All of a sudden I come up out of my body.
I turn over and I'm looking down upon myself
and I float away, and I come back...
and I come back into my body.
Something was going on.
What I didn't know was what side it was on.
What is from the light or from the dark?
So I was born into a secular, Jewish home.
We celebrated Passover, Sukkot, Hanukkah.
And I remember going to synagogue a lot.
The prayers were done in Hebrew.
We didn't really understand what we were saying.
'Blessed are you O Lord our God, King of the Universe.'
And we would be like, "This is what we do as Jewish people
but what are we actually saying?"
I remember, you know, being in temple and just sitting there
listening to the Rabbi, just looking up at the
stained glass windows, and I didn't feel God
in the congregation.
I felt him personally.
And so growing up in a Jewish family, there's a lot of
pressure on success, achievement, good grades
good school, good job.
And so as I left for high school, and I left for college..
You know, I had to pick a major and I went to a school
for business, although all I really wanted to do was
sing, dance, and do sports.
But I feel that this is what I have to do
and it really tore me up.
I'm not succeeding here, I'm not doing well.
Not only did I feel like I was disappointing my parents
I was disappointing myself.
I've had it.
I'm out of here.
And I left college.
So that whole experience over those years of trying
and effort and failing, just primed me for a head first
dive into new age spirituality.
So here I am meditating, finding silence, and the peace
and emptying my mind.
And the problem with that, is that in an empty space
something's gonna come in.
I would start to feel this oppression, this sense of
odd control nudging me into certain directions.
"Go here, go there, pick that up, turn around and walk back"
And I felt like if I didn't do what that presence
or that voice was telling me to do, that something bad
would happen to me.
I even had an outer body experience once where here
I am laying on my bed and all the sudden
I come up out of my body.
I turn over, and I'm looking down upon myself
and I float away, and I come back
and I come back into my body.
Something was going on.
What I didn't know was what side it was on.
Was it from the light, or from the dark?
And come to find out that sure enough it's from the dark.
I was doing everything I can to put on a happy face
and not let anybody know what was happening inside of me
but people knew.
So my wife started noticing that I
was going into depression.
I remember one day, lying on the floor in my wife's arms
just bawling my eyes out.
And I'm crying and I'm looking up at her and I'm saying
"I'm sorry, I have no idea what I'm doing.
I've spent 20 years in an effort to become more spiritual
successful, enlightened, and have nothing to show for it."
I'm empty.
And to be honest, I really didn't have much
strength or effort to live anymore.
But I looked at my beautiful wife, and I looked
at my beautiful children, and I said
"Wow, there's no way I could take myself out of this world
even though I have no desire to live."
I'm tired of pretending like I'm some sort
of advanced spiritual being, when deep down inside
I knew that I was broken, and I thought
"What's wrong with me?"
I've dedicated the last 10 years, 12 years
15 years to meditation and spiritual practice.
Positive affirmations, and I have nothing to show for it.
So here I am, I'm going to the gym and this
really tall guy comes up to me, and he looks at me
and he says, "You know, I've been watching you and we're
about the same age, and I just want to know
what do you eat?"
And I said, "Okay, well, you know, you don't really want
to know what I eat."
He's like, "What? Burgers and pizza and whatever you want?"
And I was like "No, I eat a plant based diet."
So the next day I come in and I look at this guy and he's
over at the other side of the gym and I'm like
"You know, I kind of feel drawn to this guy, I want to
go ask him a question."
So I walk over and I ask him, I said
"Hey, what do you do by the way?"
And he goes, "I'm a pastor."
And for some reason that sparked something in me.
And so I started asking him these questions
and he'd give me these really concise answers
and then I'd go home and I'd say
"Honey, I had this interesting experience at the gym
and we talked a little bit about Christianity.
We talked a little bit about him being a pastor
and what he does."
So, one of the biggest things that my wife was having
trouble with, was how can she be Jewish
and believe in Jesus?
Because everything that she'd heard up until that time was
"Jesus is not for the Jews."
And so she was wrestling with that, and she came upon videos
from One for Israel.
Videos, testimony videos, of Jewish people coming
to faith in Jesus.
And my son would come home, he's like "Yeah I just had these
great experiences about learning about Jesus."
And we were like, "Something's going on here."
And so I went back to the gym and I saw this other guy
on the other side of the gym.
I was like, "He has something in him that I want."
He looks happy,
there's a spark in him.
So I went over and I introduced myself, and he goes
"Can I pray for you?"
And I said, "Okay, why not?"
And at the end of the prayer, he said, "In Jesus' name."
Day after day I kept coming back to the gym and I had
this desire to look for this guy, and I would go up
for him specifically for prayer.
And every day I said "In Jesus' name" I started to feel
like something was happening.
And what I realized over time, was that peace..
It wasn't the absence of something
it was the presence of something.
Or should I say, someone.
When I heard the name Jesus, when I heard the name Yeshua.
When I started to study and read about him.
When my family went out into the world, had experiences
that were related to Jesus and we came home, we felt life.
For the first time we felt life.
And it was at that moment that my wife and I
we got on our knees, and we gave our lives to Jesus, Yeshua.
And I knew that Jesus was the only one.
The only one.
And it was at that moment this energy went through me
that I'd never felt before.
The depression, the anxiety, the fear, chronic issues
that I'd been carrying with me for my entire life.
In one moment, were gone.
So here I am now believing in Jesus
and following Jesus, and a new man.
And I gotta go face my parents again.
(laughs)
We go down and visit them and we just, you know
said, "Hey, we have found new life in Jesus."
And my mom was like, "You know, that's nice for you
but why can't you just be Jewish?
You know, why can't you just stay Jewish?"
And I'm like, "Mom, if you only knew that following Jesus
was the most Jewish thing you could ever do."