MTYC 2011: Able to Stand

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Montana Youth Conference

Chad Kreuzer

The Challenge

Father, you are the divine, heavenly Father that we sometimes forget about during the day.

We sometimes don't think about you, and I know in my own personal experience, I've even read that it is not safe for a day or an hour to go without praying and speaking to you and there have been days, maybe not full days for a long time, but even hours of the day at least that my mind has literally been consumed with other things and my thoughts have not gone back to you.

But I thank you that you can change our brains, literally.

You can change our thoughts, our actions, our habits, and our character, so that we will be people that when we have breaks in our thought processes, that we can choose to turn our minds to you and to your Word that we can be transformed into your image and Father as we open the Word and as we look at science in the brain this amazing this amazing organ that you have put inside of us We just pray that your Holy Spirit would guide.

Give me the right words in the name of Jesus.

I've been studying about brain plasticity lately and 1 of the amazing studies that they've done, I found this absolutely fascinating.

Historically, neuroscientists used to believe that the brain was basically fixed.

Like you are somewhat, you know, your genes, you are what you are, and certain processes like mental process, for instance, sight, you know, it's in the occipital lobe, it's in the rear portion of the brain, that other functions, you know, your fingers have certain portions of the brain that, you know, work with that function and they can never be changed, they are changed less.

This has been the historical, now it's the antiquated idea, just a historical idea because science has now proven that the brain is what scientists call very plastic, meaning it's changeable.

And 1 scientific discovery that they have shown that proves this very thing is that in the country of Spain what they have done is this.

They have a school that trains teachers who are teachers of the blind and in order to have these teachers understand and have a conception what if it's like to be blind they blindfold these teachers.

They come to the school in Spain, they spend some time there, but the thing is they don't just cover your eyes like with a bandana so you can't see very well, but you can kind of see, you know, because right now my eyes are closed, but I can see that there's some light over here, you know, and I can tell there's some light up above and it's not as dark down there but my eyes are closed.

But because of that you don't get a good conception of what it's like to be fully blind.

A person who's fully blind doesn't see anything.

Now there's legally blind and then there's you know totally blind where you just you can't see anything.

You don't know that there's a distinction between colors.

So these teachers come in and they blindfold them in such a way that it is so dark that no light can shine through so they can't see light from dark and a little bit of red through their eyelids and whatnot.

What's fascinating about what happens very rapidly, you know how many times deaf or blind people rather have a tactile sense that is much more heightened than the rest of us, right?

Their hearing many times is heightened to an extent that the rest of us may not hear you know, these very small changes in different things, but they can hear these things.

And within days what begins to happen to these people who are seeing, they cover their eyes so dense and so dark that very quickly they can actually begin to tell by the noises, by the reflections of noises, whether there is something in front of them.

Also they can get to the point where they can begin to tell difference between motorcycles brands by the sound of the motorcycle.

Also, what's very fascinating though, is typically scientists have always thought the rear portion of the brain is the occipital lobe, it's the, you know, from ocular, from your eyes, it is the portion that relays the information.

The information comes in from your eyes, the visual stimulus goes in through the eyes, goes to the rear portion of the brain, and it is all that information is relayed to the rest of the brain so you know what you are seeing.

But what happens is within literally, literally within 2 days of shutting off all stimulation to the visual cortex, what begins to happen is the brain begins to rewire to the point where it begins to feel the tactile sense and the auditory sense begins to take over portions of the visual brain.

It literally, the occipital lobe which was always thought to be something that basically took the function of seeing.

Now scientists know that very rapidly your brain can change.

It can transform by what you are allowing to enter into your senses.

The brain can be changed by what you allow to go in through your senses.

Another test they discovered was actually this is what they did in London.

The grid, the street grid for London is not like a grid like places like New York City.

Yeah, New York City, you know, New York City is basically right turns.

I mean, everything is 90 degree angle, right?

There's parallel streets and then perpendicular streets.

Everything is perfectly grid, almost everything I could probably say.

So you know, second street, third street, fourth street, it's pretty obvious, right?

It's not real hard and then you know some of the major streets and you can get around New York City very easily.

London the streets are, you know, curvy and all kinds of different things.

And so the reality is though when when a cab driver becomes a cab driver in London they actually have to go take a test first to make sure that they know the streets well enough in London so that they can be a cab driver.

Scientists have actually gone and they have looked at the brains of these men and they have looked at what's called the hippocampus, which has to do with memory, but it also has to do with spatial abilities, with memory for these kind of things.

And they have looked at the hippocampus of these cabbies in London, and they have discovered that the hippocampus is actually physically larger in cab drivers in London than your average person in the world.

Now you could account that for maybe 1 of 2 things.

Either these men were born destined to be cab drivers in London or something happened that actually what you choose to think about can actually literally grow portions of your brain.

That what you choose to behold, the stimuli, the things you choose to think about and and look at will physically change your brain and they will change who you are.

The Bible says in Matthew chapter 6, verse 22, it says, "...the light of the body is the eye.

If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." But it goes on to talk about darkness.

And if what you're looking at is darkness, it says how great is that darkness.

Many of us, at least myself, I grew up just watching garbage all the time.

I watched more television than most anybody as a child.

I watched TV literally hours and hours and hours on end.

I watched, as I got older, I watched, I'd drink myself to sleep at night watching the Discovery Channel.

And I'd just be watching documentary after documentary after documentary, watching just, you know, most of it was garbage really, what I was watching.

But nevertheless, I was filling my mind with the things of this world, and the Bible says the light of the body is the eye.

And whatever your eye is looking at, you know you've heard that, I mean very popular verse, we kind of sum up these verses by saying, by beholding we become what?

Now the Bible, that's not specifically a Bible verse, but it comes from 2 Corinthians chapter 3 verse 17 and 18.

It says, Now the Lord is that spirit, and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

And then it says, But we all, the King James says it like this, but I'll kind of, you know, bring it about.

It says, but we all with open face, it means unveiled faces, beholding as in a glass or in a mirror, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

In the newer translations say like this, it says we all with uncovered faces or unveiled faces.

So it's talking about the Jews who had veiled their faces so they couldn't see the glory of God on Moses's face.

We have looked at Jesus, and the veil has been removed.

We all with unveiled faces, looking as into a mirror, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

It's like you have this mirror in front of you and you're looking into that mirror and you're seeing Jesus' face.

And the more you look at Jesus' face and His character and who He is and what He's like, you are actually what?

Changed into the same image from glory to glory even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

We are changed by what we behold physically not just in some spiritual fashion although it isn't a spiritual fashion.

It used to just be the you know we think oh you know you're changed in a spiritual way but it's more than that.

Our brains are physically changed by the things we choose to behold and think about.

Many times people say, oh you know I can watch these things and it doesn't affect me.

You know I can watch this and I was raised in the Christian Reformed Church all of my life from preschool and into my college years all of my education is through the Christian Reformed Church and in the Christian Reformed Church, when I got to college we had this class called C-POL, Christian Perspectives on Learning.

And the basic, and it's kind of a modern Christian idea that you can basically watch anything and everything, but there's a Christian perspective of how you look at it.

So you can watch a bad movie and you can watch evil things on that movie and while you're watching it you just have to try to pull out of it good principles.

But the Bible says that the principle there in 2 Corinthians 3, 17, 18 tell us what?

That by looking at something you are changed.

Whether you want to be or not, you are changed by it, right?

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The Challenge

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