Nobody cares about me.
Nobody does.
Nobody did.
Nobody will.
It's not depression, its reality,
and I have embraced it with open arms.
I want to kill myself, again.
Thanks friends.
I wrote this on my personal blog only 22 days after I attempted suicide. 22 days. 22.
On March 2nd, 2010, I tried taking my own life by swallowing four bottles of a variety of medication to overdose and end my life. It's by God's grace I'm still alive.
I'm amazed that not only my life was spared, but even more, that even after going through that dark time in my life, and going through other various trials, sufferings, and turmoil, I'm still a Christian, all by the sustaining grace of God.
As I type this, it's midday. I hear birds outside, singing away their songs to one another, like an community of musicians. I hear cars honking, motor scooters as they weave in and out of traffic, pedestrians conversing to each other as they go about their day, and in the back of all of these sounds, the Islamic call to prayer echoes throughout the air. I'm here, by God's grace, starting the 22nd year of my life overseas, traveling around the world, spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and living my life to the fullest. Oh, how sweet and wonderful these days are!
With turning 22 on February 3rd and being nearly halfway done with this journey to 11 countries for 11 months, I reflect on all that God has done, not only on this miraculous adventure, but in my life as whole. Two of the Five Solas state that Christianity is "through faith alone, through Christ alone." I would agree because that is precisely what the Gospel preaches (and the fact that I have the Five Solas tattooed acros my chest would demonstrate I agree with them too.) But in this instance, on this reflection, I would reword the phrase, not out of disagreement, but out of awe-inspiring, mind-boggling, heart-jostling, passion-igniting joy! I would reword it to read " through faith alone, BY Christ alone."
Now that is wondrous.
The reason I would reword it this way is because if my committment to faith in Jesus, if my desire for His glory, if my eagerness for the declaration of the Gospel, if my faithfulness to His call, if my approvalness for ministry, if my love for the Church, if my thrill for theology, if my excitement for exposition, if all of this was dependent on me, I would have abandonded Jesus Christ long ago. I would have rejected His glory, I would have been faithless to what He called me into, I would have lost any interest in the knowledge of Jesus Christ, and I wouldn't be here in Malaysia right now but somewhere else, wasting away as I wasted my life on trivial, useless things.
Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen
The reality is, despite any and every attempts at being a Christian, it's the power of Christ that has made you alive in Christ and has kept you alive in Christ, so whatever work that you have done in being Christ-like, being a Christian, has always been and always will be the power of God inside of you. That's what it takes for you and I to keep us from wandering away from ministry, from faith, from all that God has called us into. What keeps me from leaving the World Race, leaving what God has called me to, leaving the faith, is God's sustaining grace through the love of Jesus Christ; He who is at work in and through me at this very moment and will continue to work in and through me until the end of my days, when that precious time comes where I stand before His presence, found blameless and holy, with utmost joy.
Read the text reflecting your own life, like a doxological prayer or song to the Lord.
Now to him who is able to keep me from stumbling and to present me blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ my Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen
What Jude is doing in these two verses is praising God, celebrating God's goodness. There are three things Jude is celebrating:
- God keeps us from stumbling.
- Christ presents us before the glory of God blameless.
- Christ presents us before the glory of God with great happiness.
What brought these three acts of God to existence was God. The causality of these wonderful realities is God and His sustaining grace found in His glory, majesty, power, and authority.
Now let's go deeper. Let's open our hearts to this reflection on what God has done and is doing in our lives. Can we just ponder at this amazement for a moment: do we really, I mean, really have any concept or idea of the degree and measure of God's grace in His glory, majesty, power, and authority that it took to give us life when we were dead? Think about it. We were dead. Dead people don't decide to get up and live just as much as fish don't decide to get out of the water and breath air or blind people decide to open up their eyes and see. Can we even phathom a glimpse of the immeasurable amount of grace that was given to us to bring us from death to life, and not only that, but to sustain us moment by moment, year by year, to grow in us in this newly given life so that we resist sin, love holiness, and pursue the fruits of righteousness as the body of the Church? The pondering of the magnitude of the immeasurable amount of God's grace given to us should leave us in paralyzing awe.
The giving of life and the moment-by-moment sustaining and keeping of this life, and the growing and stiring up of this life is simply an astonishing, unimaginable work of the Holy Spirit. We would simply not be alive if we were not united to Christ by the Spirit. Our life is Christ's life, awakened by the Holy Spirit. I bring nothing to my life except the fact that I was dead, and I bring nothing to the ongoing existence of this divine spiritual life in me. I exist as a Christian by it. I did not bring it to awakening. I don’t keep it in being; not any more than the universe came into existence by its own power or is upheld by its own power.
The difference between your absolute inability – your nothing – and His absolute ability – His everything – is infinitely enormous. We know we can’t do it and He can. The measurement of what it took to create us and keep us alive is the exact distance between us, finite creation, and God, infinite Creator. It is an uncontainable wonder that God creates and sustains our lives.
This is good news because it gives us freedom from ourselves, and that's the best freedom we could recieve. Our sustaining of our spiritual lives isn't based on whether or not we do good, not drink, attend every Sunday school service, not listening to " bad" music, and not watching rated R movies (unless it's of Jesus of course.) Our perseverance is based on He who gave us our lives to begin with! Therefore we don't need to worry or grow weary, but rest in God's work in and through us. It also gives us relief because the same Spirit that lives in every saint lives in us. As Peter states in his second letter, you and I have faith that equally stands to his own. Therefore we have a hope that God can not only give us life but use that life for His glory. We can have a life of purpose, a life of meaning, a life of unimaginable joy in Him.
The great English pastor and theologian Charles Spurgeon was only 22 when he was preaching to the 10,000+ people at his church. At 22, I am preaching and spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ all over the world, traveling to beautiful places, loving all kinds of people, living in an amazing community, and doing things I never thought I would do. I don't mean to compare against Spurgeon, but to rejoice in the fact that, like him, I am not living a boring or normal story but a godly story. This is the story that God has given me. This is the life that God has given me.This is the radical new journey He has led me on. And He sustains me, every step of the way. It was nothing that I ever did or will ever do. I was only a boy who was looking to take away my own life. But God in His sustaining grace found in His glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, saved my life and gave me a new one, and that is why I'm still here. And just like me, He can use you too. He can give you a new life. It wasn't too late for me, even when I tried taking my own life away. It's never too late for you.
Thank You Lord, for all that You've done for me. In the reflections of turning 22, I pray that You would sustain my given life, guide my every step, keep me in holiness, stir inside of me deeper love for the world and Your Church, and be with me through the ends of the earth, as I continue to sojourn onward, preaching and spreading the Gospel, until I come home to You.
To Christ be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before time, now, and forever.
Amen.
