been radiant stories click subscribe to get a brand new story delivered to you every Monday