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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Ryan Dolinsky

Kristyn Dolinsky

Brad LaLonde

Advent HOPE Leadership Testimonies

I titled my testimony this morning, The Confessions of a Farmer.

And if you'll bow your heads with me, I wanna open with a word of prayer.

Dear Father in heaven, I wanna thank you that we are here because of your goodness, because of your greatness.

And as we look at our lives and how you've touched them in different ways.

There's so many lessons that we can learn and grow, and we look forward to that day when we will see you again.

The verse that I like to keep reminding myself is Philippians 1 verse 6.

It says, being confident of this very thing that he who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.

God is faithful and he's calling us to be faithful.

The best parable in the Bible about farming is found in Mark chapter 4, and it's the parable of the sower.

If you wanna turn with me, I'm gonna be touching and referencing it.

So Mark chapter 4, starting in verse 13, there's this little nugget, and every time I read this parable, and if you're in my care group, you'll probably know this is 1 of my favorite parables.

It has this quote that Jesus says, and it always catches my interest.

In Mark chapter 4, verse 13, it says, and he, that's Jesus, said to them, do you not understand this parable?

How then will you understand all the parables?

There's something significant about this parable that gives you a greater knowledge.

And so I wanna share my testimony through this parable.

I'm gonna give you 3 confessions that I've learned and some encouragement about where God is leading me now.

So the first thing about the parable is that the sower went to sow.

And when you want to go and find the seed?

So you want to go to a place where the Word of God is being preached.

Have you guys heard the Word of God preached at Advent Hope?

What a wonderful place and there's there's a lot of it.

And the first warning that we're given, Christ says, watch out those that are on the wayside where the ground gets really hard and the seed doesn't get buried into the soil.

Now I have to confess that there was a point as I was attending Advent Hope, I love to come to the sermons.

I listened to the sermons before I even ever came to Loma Linda.

I was so excited to actually be here as a part of it.

And some of you may know that I like to draw and doodle, and I do sermon doodles.

And there was a point where Nicole came to me and said, Brad, you are a sermon junkie.

It came to the point I was more excited to sit there and draw and doodle, and my life wasn't being changed by the sermons.

I was just there for the entertainment of it.

And I'm gonna confess that we can get to the point where we're so close to God in the midst of it, but we don't let the seed sink in.

And so Jesus is calling me to intake the word.

And so I've tried to come up with a better process and I do my sermon notes, and then a few days later I'll go back and color them.

And as I'm coloring them, I can reflect on what the sermon is.

I can take the challenge and I can import what I learned into my life.

And I don't know what works for you, but don't come and go and let the word be taken away by the devil.

Intake the word of God, and I was taught, I found out that I had become a junkie and needed to overcome that.

The second type of soil is the stony ground.

When you think of rocks, you think of things that are solid and firm, and if you're a little seed, you like to hide behind the rocks.

There's, it actually, you get a little extra rain that gets kind of drained off the rock right to your roots.

But the danger is staying behind the rocks for too long.

Now at Advent Hope, I would say that we have some rocks around here.

We have amazing speakers come and you get to rub shoulders with these speakers and ask them questions and hear powerful messages and we even have some good theologians in our own midst.

And you can rub shoulders with them and it feels good because you're in the presence of rocks.

But if you're not growing out from the shadows of those rocks on your own, when persecution comes and trial comes, you'll find that you don't have the roots.

And I found that Jesus was calling me to not stand in the shadows of others, but to stand beside him at the battlefront.

I've never had a week quite so intense, but leading up to Restoration 2021, We were trying to finalize our location.

We were trying to finalize, we did care packages.

And as we were going to distribute them to the hospitals, the hospitals like, you can hand it out, but you have to take out this, this, this, and this.

And we looked at the bag, and that was all the spiritual content.

And we're praying and Ryan and Christy know this that me and Nicole would phone them and go, ah, we can't.

And we prayed and then they turned around, oh, okay, yeah, you can put it in.

And the venue, we weren't allowed to go there and then we back and forth and that was just a week when you're on the battlefront and you can almost feel the spiritual battle going over.

God is not asking you to hide in the shadows of those around you.

He's calling you to the battlefront with him.

Now no 1 likes to admit that there's weeds.

Everyone tries to keep their front lawn really nice and You don't really know what's growing in the back lawn sometimes.

And I have to confess that as I got here, pretty early on we got together, we were going to start a whole bunch of care groups.

And there was something that happened at the beginning of my care group, and it struck my pride a little bit in confrontation.

And I never went back and dealt with that.

I let that little seed of a grudge linger and linger, and I can come 3 years later, and I can look back and see that I have lost a harvest, I've lost spiritual growth personally, and I've seen others lose spiritual growth because I let the weeds of pride fester in the background.

And so I want to say and challenge you that Jesus is calling us, he's calling me in meekness.

They will choke out the fruit of the harvest.

Without a sacrifice, no harvest can be brought forth.

As I grew up, my mom would take me out to the garden, and at the end of the year we'd be harvesting potatoes, and we'd be digging the potatoes, and she would always go and get the seed potato, maybe this really wrinkly, almost rotten kind of thing, and she'd say, here Brad, this is the potato that gave its life for the other potatoes.

Without the sacrifice of a seed, you won't get any fruit.

So to have a harvest, God is calling us to sacrifice and to surrender ourselves.

And in that surrender, God is calling us to faithfulness, and Faithfulness comes without looking for results.

There's an interesting, if you're still in Mark, look at Mark chapter 4, verse 20.

It's talking about the harvest of the seed.

It says, but these are the ones sown on good ground, those who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit.

The very next word is very interesting to me.

It says, some will produce 30 fold, some will produce 60 fold, and some 100 fold.

Now as an engineer, I want to know the formula to get 100%.

So in the word sum, what kind of formula is there?

God is saying, don't worry about the results.

Be faithful in what you're called to do and God will take care of the rest.

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Advent HOPE Leadership Testimonies

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