Faith of Our Fathers

Have you ever thought about where your faith in God came from? Was it from your mother, your father, grandma or grandpa, a teacher or pastor, or maybe from your best friend? What person helped you see God?

First of all, what is faith? Let's read Hebrews 11: 1- 2, "The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It’s our handle on what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd." The Message Bible

I (Kathy) remember that my faith was passed down from my mother. When my Baptist mother was a teenager, she walked many miles to an Adventist evangelistic meeting and there learned about the Sabbath and became a Seventh-day Adventist. My mother’s personal faith in God was instilled in me as a small child. She taught me about Jesus being my best friend, through both the good and bad times. My mother trusted in God for the rest of her life and even through her turbulent and untimely early death from cancer. But most importantly my mother taught me about Jesus love through her loving relationship to me. The way a parent treats their children in a relationship is usually how the child will grow up seeing God in a relationship. What a blessing to have a parent that will talk about their faith in a non-threatening way that actually draws the child to God!

My (Kathy) mother's faith was passed on to me and to my sister. I can remember as a small child, praying with my sister for our daddy to become a Christian. Thinking God would hear us more clearly, we would go to the garage and sit in our daddy's old antique car (his hobby was restoring antique cars) and pray and cry for our daddy to become a Christian. We never stopped praying for him and finally during our high school years our dad committed his heart to God and changed his life style. My father came from a home that pushed religion down their kid’s throat. So in turn my dad had spent most of his life rebelling. But finally God answered two little girls’ prayers for their daddy and he lived the rest of his life faithful to Jesus. He died a few years ago as a successful contented Christian man. He was successful because he had a personal relationship with Jesus and with his family. It was because of my mother's original faith that I gained my faith and then that faith was passed on to my father.

A person never really knows the exact way that God will answer their prayers but the point is that He will answer them in His own time and way. We merely need to trust Him.

There was a story of a devoted Christian mother who prayed earnestly that her son would become a minister. Her son grew to be a dedicated Christian man but decided that he wasn't called of God to be a minister and left his seminary training. Instead he became a successful financier and banker. He died wealthy and it might have seemed that his mother's prayers had never been answered. But it was found in the son's will, that his large fortune had been left to the endowment of what now is the Kentucky Theological Seminary. Through this final wish of his life, it was made possible that not one, but thousands had become ministers. The mother's prayer was answered many times over.

This mother's faith in God was passed on to her son and then in turn passed on to many others. We never know the extent of our prayers for our family.

In a recent "Value Genesis Report," a study on the youth of our Adventist schools said that their parents seldom talked about their faith in God. Perhaps the reason for this is because their parents forced religion on them and they wanted to be certain not to do the same to their children. The main point of the report was that parents today rarely share their faith in their everyday walk of life. In past generations, grandparents shared their personal faith stories by living it as well as talking about it.

The important fact is that parents need to talk about what's happening in their daily lives in relation to their faith in God. For instance when a family goes through a difficult time and they pray about it, then they can reflect later how God answered their prayers. The prayers could be about family finances, health, career changes, moves from one town to another, choosing the right friends, or even bigger problems like divorce or deaths in the family. Family worship can be a place for parents to voice their family concerns as well as their answered prayers. Families need to talk together about how God is leading. Faith stories can be taking place in the everyday life.

I (Harvey) remember asking my father where he received his faith, thinking it might have been passed down from his father. But my dad said that his faith had not come from his father and preceded to tell the story of how he received his faith from his grandfather, which was my great grandfather, the one I was named after. My dad remembered that he had helped his grandfather landscape homes that the Corwin family built and was introduced to the Lord through both his grandfather’s life style and story telling. It wasn’t long ago that I was able to tell my own son about this story while the two of us were landscaping at his new home. That faith was passed down through many generations. My great grandfather didn't realize that he would make such a difference for many upcoming generations. He was only sharing his faith with one young boy, not thousands, but one. My great grandfather made a difference in my life. It was at my ordination into the Gospel Ministry that my parent’s told me that their prayer had been answered when I became a minister.

One At A Time

By Jack Canfield & Mark Victor Hansen

"A friend of ours was walking down a deserted Mexican beach at sunset. As he walked along, he began to see another man in the distance. As he grew nearer, he noticed that the local native kept leaning down, picking something up and throwing it out into the water. Time and again he kept hurling things out into the ocean. As our friend approached even closer, he noticed that the man was picking up starfish that had been washed up on the beach and, one at a time, he was throwing them back into the water. Our friend was puzzled. He approached the man and said, "Good evening, friend. I was wondering what you are doing." "I’m throwing these starfish back into the ocean. You see, it’s low tide right now and all these starfish have been washed up onto the shore. If I don’t throw them back into the sea, they’ll die up here from lack of oxygen." "I understand," my friend replied, "but there must be thousands of starfish on this beach. You can’t possibly get to all of them. There are simply too many. And don’t you realize this is probably happening on hundreds of beaches all up and down this coast. Can’t you see that you can’t possibly make a difference?" The local native smiled, bent down and picked up yet another starfish, and as he threw it back into the sea, he replied, "Made a difference to that one!"

Make a difference in someone's life today. Share your faith in God through your own life stories. Children need to see and hear about the faith of their fathers.