GYC West 2016: Identity. Who Are We?

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GYC West

Breakout 2- Chad & Fadia Kreuzer

Chad Kreuzer

Fadia Kreuzer

1. Good Stress, Bad Stress, Less Stress

2. The Mind and Body Connection

3. The Brain and Nutrition

4. The Great Brain Killer and 7 Ways to Fix It

5. Freedom and the Frontal Lobe

We shared the beginning of our last 1 and the end, this statement, never forget that thoughts work out actions, repeated actions form habits, and habits form character.

We talked about the frontal lobe, we talked about the frontal lobe being the seat of spirituality, morality, and will.

It's interesting that when you look at animals, and the portion of their brain, the proportion of their brain, that is the frontal lobe.

Now we look at cats and 3.5% of the frontal lobe of a cat, I should say 3.5% of the brain of a cat is the frontal lobe.

What do you think has a larger brain, a cat or a, not a larger brain, a larger proportion of the brain that's a front of lobe, a cat or a dog.

Twice as large, and that's why, have you ever noticed cats, they can make wonderful pets, but they're kind of like a wild animal in the house.

And they just look and just do whatever they want to do.

But most of the time, they're kind of like a wild animal that just does its thing in your house.

But what do you, obviously more than a dog, you have a chimpanzee, which 17% of the frontal lobe of the chimpanzee, or actually I keep saying it wrong, 17% of the brain is the frontal lobe in the chimpanzee.

But when you look at the human brain, nearly a third of the human brain is the frontal lobe.

This is what distinguishes us from other animals, that we have a connection.

Humans can have a love, or animals I should say, can have a love for their master.

But they're not thinking beyond the master to the supernatural, right?

And this frontal lobe is the seat of spirituality, morality, and the will.

Now I'm going to share with you some very amazing things that tie into finding victory.

And having the identity that God intended us to have.

Because he intends for you to have an identity.

And even as he wants you to have a special identity, He's not looking to strip your individuality from you.

He wants you to have the individuality that you were created to have, which is the highest possible attainment that you could ever have.

What God asks you to do, He's not, just like when you were sharing your testimony, He isn't actually trying to strip us away from something, but he's trying to use what he's called us to to make us into something, right?

He's not trying to strip something, now yes he wants to strip away pain and suffering and sin and these kind of things, but he's trying to give us something better in return.

Now, Olds and Milner did a study back in 1953 in Montreal, and what they did, it was actually kind of a mistake, they were taking mice and they were trying to look at the fear center of the brain.

So they implanted some electrodes in the mouse in the brains of a mouse and as they did so typically what would happen is if you give a little electric shock to that portion of the fear center of the brain the mouse would do anything it could to get away from that area and would do anything it could to stay away from that area.

Because it associated wherever you shocked it with this horrendous fear response.

But here this mouse that Olds and Milner had planted an electrode, they were trying to implant it in a fear center, but when they shocked it, it would do anything it could to stay in that area.

So now the question was, was this some kind of masochistic rat?

They had accidentally placed it, what they believed, into the pleasure center of the brain.

It ended up being the center of desire rather than pleasure.

But what they discovered was that they could actually, they set up a little contraption where the mouse could push the lever itself and receive this electric shock.

And it was so exciting to have this experience that what would it do?

It'd push it, and once it realized what it did, it would push it again, and again, and again, and it would just push it over and over and over until it just passed out.

So it just, to get that pleasure, it would do it over and over and over to the point where it would just collapse from exhaustion.

They set up an electrified grid and this grid is just my little illustration of what it would be like.

But basically they would on 1 side on both sides you'd have levers and each lever would only work 1 time.

And then you have to run across a painful electrified grid.

And that would only work once until you went to the other side and you had to go back and forth.

And so they would begin to run back and forth and they would push the lever and it was so exciting to receive that pleasure.

That, just to let you young ladies know, that they planted electrodes in these mice and it would, they could push these levers and it would give them a jolt of electricity to the part of the brain that would have to do with like pleasure or desire.

And so exciting to the mice, they would do anything to push the lever.

But here they would push it but they could only push it once and they would have to go over this electrified grid and go through suffering and pain to get to the other 1 and push that and it would only work once and then they'd have to run back and push it again and push it again and push it again and it was so exciting that they would run back and forth until their feet were literally burned and they could not go any longer.

And 1 of the things they did as they were doing this, they actually figured out, like for instance, they would, if they wanted the mouse in its cage, they have this electrode in the brain, if they wanted it to move to the right, every time it moved just a little bit to the right, they would give it a little shock.

And then it realized, oh, they want me to go this way.

And then it would do it again, and they'd give it another, and then it would do it again.

And they could get it so that they could control it like a video game joystick They could control it like a joystick Now I don't know about you, but to me that sounds a little bit like what the devil can do to us He can get us where we have something on this planet that we love so much, some sin, and it would be different probably for each 1 of us.

But where Hickey literally can control us to get us to go anywhere we'll go to get our little jolt of pleasure in our brains.

The devil can do this and then notice what it is.

But God is saying, listen, I don't want you to be captive to the enemy.

I want you to live to the fullest extent of the freedom that I intended you to have, which is having the greatest joy that you could possibly have and the most fulfillment on planet earth.

And so we're talking about a distinction between the frontal lobe, this blue portion of the brain here in the front left, or here's a mirror image of it, at the center of the brain you have something called the limbic system.

Now the limbic system is kind of the center for your drives and your desires.

It could be for your drive for food, your desire for food.

There's nothing wrong with having a desire for food.

There must have been some kind of hunger in the garden that would cause them to eat.

Now, I don't think it was a painful or a bad kind of hunger, but it was a, oh, it's time to eat.

And there was a drive for things like what married couples are to do, right?

Since we have children, hey, you get the idea.

There's nothing wrong with it in and of itself, but it becomes wrong when it's put in the wrong place, right?

Outside of the marriage covenant, just like food.

There's nothing wrong with a desire for food, but it's what we do with that desire for food.

That can affect us negatively or positively.

And so we want to learn not to live based upon the limbic system.

Yes, we have to live to a degree by our drives.

We have to eat and we, you know, we get married, we have love, and we have these things.

But we want it to be controlled by the frontal lobe.

So the higher region of the brain controls the lower.

It's interesting because it is literally lower within the brain.

So the higher powers of our mental faculties would control the lower.

And Robert Sapolsky, a neurobiologist at Stanford University, has argued that the main job of the modern prefrontal cortex is to bias the brain and therefore you toward doing the what?

When it's easier to stay on the couch, your prefrontal cortex makes you want to get up and exercise.

And when it's easier to put off that project till tomorrow, it's your prefrontal cortex that helps you open the file and make progress anyway.

So the frontal lobe, the prefrontal cortex specifically, his argument is that it encourages you to do the harder thing.

And when we think about it, in life, do you see that many times the harder thing is actually the more fulfilling thing to do?

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Series

Breakout 2- Chad & Fadia Kreuzer

2. The Mind and Body Connection

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Can God Believe In You? (Devotional)

3m

Hebrews 11- Faith

02 The Faith of Enoch

36m

The Adventist Cannibal

35m

iShare 2013 Seminar: Mission to All - Sharing Christ in Any Setting

Medical Evangelism

47m

Living Faith

1h 6m

Kingdom of Gentleness

59m

Systematic Benevolence

Systematic Benevolence- Part 2

52m

The Mount of Blessings

Sins of the Heart

43m

Christian Service and Character

45m

GYC SE 2012 Seminar: Lessons in Warfare

A Stern Warning

35m

Plenary

The Power of One

52m

Martin Luther’s Views on the Antichrist

32m

Sound Doctrine