Seeing What God Sees

This comes from a broken heart that I share this with you. A good friend of my family's past away on Friday. I won't share his name but he committed suicide and it has left my family in a number of mental states. I for one am heart broken that he felt so depressed that he felt there was nothing to live for. It breaks my heart to know that he was in that kind of pain. There are many ways to respond to this type of situation. Some get angry at the lost soul, others feel guilt, and while others may just feel sad. I fall into the latter as I stated before. The reason I share this is because I got a glimpse of what God sees when people are in pain. I also got a glimpse of how Satan tries to attack you in times of hardship...

People regularly refer to suicide as a very selfish act. Yes it is, kind of. I think this response comes from how we feel it impacted us. If we feel angry then we blame them for making us feel that way. We say that they are the bad guy for this. While this may be true of the circumstance it isn't necessarily the right response. For as we are saying that they are being selfish for taking their own life, we are making their death all about us. I'm not saying that you aren't aloud to have those feelings, cause they are valid, but I am saying that we can't stay in that state and be in the correct response. When we only think about how their death effected us, we fail to see what the cause was. It is easy to get mad. It's hard to see how they felt. That's what God does. If we agree that God is a loving father who wants nothing but the best for His children, then we have to agree that he feels for us on the emotional level. Jesus experienced dispare, loneliness, anger, temptation, and all shorts of levels of emotion. We can look at the Jesus during his temptations from Satan. He was tempted to jump off a building. Of course in context it was to show his majesty and holy annointed for all to see, but the reality is that Satan, in a way, tried to get Christ to end His life. Jesus knows what that feels like. He experienced all sorts of troubles through life. He was out casted by full cities, he had his "friends" turn on him crying out for his death. Jesus knows, God knows. We as Christians need to be understanding of what people are going through. Is suicide a sin? yes, did Christ die for all sins? Yes. This idea that Christ only died for the sins you had committed and not for the ones you will commit is unbiblical. So if God can forgive t, what gives us the right to hold it against them?

Another response is guilt. This provides us with the most profound look into the relationship that the two people had. It seems that the closer you are to the person the more you blame yourself for their death. While God may be directing you toward loving the lonely more, he doesn't hold you accountable for the actions that are independent of your own. Meaning, stop thinking that you are so awesome that you had the power to stop it. Not that it's a pride thing, more that it is an issue of focus. Again it seems that Satan has us turn it onto oursleves to see how we failed. The reality is that, there is a spiritual battle that claims lives everyday. It claims both mental lives and physical lives. Please understand that I am not claiming that his is a bad response. I am just warning against the possible unhealthy out comes. Guilt isn't a tool of God, Christ, or the Holy Spirit. It is a tool of the devil. Some of you may think that is a little extreme but hear me out. God doesn't want to convict us so heavily that we become useless to Him. That would be bad strategy. You want our troops to have a good moral while working out the kinks. The Spirit convicts to show us where we are falling short of God's calling. Not to show us that we suck. The "we suck" comes straight from Satan. It is a battle for your mind and emotions are the way that Satan tries to get us down. If you look at many of your decisions it usually stems from the basis of emotion. The bible directly tells us that the heart is deceitful. Thus saying that we can't trust what we feel because it changes so often. We have to be smart about it. Yes you may have seen signs that they needed help, no it isn't your fault they went to that extreme. If there is no learning from the experience then it is used by Satan. If you can learn and grow from it, then it is from God. So because you saw that there were signs, it doesn't mean you are responsible for them. It means the next time you see the signs, you go out of your way to make sure that they have an ear. That's what changes it from useless guilt to applicable conviction.

The final response is to feel sad for them. This is probably the most dangerous place and yet the closest to God's heart. I say it is the most dangerous because if you are not careful you can slip into the mentality that it was ok because they were sad. You can skim over the fact tht sin is sin and we have to call it out. Empathy is a great thing. Women feel it more than men, hence lifetime network. Consequently there is litle room for error here. When you just feel sad for the person and feel their depression, you can miss the lessons God is trying to use. I sincerely believe that God uses every major event in our lives to show us how to live. I say major, because spilling milk isn't the time to get philosophical and make life decisions based on how much milk is spilled. Major events that shake you, God wants to use them for His glory. I fall into this state, not because I am all that emotional, but primarily because I fail to see what God is teaching me. I tend to not have life change when God is clearly showing me how. But God is empathetic, God is th Great Councilor. You can ask any councilor you know and they will agree that the most powerful tool in counciling is empathy. Sympathy is a way of looking down on some one while empathy is placing yourself in their shoes and validating their emotions. Some people just need some one to understand where they are and to know that hey are not alone or weird. God empathizes without granting sinful behavior. God loves us, and will always love us.

To sum up, death is always tragic and suicide tends to be the most. Don't let it be about you, but also don't let yourself be held down and made useless because you have been crippled by this event. Learn from it no matter how hard it is, learn from it. We won't be perfect until the day we are standing in His presence. I know our family friend is standing there now. His committment to Christ was real and is real. He fell to temptation in a battle that he lost. This doesn't mean Christ didn't already pay for it. Remember tha. Christ paid for it in His own blood. Willingly, sacrificially, and lovingly.

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