I firmly believe that the family is ground zero in the enemy’s plan of attack. The Lord has put it on my heart to support, equip, and empower families, in particular parents and grandparents, to fight the strategy of the enemy. We know who has won the victory, but God is calling us to engage in the battle. I want to share with you three very simple but profound ways that we can endeavor to love our children into the kingdom of God in the midst of this battle.

GROW

The first way you can love your children as parents and grandparents is to grow. We cannot give what we do not have. We need to continue to be united to the vine, abide in Christ, and pursue our own relationship with the Lord. We don’t get to a certain age in our lives when we’re done growing. His mercies are new every morning. Growing doesn’t just give us more intellectual knowledge to pass on to our kids. It makes us greater, more authentic witnesses. We want to strive to be saints, especially in the context of our own family. We don’t know how our actions are going to affect those around us, but we know that if we continue to love the Lord, He will use that to be an authentic witness to our children. So, don’t stop growing in the Lord. Pray daily, read the Scriptures, and dive into the promises of God.

FIGHT

The second way to love your children is to fight. We have to understand that as parents and even as grandparents in a certain way, God has given us spiritual authority over our families. If he’s giving us spiritual authority to preach, teach, and help our kids know Jesus, He is absolutely giving us spiritual authority to fight the battle for our children. Our children are not the enemy. Their friends and the environments they’re in are not the enemy. We know Scripture says that we have a spiritual enemy—”the devil who is prowling around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour” (1 Pt 5:8). The enemy is a liar and a thief and he’s trying to steal our children from us. Even if we can’t be in every single environment that our kids are in, we can pray for them daily. We can pray for them by name with specific things that are on our hearts for them.

LOVE

Lastly, we want to love. The deepest fundamental desire of every human being is a desire to be loved, seen, and known. Even if your kid is giving you the cold shoulder, rejecting you, or not acting like they want what you have, they want love. So, we pray for the grace to be able to love our children as Christ does. A prayer I would pray often when my kids were teenagers was, “Lord, show me what you love in this child and help me to see what you see.” That changed my heart and the way that I prayed for them and loved them. Answering this call to love is the most important thing that we can do. When people asked Mother Teresa, “How do we change the world?” she would say, “Go home and love your family.” That is my charge to you today. Go home and love your family, and love them with the love of Christ.

The enemy does not have the final say. God has won the victory. Let’s continue to grow, fight, and love our children.

This article originally appeared in Renewal Ministries’ August 2026 newsletter and was condensed from Debbie Herbeck’s YouTube video of the same title which can be viewed at https://youtu.be/kGuAi3XSTBo.