OCI NAD Convention 2022: Mission Revival

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Outpost Centers International

Curtis Letniak

The Mission of Business

And it's a story of how my great-grandfather came from Europe.

He immigrated to Canada where our family still lives.

And he came in the early 1900s as a settler.

You know, landed in the east coast of Canada, made his way across Canada, and heard there was free land available for those who wanted to settle and develop the area.

And so he came west to Alberta, which is just above Montana, Idaho, in Canada there, on the prairie and literally dug a hole in the ground.

And that's where he lived and raised a family, Sod Shack, where they started out in those days.

It was a traveling, self-supporting evangelist that came to the area to this small rural area in Alberta and He had a genuine interest for the people there This evangelist would roll up his sleeves as my grandpa recalls the story.

He would roll up his sleeves and he would help them with harvest.

He would help them do these things during the daytime and then in the evenings, he would hold evangelistic series and a whole very thriving church came as a result of that.

Those who accepted the Adventist message at that time and I'm very grateful for that self-supporting minister that came and did this and this was something that this minister did in multiple places across the prairies of Alberta and Saskatchewan and really had a huge impact on the work there.

1 person dedicated to the Lord and what he did and the impact that it's had and I'm just forever grateful for that.

And who knows, you know, that I may have never had the opportunity to have known Christ had I not been born into a family that had done that.

What I would share with you today is perhaps more about how God has worked and is willing to work in our lives.

But it's a call that is extended to us, the call and the plan of salvation and what Christ has done for us is only worth anything if we accept it.

It's like a check that never gets cashed.

If you just take that check for a million dollars and put it in your pocket and never cashed it, you never realize the value of it.

And so it's as we accept that, that it's only worth something.

And so it's my prayer that as I share this morning about the different ways that God has called myself and each 1 of us to service for him, that we can truly realize the joy and value.

And I'm just, what I'm sharing with you today is perhaps a little bit more of a testimony of God's faithfulness really and how God's so merciful and wants to continue to guide and direct us through the different lessons that he wants us to learn to call us to trust him more.

And so it's a verse that comes to mind in Revelation 3 verse 20.

If you would have a Bible there and turn there with me.

Revelation 3 verse 20, where Jesus extends this invitation.

We can perhaps all visualize this where there's the picture of the painting where Jesus is standing outside the door and it says, Behold, I stand at the door and knock.

If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and sup with him and he with me." It's a call that Jesus gives, a call that we have the opportunity to answer that invitation for.

And so what I would share with you today would be 3 areas of those calls that God has given to us.

A call to surrender, a call to serve, and a call of stewardship.

Reflecting on characters in scripture that have exemplified this and how God has shown himself in his word and in his testimony to be so true.

And that's really what I would just hope that if there's anything that you would take from what I would share with you today, it would be just that God is faithful.

He's faithful in his word and he is faithful in the testimony that he gives us to share.

So I just wondered if you would bow your heads with me in prayer as we just ask God to guide us in this study.

Lord, we're just grateful for the examples in your word that you've given us that inspire us, that encourage us, that testify of your faithfulness.

And Lord, you've also given each 1 of us a testimony of how you are so faithful, Lord, how you're so merciful, how you're working in each 1 of our lives, and I thank you for that testimony, Lord.

And as I share the testimony that you've given to me this morning about how you've worked in spite of me, and how you've been so merciful to me, Lord, I just pray that something that I might share might be a blessing to each 1 today.

And I know that this can only be the case as your spirit speaks and as you work in each of our hearts to receive the message you have for us.

Lord, I just ask that you would do this now in your name.

So as we look in Scripture, 1 of the examples that has been such a powerful testimony to me is the example of Abraham.

And how, if you look through his life, how God guided him through the various stages of his life in teaching him to trust and to have faith.

If you look at when Abraham was originally called to leave his family, to leave his country, to leave everything that he knows and go to a land that he doesn't know So that God could use him to preserve a knowledge of himself It's amazing to see how God grew his faith relationship so he started out he leaves, you know, you see the trials that he ran into and he attempts to take matters into his own hands to solve the problem.

There's a drought that comes to the land so he has to leave and he thought that it would be better to tell a lie you know, than to actually allow God to intervene in the situation.

And God leads him through that experience.

God leads him through the promise that he was to have a great nation and he thought he'd take matters into his own hands and he, you know, we see the result of that.

And then at the end, near the end of his life, we see how God has led him to be so trusting, how God has led Abraham to trust so much in him that he would give his only son because he knew that somehow God would intervene in the situation or God, he would all work it out.

So it's just amazing to see all the different experiences that God had to lead Abraham through so that he would learn to eventually trust in him completely with everything that he had.

And that's the experience that I think God wants to give each 1 of us and it's certainly been an experience that I know though I've often maybe not realized it at the time how God has led in my life as well.

Just starting out with, I guess, a short bit of my testimony.

So I grew up, as I mentioned, in Alberta.

Grew up in an Adventist home, but never really accepted Christ as my Savior.

A lot of my friends and those that I grew up with at an early age accepted Christ, but it was not something that I could say I could honestly do because I just hadn't accepted that there was a God.

We grew up in a rural area where there wasn't an opportunity for Adventist education, so I went to a public school.

You know, amazing people that I went to school with.

They were some of the nicest down-to-earth people, but they weren't necessarily Christians or even certainly not Adventists.

And so, you know, these things start to have an influence on our lives, and it certainly was an opportunity for, you know, as young people, you have to, in a public school, you have to stand up for your faith, and it actually helps build your faith in some ways.

But in other ways, you know, Satan works to influence you in ways that you don't even maybe realize until you look back later in life.

I was quite interested in science and I had a really very gifted teacher who was an atheist.

And this teacher was really effective at presenting things in a certain way.

And so it had really come to the point where I doubted that there was even a God.

And if there was a God, why was it that Adventists thought that they had the truth?

And these were the questions rolling around in my mind.

I went to school with, you know, others that were Christians and they were wonderful people and how could we be so arrogant to think that we had the truth.

This was kind of where I was at in my walk.

And so I went to public school up until grade 10.

So for grade 11, my parents perhaps saw the drift or the way that I was heading in my life.

And so I had the opportunity to go to an Adventist boarding school in Alberta there called Parkview Adventist Academy.

And I was very grateful for Adventist education and the opportunity that I had there to learn.

And It was in my senior year there, studying biology, that God really opened my eyes as I studied the way that people were, that God created the earth and the way that all the creatures and all the way that everything worked together so amazingly.

I could not deny that there had to be a God.

And so it was there in my senior year that I made the decision to accept Christ as my personal Savior and was baptized.

And so I'm very grateful for Adventist education and for the opportunity that it has to introduce and, you know, truce to young people at that pivotal stage in life for making decisions.

And, you know, it was interesting, though, how God leads you through different stages or phases, because I, even though I'd accepted Christ as my personal Savior, I wasn't necessarily applying that to the practical decisions in my life.

I, you know, I fully believed that the Lord was my Savior.

But when it came to applying that to my personal decisions and the career and relationships, that was kind of over here in a separate box.

And, you know, it was about, I would say, 2 years of kind of wandering around in this path of broken relationships and, you know, a lot of, as a young person, different ideas of direction where I wanted to go, but it seemed like it was just going nowhere.

And it was something that I really realized was not fulfilling.

And so it was actually as I was working that 1 summer, I went to the workplace, I would start at 04:00 in the morning.

I was working on a lot of things on my own, and I decided that I had been given a Bible by my uncle, and it had sat under the seat of my car and I thought that I would take that Bible out and read it before I went to work.

And so I pulled that Bible out and I started, you know, I opened to the book of Proverbs.

And it was there that God's plan for our lives and the practical things that he has, the counsel that he's given us in his word just started to come to life.

And as I could see there that God had counsel in there for, you know, the direction that he has for our choices, the direction that he has for our relationships.

All these things really started to just come to life for me and I could see that God had really cared about the practical things in life.

And it was then that I started spending time with God every single day.

And I would spend time getting to know him.

Then I went on to the Gospels and I started to realize that this is a God who cares about all the little details of our lives.

And so it was spending time with him every day that was a huge turning point in my life where now it wasn't just accepting Christ over here and then having, you know, those kind of decisions that we make in our lives and those plans that we have over here.

God started to bring those 2 together in a very practical way.

And it was through this then that I could start to see God giving me a direction and a purpose in my life.

And things that I had, a lot of great ideas about business.

I grew up, as I mentioned, in a rural part of Alberta on a farm, and that was what I thought I was going to do.

And it was, you know, it would be a fourth generation farm and, you know, God had other plans for me and those plans started to become more apparent as I, you know, started, I guess, having priorities change in my relationships.

It was just amazing how God led me to the person who's my wife now.

And I'm so grateful for a godly Christian spouse.

The Mission of Business

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