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Anchor Point Films

Chad Kreuzer

Tortured, Tried and Transformed

Good morning, I'm happy to be with you again.

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Chad Kruiser and my wife is Fadia.

We have a ministry called Anchor Point Films where we produce documentary films on Bible prophecy and health.

We also do seminars on Bible prophecy, overcoming habits, the gut-brain connection and many more things.

If you have any questions or you'd like to contact us go to our website which is anchorpointfilms.com.

And this morning we're gonna look at a message called Tortured, Tried, and transformed.

We can see all around us troubling times are not too far distant.

But before we begin, let's bow our heads for a word of prayer.

Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your Word, for the opportunity to study.

We thank you that in the midst of trials, tribulations, difficulties, and dangers that we have a Savior that is with us at all times.

And we thank you that you supply all of these things through the power of the Holy Spirit.

So we ask for this and we ask for wisdom now in the name of Jesus.

In a book entitled Ghost Boy, you find out about a young boy named Martin Pistorius, who at the age of 12, he went through a sickness that caused him to go into a coma.

And he was not able to speak, he was not able to move his limbs.

His parents were told to just help keep him comfortable until he died.

Well, he had what was called total locked-in syndrome.

What that is, is that means that he could hear, he could understand everything that was going on around him, but he just couldn't respond.

He said, I cannot express to you how much I hated Barney.

You see, he was taken to a center that would take care of him.

He lived at home with his parents, but during the day, while they would work, he would be at this center and they would just sit him because they thought he was just gone, you know, like a vegetable.

He was in the sense that he couldn't move but he could understand everything and they would just sit him from the age of 12 to the age of 25 in front of a TV watching children's programming and what ended up happening?

He said, I hated watching Barney, that crazy purple dinosaur.

I mean, literally, you understand that in and of itself is torture.

But nevertheless, being in this place, being in this facility that was supposed to take care of him, he was abused mentally, physically, and even sexually by multiple caregivers.

His mother even said to him, I wish you would die.

But his father, he daily showered him and he took care of him, he washed him, and he clothed him and fed him and he took him daily to the care center.

His father's diligence paid off and 1 perceptive caregiver, 1 of the people that was working with him, noticed an almost unperceptible smile as he was talked to.

And finally that caregiver said to the parents, you should have him tested.

And it turned out that at the age of 25, that he had a fully functioning mind.

He just couldn't move his body very much.

So through a computer he was able later to communicate.

And with that computer he was able to go to school, to go to college and get a degree.

And he finally went on and he went on into web design.

And a woman ended up meeting him and she began to witness to him.

And Martin Pistorius gave his life to Jesus Christ.

Amazingly enough, he ended up marrying this woman.

And all along, when unable to communicate, he had a sense of God's presence.

He didn't know the Bible, he didn't know Christian doctrine, he wasn't really raised in a religious home, but yet somehow, he, in the midst of all of this, knew that God was right there with him, even long before he met this woman who shared Jesus Christ with him.

He sensed that God was there with him even as he couldn't communicate with anyone.

And somehow God used this torturous experience to play a part in bringing this man Martin Pistorius to Jesus Christ.

You know we all go through trials in life.

Maybe not necessarily like Martin went through, but in the last days there is going to be trouble.

These things, if we cling to Christ, they will rather than draw us away from Christ, will actually help us to draw closer to Jesus than ever before.

I was reading an article from Scientific American by Scott Barry Kaufman and he says in this article he talks about something called kintsugi.

Now kintsugi is a century old Japanese art of fixing cracked pottery.

Now, rather than hiding the cracks, the technique actually involves rejoining the broken pieces with lacquer mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum.

And when put back together, the whole piece of pottery looks beautiful as ever, even while owning its broken history.

It's interesting that this pot can end up looking just as beautiful as ever, even showing its brokenness.

And then the reality is with God's people, they overcome by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.

And typically your testimony involves trials, tribulations that you have gone through.

That your beauty can show for that you can be as a broken vessel that is put together, put back together by the potter, by the master.

And even with the trials, even with the difficulties, even with the examples of what you've been through, though the trials may be deep, the hardships sore, yet Jesus put you back together.

Far from these trials separating us from Christ, we read in Romans 8, beginning in verse 35, Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or a sword?

As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long.

We are counted as sheep for the slaughter.

Nay in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Friends, I don't think Paul could have really come up with anything else.

He just ran the gamut of all the things that could cause us trouble, and yet he said these things cannot separate us from Jesus Christ.

If we yield broken, if we yield our weakness, if we fall upon the rock that is Christ, nothing shall be able to separate us from the love which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Psychologists now look at trauma not only potentially as causing, in some cases, something like PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, But on the contrary, in many people it seems to propel them, the researchers tell us, onto something actually marvelous.

It actually gives them a higher state of life and the psychologists now have termed this, they call this post-traumatic growth.

We're going to get back to post-traumatic growth.

But I want to give you some examples of people who had post-traumatic growth in their lives.

I mean, we can look through the Old Testament.

We could look at Joseph, amazing example in his life.

We could look at Isaiah, Jeremiah, and many more examples in the Old Testament, figures in the Old Testament on how the trials they went through actually drew them closer to God.

But I want to look at some New Testament examples of people who went through trials and difficulties and yet it actually it elevated them to a new experience in Jesus Christ.

1 of the great examples are the disciples.

They went through trials day by day as they ministered for their Lord.

They heard people lying about Jesus, maybe falsely accusing them.

They finally, they saw that the people, the leadership of Israel, the priests, The Pharisees, the rabbis began to conspire together to lie about what Jesus had done.

This 1 who had gone about doing good, healing those who were sick, literally raising the dead, casting demons out of people.

And finally they saw their Master tortured and a cruel death on the cross.

But in the end, no, it didn't destroy them.

It actually, it was actually the cross and the resurrection that transformed their lives.

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Tortured, Tried and Transformed

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