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And you know, some people are hard cases. Some people it takes a long time and a lot of effort. I feel like God put a lot of effort into my salvation, where it finally culminated to the point where I got saved. I'm sure there's some people that didn't really live that bad of a life before, but I did. And I'm not gonna get up here and tell you every bad thing I've ever done, because I just don't think that's profitable, but just know this, I was bad, okay? And it took God a long time to get ahold of me. And it took great circumstances to get ahold of my heart. That just tells me that God doesn't just give up on people easily. You know, when God gives someone up, God gives someone over to a reprobate mind, he's probably exhausted everything that he could put into them. And they still turn away from him and don't want him. You know, so God knew, you know, even though I wish I would have got saved when I was younger, and I had to do all these things, but everything in my life culminated to where I'm at now. Yeah, right. So turn to Jeremiah chapter 23, verse 29. So this guy at Steadfast, I started to tell him, he said, I just like to hear people's testimonies. I think he was doing a salvation check on me or something, but no, I'm just kidding. He just said, I just like to hear where other people, you know, other people's testimonies, and I like to hear them too, but you know, it's just sometimes it's hard to get the time to actually hear someone's full testimony. So, and I'm not gonna sit here and say all the great things I did because of being saved. And so I'm very hesitant to even talk about this, but I'm not, so I just wanna let you know, I'm not trying to prop myself up or say how great I am because of what, you know, God's the one that makes me do anything that's great. Not makes me, but he inspires me. So Jeremiah 23, verse 29 says, is not my word like a fire, saith the Lord, and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces. God's word can have a dramatic effect on our life, and actually, it's the only thing that can even get you saved. We're so sinful that it takes the word of God to break through the hardness of our hearts and to actually, you know, it's a miracle of God that we even get saved. It takes a soul winner to get someone saved. It takes the word of God to get someone saved. It takes the spirit of God. It takes the Lord Jesus Christ to regenerate us. And so I'm just gonna give a quick testimony, and maybe it won't be that quick, but I'll try to make it abridged as possible. And it's the testimony of God saving me, okay? So my background, again, I'm just not gonna get into all the details, but I wasn't a very good guy. At one point, excuse me, one point before, you know, during this time, I convinced my wife that God wasn't real. Even though I think in the back of my mind I still believe it was possible that God was, but I was just so sinful at this time and so wicked that I sit there and convinced my wife that God wasn't real. And she believed He was. She wasn't saved, but she still believed God was real. And I just used all these stupid atheistic points and me and my friend just like ganged up on her and convinced her that God wasn't true. So that's how bad I was. But one year, 2000, so 21 years ago today, I was being a total jerk to Sherry, and we weren't married at the time, but I said I'm gonna go just do my own thing today. That's how much of a selfish person I was that I just, I didn't wanna deal with her. I didn't wanna deal with kids. I just wanted to go do my own thing and just live my own life or whatever. So I went to this Chinese food restaurant by Clackamas Town Center called Quang Chau. I was sitting there, and they had a television playing the news. I just was like, because I was kind of a truther at that time anyway. I was already kind of, there was no 9-11 truther movement because 9-11 hadn't happened yet. It was another year away, but I was already kind of one of those people that was skeptical about things. I was definitely skeptical about the media. I just made a comment to this guy that was sitting in the restaurant with me, and I said, man, this news stuff is so fake. He was like, yeah. And then I started talking about the New World Order because I believed that the New World Order was real. I just didn't believe, I mean, and I believed it probably came from the Bible, but I just was not saved. So this guy just starts talking to me about stuff, and we're just having this great conversation, and then he starts talking to me about the Lord. I said, hey, I don't wanna hear this. I shut him down. And so he didn't, he stopped. That's what a good soul winner should do. He stopped and I said, hey, I appreciate the offer and everything. I said, my dad was in a cult, and it was a weird charismatic church, and I just want nothing to do with it because he tried to jam this stuff down my throat, and I just didn't, I'm not interested. He said, well, hey, if you ever are, here's my card. Hands me his card. Company's name is Covenant Drywall. So obviously he's a Christian. So, I mean, not obviously, but I mean, it was a Christian name of his company. I said, well, thanks, it was great talking to you, bye. So how many times do you knock on a door and someone says, I'm not interested? But do you still offer them an invitation anyway? He should just say, well, hey, if you ever are, you know, here's the information for the church, and if you have any questions, you can call the pastor, or whatever, right? You know why I do that every time? Even if they're not interested, if they're willing to take the card from me, it's because that was the beginning of my salvation, being the road of my salvation, where he didn't even tell me any verses, he didn't say anything, but you know, the fact that I shut him down by saying I wasn't interested and he stopped, that was, I liked that. So, after that, I was working for my uncle, and he said this lady gave him all these left behind books, and so we're talking at his house, and we're like, we don't know anything about the Bible, and we're like, well, I could call this guy, he gave me his card, I can ask him, and so I went in my van and I looked, I couldn't find it anywhere, I mean, I tore the whole thing up looking for this card, so I could call him and just ask him about this rapture and all this stuff, right? So I couldn't find it, and so we just kind of both were like okay, well, whatever, you know, let's drink some more beer or whatever, but that, I remember that conversation happening and me losing the guy's card. In between that time, I went to three funerals, from the time of January to June, I went to three funerals. One was my grandma, she died of cancer, I went to her funeral, and then I went to my uncle Dan's funeral, who was my great uncle, and so each time there's services being performed, right? And so the final one was my best friend, who was killed fighting my brother in the street on Halsey, or 82nd and Halsey. So they were all out drinking one night, some words were exchanged between friends, and my brother ended up fighting my best friend, and as he's on top of my brother in the street like this, a car comes by, hits him, flips him up in the air, kills him, dead. He dies in my cousin's arm, my cousin Lindsay's arms, and so that was the third funeral I went to, terrible. My sister, you know, my nephew was, he was together with my sister at the time, and they had a child named Ethan, who's my nephew, and so that was really hard for me, and so, but a lot of things had happened in between those six months along with the funerals. Me and Sherry had broken up, we were just boyfriend and girlfriend, but we had kids together, and we had broken up, and she moved to Vancouver, and I moved in with my friends in North Portland. I'd gotten into like astrology and stuff like that, so I was reading like those Zohan or Zofar, or whatever they're called, books. You know, astrology is so stupid, but anyway, that's a different sermon for a different time. It's like if you're in this house, and that, you know, whatever, I don't get it, but I was just, I wanted to know what the truth was about things, and so in between that time, me and Sherry were still friends, even though we still would fight about stuff and things like that. She had brought me these Chick comics. You know what Chick Publications is? Okay, so I didn't get saved or anything. I read the book, and it was a comic book, so it's all inked out and stuff, and it's called Sabotage. So I read that and became King James only. So I didn't get saved, but I became King James only because that comic convinced me, because it basically just lays out how all the other versions are perversions and things like that, and how the King James is right. I had recently gotten a job with a roofing company that was owned by Jehovah's Witnesses. They were all Jehovah's Witnesses, and they were trying to get me into their cult. So I become King James only as I'm working for a company of all Jehovah's Witnesses. They're trying to convince me of this. I'm into astrology. I'm basically what you would call confused, okay? But I remember, and I'd read this book called Behold a Pale Horse by this false prophet, but some of the things in there were like the George Bush, the Bush family was wicked. That's why I voted for Al Gore, but don't hold that against me. That's all under the blood, okay? But, yeah, I can't believe that. Anyway, I'd like to take that vote back, but he lost anyway. So I'm going through all this stuff, I mean, just trying to give you a little where I'm at spiritually. So my wife did a great thing for me. She didn't even realize. She goes, hey, my aunt and uncle wanted to give you these, and so I was like, yeah, whatever. But that, I mean, out of all of them, I didn't read any of the other ones. I just read that one. That one made me King James only. So, I mean, I know Chick Publications is not something I promote, but that got me King James only, okay? So I'm King James only, still not saved, worked for a company of Jehovah's Witnesses, I'm into astrology, you know, I'm just hanging out with these losers that I live with as roommates, and then my best friend gets killed fighting my brother. Okay, so I'm just like, turn to Ecclesiastes chapter seven, verse one. Ecclesiastes seven, verse one. The Bible says a good name is better than a precious ointment, and the day of death than the day of one's birth. It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for that is the end of all men, and the living will lay it to his heart. So I believe that God used the deaths in my family to move me towards him. Because when you consider your end, once you go to a funeral, that person's dead and you start, most people will wonder, well, what happened to them? Where did they go? Is what this person's saying in the funeral, the person performing the funeral, are they right? Well, the other two were quasi-Christian services, they were probably false prophets or whatever. They didn't preach the truth. But the other one was an American Indian Navajo, not Navajo, but it was an Indian service mixed with Christianity, like the peyote religion. And so basically, they're saying Jesus, they're saying all this stuff, and then they start talking about Grandpa Moon, and he's fishing, now he's not in a better place, he's fishing with Grandpa Moon, and Grandma Sun is looking at him, I don't know, I forget everything they were saying, but it was weird. I remember their pounding the drums, it was very emotional. My nephew was crying, I'll never forget that. But afterwards, I talked to that Indian that performed the funeral, and I was just like, so what happens? Is that stuff really true? And he's like, oh yeah, it's true, and I was like, it just doesn't sound true. And then he basically, at that funeral, there was hundreds of people there, because he was a really liked guy, and we had a really big circle of friends. But I remember the Indian cursing anybody that drank alcohol or did drugs for the next seven days. So, I mean, that was just really, just one of those things that stuck with me, but, so I'm into all this stuff, I'm at an Indian funeral mixed with Christianity, because that's what the peyote religion is, it's just quasi-Christian, right? So then, basically a month later, I'm trying to read the Bible. I actually got a family King James Bible from a homo that my friend's dad was a homo. So I didn't really like homos, but I tolerated this guy or whatever. But I didn't think like I do now, obviously. I used to think homos could be saved. So, but anyway, he was letting me borrow his family King James Bible, I had a picture of Jesus, white Jesus on the front, with long hair and blue eyes, remember that? And I was traveling around without my car, just still shooken deeply over my friend's death, and still wandering. I remember one time I was in my room at my house, and I just prayed, and I was just like, you know, God, if you're real, would you show me what's true, what the true religion is? I mean, obviously I was mixed up with a lot of stuff. I never was gonna be a Jehovah's Witness, just so you know. I took my King James knowledge and took it to that one of their Bible meetings, and they didn't like it very much, so. But I wasn't saved, obviously, so anyway. But, so I was driving around, I'm reading the book of Revelation, I'm reading the book of Matthew, trying to figure out Bible prophecy, not saved. And I go to, so remember at the very beginning, on my birthday, 21 years ago today, I went to this Chinese food place as a selfish person, got into that conversation, lost that guy's card, and then one day, about a month later, I was at those homo's house, it was a good night, can't believe that's part of my testimony, but I was. And no, I didn't experiment, okay? So, but anyway, I said, hey, I'm gonna go get some food, you guys want something? No, we're fine, so I drive to this Chinese food place in downtown Milwaukee, which is a different Chinese food place, right? When I walk in, guess who's in there? The same guy from the other Chinese food restaurant, basically six months later, exactly. And what did I say? I said, I can't believe, I've been looking for you everywhere! I was like, I got, there's a restaurant full of people just like as many people as in here, and they all just turn around and go, you know, like the music record stops, er, er, er. And they're all just turning around looking at me, I'm like, I've been looking for you everywhere, I got all these questions, and I'm confused about this and that, and then he kind of just walks up to me and says, do you believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God, and that he died for your sins? And, you know, I said, yeah, I do believe that. And so he said, well, let's go outside. So we go outside, he goes, do you got a Bible? I was like, yeah, I got a King James Bible. Amen. And so I open up the trunk of my car, grabbed my giant King James Bible with Jesus' picture on it and handed it to him, and he starts going through the Romans road with me, shows me the scriptures of what it takes to be saved, and then he said, well, if you believe all that, would you like to pray and trust Christ as your savior? I said, yeah. But I was, you know, I was kind of like, I had that hesitation moment, because there's all these people around, and, you know, I didn't, you know, I just felt weird for a second thinking, you know, all these people are around here, but it was just a second. I just was like, yeah, I want to get saved. You know what I mean? And so I got on my knees, and he led me through the sinner's prayer, and I got saved. So that's my testimony, and, you know, it's the testimony of Christ, though, in me. He's the one that worked all that stuff out. You know, and obviously, I wish my friend was still alive. I wish he was saved. You know, I wish that my grandmother was saved. You know, there's just a lot of things that had to happen for that to come to pass.