Helping my friend who's suicidal on this edition of Truth and Love.

I'm Heath Lambert, and you're listening to Truth and Love, a podcast of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors,

where we seek to provide biblical solutions for the problems that people face.

The Apostle Paul knew what it was to be sad. In 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verses 8 and 9, he said,

we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed, perplexed, but not despairing, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed.

The Apostle Paul struggled with great pain and great brokenness, but as he articulates in this

passage, it wasn't overwhelming sorrow, though he was afflicted, he wasn't crushed, though he was

perplexed, he was not despairing.

In the midst of the Apostle Paul's pain, there was hope. But we're aware that in a fallen

world, it's possible to be overwhelmed with a kind of despair that is devoid of hope, and this

can lead people to be so overwrought that they don't even

want to live anymore. Isn't that right, Amy? Yeah, I think that's right. So I think then the question is,

what do we do if we know someone who's suicidal? How can we help them? Well, if we know someone who is suicidal, and it's likely to be the case that everyone listening to this,

will sooner or later know a friend, a loved one, someone in the course of their personal ministry

that is in so much pain that they want to die, and they are thinking of taking their own life.

And I think that there are several things that we can do to try to help in that situation.

The first thing is we really need to understand that suicide is wrong.

It's an act of murder against oneself. And we need to have that conviction

and we need to articulate that conviction because nothing goes without saying anymore.

In a world where there is assisted suicide and euthanasia and that phenomenon is going to grow and expand, we need to agree that it is

wrong to take the life of a human being, even if the human being is ourselves. That's wrong

for at least two reasons. Number one, human beings are made by God in his image. We bear his likeness. We represent him to the world.

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