Does your grandchild’s world shock you?

Recently, a friend of mine spent the weekend with her grandchildren. She told me, “It was shocking to see how fast my four grandchildren are growing up and the challenges they are facing.  I am experiencing a lot of heartache over the world they are growing up in and concern over their response to it.  Seeing my sweet grandkids living in such a godless culture is heart breaking.” I can identify with those thoughts and I am hearing those thoughts expressed by many grandparents. Using media, technology, education, social influences, and political pressures to desensitize and cloud the boundaries of truth that holds our families together is launching an aggressive attack. The enemy’s attacks against our families and our nation’s moral foundations are relentless and growing worse with time.

Ask your grandchildren about their friends, their teachers, their activities, what is going on in their world and how they feel about it. Keep an open mind and open ears so you know how to pray for them. If you are alarmed, they may not feel open to share with you. Appreciate their perspective, listen to their opinions.

However, Daniel, the one in the lion’s den for not obeying the king, stood strong for God in a very complicated ungodly culture. Today, we as grandparents can stand in the gap for our grandchildren, praying they will stand strong for God. Just as Esther stood in the gap for her people, the Israelites when their lives were threatened physically, we can stand in the gap for the spiritual lives of our grandchildren.

Suggestions to pray:

• Pray your grandchildren will invite Jesus into their hearts.
• Pray your grandchildren will grow strong in their walk with the Lord.
• Pray your grandchildren will recognize the difference of truth and deception in their culture so they can flee from it.
• Pray your grandchildren will respect authority and pray for those in authority over them, like their parents, teachers, and others.

Our hope for the future generation can only be in the Lord, not in this complex world.

 What are you doing to stand in the gap for your grandchildren? Please share in the comments.

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By Lillian Penner, lpenner@christiangrandparenting.net, Prayer Coordinator, Christian Grandparenting Network