I didn’t grow up in a Christian home, I didn’t have any Christian men or women around me, no parents or grandparents but yet they all influenced me in one way or the other. When I met Jesus in 1999, I started to challenge all the influences I had got from the people I should look up to. My father and his friends loved to have big fancy parties, and then would often challenge me and my friends to do more crazy things than they had done, comments like, you will never beat us. And yes, guess what we tried to do, even more crazy things than they had done! So when I became a Christian at the age of 26 I had many years of both good and bad influences in my life, but at that point, the bad ones made more impact on my life then the good ones.
Now I have three children of my own, I am very aware of who is going to influence my children. I want my children to be influenced by people who know the way and the life, and to follow Jesus. During my years as a Christian I have been searching for spiritual fathers – older, wiser men that I can look up to, Christian role-models in the church. But I am sad to say I haven’t met too many.
I have seen in Churches that people don´t look up to the elders, the older people in the church – the people that have years and years of experience and wisdom. They might not have a great understanding of all the new technology, but they have so much knowledge wisdom and they know God.
The church today needs men from all ages to help shape the new generation, grandparents need to pass on the knowledge to their children and grandchildren, we need to start building a Church where we respect to the older and wiser.
I was been blessed to be invited to a men´s breakfast here in the Marbella area – the members of this church are older – In fact most of them are grandparents. I started to speak to a truly wise gentleman about how children, what we would call the youth of today, are posting photos of themselves that would be classed as pornography maybe just 15 years ago. He then told me that he knew what I was talking about, that he had Facebook and so did his granddaughter who was age 16, and she had posted a picture of herself that he felt was not appropriate. And then I asked him, “Have you told her you feel like this?” and he said he hadn’t, he felt that maybe this is the way children express themselves today, but in his heart he knew it was wrong.
I said to him, I truly think that you should tell her, bring her your wisdom and knowledge and what the Bible says. He looked at me smiling, “Can I really do that?” he asked, of course you can I told him, I need your knowledge and so does she.
I want my children to be shaped by wise Christian people, all ages included. I love when I see my father in law, my children’s grandfather, tell them about his answered prayers or miracles in his life. He is as important as all the youth leaders in the church that my children look up to and they are very important too. It was because one of those amazing youth leaders in our church in Sweden that my two boys decided to get baptized, so thank God for them!
We do it together!
There is an old proverb saying “It takes a village to raise a child.” and I think it’s true but in this case I would like to rephrase it: “It takes a CHURCH to raise a child.” We come together as dad’s, mums, grandparents – older and younger must help one another to become the role model Jesus wants us to be and then start together to shape the coming generation and to help them to become what God wants them to be.
Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.
Proverbs 22:6
Johan Odén
