Essentials of Parenting #3. “Living out a Heritage of Faith”
God calls us as parents to do amazing things with our lives! We can’t follow God and keep Him in a safe and well-defined box, He will call us to follow Him and into strange and often unfamiliar places. Yes, being a parent is often strange and unfamiliar enough, but God may be calling each of us to step further out and do more outside of the comfort of our home. Our inspiration for this post is Patti Garibay, founder of American Heritage Girls, and her story is so encouraging for parents to hear!
As Patti shares of her story it becomes very clear, God’s ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts… so the path God leads us to follow is often overwhelmingly big and seemingly impossible. God has a long, long, history of calling ordinary men and women to do extraordinary things.
Our talents and education, preparation and confidence have nothing to do with God’s ability to use us for His plans. As parents we may feel like we’re totally out of it, barely surviving our responsibilities and feeling very much like a failure, but God has a habit of using people like us to do impossible things.
We can be used by God despite our shortcomings and fears and irregardless of our failures and frustrations. God works with those who will simply take the time to listen and trust it enough to follow.
As parents its our lifetime of learning and trusting God that creates the foundation of a genuine “Heritage of Faith’. It’s not our ‘mistake’ free lives or career successes that will win our kids hearts, instead it’s the grace we receive and share that paves the way for God to work.
Patti Garibay heard God’s cry as a stay at home mother and obeyed in faith. The result, the formation of “American Heritage Girls” and twenty-five years later, hundreds of thousands of girls have been influenced and shaped by a heritage of faith, passed down from a stay at home mom’s obedience to God.
Source AHG
Some points of advice from her Season 1 interview:
- We need to “listen’ and be aware of the subtle requests that God nudges us to do. It is NOT our life, we are on loan to God, and we can’t forget that God has plans for us that are bigger than our own. The same is true for our children.
- Our lives as parents’ matter, we’re not in control but we are able to influence and shape our kids while we’re given the opportunity. What we do as spouses and parents will impact our kids for generations and passing along a heritage of faith requires parents who will consistently chose to put God’s will and plans above their own, both for themselves and for their kids.
- Our experiences as parents and families will be less than perfect or ideal, we must trust that God can use us and our kids regardless of our ‘performance’. We can trust God to walk us into the opportunities and paths that we are meant to follow.
- Our kids and our plans can’t be driven by our ambition or pride, it’s not about us. EGO is Edging God Out, and we can’t do that as Christians.
- God will empower us to see beyond our own lives, to see the needs of those around us and to give us the strength and courage to act boldly!
- Change is NOT a bad thing. The Lord has a plan for us, and change may be what is exactly necessary for us and our spiritual life. We don’t need to be afraid to follow the leading of God, we need to step out of the boat and walk on water.
About Patti Garibay: Patti Garibay is founder and Executive Director of the national character development organization, the American Heritage Girls. Educated at the Ohio State University with a major in secondary education and French, Patti shares a love of history and youth. Patti and her husband Pat, of thirty-nine years, are blessed with four grown children, three girls and a boy, five grandsons and two granddaughters.
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