GYC Conference 2024: Wherever He Goes

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

The Most Fulfilling Life

Chad Kreuzer

Fadia Kreuzer

01 The Most Fulfilling Place to Live

Well, let's begin with a word of, oh yeah, we'll introduce ourselves then, we'll break.

So my name is Chad Kruiser and this is my wife, Fadia.

We live an hour north of Grand Rapids, Michigan, out in the country.

We have a YouTube channel called Health and Homestead, 3 words spelled out, Health and Homestead, if you want to learn more about what we do, sharing seminars on country living, research on natural remedies that has been shown in peer-reviewed literature, often to be just as good or better than drug medication, with generally significantly less side effects.

We go into the research on that in the channel.

We talk about country living in general, growing food.

And so if you wanna learn any more, check that out at Health and Homestead on YouTube.

And we also have a website called anchorpointfilms.com.

And we, God willing, are likely going to start a health center, probably 60-some miles northeast of here with the Amish, to work with the Amish in, well, God willing, the property should be bought within the next couple of weeks if all goes well.

And so we do health work, we do traveling seminars, we speak at places like GYC or camp meetings, those kind of things.

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

Heavenly Father, thank you for the opportunity to study science and scripture, the 2 books that you've given to us, nature and revelation.

Lord I pray that your Holy Spirit would guide As we talk about the most fulfilling life, the most fulfilling way to live, and as we talk about that in 5 sessions, we pray that your Holy Spirit would rain down.

Lord, I pray that you would bless each and every seminar that's taking place right now, that each of us would get what you have planned for us bless us with your Holy Spirit and may Jesus be uplifted in his name we pray amen I want to start talking about the most fulfilling light way to live going back through a little bit of history with, beginning with from the perspective of Jacob, Jacob looked back and he had heard the story of his grandfather.

Jacob had heard of his grandfather, He had heard how his grandfather was called out of his homeland.

And that may be kind of hard to understand, but some of us were called out of the faith of our fathers.

And so Jacob had heard that message and he had heard what God had said to his grandfather, and I will make thee a great nation and I will bless thee and make thy name great.

And thou shalt be a blessing and I will bless them that bless thee and curse him that cursed thee and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.

So he had heard that there was a prophetic calling on his people.

By the way, there's a prophetic calling on your people.

This is what Jacob had heard of his grandfather, and then he had heard from his father the testimony of how his own father had been willing to sacrifice his life for the cause, if it would have been necessary.

Because remember, his father Isaac, could he have stopped Abraham from bringing down the knife, yes or no?

Because his dad was an old man, and he was a young, strapping, strong man.

He could have been like, no, this is ridiculous, I'm not gonna do this.

But he believed if God is calling me to sacrifice my life for his cause, I'm willing to do it.

So Jacob had heard the story of his grandfather, how he was faithful to leaving his background, coming into the truth, how his father was willing to die for the cause if necessary and then he comes in and Jacob wants the blessing also but he wants the blessing without the sacrifice.

He wants the blessing and so he wants to get it any way he can, whether it takes deception, lies, whatever it will take, Jacob wants to receive that.

So then because of that, his brother wants to kill him.

And so he runs off into the wilderness, and while he's in the wilderness, there so he doesn't die.

He's in the wilderness so he doesn't die.

It's interesting how many times in the Bible you see that, that God's people are called into the wilderness so they don't die.

It's not always because they're deceptive, but in this case it was.

But while he's in the wilderness, he's all alone, he's guilty, he knows he's guilty, he feels terrible, he's at the lowest point of his life, and it is at the lowest point of his life that he?

And so as he meets God, what ends up happening is this was the moment.

He now had a dream, a prophetic dream, and in that dream he meets God, and what does he, what ends up happening in his experience?

And Jacob vowed a vow saying if God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go and will give me bread to eat and raiment to put on so that I come again to my father's house in peace, then shall the Lord be my God." So now, he's not just the God of Abraham and Isaac, but he's the God of Jacob as well.

And so many of us have to go through that experience, right?

That God becomes our God, not just our father's God and our grandfather's God, but in our most trying experiences of life is when God becomes real to us personally.

It was when life got really tough that I had to turn to Jesus.

And it was just so traumatizing to our family.

And I just couldn't understand how to deal with it.

But it was in those dark moments that I would cry and cry and cry to God.

And literally, as the cliche goes, Jesus became my best friend.

And by the way, you're welcome to come in.

There's seats up front over here on this side.

And so Jacob now has his personal experience with God.

And by the way, you will only find the most fulfilling life that you can live if you fully give your life to Jesus.

The last thing I wanted to do was go into ministry.

But I'll tell you my life has been so much more fulfilling giving my life to Jesus.

And I've gone through trials in my ministry, but I will tell you I wouldn't have it any other way.

There's nothing more fulfilling you can do than give your life fully to God, just as Jacob did.

But then Jacob ends up having several sons.

And you know, for Joseph, life was great because Joseph came from the family of the patriarchs and these people, he came from a perfect home.

We think of the patriarchs like, oh, the good old days, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, right?

These were the, these are the patriarchs.

Dad's marrying multiple women, and when you have that, just like in many Muslim homes in the world today, there's all kinds of problems within the home.

I don't say that to insult Muslims, It's just a fact.

I've been in Muslim countries, and often when dad's got multiple women, there's jealousy in those marriages.

It's interesting that he can- We have it today with divorce and remarriage, divorce and remarriage, we have multiple families, and there tends to be, you know, tension between the different families, right?

02 Cultivating Contentment: Discovering Fulfillment Through Gardening

Once again, my name is Chad Kruiser, my wife is Fadia Kruiser, and we live in Michigan, and this is our second session in How to Live the Most Fulfilling Life.

This one's called Cultivating Contentment.

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

Heavenly Father, we're so thankful for You and Your Word.

We thank You that Your Word is the way, the truth, and the life.

Lord, I pray that Your Holy Spirit would teach us.

Lord, that we would come to an experience of contentment if we don't have that.

That you would help us to learn to be content in all things.

We may have contentment sometimes and then in trials not have it.

Lord, We pray that you would help us to have contentment in all situations.

Bless us with your spirit, in Jesus' name, amen.

I was just reading an article in GQ, which by the way, I don't normally read GQ, But the title of it was, why is everyone on steroids now?

By the way, when you think of steroids, you think of dudes, right?

You think of like big buff guys, but tons of women are on steroids these days.

And I'm not just talking about women trying to be men, that is a thing, but we're talking about just even women working out, like a lot of buff women these days are on steroids.

You see all these just massive men these days and they're on steroids.

And this article talks about a guy, it talks about multiple people who are on it, what it does to their genitalia, how it shrinks things, and how it messes things up, and how for the rest of their life, they can't produce the same testosterone that they once could.

So now they have to be on these testosterone for the rest of their life.

They go through these things called cycles, because you can't just do it all the time.

And so it's like this trendy thing, but 1 of the things they point out in the article is these people are suffering with the fact that they're not content with the body that they have.

Strangely enough, dudes are less content with their bodies than girls are.

That's the conclusion the research has come to, which, that surprised me.

And I think there's a reason, and I won't go into that.

Partly because dudes tell women how beautiful their bodies are all the time.

So, Women are less likely to do that to a guy, so that's probably part of it, but that's beside the point.

So then looking at women, the 2018 study of female college students found that 77.6% of female college students were not content with their body.

So the vast majority of you, and once again, dudes are worse.

So what we're seeing is people are not happy with who they are.

So it's like, well, you cannot be happy being a skinny guy, and so you just take some steroids.

And now you're messed up for the rest of your life, but at least you're bigger.

It's like, OK, now I have to rely on a drug or an outside substance to make me what I am, Because I'm not content with my body.

Some of you, how many of you know who Scott Ridsom is?

So Scott and I grew up, before we were Adventists, we've been friends since we were children.

And we had a third friend, this guy right here, Andy.

We're at my parents, this is my parents house.

Andy came with his new girlfriend and so we took a photo.

He said, oh, why don't you get a picture?

I thought, oh, I'll use that for the presentation.

But Andy said, so Andy growing up, Scott was always the best 1 of us.

He was the most faithful to God of all of us.

I was crazy, Andy was crazy, and Andy was an atheist.

And from a child, his parents were the most godly Christians I had ever met, but he was an atheist.

I remember in second grade, he's like, I don't believe there's a God.

I didn't know anybody didn't believe there was a God.

And, but Andy said to me, when we were in high school, he said something to me that like blew my mind.

He said, I want to get to the point in my life where I am content all the time.

And I was like, that's even a possibility?

Because in my mind, contentment was like at the party on Friday night.

Contentment was like messing around with a girl.

Contentment was being higher on drugs or having a cigarette or whatever.

Contentment was always some future thing.

It was not really much of an experience that I lived with.

It was always looking forward to something.

When Andy said that it was like you know sometimes people just say things in life that just grip you and Andy did that I appreciate Andy is the reason Scott and I are Adventist today.

Andy never became an Adventist not yet not yet but he tells us he's told us he's like you guys are Adventist because of me.

It's true He got invited by somebody else to a Bible prophecy seminar and then he invited us.

I invited actually, he invited me and then I invited Scott and yeah, long story short, that's kind of beginning of that history.

But Andy's changed my life in many different ways.

I still love Andy, still a friend of mine.

But nevertheless, Andy had this concept that What if you could live content all the time?

And the Bible says in 1 Timothy 6, verse 6, what?

But godliness with contentment is great gain.

Now, I wanna talk a little bit about something that often people do when they're not content.

And this is, I actually got this, this is amazing, this is from Dr.

I love this, I mean, I put the chart together, but it's from Dr.

And this is basically, see that center dotted line, the 1 in the middle of that dotted line, that's the neutral dopamine levels.

Dopamine we typically think of as like the pleasure chemical.

It's been called the molecule of more, but we have like a neutral dopamine level in life where you're not like super happy, you're not sad, you're just, you're okay, you're neutral, right?

And so here's what happens when you have your first cigarette.

My dad gave me my first cigar and when you have your first bit of tobacco you have a spike in dopamine.

Now when I say very good it's not that great with cigarettes.

It's more intense with alcohol, with heroin, with meth.

But nevertheless you have a dopamine surge just BAM.

I didn't know you could just immediately feel better.

And then you have a cigarette and you're like, wow, it happens.

But then, after you smoke it, you drop below neutral.

And then you're like, well, I don't have to feel bad again.

03 Fulfillment and The Gut-Brain Connection

And we're going to be talking about fulfillment in the gut-brain connection, a bit about depression, anger problems, lust problems that may be impacted by our gut.

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

Heavenly Father, thank you for the opportunity to study science and scripture.

As we do, I pray that your spirit would be here, and I pray that Jesus would be uplifted.

We're going to begin by looking at the oldest scientific study in recorded history.

This is taken from the journal Perspectives in Clinical Research.

The title of this entry is Evolution of Clinical Research, a History Before and Beyond by James Lind.

Now, this is not a history of evolution, it's the evolution of science or scientific inquiry, and this is what they concluded that in 562 BC, 500 years before Christ, the world's first clinical trial is recorded in the book of Daniel in the Bible.

So, you know, medical historians look through history and they're like, hey, what's the oldest study we can find?

Daniel's taken from Jerusalem, his hometown.

He's taken captive to Babylon, which is modern-day Iraq.

And he was taken there, and he was given the best food of the kingdom.

Everybody knows if you want to be the smartest, the strongest, you go on the carnivore diet, right?

And that's what they were, you know, this is common knowledge for millennia.

But Daniel and his friends didn't choose that, not that it was the carnivore diet, but they chose, it says in Daniel 1 verse 8, but Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's meat nor with the wine which he drank.

Therefore he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not, what?

And so this is the first test right here in Daniel chapter 1.

It's kind of got a little funny sound, so if anybody's good with audio, We'll have you jump back there, but if not, that's okay.

So in Daniel chapter 1 verse 12, this is the actual test.

You had a control group, which were the Babylonian students, and you have Daniel and his friends, which go on the experimental diet, and it had a time limit, it was a 10-day diet, and let them give us pulsed heat and water to drink, and pulsed are things that are grown from seeds.

In all matter of wisdom and understanding that the king inquired of them, thank you guys, in all matters of wisdom and understanding that the king inquired of them, thank you guys, in all matters of wisdom and understanding that the king inquired of them, he found them 10 times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in all his realm.

And so what we see is the first study in all of scientific inquiry turns out to be a study on the gut-brain connection.

And it's interesting because the gut-brain connection was kind of, it was something looked at in history in the Bible.

You see it repeatedly mentioned in the Bible, not only in Daniel, you see it in Jeremiah, you see it in Lamentations.

It talks about the impact between the gut and the brain.

You saw it in the 1800s, but then it kind of became like a joke during the early part of the 1900s, even until the latter portion, until it finally began to be kind of largely rediscovered.

And I want to show you a quick video clip from a documentary that my wife and I produced called Ancient Health.

Uh-oh, we killed out, is how long you live.

But the main thing that folks should be concerned about is how long you live and how likely you are to get disease.

And there have been 3 major studies published on this subject, big meta-analyses.

And these meta-analyses, and only 3 big ones have been published, they show consistently that low carb diets, in other words low plant food diets, high animal food diets, consistently they show that they're associated with more heart disease and more death, more mortality.

If you look around the world and you look at these people in the blue zones, the average percentage of calories from carbs ranges from about 50 percent to about 80 percent.

Carbs are not the enemy, refined carbs are the enemy.

There have been a number of recent studies.

Beeshold out of Phoenix, Arizona, first she did an observational study showing that plant-based diet actually significantly improves your depression and anxiety stress score.

So the mood actually is improved when you get the right amount of carbohydrates, but also the right type of carbohydrates and less protein.

Then she followed up with an interventional study.

And that's where she took people who are not on a plant-based diet and put them on a plant-based diet for 2 weeks.

She also put them on a plant-based diet plus fish for 2 weeks to see which 1 would be superior.

And it turned out the fish diet wasn't any more superior than the carnivore diet.

But the plant-based diet, significant, dramatic changes, statistically significant changes in just 2 weeks in their mental ability.

We see when people go on this diet and drink plenty of water, get plenty of rest, follow these natural remedies, that it's just like something snaps in their brain, and it doesn't take weeks or months.

Plant-based diet is key in our program for depression and anxiety recovery.

The results are outstanding because it's a comprehensive approach, not just diet.

We also utilize exercise and we're utilizing correct thoughts and a lot of different modalities, but the diet is a key element.

I went on a plant-based diet about 5 weeks ago.

It's amazing because I even if they had had not told me he had the diet change the first thing I noticed was He was bringing his schoolwork in.

And my teacher has actually been bragging on how much better I've been behaving since I've been on the diet.

In class he wasn't getting as distracted, that he was paying attention, he was able to listen more closely, he was being alert, his discernment was better, he was more diligent, everything.

I can pay attention more, my mind is more clear since I've been on the diet.

And I also noticed he lost a lot of weight.

I mean, but the main things I noticed was behavioral.

A study in a middle school has showed clearly that switching the menu from animal source to plant source diet almost eliminated absenteeism, increased and enhanced attention and homework performance and performance at school.

It almost eliminated acts of violence as well as teen pregnancies.

And so they just feel better everywhere the blood flows, everywhere that perfect circulation goes, they feel better.

And every single day since I've been on a plant-based diet, the clarity continues to increase and my face continues to look younger and I my body feels like I feel like a look more vibrant.

Series

The Most Fulfilling Life

04 Growing Together: Fulfillment in Relationships

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Relationships and Family Life

My ‘Single’ Desire

1h 24m

When it’s not Good for Man to be Alone

1h 9m

God’s Design for Marriage

37m

Family Health

A More Beautiful Story- Christ Our Editor

48m

Breakout Session A

Addicted to Affection

1h 11m

Love and Marriage

1h 4m

The God-Arranged and Blessed Marriage

Principles of the God-Blessed Marriage

57m

Morning Devotional

Radical Love

59m

Relationship Revival

3. Safety First

1h 4m

Advising Love: From Attraction to Anniversaries

4. Advising Love’s Experience: Married Life

57m

GYC SE 2013: How to Avoid a Breakup

Why Breakups Happen

46m

May I Brush Your Hair: Making Your Marriage a Priority

1h 3m

Sound Doctrine