Would this be a particularly good time to talk with children about God? “Absolutely. I think if we can help them to see that – even in the midst of the most crazy times – we have help, we have strength from God, then we’re setting them up for success – we can model that for them, too.” The thoughts of pastor and author Levi Lusko.
With the COVID pandemic, employment and financial stress, and natural disasters, parents can be worried and distracted, perhaps even depressed. “I am gravely concerned about my own mental health, and especially kids, too. These last couple of years have been tough, but all of life is hard. And I know for a fact that kids read their parents and all of us seem to be on edge, I’ve noticed just an edginess…people in traffic, honking…and there’s stuff globally going on, there’s disease, there’s political fighting and I think kids definitely pick up on that.”
As a parent, “my goal isn’t to protect them from the world – at a certain point – but to prepare them for the world.”
One definite way to help kids understand faith in Jesus is by sharing what’s in the Bible. To help with that, Pastor Lusko has written a children’s devotional, “Roar Like A Lion.”
“And I think that God, through faith, can help us to be courageous. The book of Proverbs says, ‘the righteous man is as bold as a lion’…and Jesus is the Lion of the tribe of Judah. As we follow him, we shouldn’t have to be afraid, we shouldn’t have to be kowtowing to our feelings, we can be triumphant. And I think we can teach our kids that with God’s power in us, no matter what life throws at us, or how hard life gets, that we can be courageous.”
In our podcast below, Pastor Lusko, the founder and lead pastor of Fresh Life Church, with campuses in four states, shares what gave him the reason to start writing portions of this book some years back. It was a family tragedy the Luskos experienced in 2012, the loss of a daughter. And they needed to explain that loss to their other children in line with faith. “And so, this book was born out of that, the way we were trying to bring the Bible to life, for them.” Pastor Lusko wants other parents to have a resource for when their children encounter rough patches in life, so God can help them “not to lose heart in the midst of difficulty.”
