This is written to people who are considering taking their own life through suicide. My hope for you, whether you know the Lord or not, is for you to understand your value to God. It is not too late to get help, to reach out to someone, to make the choice to choose life. I realize this a more lengthy post than most of my other posts and pray that you will continue on and read to the end.

• My best friend in junior high’s cousin who just broke up with his girlfriend.
• The girl I went on visitation with in college that extensively tried to win people to the Lord who lived in lower-income housing in our city. Years down the road when she was married.
• The church assistant that worked in our church school that wrote a blog leading up to the date.
• The man who announced to his wife, “I just can’t do it anymore,” and walked into the next room.
• The church member that let his family leave for church without him.
• The pastor that put a Wal-mart sack on his head and sprayed bug spray inside.

Suicide touched all of these lives. They were people I knew, call-outs as my husband has gone to as a police chaplain, or other stories I have heard through the years.

These stories of untimely death are sobering. Each person left people who loved them and who still grieve for the losses of the unexpected and horrific end to their lives. Questions, hurt, and grief will haunt their loved ones for life.

Suicide is an action that was preceded by thoughts… wrong thoughts. “Wrong thoughts?” Yes, wrong thoughts about the value of their life to God. People that believed death was the way out of their sorrows.

God is the giver of life first when it is created in the womb and the giver of eternal life when a person chooses to believe on Jesus Christ. Death for a believing person is a departure from this life to eternal life. Many people in this list were believers and I am confident that it was not God’s will for them to destroy their own lives out of His timing.

Death for the unbeliever is a departure from this life to a death that lasts forever. Suicide is an attempt on Satan’s part to destroy the life and souls of individuals.

Suicide is a personal destruction of the body.

Satan is the destroyer of life, as the Bible describes him as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour in I Peter 5:8. In John 10, Jesus describes Satan as a thief coming to steal, kill, and destroy. Satan’s plan is to separate people from God and destroy their relationship with God. One of his greatest “victories” is to have someone like you to believe wrong thoughts long enough to end your own life.

Not only does Satan attempt to destroy life through self-harming suicide his snares include the elderly and diseased with euthanasia, and assisted suicide through the means of drugs.  He also seeks to destroy life in the form of abortion and murder and self-harm through cutting. The list continues with drug abuse, alcohol, sexual addictions and STD’s that all lead to personal destruction of the body (in slow or fast ways) and many play a role in the majority of suicide attempts.

Consider the value that God places on life.

The origin of life is God. He created man and woman in the Garden of Eden and created them to be able to reproduce life and subsequent generations have been the result. Every  generation through today has had the valuable gift of life given to them. God loves each life so much that He knew you before you were formed in the womb, (Psalm 139:13) the number of hairs on your head (Luke 12:7), and when you stand up and sit down (Psalm 139:2).

God loves life so much He gave His Son, Jesus, to die for it.

God the Father made a choice before the world was made, that Jesus, His Son, would be born as a man on this earth to die for the sins of every person (1 Peter 1:20, Titus 1:2). Jesus’ perfect body bore all sin (including yours) after He had been beaten and humiliated and hung on the cross to die. As He hung on the cross His last words were, “It is finished,” declaring He was finished with the work of bearing all sin upon Himself (John 19:30). His dead body was laid in a tomb for three days and nights. Then God allowed Jesus to raise back to life in His resurrection, where Jesus lived another 40 days on earth before going back to heaven. God loved your life so much that He gave His Son, Jesus, to die for it.

God loves life so much that He offers it to all mankind.

Satan, was known as one of God’s brightest angels of light, named Lucifer (Isaiah 14:12). In his pride, he lifted himself up to be higher and greater than God Himself. God cast him out of heaven and created hell to be the eternal place of punishment for him (Revelation 19, 20). Hell was not initially created for people, but it does later become the place where people who reject Jesus end up at the end of time (Revelation 20).

God allowed Jesus to die on the cross so you could believe and have eternal life, not death. There has to be a realization though of one’s sinfulness before God and that you cannot pay for your sins by yourself without paying the high price of eternal death in the lake of fire with Satan. That is why it is clearly taught and explained in the Bible that we needed a Savior (helper and/or rescuer). We are not good enough on our own to go to heaven and it is necessary for us to call upon Christ to be our Savior.

God’s love is so great that he offers salvation freely to all who choose to believe. The Bible says, “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” The word “whosoever” allows anyone that will believe they need Christ to pay for their sins to avoid the eternal punishment and have eternal/everlasting life. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever, believeth in him, should not perish but have everlasting life.”

Suicidal thoughts on the part of an unbeliever are often a lure from Satan to destroy that person’s body and soul. God though, provides not death, but the freedom of life. Jesus speaks of Satan and Himself in John 10:10, God never desires anyone to kill themselves because he wants you to have life.

God sustains life throughout eternity.

Eternity itself is hard to comprehend because we live a time-oriented life. God loves life so much that He  will sustain eternal life forever.

Jesus did not die in vain, His death was for you, so that God could give a way for you to have eternal life that will last for eternity. No matter what you’ve done, God loves you. No matter the dark thoughts in the forefront of your mind, He knows. He’s seen your sin and disobedience to His laws (Exodus 20), He has witnessed your very best and worst. He knows the fears you have and the way you do not want to face the hardships of life anymore. Stop and ask yourself, what would the God who loves me want me to do now? Would He want me to kill myself?

God’s provision of eternal life remains a choice for you to make. God allows us to choose His way to eternal life or our own way. Our goodness though, is not the basis of God’s gift of eternal life because the standard is God’s holiness. If we reject Christ’s payment for our sins on the cross, then we must pay for our sins ourselves with eternal death and punishment. No one likes to face the reality of this fact, that we are not good enough in and of ourselves to make things happen for us in a good way for eternity.

Some people believe, if you choose to kill yourself through suicide that you automatically go to hell, whether you say you were a Christian or not. This belief cannot be found in the Bible because it is a lie. The plain truth is not about how you die, it is what you do with what you know about Christ’s death that matters before you die that matters. So many people take the risk of saying, “I will find out what will happen to me after I die.” By then, it will be too late. Choices about eternity must be made before death.

Now that you know God loves life so much that He allowed Christ to die for you, what will you do with that truth?

Will you choose to accept it? or reject it?

Your life and time on earth is a gift from God, don’t rob yourself or others, by allowing wrong thoughts to lead you into destroying yourself.

At one point in time God is speaking to the Jewish people this message in Deuteronomy 30 and I believe that He would say the same thing to those of you who are considering suicide.

Deuteronomy 30: 19,20a “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: That thou mayest love the Lord thy God, and that thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto him: for he is thy life, and the length of thy days…”

If you are a Christian reading this and you are thinking of taking your life, I want to beg you to wait. Take time now to pray and ask God to make Himself known to you in a special way, so that you can feel His love and presence. If you’re running from the consequences of your sin, I pray you will run like King David did on multiple occasions and rest yourself upon a merciful God. His plans are not to destroy you, but to make you come close to Him and become a fruitful Christian. If you’re running from dire circumstances that have happened in your life, I pray you will rest like Job in the hands of your Creator, and wait for these circumstances to end. If Job had ended his life, he would have missed out on the blessings of his restored life. What you need to do is cling to the hope of God’s promises, get in your Bible and memorize scripture that speaks to your heart about hope.

I understand this is a very sensitive subject, if you have any questions or thoughts that you would like to share with me, please contact me here. If you would like to know more about salvation then please do not hesitate to ask me and I will be happy to help you know more about how you can have eternal life.