{"id":1837,"date":"2025-07-01T10:09:32","date_gmt":"2025-07-01T10:09:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uckg.org\/fastofdaniel\/?p=1837"},"modified":"2025-07-01T10:09:48","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T10:09:48","slug":"israel-brako","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uckg.org\/fastofdaniel\/israel-brako\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel Brako"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>\u201cI was invited to the Universal Church by a friend, and I could see how much he had changed. At the time, I followed the crowd and lived from party to party, yet I still felt empty. It reached a point where I wouldn\u2019t even remember certain moments, only seeing myself later in Snapchat stories, making a fool of myself.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>My first real interaction with the church was through Real Talk<\/em>. I remember my pastor showing a video of a man who claimed to be a Christian, yet he promoted and listened to rappers who openly worshipped the devil. Even when confronted about it, he defended his actions. To me, it sounded so absurd that I couldn\u2019t believe it. However, at that moment I realised I was no different. I had claimed to be a Christian all my life, yet I was living in complete contradiction to what a Christian should represent.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>My pastor, who was also the youth pastor, helped me a lot. During one-on-one conversations, I was completely open with him. I told him everything I had done because I knew it was wrong. There was no point in hiding it. I understood early on that he was there to help, not to judge.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>Receiving the Holy Spirit was my turning point. It was the last day of the 21-Day Fast of Daniel and I gave it my all. I cut out every distraction and sought God with everything in me \u2013 meditating, praying and seeking. T<\/em>hat night, I received the Holy Spirit.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>Now, I can say with certainty that I am changed. My friends and family look to me for advice and support, and I\u2019m always happy to help because I understand how precious souls are. I was once a lost soul, and I know that if I hadn\u2019t been given the chance to change, there would have been deep regret. Now, I want to give that same chance to as many people as possible because my testimony is only just beginning \u2013 there\u2019s so much more I intend to do, even in future workplaces.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cI was invited to the Universal Church by a friend,  [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":1838,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-case-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uckg.org\/fastofdaniel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uckg.org\/fastofdaniel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uckg.org\/fastofdaniel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uckg.org\/fastofdaniel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uckg.org\/fastofdaniel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1837"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.uckg.org\/fastofdaniel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1839,"href":"https:\/\/www.uckg.org\/fastofdaniel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1837\/revisions\/1839"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uckg.org\/fastofdaniel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uckg.org\/fastofdaniel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uckg.org\/fastofdaniel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uckg.org\/fastofdaniel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}