“Grandchildren are the crown of the aged, and the glory of children is their fathers.”
– Proverbs 17:6
What a picture of God’s design for the good of families. Think about it. There’s three generations here. You’ve got grandparents, parents, and children. All of us fit into this spectrum in some sense. We all are children with parents. We all are grandchildren. Some of us are parents of children. Some are grandparents with grandchildren.
May we bring glory to God in the way that we care for our families.
This Verse Calls Us to Honor Our Families
And the picture here is God has designed our lives to honor our parents and our grandparents. God has designed our lives as parents and grandparents to be glorified in the way we love our children, in the way we love our grandchildren.
So, as we see these three generations, I just want to encourage you to think about life and think about how you can honor your parents, even just to thank God for them, to pray for them, and grandparents, as well. How can you honor them? How can you pray for them?
I think in my own life, none of my grandparents are living. My dad has gone to be the Lord. So when it comes to these groups in my life, I think about my mom. I thank God so much for my mom and my dad and their parents, and by God’s grace, for the legacy of faith they’ve passed on to me. I could go on and on and on far, far beyond the scope of this podcast just talking about God’s grace toward me. God, I want to honor them. I’m so thankful for them.
Proverbs 17:6 Encourages Us to Glorify God in Our Families
And then I look the other way and think about my kids. I think about how precious they are, what a gift they are, and how much I pray for them. I want to glorify God by loving them and caring for them well, and then I pray for their kids. So I pray for my grandchildren all the time even though I don’t have any grandchildren right now. My oldest is 12 at this moment, so no grandkids, but I pray for my grandkids. I pray that they would know God, they would love God, they would know God’s love for them. So, just think about your life and where you are right now in the spectrum, whether you are single, married, a parent, or a grandparent. We just pray.
God, help us to honor you and glorify you in our families. I know that listening to this right now are men and women, kids with all kinds of different situations, some great family situations, some really hard family situations. All of us, I know at some point in the family tree with evidence of just brokenness and sin and things not the way you’ve designed them to be, so God, we pray for your grace in our families. We pray for grace to honor one another in different generations. We pray for grace to glorify you in our relationships with parents and grandparents, children and grandchildren. God, we pray that you would be glorified in the way we love our families, and the picture of your grace that the world sees in our love for our families.
Proverbs 17:6 Thanks God for the Beauty of Relationships
God, we pray. We pray Proverbs 17:6 knowing grandchildren are the crown of the aged, the glory of children is their fathers, the beauty that you’ve designed in relationships. God, I pray that my life would honor you and honor my grandparents and my parents. God, I pray that you would help me to love my kids and grandkids if you ever entrust them to me in a way that honors them and honors you.
I just pray that over every single person who’s listening right now. Give us grace. Give us wisdom, and help us to see even things we need to do right now in our families, things that might need to change in our relationship to our families. As a result of praying Proverbs 17:6, God, we pray that you’d help us to honor our family members and to honor you in the way we love them. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
