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 concerned over their response to it.  Seeing my sweet grandkids living in such a godless culture is heartbreaking.” I can identify with those thoughts and hear those thoughts expressed by many grandparents.   

Today we are currently facing a significant threat. An enemy has surfaced from the shadows that seek to destroy and intimidate the family unit, parental rights, traditional moral values, the church, and fact-based education.

Over the past few years, we’ve watched how the enemy has attempted to brainwash our children into thinking we live in an evil, racist, irredeemable country.

Using media, technology, education, social influences, and political pressures to desensitize and cloud the boundaries of truth that hold 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

In our post-Christian society, children are going to face strong opposition and competing belief systems, and unless they are rooted in the Bible, they will absorb the ideas of our day and assimilate to the beliefs of our culture. 1

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

However, in the lion’s den for not obeying the king, Daniel stood firm for God in a complicated, ungodly culture. Today, we as grandparents can stand in the gap for our grandchildren, praying they will stand firm 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 between truth and deception in their cultureso 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