From Atheism to Faith: A Software Engineer’s Search for God | Mark Neyer

David W Ebel: Welcome to the God Says Yes Podcast. You are welcome here. Welcome to another episode of God Says Yes. My name is David Ebel. After fifty plus years of ministry, I still have a a heart and a passion for loving people where they are, not just when they're on their mountaintops, but when they're struggling too. And that this podcast is to encourage not only those who struggle, but those who are living around someone or have a friend or a family member who's struggling. This is a chance to help people to move forward in their lives and And to get past where they've been wounded or hurt, whatever challenges they've had, and to come to a place where they can use the faith that God has given them and try again. And that's all we're looking for today is the chance to share that with you. So I I have with me ⁓ a dear brother in the Lord, his name is Mark Neyer, and Mark Mark is is gonna come on and and share with us and tell us his story. So welcome, Mark. Hey, thank you. It's good to be here. Thanks for having me. Glad to have you here. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself so we're not talking to strangers? Yeah. I'm married. I got three kids, ⁓ nine, eight, and four and a half. We have two rabbits in the house. I'm a software engineer professionally and ⁓ do a bit of investing and I'm not doing all that. Sometimes we get ⁓ we got some pet rabbits too. So we're Well, rabbits are great. we when I w I used to do magic and I I had a house full of ⁓ at one point. So I do understand. ⁓ now, we always have the four simple questions that we ask, but and the the answers are never the same. They're they're the this is the heart of Mark. This isn't some some fancy thing. We just want to get to know you know and know your story. So the first question is who were you before you gave your heart to Jesus? That's good question. I was a lot of different people, depending on what phase of life I was in. So I was brought up in the faith. My mom and dad, we went to mass every Sunday, said the rosary every night, constantly praying. When I got to be about 14, I start asking questions because I stu I learned enough science and math to start thinking I know how things work. I learned geop geometric proofs, and the proofs just seem so solid. And ⁓ I had wanted to prove to people that abortion was wrong. It bothered me that people didn't understand. Like it was obviously wrong. How do you not get this? But I couldn't prove it. I realized I needed to find some some some axiom that you could something that you could stand on without doubt. And it just seemed like, well, you could doubt basically anything. And people would be like, Well, I would say, well, you know, some things are right, some things are wrong. We to start there. And people would be like, Well, that's just your opinion, man. So I tried to go look for like, well, how do I prove that? And it Started to seem like you couldn't. And I asked my dad. He had a PhD in physics and he was he believed God was real. So I thought he would know. I thought he'd have good arguments. And he just he said something like, Well, if there's no God, then we're just biological robots, and that's too depressing. And at at 14, I thought something like, Well, the fact that it's depressing doesn't mean it's not true. ⁓ at the time my brother had been diagnosed with leukemia. I was one of eight siblings, too. No, one of nine, I had eight siblings. So I I think The reality is that my parents didn't have enough time for me at that formative time in my life. And what I thought was a rational rejection of the possibility of God was really something of like, I was feeling abandoned. And I remember praying, like, God, if you're real, please. Let me know what you want me to do. Just reveal yourself to me. Let me know what you want me to do and I'll serve you. And it seemed like nothing happened. And so it it it just felt like the opposite of science class is they'll tell you, you know, mix these chemicals this way. Temperature goes up, so and so, you can measure it. Everything works out exactly like they said it would. And then when I went to pray, it seemed like nothing happened, so I figured it was all just nonsense. And I found that super depressing. Because if there's no God, then there's no right and wrong, like everything is just opinions. The world is kind of a dark place at that point. Yeah. And I didn't know like how to what what to do about that. ⁓ I went through a spiritual exercise that students at at school of a labyrinth. We were supposed to Take one step at a time and pray with every step. And I at this point I I'd I had thought I had already rejected the idea that God was real. But I wanted to work through like, well, why am I so depressed all the time? I didn't think that was related to getting rid of well, I sort of thought it was related to getting rid of belief in God. But at the time my thinking was like, this is just coke. This is just people trying to make themselves feel better about living in a dark world. But what do I do? How do I handle that? Specifically, how do I handle the fact that I seem to be different from everybody around me and that Most people can reliably throw a ball and it goes roughly where they want it to go. Or they can move their body without being awkward and getting laughed at. I don't know how to do those things. So what you know, what what is wrong with me? And I start thinking like I'm a flaw. Evolution is just tossing out random experiments. I'm an experiment. Maybe I'm just not fit to reproduce, even though I knew I wanted to have kids. And I I resolve something in that labyrinth, like maybe it's up to me at some level. Like maybe I get to decide whether or not I'm I'm worthy of existing or not. So then I start becoming this like super striver and ⁓ got the best grades I could manage in high school, which I d I didn't pull off the straight A's, but I got pretty close. Well, technically there were straight A's because anything above a ninety percentage was an A. But I wanted a hundred percent average and I got like I got ninety nine and a half my sophomore year, junior year was hard. Go to college on a full ride, study physics and computer science and ⁓ I wanted to make video games. Then I wanted to go get a PhD. And I'm like, so I'm going down this academic track. I seem to be doing pretty well in school. I get a job working at a a trading company. So like on the career front, things seem to be going well. But internally I was just like, there's no point. There's no point to this. And everything that feels good is a kind of delusion that happens in our brains because of chemical processes, but it doesn't mean anything. And I found that like I couldn't, it was just so awful. That I I would occasionally I contemplated suicide a couple of times. I came close to it a number of times, but it always I loved my mom too much. I just could not like I would take a step that I thought maybe this would do it. And it it in the end it was always like, I can't do that to my mom. And it was an honorable thing. So sui suicide is is a r it it creates more victims than the person who left. So I I I kind of recognize like if I do this, it's gonna really hurt all these other people that I care about and I don't want it to do it to them. And that just made me more the thing is, it made me more angry about God, but I didn't believe God was real. It was this weird thing. It was sort of like I would say out loud, I don't have any reason to believe that guy exists, but if he does, I'm really mad at him. And I didn't realize how much that that dichotomy is really covering something up because it doesn't make sense to be angry at something you don't think is real. But it does make sense to be like, I'm not gonna talk to you if you're really angry with somebody. That is something that people do. Yeah. That's very real. So ⁓ careers seem to be going well until I get I get myself addicted to marijuana. I get addicted to ⁓ I get described as like, ⁓ you have bipolar disorder, you have ⁓ you need to take all these meds. The meds make things worse. I start smoking weed to counteract the effects of the meds. I'm like, I'm kind of holding it together in my career. I managed to get to be this early employee at ⁓ a startup in San Francisco called Twilio. And that at the time they only had like ten something employees. But th they went on to be a billion dollar startup. I was like not super happy there. I jumped to another one. It was called Uber Cab. Where it was Uber Cab, then it became Uber. You know, that the they also blew up. But I I didn't stick around. I I jumped jumped ship a third time to be the chief technology officer of this company in Ukraine. They were making card games. And ⁓ At this point I was smoking weed every day. And I'm like writing in my journal, like trying to understand reality while I'm getting really high. And ⁓ everything eventually crashes. Right around December two thousand twelve. This is what all the all the marijuana enthusiasts thought that my apocalypse was gonna happen. And my own life seemed to be like kind of careening in this crater. And ⁓ I kinda like I'd hospitalized maybe five times over the course of that year. And whenever I got put in the mental hospital, I was always like, I just wanna get out of here. And I start figuring out like how do I act in ways that will get me out of this place. And I realize I kinda click at some level, like maybe the whole world's a mental hospital. Just like in layers. Where like you don't get out of the mental hospital when you've healed your psychological trauma. You get out when you can act normal enough that they're like, ⁓ he's you know, he's he's kinda acting normal enough to be let back into polite society. And I start thinking like well, I know this too, 'cause in the mental hospital, if you're really misbehaving, They have a back room they put you in that's like a lot smaller and it's it's much more boring. There's a lot less you can do. And then if you stop shouting at the aliens or whatever, they'll let you out of the back room into the main area where there's a TV and you could like draw with crayons and colored pencils if you want and socialize with other people. And so I start thinking like, huh. Maybe the mental hospital is just like a smaller version of the world as a whole, where like there's a right way to act. And if I act the right way, I'll have more freedom. I'll be able to explore more of the world to see more of it. And this was like I was tiptoeing back to the idea of maybe right and wrong mean something real. I was so far away from the idea of God being believable. I couldn't, there's no way I was gonna do that. But I was starting to accept that maybe even though I couldn't prove it, maybe right and wrong actually pointed at something real. And so then I start like, okay, like even if I can't prove it, I need to at least live my life. Surprise, surprise, life starts to get better. It starts to improve. And my wife and I, the woman who's now my wife, she was like a roommate at the time, but also an ex-girlfriend. So she'd see me before I spout in the madness. She kind of knew, like, this isn't who you really are. You get out of this. And I ended up persuading her like we should be dating. And I knew basically I have to get my life together to be with her. She's not going to be with me my lifestyle together. So we got engaged. She kind of held me. get back to sanity by just being this like target that was like that's a goal worth aiming at. So having a billion dollars in the bank account wasn't sufficiently motivating to like have my life together. Because I figure th they're just printing money. I'll find the money one way or another. But I felt like she was irreplaceable. And that was enough of a like a consequences are real. Your life matters. It could go either way, but you've got to get it together. That was enough to like for me to start walking the way without realizing what it was. So what I believe now, when Jesus says I'm the truth, the way and the life, he's not giving you properties of who he is. He's giving you his identity. And there's not really a difference between doing what life requires of you and following Jesus, even if you're not using the name, you just haven't realized who you're following yet. So I think I was like starting to come back to this path. When we got engaged, we're playing the wedding, my wife wanted to get married at the church. She wasn't religious. She didn't really have much of a background in that. She's from China. Didn't you know they didn't they didn't talk about that there. And she just felt like it was the right thing to do. I was adamantly against it, 'cause I was still of this place of like, if God is real, he's a monster. And it just seemed easier to believe, or like it seemed more plausible that life just kinda happened. And that the idea of God sort of worked to help people function better. And that maybe if all of us acted like God was real, the world would get better. And maybe if enough of us did that, it would start to become better and God would start to become more real. But I couldn't I I didn't want to go along with something I didn't believe in because it felt like a violation of integrity. It felt like a violation of going against what I believed felt like going against the truth. ⁓ so so what changed things? What's a good question? My with li life got really hard. We got two young kids and my dad gets diagnosed with this thing, this ⁓ Is Parkinson's adjacent neurocognitive decline. So my dad starts mentally declining. And my wife's dad, he's dying and sh my wife's dad passed away when she was young. Her mom is diagnosed with breast cancer. So we've got two kids under the age of four. Both parents on both sides are dying. And they're like, we're in California. Her mom was in China. My dad was in Ohio where I'd grown up. And it was just like life just kind of crushing down got to be so hard that I start to be like, I'll try anything. And one time went my wife and I are in a fight one day, and I'm like in order to avoid screaming obscenities at her in front of our children, which is what my body was telling me to do, I went out and I prayed. I started walking back and forth saying this prayer they taught us in high school that said, Lord, teach me to serve you as you deserve, to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not seek for rest, to labor and not ask for any reward, save that I'm knowing I'm doing your will. And I didn't think he was real. I didn't think anybody was listening. But I I just I knew I needed help, man. I was willing to do anything to get that help. And it's not like he appeared to me in that day, but I was able to keep my mouth shut. And then later, a day or two later, maybe the same day, we're at my brother in law's my brother in law, my sister's place. He was in college in California and they had a textbook of world religions. And I start reading this thing. And I approach it like a software engineer. 'Cause I you I write code for a living, I approach this like the things that people believe, they're sort of like computer programs that run in your brain. And so I figured if all these different religions I can understand them, let me understand them the way I understand computer code, and maybe that will help me get at the truth of what good really means. Because I was increasingly starting to believe that the word good meant something real, but it was confusing and subtle, and that's why there wasn't like 'cause I I figured if it's real the way atoms are real, you wouldn't have a bunch of confusion about it. You know, it would be a little bit more obvious. Nobody's really arguing about the periodic table of elements, but they do argue about what good means, and I felt like that required an explanation. So I start I'm studying these different religions in these different books, trying to make sense of them putting it together. And when I get to the part about Judaism and they say that the thing that made the Jews unique is this idea of like that they basically said, first off, everybody recognizes there's something that's not you, something outside of you, something that's other than you that you can't control. And the Jews were like, ⁓ that thing loves us and we love it. And I remember being kind of mind blown by that description of like the way the Jewish people conceived of God, because effectively I realized I had that object in my mind. I was already relating to this thing, but I didn't call it by a name. I didn't see it as a person. I sort of thought of it as like the game I'm playing or like the system I'm trapped in. I'd use words like system or principle. Yeah. But the the book is this book was saying the Jewish people conceptualize that as a loving father. And I was like, Okay. I that's a way I could think about it. And I had this dream one night shortly after where I'm So my parents had given me a journal of a bunch of ancestors. So I'm getting to the point. I'm getting there. If that they're giving me the journal of ⁓ it was one of my ancestors who fought in the Civil War. And I'm reading this guy's journal and I feel a strange sort of affection for him. So he never met me, you know, he died in the late nineteenth century. But he's responsible for my existence today. And the sacrifices that he made to live a good life, I'm the beneficiary of them, even though he never knew me. And I start I saw as I'm having this dream, I feel this gratitude for him. And then I start imagining, well, if I had future descendants, am I living in a way that they would be grateful to me? I start thinking that maybe some of what I'm doing, like I you I've got kids, if they have kids and that goes on forever, maybe they would be a bit grateful for me. And it was it was calming. It was it felt almost healing to imagine this like beam from the end of time shining back on me, like, thank you for doing what you did. And then I realized like All right, my ancestors, if they could watch me and they could see what I'd be doing, well, once you get back far enough, you have ancestors, your your ancestors have descendants that are like filling the whole world because of the way that the math works out with the g ⁓ the genetics and the ancestry over time. And so I start realizing I'm like, maybe I'm more loved than I realized, at least by my descendants, but by my ancestors and maybe even by my descendants who in the distant future will be grateful to me. And So I start reading more, I realize I gotta get deeper into Christianity and I gotta better understand because I was raised Catholic. I've encountered enough people who are e evangelical or different various variations of Protestantism. Like there was this guy at Google one day. I'm walking into breakfast. I run into this guy, and somehow he just hits me. I don't know why I start talking to him. I felt drawn to him. He shows this Bible verse from I think it was Ephesians that's like, We're not saved by works, but by faith alone. And he was telling me like nothing you can do. Is gonna ma like only God's grace can reach you. And if I just I sp broke down in tears in front of my plate of like sausage and biscuit at the Google cafeteria on MP5 and Sunnyvale, it's like I needed that. Because I think I'd internalize this idea from the materialist universe. The materialist, you know, physicalists is like, well, you exist as a bunch of thoughts in your head, and if you don't figure it out, the life the universe is gonna crush you. Like if you personally don't navigate life, it's gonna quick like a bug. And I like I was sorta getting the I've gotta do it the right way, I gotta do it the right way, I gotta do it the right way. And had no concept of grace. I had no concept of like God is reaching you at the very moment. You just gotta get out of his way. You just gotta open up and accept it. So what was the aha moment? So the specific aha moment after I've been studying scripture a bunch and I re I realize he's drawing me in, but I was still kind of keeping him at arm's length of like, I only want to believe what's true. And if it's like I know that this makes me feel good, but if I don't know what it means to say he's the son of God, if I can't prove like if I feel more confident that Bitcoin will go up than I do that Jesus was the son of God, I don't want to tell people I'm Christian because You're supposed to really actually believe that, not just say, like, well, I think it helps me navigate my life. Okay. And it was right around the time my dad passed away at the very end. And for a couple of days, it was like the veil was thinner, something like the way I recognized my dad in my mind somehow changed. And it was like I started to see him as a a principle or idea. The way I would think of numbers. And I don't know how it works for other people, but for me. Numbers have a feeling to them. There's an emotion behind them. Algorithms and processes, they feel like something to me. It's not this stereo. I don't like I gather for other people there's not a lot of feeling in math. For it's like, no, man, it's all feeling. I don't know how else people do it. Numbers feel like something. And so when my dad passed away, I I felt him transitioning in my brain's understanding of him from like a man in that bed right over there down Montgomery Road, you know, 20 minutes away. Here's roughly how big he is, etc. To like you I'd see his life kind of roll ⁓ through my eyes on like a film strip and our interactions, and it and it was like God put him there to do a job. And his job was to be this like precise, explosive person. Because he did have a temper. He could be really he was terrifying when he was angry. He worked on But how the the aha moment. Yeah, so I'm getting there. The aha moment was I'm getting into the shower. And it clicked that I I just remembered the angle that my head made down, like I'm pushing Jesus away because I out of reverence for the truth. I only want to believe what's true. But that thing that I was clinging to the whole time, which Jesus already had me in his hands, man. The whole time I was clinging to the truth. And I was clinging to what I thought the truth was, and I was pushing away who I thought Jesus was. And it was sort of like realizing this thing I've been clinging to for dear life the whole time, he was holding me to. He was carrying me the whole way. It was him the whole time. I just hadn't learned to recognize him in the face. Like I I thought the truth was like a kind of principle or a tool or some kind of abstract property or reality that you could get to by measuring. And it was sort of like no, he's a person, man. The truth is a person. And he was carrying me the whole time. And how did that when you realized that, how did it affect you? I just wanted to follow him now. Yes. So that's when you you gave your heart to Jesus. Yeah. I don't know if I'd use that language. That isn't how it felt at the time. It was more like that again, I I guess everybody's different. That was when I realized, ⁓ this is actually real. Yes. This is not that he that he's that guy that I was following. And so then for the the next couple of years it kept being like, let me get closer, let me understand more. Let me follow more. Let me try to make sense of it. And so then after that, I've yeah, I've I have been also been a series of different persons, but I feel like I'm converging on who I really am. Okay. So let me repa let me recap. Okay Sir. Yeah, you you lived in your head. You did intellectualized your life. Yes. And and it worked and then it didn't work and it crashed and burned. Yes. And then And then in your bottom of the the pit of your crash and burn, you began to wonder that maybe there might be a r a re a God actually out there somewhere. Not even a god. I wasn't even that far. It was there might be a reality to right and wrong. Okay. All right. I'm I so I I I accept that correction. ⁓ but then at at a point you did realize that that that whatever that was out there was God. Yeah. And and you you said, okay. I want I want you to control my life. I wasn't you could use your own terms. But yeah, yeah. It was like I want to follow you. It took a while to realize I need to surrender to him. Yes. But you did. Yes. That's the moment that I've been waiting for is the surrender part. Because so many people I'm by by by how I'm raised, I'm an intellect. I'm not so ⁓ it was easier, especially with ⁓ living in chronic pain, it was easier to live here than it was to allow it to affect here. Yeah. And and it was so when I would when things would go bad I would I would run back here. Okay. And but when I when I fran when this didn't work anymore and I and life wasn't worth living, and someone said, But there is a solution. His name is Jesus. And I said, But then here, let me follow you. You can have me. If if you'll do something with me, ⁓ take me. And he did. And that's when my life became livable and not not all rosy and perfect, you know, none none of that. Come to Jesus and it'll all be b but butterflies and roses. No, no. It'll it come to Jesus and God will help you with your life. He will work in your life and in your heart. I call it the six thousand miles, six-inch trip trip from here to here. When you when you finally accept him and say, okay, it's you and me, it's a personal relationship. It's not going to be like it is for David. Or for George or Mike or Bill or anybody else. It's going to be him and me, and he's going to meet me where I'm at, and I'm going to trust him. And that's and that's the life you're living now. So I think so. I got I don't I can't point to a moment and be like that's when I there there was that mental moment, but there's a part of me that wonders like have I actually surrendered or am I still in the place of like mentalizing everything, telling myself I surrendered? Like there are times that I wonder about that and then I just say, Okay, Jesus, yeah, I trust you. I know you'll guide Yeah, but when you do that, okay, Jesus, I trust you. Yeah. Once you said it once, here I am, I give it to you, then those Then you're gonna have doubts. You're you're gonna have challenges because you're you're transitioning from from just thinking to living. Yeah. Not surviving, but actually a new life. And that's why this this this podcast is here, is because you're not the only one who's y used every coping mechanism in the universe except trusted Jesus. I was like, I'll I'll use everything. Yeah. That's And and and and and for everybody it's different. If I talk to 500 people, I'm going to get 499 different stories. Okay. Because because everybody it's a personal relationship. When we when God created us, he created us from the inside out. Before we were even a twinkle in an eye, the Bible tells us he created us. And in that creation, He put faith and hope as part of our spiritual DNA. That's in there from the beginning. So that when you're born, those tools that God would love to use later in your life. were already available to you, their resources. And when you finally come to a place where you can't do it on your own, you don't you come to realize you need something bigger, better, or something different than you've done before. Yeah. Which is what happened to me, which is what happened to you. We we make a faith step and say, here Jesus, take my life. And that doesn't mean it's all done. It just means we've we've now we've set on a trip. The rest of our life is a path. Yeah. We're going follow Jesus' path. We're going to learn to learn to please him, how to love him, how to serve him, how to reflect him, and how to change others like he did. So that we become a vehicle for the love of God to get through us to someone else, even though we're not perfect, it though the perfectness of God will come through us and impact others. And that's what's called a Christian life. ⁓ And that's why we have a podcast about it. And I'm glad you're you're on being you telling about the intellectual side of it because we we we have I note a couple of people who when they watched my podcast they said, Well what about us thinkers? And I said, Well, I'm one of them and he Yeah, but you're the one. Yeah. No, there's others. You're not the one. It's ⁓ it's okay that we're all different. Yeah. Because this world is different. Yeah. You know, we're we're a huge buffet of all different choices. And but if if we all remember that the end result is that God created us, wants a relationship with us. And when we put that trust in Him, that relationship begins. Yeah. But when a baby is born, we don't say, Congratulations, here's the freeway, you're on your own. Yeah. When we give our heart to Jesus, it's not congratulations you're a Christian, you're on your own. It's congratulations you're you've given your heart to Jesus. Now it's the beginning process of learning to love him and serve him. And that's one of the reasons why people go to church at a Bible believing church, because they want to learn how who God is and what he what he wants from him, so that they can please him more. Not out of fear, but out of love. Yeah. Yeah. How how to serve him. And those are the things we get from reading our Bible and praying and and going to church and s hanging out with people who believe what we believe. We don't fire the people who don't believe what we believe, but we draw closer to the ones who are going to feed that new appetite. Yeah. That spiritual appetite. And that's why we're here is to is because not everybody's gonna find Jesus the same. But Jesus is same is the same Jesus available to anyone and everyone. And I think that's amazing. Does that make sense to you? It does, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So having said all that, how is how has your life changed now that you've now that you live with a faith direction, is your life ch changed in some way that would be that you can you can look back and say, Wow, look at how much that things have changed. ⁓ yeah. Yeah. ⁓ so I think the biggest would be the the famil family life. That I've internalized a bunch of stuff that wasn't particularly helpful about the way a family should or should not be structured. So I didn't know how to lead in my family. I didn't understand that that's a responsibility. I didn't internalize the idea that men and women weren't really different. And so that meant there's no difference between a mom and a dad. As a consequence, I wasn't trying to be a dad. I was basically trying to be a mom and doing a bad job of it because that's what my wife wanted and I was trying to make her happy. And hadn't realized like, that's not gonna work. There's no way that's gonna work. But There's a different path. And when I follow that path, things actually seem to work better. So like she's happier, for example. So that that would be one one dimension of it. Another would be like, it sounds odd, but my career, I'd had this continuous like dissatisfaction with the various jobs I'd had. And part of it might be 'cause like if you walk away from a billion dollars in a role, it's hard to be like you not not struggle with regret. If you attach any significance to money. If you have any level of like, ⁓ you know, that would make my life better. And so I've just I learned to trust like God has some path for me that is increasingly starting to make sense, but like only in hindsight. And so like I was finally able to start doing my job and appreciate it, like enjoy it. Enjoy the act of going to work day to day. Cause I was able to be like, Well, I have a duty to my employer to do a good job. And then that's for the short for today. And then like for well, whatever, anything else beyond today, God will take care of. So I don't need to I I learn to finally stop playing with the thought of like, should I reconsider some area of my life? What if I did this? What if I did that? And when those thoughts show up, I finally learn to recognize, like, no, this is not yeah. This is not trusting God. What a coulda shoulda is always the way to hurt yourself. But there's there's no end to it. Yeah, it's it's it's like dancing in quicksand and wondering why we sing. Yeah. Well so that that is like one one advantage of having a giant financial regret is like the moment I start thinking, well, if I could if I could have lived differently, I would have da it eventually converges on like you would have ⁓ known all the lottery numbers and bought all the right lottery tickets. It's like, well, you know, I didn't so that that's definitely improved. And the other one is like I've taken some risks that otherwise I don't I would never have like I was in New York one time for a business trip, we're in the subway. And this guy comes up asking for change. And I felt moved, I guess, to say, I can't give you any money, but I can give you something that's much more valuable. He's like, Do you have a guide? Do you have a compass in your life? Do you have a guide? And he starts talking a bit about Jesus. And I was like, dude, he loves you, man. He loves you more than you know. You don't need to be doing this. And he starts talking about how he has a kid on the way. He's gotta take care of his kid. And he's Yeah. And I just I felt like in that moment, just instinctively, like those are the words that come out. I would never suffer before. That's proof that Jesus is real in your life. Yeah. I mean, though that's that's that's one of those things you can put on the checklist. I've changed enough that these things are now happening in my life that reflect Jesus. And I'm glad about it. Yeah. ⁓ yeah. And if but intellectually, if you'd gone before that decision, you would not have even considered it. You would be like, There's no way, you're crazy. Well, don't just just get out, you know, don't don't engage with the situation. But so see, so there are we c we can we can sell together we can celebrate how far God has taken you already. Yeah. And we still care and have anticipation for how God is going to continue in your life. And t ten years from now, you're gonna look back and say, Wow, look how far I've come. That that sounds entirely in keeping with what I've come to understand. And we ⁓ but the key is to say when you say ⁓ I've come this far, we have to stop and say, No, no. Lord, we've come this far because you've moved me this far. I give you credit for all my victories. That's because I've already I already had my no victories. I I look at my life in three po in three parts. My history, how I got to here, ⁓ it all the ups and downs, all the back and forth, all the good things, all the bad things. The the chapter where I gave my heart to Jesus and my life has become changed. And the next chapter is now and forever. And in my so I live my now, today, the best I can. And I impact I want to impact my friends and those I can learn to love. I want I want them to find the love of God. So and I then because of that, there'll be people who are changed forever. They may I may never see them face to face, but God will. Because they gave their hearts to Jesus. They have a guaranteed place in heaven. And you know, it it's it's such a beautiful thing that no matter what your history was, because of your ahow moment, the beginning of a of a whole new life begins. And you continue to grow and mature and ⁓ crawl before you walk, walk before you run, kind of thing. Spiritually you you grow and as a result, you begin to reflect the one you love the most. That sounds right. Love and so Love dissolves and changes your identity. Exactly. So if you were to talk to to our our viewers and you wanted to give them ⁓ a golden nugget, something to encourage them, based on on ⁓ the next week or so, maybe when they pray or when they're thinking about it or mulling, even after the podcast has is already been viewed, what would you like them to to to be encouraged with? More I try to control my life, the more I just make a mess of things. The more I let go and just trust him, the better everything gets in ways that I would not have believed. I just I wouldn't have if you told me what was going to happen, I would say, I don't believe you. I don't believe that that's possible. Mm-hmm. So if that's the I guess that's if there is a nugget, is like if the more you notice that and just let go, let go completely and let him lead, it really works. It does. That's a beautiful nugget. And the thing is that someone who's been h hurt, betrayed, belittled, ⁓ whatever's got them sitting on the curb watching life go by, an encouragement like that gives people the chance to say, Well, maybe I should try that again. Maybe maybe I'm gonna give God another chance because people screw up, but God does not. I wanna trust him. I I I want that new life. Yeah. And if if it worked for Mark, it can work for me. And that's the greatest gift you i you can share with anybody. I I could be wrong, but d do you feel like there's a direct relationship between the suffering that you had to go through beforehand and the joy that you get to experience afterwards, almost like it's they're they're they're tied together so perfectly where it's like Yeah. Well, I th I believe your entire life is woven together. Yeah. The good, bad, the and the other. And for me, being disabled, yeah, ⁓ this is not a new topic to this this podcast. ⁓ you know, I I've had a I had a rough time. But what it did teach me was what I would never do again. I would never treat people like a certain way because it was done to me. I would I would do more of the things I do now because I saw how much it what little I did get, how it impacted me. So when I finally had hope in Jesus, I couldn't wait for others to discover it too, because it was so profound a change for me that I can't imagine why anybody wouldn't want it. Mm-hmm. But I w I was overbearing with it. I wanted the world to w to pray with me right the second. And so I was not giv I was giving God a terrible black eye at the g initially. And finally somebody who loved me enough squ kind of grabbed me by the collar and said, Step back. Yeah, let me talk to you a little while. And they and we we we took the we took the garlic out of the breath. We we slowed it down and we learned to do it with love. And that's the life I've been living for fifty plus years. You know. ⁓ is i is the the life where everything is motivated by love. God's love. I want them to discover the love that gave that God gave me, that gave me this joyous life. And yeah, I'm I'm I'm wound up about it and I'm never gonna stop being wound up. When I wake up in heaven, they speak people keep telling me, Well you're gonna get all these jewels and stuff. I'm just gonna put it at Jesus' feet. I don't need any of that. I just want to be near him. You know I I I'm not I don't do this for a reward, this isn't for a paycheck. I do this because this is the only life that matters. To live this life with Jesus and be pleased with it. And make him pleased with me. And I I'm I'm sure that'll work at your house as well as it works at mine. And it'll work for ever all our viewers too, whether they're listening or viewing. Whatever you're going through, the the God that created you has never taken his his eyes off of you. Through his Holy Spirit He's been gently ledging you and drawing you to the point where you finally can get past your stumbling blocks, your arguments, your wrestling, and put your trust in him. Now ha having said all that, it's time to talk ⁓ for a minute about your book. ⁓ cool. Would you like to tell us a little bit about that? Sure. I felt like God was calling me to write a book about my own story. Part 'cause I'm a software engineer and when I would talk with people about how I believed in God, they thought this was unusual because I was describing it from a technical perspective. And it's not like I believe in God despite my engineering background. It's the opposite. Like, no, I think science and math point to God in ways that like They only make sense to science and math type people. And so people found it unusual. I thought I'd write my story up. So I left my job last year to do that. ⁓ it was a very good job, the best job I've ever had. So it's kind of a tough decision, but I felt like, well, this is what God's calling me to do. So I'll figure it out. And ⁓ I spent a lot of last year, much of this year working on it. It came out July sixteenth. It's called Rebooting Belief. And I'm calling it that because well, when a computer doesn't work, you turn it off, you turn it back on again. And so I like I turned off my belief in a bunch of things like reality and moral truth and all that stuff, and my life crashed. So I had to turn it back on. And this time when I turn it back on, I thought I was building my own belief system. I thought I was gonna like, you know, solve it myself until I realized these are old ideas. I'm like stumbling back into something that's like I didn't make this up. And yeah, so everybody that's read it is basically said, I enjoy this, this is good. And ⁓ a lot of people Who aren't religious yet, who don't have that relationship with Jesus yet, even they liked it. Even they thought it was good. And I wanted to write it in a way that's like as maximally appealing to that kind of person as possible. Because I feel like the the people that when they hear the name Jesus, their brain skips a gear and they're like, I don't want any of that. Those are the people that need it the most, man. And so I I wanted to write it in such a way that they're not going to feel preached to or like pushed on, but they'll feel like invited into Sharon's story. Well, I'm I'm I'm encouraging I I want a copy of it. I want to read it. I will send you one. And I want I want others to to to really you know, you can can you get it on Amazon or how do you get the book? Yep, it's just you can go straight on Amazon. Just rebooting belief is right there. It's the first thing that'll come up. Rebooting Belief. Yep. Okay. And that's by Mark Nyer. N E Y E R, that's right. Okay. And and you've got a website I do, just markneyer.com, that's my name. I do have a a sub stack where I blog. Those are a bit more on the technical side. So if you're into that stuff, go ahead and read it there. But these are more like mathematical philosophical arguments for faith that are you know, if if you're into computer science theory, you might enjoy that. Yeah. So it's it's it's the the podcast for nerds. That's right. And the and there's a r there's a lot of us. There's there's not just two or three. So it's good to have someone who can speak the language That's most comfortable. Yep. I I'm glad you're doing that. God makes us all individuals and we're all we have different strengths and different weaknesses and I definitely can't reach everybody, but I can reach some people and that's what I'm gonna do my best to do. Yeah, and I can't reach everybody either. And so all I do is just love people and let God sort it out. Makes sense. Is what I'm what we're gonna do now is pray. Okay. And ⁓ after we pray, ⁓ we'll we'll we'll ⁓ I give a challenge. So let's pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you and thank you for the privilege we've had to to share the life-changing difference that got that you have made in Mark's life. And Lord, it may not be like everybody else, but that's okay. That's why Jesus died for a personal relationship, so that each of us can develop our relationship based on who you created us to be, who we are, and how we live, so that our faith is not like a rubber stamp. It's a personal developed relationship. Lord, work in the lives of our viewers and listeners. Help them to understand that you love them more than anyone could even define, and that you love them enough to love them the way they are. And we pray that you'll let your Holy Spirit work in their lives and draw them to check you out, to see out what Mark discovered, to see what I've discovered, that the love of God is real, and He'd love to shine that love and share that love with you. God bless them and bless them all and make a difference from this podcast. In Jesus' name. Amen. And the closing thought is seek after God, he will be found. You want to know him deeper, seek Jesus. Jesus told us he's the way to God. So you want to know God? Seek Him. You want to know Him better? Jesus is the way. If you really want to hope and you really want to change, and even though it intellectually doesn't compute, You don't turn off your brain, you just open up your heart and God will meet you there. And God will do a wonderful work in your life, as he always does. This has been the God Says Yes Podcast with David Ebel. Connect with David, email him at GodsaysYesPodcast at gmail.com. You can get his latest book, When the Doctors Say No, God Says Yes, at Amazon.com.