Kristyn Dolinsky shares the second part of her personal testimony, how God called her out of the entertainment industry into a career of service to God.

ACF Institute 2018: A Higher Aim

<p>Kristyn Dolinsky shares the second part of her personal testimony, how God called her out of the entertainment industry into a career of service to God.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Adventist Christian Fellowship (ACF)

Kristyn Dolinsky

Identity Crisis- Part 2

And there's a joyful end to the identity crisis.

So, I'll do a short little recap from last night.

We were at the point where I had graduated from Stanford and I had gone back home to LA and started acting full time.

I had everything, much more than my friends did at our age.

I had specifically stopped singing, something that I loved doing, and I was acting full-time.

I was snorting up things and popping pills and I was tatted all over, a ton of piercings.

And I was very, very different from the child who went to her biological father's home for visits every other weekend and cried herself to sleep.

Really quiet and obedient, good at school child that seemed like I was almost a different person.

And as for church, well I had stopped going, my whole family had stopped going by the time they were, I was 10.

And it was at this point where I was in my home in West Hollywood and I remember distinctly thinking this to myself.

It was a very clear thought in my head that God did not exist.

It was a faith shift because if you recall, you know, up to this point, even if I had an incorrect view of who God was, I still at least believed that there was a God.

And it was when I started to say, well, I did all of this on my own.

And if there is 1, it's certainly not anyone who has any store in my life.

And I was thinking of saying this, and it was sounding very similar to a verse in the Bible, actually 2 verses.

And I'd like for you all to turn with me to a very familiar passage.

I think it's Isaiah 14, 13, starting in verse 13.

And it reads, For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God.

I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north.

I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.

Because I could be my own god in my life, right?

But I think it's a very sobering thought to think that your thoughts are exactly like how Lucifer's was before he rebelled or as he was rebelling.

And to me, it was very clear from this that if a man is left, or if a person is left to his or her own devices, without any guidance from God, his word, his law, his commandments, that this is the kind of thing that happens.

Proverbs 14, 12 says, there is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.

And I didn't know it at the time, but I was on my way out.

And then, like I told you last night, Everything went wrong.

I was at the height of the mountaintop, of my secular profession in the world.

And I'm not the first 1 that this has happened to, but praise the Lord.

I just kept on month after month after month after month.

The work just dried up, just at the point when I was so secure with myself, my talent, all my gifts, you know.

So it was a year and it became to be over a year soon.

And pretty soon I was thinking about whether or not I had to declare bankruptcy and whether or not I was going to lose my home, and I ended up losing my home.

So I foreclosed on the home, on the condo, and I ended up moving back in with my parents, which to me, me back then, was the worst possible thing that could happen.

I have never been so humiliated in my life, Because I had built up myself to be someone who was tough and who could take care of herself and who didn't need anyone.

Who could by the, you know, just by grabbing on with her own merits and pulling myself up that I could do it.

And then on top of it all, I mean, I didn't even tell my friends I was so ashamed.

I kept up this pretense that I was living in West Hollywood still.

And then on top of that, a few months later, my grandpa had a heart attack.

This was my grandpa who you saw in the family photos that I had shown before.

And I was very close with my family, even though at that point in my life, I had rather blocked all of them out from my life.

And so I had this major blow in my professional life and I had an equally major blow in my personal life.

And so it those kinds of moments I think make you rethink and you you reassess where your life is going in times of tribulation and in times of trial.

And I was sitting there in the hospital, and my grandfather's surgery, praise the Lord, was successful.

And he came out of it cognizant and Lucid.

And for the next few weeks, it was my family and me in the hospital while he recovered.

And extended family would come and visit.

But it was a time that I hadn't had since I was small, which was time with my family.

So I just sat there and, you know, helped to take care of him, just be there, be there with my family.

And it was on 1 of those days, and I was sitting there.

And my grandfather was sitting up, and for some reason, I said, oh, I'm going to try and cheer him up and, you know, let's make a list, I told him.

Let's make a list of all the things that you want to do that you hadn't done or hadn't done in a long time that you want to put back in your life when you get out of the hospital.

But the thing was, is that it was really for myself.

I was really doing that because I needed the encouragement.

And I wanted to put things back in my life that I had neglected.

And I said to him, oh, you know, I have a good 1.

And I didn't even realize, like I wasn't even thinking it, but I think in my heart I was thinking it.

And that was just the first thing that came out of my mouth.

And I couldn't tell you why at the moment, at the time.

I couldn't tell you why, but that's the thing that I desired most.

And so he fully recovered, and my grandma, my grandpa, and they moved a little close by to us where I was living with my family still.

And true to my word, when he was fully recovered, I would drive to their home, 20 minutes in the opposite direction from our old church, pick them up, and drive the 45 minutes, well, over an hour actually, back to church.

And then a few weeks later I asked my dad if he wanted to go with us.

And then a few months later, I asked my mom and my uncle if they wanted to come with us.

And 20 years and my whole entire family is going back to church.

And the thing about church was that it got me thinking about things again.

It got me thinking about singing, which I had stopped completely, because we had a really good church choir, and I would always just love to listen to them.

And this was the exact same church that I had grown up singing in.

So I would look at them up there and I'd say, hey, I used to do that.

But I think I was really scared because I had, I'd been, like I said, I'd been snorting things and smoking half a pack a day.

I was scared to start that again, but I kept it in the back of my head.

It was always something like a, you know, a secret little thought I would think it would be nice to do again.

And so we've been going to this church for quite some time, maybe like a year, and some of the things that this new pastor that we had gotten got me thinking and questioning what the Bible actually said.

Back to Menu

Identity Crisis- Part 2

Transcript

Description

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Related

Educational Excellence

50m

Atheism, Apatheism, or Adventism

6. A.I. and Space Colonies? Where is Humanity Heading?

1h 6m

God's First Book, Our First Classroom

2. Teaching Science & Math in the Outdoors

1h 4m

Essential

03 The Cross, The Quality, The Message

42m

Misc

Entrepreneurship: Why & How?

52m

How Education Leads to Revolution

36m

Seminar 1

Agriculture in Our Soil

53m

Plenary

Will We Believe?

43m

Forever a Student

36m

Lessons on Faith for the Time of Trouble

38m

Practical Considerations

1. The Importance of Practical Skills in Education

1h 14m

How the Papacy Was Able to End the Protestant Reformation

36m

Sound Doctrine