What about suicide?

Asking God why is the natural reaction to disaster. He is our Father and we naturally run to him. Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking He caused it. He doesn't. This world is full of evil and bad things happen.

In my quest for comfort, I'm spending more time in nature. Even though there isn't much green around, it helps to be out there among what God created. I feel closer to Him. My family and I went hiking this weekend in a nearby state park. It was beautiful and peaceful.

God gave me some revelation on my friend's suicide that I want to share. I know it isn't anything new, but maybe it might be new to someone reading it.

Mental illness is a sickness just like any other horrible sickness. It has such a stigma we sometimes forget that. A person with mental illness is like a person whose body doesn't have the ability to fight off the disease. They succumb to any sickness easily. The Word of God (the Bible) is like an inoculation. You have to keep taking it regularly to help fight off the disease. As you continue, your body becomes stronger and stronger. Hitting it now and then doesn't do it.

Let me clarify a bit here. Reading the Bible is wonderful. However, the words might not even make much sense to the person who has not accepted Jesus as their personal Savior. The Holy Spirit that we receive at salvation opens our eyes to what the words in the Bible mean (I Corinthians 3:16). They come alive. Click here to find out more about salvation.

1 Corinthians 2:14 But the natural, nonspiritual man does not accept or welcome or admit into his heart the gifts and teachings and revelations of the Spirit of God, for they are folly (meaningless nonsense) to him; and he is incapable of knowing them [of progressively recognizing, understanding, and becoming better acquainted with them] because they are spiritually discerned and estimated and appreciated.

1 Corinthians 2:10 Yet to us God has unveiled and revealed them by and through His Spirit, for the [Holy] Spirit searches diligently, exploring and examining everything, even sounding the profound and bottomless things of God [the [a]divine counsels and things hidden and beyond man's scrutiny].

Suicide is contagious. It is an evil that jumps from one to another. A friend with mental illness who is around another that commits suicide has to be very careful. My friend had another friend who committed suicide. She was obsessed with her friend's death. She thought about it often. I see now how she succumbed to it. She wasn't strong enough spiritually to fight it off. There were times my friend was in the Word of God and she was strong. When she wasn't, she succumbed to all sorts of evil. Eventually death.

Keeping this in mind, we need to help our friends with mental illness by encouraging them to stay in the Word. Praying for them. Being available to them but not allowing ourselves to become their Savior. Even though I feel I did all these things, she is gone. Ultimately, it was her choice not to remain strong in God's Word. I do take comfort in the fact that she loved Jesus and that He was her personal Savior. I know I will see her again in Heaven.