Hurting with Hope | Pastor Levi Lusko

hey we came to church to celebrate the life of an insanely amazing little girl named Linea let's go that's what we're here to do [Music] hand me that Eric and my uh my uh my oldest daughter Olivia she has she has something that uh that she wanted to say and so this is a seven year old girl named Olivia who was one of the best big sisters you will ever meet in your entire life I'll tell you that right now and she's really pretty she was funny like one time she put her under an hour head and so her hair would stick out like Mickey Mouse she loves playing she loved playing wills PET SHOP and replayed imagination travel hotel and Barbies she liked playing board games and puzzles she was really good at the splits in swimming even though she never took to him lessons she loved tea parties with me and my sisters in my mom on tea party Tuesdays and when my mom wasn't looking she does need a huge spoonful of sugar she was our lanolin she would always love to go upstairs and daddy was studying and bring him a coffee or water and seis and she would say study hard dad she loves school church and regular church she loved giving dead knuckles in st. Pete sewer dad she loved meeting the bands like Leland but she was scared of family for spice she loves daddy/daughter dates like when they went to Disneyland she loved easy dance parties she loved jumping on her bed at bedtime everyone was asleep up mewling yeah me and her would get out of bed and me in the middle of the hallway I'm gonna play something you really play something random and whenever every and when everybody was asleep I would go into Anna's room and talk Rin I'm so sad that she had to go to heaven but I'm also happy for her that she is in heaven that she beat us there and she's having all fun she I want everybody in the whole entire world to give their life to Jesus so when they die and go to heaven they'll be able to meet Lenya come on somebody [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] I I'm so honored and so blessed to have been líneas mommy for five years and although her her life was filled with with hard times with difficulties with allergies and failure to thrive and figuring out what was wrong and what she was allergic to I loved every moment of it I loved all the drives to Spokane to the allergist I loved the time with her the times with her while she was hospitalized holding her and being there with her I loved having to put three different kinds of ointments and two different kinds of lotions and putting wet tights on her and then putting another pair of PJ's over to her so she wouldn't scratch I I loved Lenya so much and she was she had grown out of a lot of her allergies and she was doing so well and any of you who knew her and were around her her skin was beautiful and she was beautiful and I just wanted to read just something from my my journal that I wrote this year on her birthday which was September 8th and I really felt this year with these girls that God was putting it on my heart to pray specific things for them on their birthdays and to find a specific passage or a specific verse that I could really pray for them and I found proverbs 5 and it was talking a lot about adultery but I found a few things that really stood out to me and I'm about lending her ear to understanding and paying attention that her lips would keep knowledge and preserve discretion and that she would obey and incline her ear to instruction and so I just had a few words that described her and then I was just I'm just gonna read my prayer for her this year um that she was a sassafras citrusy bold loud beautiful spicy daring crazy sensitive generous kind fiery tender compassionate nurturing gentle strong and my prayer was this Lord I pray for the things she is and the things I see in her what you've created her to be I pray that she would obey instruction and that her lips would preserve discretion and this year would mark a year of growth in her response to you I pray for her salvation and that she would call on you and be saved I pray she would experience you at a young age and that she would want to live for you passionately I pray that as she is strong and sassy and bold and loud that these very things would be used for your glory and to make Jesus famous you turn my page I pray for her future husband that he would love you more than anything and honor and respect and love her I pray even now that he would be being raised in your house knowing you I pray that you would protect her purity even now I pray that her heart would be on fire for you and set on eternity I pray she'd be a world changer and little did I know that when I prayed for her future husband I was praying for Jesus because um she's she's Jesus's bride and she's with him and she's in eternity and she is from eternity I believe from her little five years here is gonna be a world changer and we've already seen the fruit of that which I can't wait to see and we won't even see it all until we are in heaven but I believe that God has a plan through her going to heaven more than what we could even see and I just want to encourage all you parents to pray for your children and to teach them the Bible every day and to teach them to pray every day and to teach them this song read your Bible pray every day pray every day pray every day read your Bible pray every day and you'll grow grow grow and when you hear your kids sing that song it's amazing and all that matters is that we prepare kids for eternity and that they meet Jesus now and we love you all and I just want to say that every text every Instagram comment means the world and you may feel like we're inundated with messages but when it's God's Word when it's encouragement we love it and we cherish it and we love you all so much thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you know we um we are as parents we've Jen and I we both feel we feel we've been gutted we feel like we've been like there's a scene in Braveheart where he just gets disemboweled and that's how this has been this has been this has been like having your your guts just torn out of your body and we're still in shock this happened so fast there wasn't time to say goodbye there wasn't I always preach about how you know you got to live like just deaths of surprise and and this just surprised us Jen and I were on a date night you know and and wrapping Christmas presents and and we didn't get time to say goodbye we never saw her conscious like Jenny got us here for just a moment and and and she died in my arms as always as I was giving her mouth-to-mouth and CPR and and yet we have hope we're hurting fiercely we miss her with all our hearts but we trust God fully and I'm gonna tell you something faith works it works it works God is here he is present in our pain I wrote a sermon called turn off the dark on the day that she died about how light shines in the darkness and the darkness can't over overcome it and about how God's light turns off guilt and it turns off despair and it turns off loneliness in it it turns off it turns off death and you know what a sermon that I wrote in the sunshine I believe it in the shade I believe it in the valley it's working even in the valley of the shadow of death we don't fear evil and you know what our little girl's body which is in the is in the ground that's not her she is alive more so today than ever before and she's with Christ far far from weeping we feel that we want her here she's like I want you there and we will go to be with her one day and it'll come sooner than we think and in the meantime we're gonna honor the legacy and the life of the most extraordinary five-year-old you've ever even heard of by living each day with a passion for eternity and agreed for souls because that's how she lives she desired for people to comes in if you don't know Jesus Linnea would have if she knew this was happening she'd been praying and I don't know if she knows he perhaps is asking God to move in power in your life right now as you hear this as this webcast goes out all over the place we should we left the ER with with her having just been declared dead and we knew Jenny and I both knew we needed to go back into the ER and invite the nurses and the doctors in every single person in the emergency room to get to church for Christmas Eve because Linda would have wanted us to and you know what a nurse came and a nurse wrote in that watching her her experience and and and and and seeing the message preached it changed her life and God invaded her soul we heard of two paramedics who came to the Christmas Eve services just as a tribute to her and ended up raising their hands and giving their lives to Jesus Christ we heard of a of a mother of an eight-year-old boy on Twitter who stood up in his living room watching the webcast and He gave His life to Jesus we heard of a seven-year-old little girl who gave her life to Jesus Christ in response to this this mortality and an líneas legacy and her name means lion and that's a Russian and we loved that and we want to be righteous as bold as a lion like she was you know as parents you you have prayers you have you have dreams for your kids Jenny shared her prayers for for Linea I want to share with you the lusco core values it's it's like all good things written on a napkin or is that a I've got Mormon napkin is I know it by heart but I want to read it off the napkin that's okay our core values in our house and we say bang bang choo-choo train come on les goes your thing and it's so we want our we want in our house whistle us go we fear God and and we fight for our family and we're planted in the house of the Lord and we we show honor where honor is due and what's the Murph what's the last one on the list I'm just escaping me now my me myself do push-ups later for forgetting it there's one more thing and what it means to be a less go and and all of it I'll tell you what Linea exceeded all those things and we have anchors everywhere we do it with all our heart everything we do to put our whole heart into it that's what it is and Linea did that with spades and and so we're gonna sing a song about an anchor because Hebrews 6:19 says that we have hope as an anchor for our soul and and and we do because when when Linea was born we dedicated her to God and that reminds me where's clover at is that clover right here we never dedicated clover could we do that real quick you guys help us out we want to dedicate clover to the Lord this is lineThe baby sister she loved her she just learned how to hold her standing up her biggest thing she was soaked on the night before she died I could hold clover standing up daddy and she did and we were stoked about that we want to dedicate clover to Lois do that could you raise a hand towards clover wherever you are God we thank you for clover you gave to us as a gift she's yours you've entrusted her to us to raise to know you and to love you God we want clover fear you won't clover to be planted in your house we want her to fight for her family we want clover to experience you God to know you and love you to put her whole heart into whatever you have her doing and we believe God that you have plans for clovers life for good enough for evil got fill her with your spirit even at a young age and use her to change this world help her to learn and to love you like her little sister big sister Linda did and we pray this in Jesus name Amen don't need my microphone okay so we're gonna sing a song about hope as an anchor for the Soul because you know what we're hurting right now you wonder how we're doing we're hurting we're doing we're doing terribly but we're doing really good too because we have hope as an anchor for our so let's get this going both sure and steadfast it enters into the veil and nothing can separate us from the Lord and that means nothing can separate us from linea we trust him we believe it and we lift up the name of Jesus Christ in this house [Music]

Channel: Fresh Life Church

Views: 105,151

Rating: 4.9631677 out of 5

Keywords: LUSKO'S, FINAL, Broadband, levi, lusko, levi lusko, fresh life church, lenya lusko, through the eyes of a lion, hurting with hope, jennie lusko, asthma death, asthma, finding hope in death, hope in death, finding hope, how to deal with death, dealing with death, death of a child, montana pastor, lusko levi, pastor has child die, hope in tragedy

Id: ZZPau-3uKFI

Length: 14min 54sec (894 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 27 2012