Safeguards: Shielding Our Homes and Equipping Our Kids

Julie Lowe

Reviewed by: YaPing Li

Safeguards: Shielding Our Homes and Equipping Our Kids, by Julie Lowe. New Growth Press, 2022. Paperback, 160 pages, $13.59. Reviewed by OP member YaPing Li.

Julie Lowe is a counselor, a teacher, and a mother of five. In her counseling classes for seminary students, she teaches her students to help and love children creatively. In her church training seminars, she equips church members to report childhood abuse to protect the vulnerable. In addition to her teaching and counseling gifts, she has written several books, including Child Proof and Building Bridges, that are filled with biblical and practical wisdom and are well loved by parents and students alike. Her new book, Safeguards: Shielding Our Homes and Equipping Our Kids, is her best yet.

Equipping children with safety skills in an increasingly dangerous world is urgent and important. Lowe aims to provide parents with wisdom to equip children with real-life discernment of good and evil. She begins with an accurate diagnosis of the dangers children and teens are uniquely facing today. These dangers can be as well known as technology, peer pressure, and the egocentric culture, and they can also be as alarming as school shootings, childhood sexual abuse, bullying, sexting, pornography, substance abuse, and so on. She delves thoroughly into the issues of childcare guidelines, technology safety guidelines, family safety plans, dating safety plans, and so on. She goes deeper and touches upon the biblical call for children to evaluate the fruit of people, to address bullying, and to respect authorities properly and wisely.

Even more serious in the spiritual sense, dangers also come from the children’s own sinful desires. Lowe points out that unbelief is just one generation away, and she calls parents to safeguard the faith of their children and teens. The goal of safeguarding is not only to protect their bodies but to safeguard God’s calling for them. When Jesus prepares to send his disciples out, he also gave them hope: “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4). With this hope, parents are specially trusted and gifted to equip their children to safeguard their own hearts, for from which is the wellspring of life (Prov. 4:23).

Lowe’s theme is to protect children bodily and spiritually. To accomplish her goal, she offers both gospel truth and real-life instruction. Her writing brings comfort to anxious parents by showing them how they can thoughtfully trust our true Protector: as she quotes in her conclusion, “God is our refuge, strength, and a very present help in trouble” (Ps. 46:1). The good news is that our heavenly Father is best able to love and protect his children. Our hope is that Jesus, our true source of safety, is with us all the time. I highly recommend this book for safeguarding the next generation with godliness and true wisdom.