Good Morning Everyone. Yesterday was long but good. It led to more thinking which after a phone conversation led to self doubt I thought I had conquered. Now I am starting over on building it back up.
Do you ever get old enough to just live and not worry? I don’t really know my place in the company. The broker is a necessary evil in the KW organization. Someone’s name has to be on the door and take responsibility but other than that there is no job description. I have carved out a role but it is a hybrid so I write it out as I go. My contract renews in August and I had been feeling ok. Now all the self doubt is back.
Get through the day, the week, the month. Not much I can do about it at 5:40 in the morning.
Good morning Kim, Aj and everyone else but Jo.
Good evening jo.
Kim asks, “Do you ever get old enough to just live and not worry?”
Answer, Maybe, but it’s after 89.
You may be financially secure, your love life is secure. Your children are secure. But your health is failing and you depend on others to do things you did yourself without thinking.
It’s always something.
I notice that I pray a lot about things that didn’t bother me before.
I am more careful about trivia because the consequences are more serious.
Years ago, I heard a preacher say, “Do the next right thing.”
I’ve noticed that it works. Do what is best now. It will work out.
Re: “Old enough to just live and not worry”
Right after I retired. Everything was secure. No Beltway, no waiting at the Atlanta airport. no getting up at 5:20, etc. Chuck had graduated and had a job.
But something soon came along.
I suspect that some of us are born worriers and others of us are not. Hubby worries about everything, a trait he inherited from his mother. I tend to not worry about anything. While it isn’t a conscious thought, I imagine it has to do with a basic realization that there isn’t anything I can do about it, anyhow, so why waste the energy?
Morning! What they all said up there…one step/day at a time and even at this age they can be “baby steps”…sometimes we tend to over stride. And for someone who has a “perfectionist “ character, perceived setbacks can take a toll on the confidence of our abilities. I can say don’t let it but that would be hypocritical because I find myself there so many times! Praying for you that you will be quieted before Him and He will reveal to you His purposes in it all. This is something I am learning even now…Lord what is it You have for me to learn in my current situation…Let me be used of You to bring glory unto your name…
I worry when I think too far ahead. People keep asking me about my future plans right now, and I can only give them the next step, which is currently studying for the registration exam (I am scheduled to write it next week). That is the story of my life*. I can only ever see one step in front of me, and because of that limited view, it is easy to worry about what comes after that step. One would think, after my life experiences that I would have learned not to try to look ahead, but I have not.
*Nine years ago, when I came to the city for the first time to study Operating Room nursing, I had an experience which, in retrospect, seems prophetic in nature. I had been ill and missed an important class as a result, and I was worried, due to the highly compressed nature of the program (fitting nearly a year’s worth of courses into 6 weeks), that I would not be able to make up the time. I was living in a sublet basement apartment in a seedy section of town and it was a long bus ride up to the campus where I had my classes. That morning, I was pacing my apartment, praying that God would help me make up the class. I knew I did not need to leave for another hour yet to get to class, but I got this urge, almost frantic in nature, that I needed to get on the bus now. I threw my things together, went out, around the corner, across the street, down the block to the bus stop. When I got on the bus, it was quite full and there was only one seat left, next to an elderly woman who gestured for me to sit down beside her. She began talking to me about what I was doing in the city and I told her what I was taking. She said she had been a nurse, but that she could never have worked in the operating room because it was so challenging. When she got up to leave at the stop she wanted, she turned to me and said, “The Lord will make you into an operating room nurse, step by step.” She got off then, and I have never seen her since, but her words have stayed with me over the years, and I recall them when I begin to worry about what is past the next step.
I well remember our oldest daughter so worried about how she would make it, financially and otherwise, through college. My husband reminded her to take one day at a time and not look too far into the future. It was good advice now and advice we remind ourselves of quite often. There is a reason Jesus reminded his disciples so often in the same vein. She is far beyond college now and has made it through many more things.
I think being grateful for what we have today also helps us keep perspective in our lives.
Tych talks about the Pashtuns on the prayer thread, mentioned the fact that many of Bollywood’s actors are Pashtun. Three of the biggest actors in Bollywood, Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Kahn, and Saif Ali Kahn are indeed of Pashtun origin, with a fourth, Aaamir Kahn, also having Pashtu ancestry (none of these actors are related, although they all have other relatives in the film industry). I mentioned in a response that Pashtuns were enthusiastic fans of Bollywood films. Bollywood returns the favour, often depicting Pashtuns in films, including this film song from the 1980s, which depicts the traditional musical style of the Pashtuns, in a story set in the Pashtu culture – the song is praising the virtues of love (mohabbat):
Sounds like we have our marching orders for today . . . one step at a time. I am remembering a Stormie Omartian book Just Enough Light for the Step I am On. Also, for anyone interested, Max Lucado is doing a summer Bible stude from his book, Be Anxious for Nothing. It sounds good, but I am already doing a daily online study and also my Sunday school study.
I got sad news yesterday. One of the young guides at the cave died. He was a professing Christian from a good family. He was friendly and usually had a smile. We found out that he also had depression and maybe took his own life. He was 18 or 19, I’m not sure.
If only we could all learn to trust in the One who knows us best, and believe in the hope of eternal salvation.
Peter, suicide is not the unforgivable sin and those who are severely depressed are not in their right minds, and thus not fully responsible for their actions. I have an aunt who is a Christian but has, in times of severe depression, attempted to take her life more than once and nearly succeeded. Yet, she continues, when she is well, as she has been for some years now with the help of the right medication, to live for the Lord in very difficult life circumstances, the kind of circumstance that many people would find unbearable to live in day after day. Christ is able to cover even the sin of suicide and eternal life was not taken from the young man because he brought about his own death.
But I came here to comment on Phos’ comment.
When you have that urge (You will know it), follow through. Satan can lie to you in some situations, but he can’t follow through.
That is so sad, Peter. I’m sorry. Suicide is an especially difficult circumstance for family and friends afterward to comprehend and deal with and it’s natural for people to feel they should have/could have done or said more, something that would have made a difference.
Exercising & resting in a *perfect* trust at all times — in this fallen world and among fallen creatures — remains more or less elusive, depending on so many things that we go through in life. The Psalms tell that story.
My mom was a worrier by nature and I think I am, too.
My young neighbor just put her house on the market. There has been speculation her husband ended his life and not the heart attack…but that is before our Lord and we extend grace, mercy and love to her without comment as it truly is none of our business. I am sad that she is now moving but she knows what is needed for her and her two kiddos. We have had many teen suicides in our area the past couple of years and they were professing believers no one suspecting they were at their end…for the most part not even their parents. He knows and we trust Him with the very last breath of those finding themselves with this end….so sorry to hear of this young man’s journey’s end Peter… 😞
Mumsee, I posted and went to lunch. I just saw pewter’s post on his colleague. I’m sorry about that. But the post I made had to do with. her 9:07. I usually specify that. Don’ know why I didn’t then.
Chas, I found it macabrely amusing. Since I deal with suicide threats a lot around here, one finds humor where one can. Suicide is a horrible thing to do to your family and friends. But I understand that it looks like the only solution to some. We know it was not the only solution to the brother of three of our children, we were always available to him. But it is the way he chose and his sibs and bio parents and grandparents and his girlfriend and her child are still struggling with it.
Every time seventeen year old makes a suicide threat and has to go to the hospital, she comes home with more info on how to do it correctly. I wish people would stop being so “helpful”.
It is not surprising to me to see the increase in suicides in a society that is taught it comes from rocks. And I am not surprised to see it in young believers as they have not yet fully comprehended the Love living in us. It does surprise me when a long time believer takes their own life but often it is done with the help of alcohol or drugs. I do not it is the unforgiveable sin and I don’t know many who do but I am sure there are some.
Roscuro- I realize suicide is forgivable, but how does one ask for forgiveness or repent of a sin that takes his/her life? I cannot say what happens to a Christian who commits suicide. However, I cannot fully believe that self murder is not the same as murder in God’s eyes.
I wonder if we don’t all die with some unconfessed, specific sin?
Not to dismiss the dire seriousness of such an act, but that’s where I would take comfort in knowing that God chose us from the beginning and it is He, not us, that ultimately does the ‘hanging on’ of our oft-troubled souls in this broken world.
Something interesting I read once also (without knowing how true it is): Not everyone who ‘threatens’ suicide goes through with it; but those who do take their own lives almost always have spoken of it first.
It reminds me of something a fellow believer said recently, that Jesus had already died for all of our sins, so they are already all – past, present, and future – already forgiven when we come to Christ. Maybe that is the answer?
We are to confess our sins, agree with God that we have broken His rules. But, since it would be impossible for us to find all of them, we would live in constant fear if we were not assured that His death was sufficient. He does bring things to mind as He works in us, but I suspect if we understood how totally off we are, we would not be able to see His grace and mercy and would be overwhelmed. If we could see our sin in its entirety, we image bearers with Him living in us, would not be able to stand ourselves. But as we look at His redemption of us, we can begin to see clearly. None of us are there yet. The forgiveness is.
Nightingale asked The Boy if he wants to go back to talk to the lady about his feelings (referring to the therapist he saw for a while after X’s attack on her). Surprisingly (because he didn’t like it so much at that time), he said yes.
We are wondering if X has been telling him that he is going to get custody of him. We don’t know, of course, but it is something he would do. He used to threaten her with that over the phone, when The Boy was right there with him.
Here is an article that sounds very much like X, which is why Nightingale was adamant about hiring a good lawyer. I also knew a woman whose ex-husband managed to get custody of their two sons because he was much like what is described in this:
“How Domestic Abusers Get Custody in Family Court
How Good Mothers Lose their Children”
I once talked to an employee counselor about my friend who committed suicide and my concern over if she would be in hell for having done that as her final act. He counseled me that God would look at her whole life to make His judgement, and not at that one act alone. It seemed logical and eased my concern.
… Although that (1:23) also puts our salvation squarely on our shoulders. 😦 I think the Bible teaches that salvation is not earned by having lived a “good” life as none are “good enough” — it is a gift, completely, through the grace of God.
Peter, if our salvation was dependent on us repenting from each individual sin, our salvation would be dependent on our works. From the Catholic practice of last rites, in order to be shriven from sins before death, to the sermon by the Pelegian heretic C. G. Finney’s on Breaking up the Fallow Ground, through meticulous and laborious confession of every sin one ever committed*, humans have fallen into serious error regarding a perceived necessity of confessing sin before it can be forgiven through Christ. Christ’s salvation is not a one time event, it is continuous. “The blood of Jesus Christ,” the Apostle John says, “cleanses us from sin” (I John 1:7). The verb tense of ‘cleanses’ in the Greek, as Pastor A so often said, signifies continuous, ongoing action. If it were true that unconfessed sin prevented a Christian from entering eternal life, then every time we sinned, we would lose our salvation and have to regain it by confession.
Murder, although a grave crime, is not the unforgivable sin either. Paul called himself a murderer and obtained forgiveness for his sins, as did David, who murdered Uriah. When John says in his first epistle that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him (I John 3:11-17), he is speaking in the context of hating one’s brother while claiming to love God – in other words, the person who hates another in their heart, as Jesus said in his Sermon on the Mount, is a murderer (Matthew 5:21-22). To hate and despise another human, whether or not one actually kills the object of their hatred, is to raise questions about the validity of one’s salvation – as should any continuous, ongoing sin that someone refuses to repent of, even when confronted with it.
Yet, while I seldom see anyone questioning the salvation of someone like Martin Luther, who in his latter years, railed against the Jews in the most hate filled of terms, I do see people questioning the salvation of those who were seriously depressed and died by suicide. The way John’s statement about the sheer evil of hating others has been twisted to shut out from eternal life those who commit suicide in their despair or madness shows a lack of mercy in the Church that is troubling. I know a pastor whose death from suicide I would describe as the final act of disobedience of a false professor of the faith, but I say that not because he committed suicide, but because of why he committed suicide. He killed himself to escape the awful scandal of his affair that was about to be revealed. He was a proud and merciless man (I have multiple first hand witnesses to those facts) highly respected in the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist world and his pride was too great for his downfall, and like King Saul, he preferred death to humiliation. But not all suicides are committed out of sinful pride, most are committed out of the darkness of depression.
A person who commits murder while insane is not held to be fully responsible for his crime. Those who commit suicide out of depression are not in full control of their minds. My aunt, after her recovery, described the mindset that brought her to suicide as a dark tunnel with only one exit, suicide. She said she thought everything would be solved by her death, not just her own pain (from an abusive childhood, but that her family would be better off if she were dead, which was a completely insane and wholly illogical thought, as she herself realized when she was fully in possession of her faculties. The only difference between the young man and my aunt is that she survived her suicide attempts, while he did not. It would be totally against all we understand of the free grace of God in Jesus Christ to say that my aunt is saved only because she survived to repent of trying to kill herself.
*ATI actually used Finney’s sermon in one of their Wisdom Booklets, and I nearly went mad trying to follow it when I was in the midst of those mental health symptoms that resembled obsessive-compulsive disorder. If you want to see why, have a look at the sermon (Warning: Do not try to follow it): http://www.sermonindex.net/modules/articles/index.php?view=article&aid=579
I “liked” Janice’s comment, but then saw that DJ had another good point, and “liked” that one, too. 🙂
In reading Janice’s comment, though – reading it through my own understanding – I didn’t take it to mean that God would look at the person’s works, but at the person’s faith throughout their walk with Jesus. IOW, He wouldn’t only see that one faithless act, but the faith she had through His grace. Does that make sense?
Kizzie yes, and we look to those specific evidences of the faith to comfort us in those cases — that also is helpful advice for those whose profession of faith was not really known; we can look for even small evidences of faith to cling to for comfort, though accepting that we do not really “know” the final state of those whose faith was not in very clear evidence.
Heidi just had her summer hair cut, by Nightingale and Chickadee, and is now having a bath. The girls are both laughing about something in there, and I hear splashing.
**********
And now they are finished, and Heidi is a very happy doggie to get out of that bathroom.
Chickadee suggests we go back to taking Heidi to the groomers next year. I agree. Although the girls do a pretty nice job with her, it is difficult, and they can’t trim the hair on her head and face.
And the nail clippers broke as soon as they were taken out of the package, so we’re gonna have to take her up to get her nails clipped. (Maybe I’ll also have them trim her head and face while she’s there.)
Fortunately, none of us will be the decider of whether or not God knew each individual. We have hope, we have confidence, but none of us know another’s heart. That is left in the Hands of God. And what Kizzie said, and DJ said, we can look for evidence. If we look too closely, we may see enough sin to convince us that no way is that person in Heaven. But then we realize we are looking in a mirror. God. It is all about God. The mystery made known to us, that He would pay our debt, in full.
Nightingale says she is going to borrow our neighbor Denise’s dog nail trimmer. I decided to give her our dog hair trimmer, since we won’t be using it anymore, and she can get some use out of it.
I just got here and haven’t followed the discussion. So this may not be fair to go directly to the bottom line. But here goes:
Romans 10:9
‘That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.’
Kizzie, that is right. I did not even think of works regarding his explanation. I thought of her majority of thinking and acting with love toward God as compared with the minority of thinking and acting while out of her right mind. She was very depressed because her uterus could not hold babies in to maturity even with bed rest in the hospital. She kept losing babies, even twins born way too soon died in her arms. Then she got divorced from a Mr. Jekyll and Dr. Hyde. I could not imagine all she went through but felt if anyone had reason for suicide . . .
Evidence of sin will be abundant in all of us so we know not to look there.
For those who never professed faith or showed any inclination toward it in this life, perhaps were openly hostile to it, finding comfort becomes harder. I knew one woman who seemed as close to a reprobate as I could imagine, she had a deep (and vocal) hatred for the Christian faith and God himself. She was an acquaintance at the old dog park I used to go to and she passed on a few years ago. She’d go on absolute tirades back in the day. I tried to share with her a couple times but got slapped down pretty quickly. 😦
A mutual friend, a lapsed Catholic, was panicking at the end of this woman’s life (she was taking care of her, she had cancer) about how to get her to embrace the Lord so she would not wind up in hell; in the woman’s last days, she had a Lutheran pastor come over to try to talk to and pray for her, but it sounds like that didn’t go far.
But at least she didn’t throw him out, I was told. So one still never knows …
Clarification: It was the caretaker who brought the Lutheran pastor over to the woman’s house.
I kept wondering how that would go over, knowing the woman as much as I did … (She also had a very anti-Christian Twitter account and posted frequently 😦 )
I am doing a study in Nehemiah with two other ladies. So nice to get back into a real study. Last night the others had not prepared, but I had spent a lot of time working on the lesson and was able to lead. So nice to work through it together.
Kizzie, even if you are going to get the dogs groomed professionally, might there not sometimes be need to groom a spot? Having never gone the professional-grooming route, I really don’t know, but would imagine there might be.
Just got back from a quick trip to the 1st Pres Church a few blocks away to vote — only one issue on the ballot, a measure to give money to the LA school district to help fund the teachers’ strike settlement, essentially. Property taxes would go up between $100+ and $400 a year. So many of us are voting no.
That district is a mess, the teachers are well paid and have free medical care for life — I am sympathetic to the need for more school nurses and smaller classrooms, but it just seems like the district has been basically mismanaged for decades. There’s little confidence that providing more tax money at this stage will be used in the way they said it would (the language seems to allow for using it to go into pensions/medical care costs the district now is sagging beneath).
Cheryl – Until last year, we had taken Heidi to the groomer each year, and we’d never had a problem. When her “bangs” get too long, we can trim them with scissors.
Wandering Views 
Good Morning Everyone. Yesterday was long but good. It led to more thinking which after a phone conversation led to self doubt I thought I had conquered. Now I am starting over on building it back up.
Do you ever get old enough to just live and not worry? I don’t really know my place in the company. The broker is a necessary evil in the KW organization. Someone’s name has to be on the door and take responsibility but other than that there is no job description. I have carved out a role but it is a hybrid so I write it out as I go. My contract renews in August and I had been feeling ok. Now all the self doubt is back.
Get through the day, the week, the month. Not much I can do about it at 5:40 in the morning.
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Morning, Kim. Nice to see you on here. We believe in you and you have helped many of us. Have a blessed day.
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Good morning Kim, Aj and everyone else but Jo.
Good evening jo.
Kim asks, “Do you ever get old enough to just live and not worry?”
Answer, Maybe, but it’s after 89.
You may be financially secure, your love life is secure. Your children are secure. But your health is failing and you depend on others to do things you did yourself without thinking.
It’s always something.
I notice that I pray a lot about things that didn’t bother me before.
I am more careful about trivia because the consequences are more serious.
Years ago, I heard a preacher say, “Do the next right thing.”
I’ve noticed that it works. Do what is best now. It will work out.
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Good morning. Chas is right, one foot in front of the other and continue on.
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Re: “Old enough to just live and not worry”
Right after I retired. Everything was secure. No Beltway, no waiting at the Atlanta airport. no getting up at 5:20, etc. Chuck had graduated and had a job.
But something soon came along.
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I suspect that some of us are born worriers and others of us are not. Hubby worries about everything, a trait he inherited from his mother. I tend to not worry about anything. While it isn’t a conscious thought, I imagine it has to do with a basic realization that there isn’t anything I can do about it, anyhow, so why waste the energy?
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Morning! What they all said up there…one step/day at a time and even at this age they can be “baby steps”…sometimes we tend to over stride. And for someone who has a “perfectionist “ character, perceived setbacks can take a toll on the confidence of our abilities. I can say don’t let it but that would be hypocritical because I find myself there so many times! Praying for you that you will be quieted before Him and He will reveal to you His purposes in it all. This is something I am learning even now…Lord what is it You have for me to learn in my current situation…Let me be used of You to bring glory unto your name…
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I worry when I think too far ahead. People keep asking me about my future plans right now, and I can only give them the next step, which is currently studying for the registration exam (I am scheduled to write it next week). That is the story of my life*. I can only ever see one step in front of me, and because of that limited view, it is easy to worry about what comes after that step. One would think, after my life experiences that I would have learned not to try to look ahead, but I have not.
*Nine years ago, when I came to the city for the first time to study Operating Room nursing, I had an experience which, in retrospect, seems prophetic in nature. I had been ill and missed an important class as a result, and I was worried, due to the highly compressed nature of the program (fitting nearly a year’s worth of courses into 6 weeks), that I would not be able to make up the time. I was living in a sublet basement apartment in a seedy section of town and it was a long bus ride up to the campus where I had my classes. That morning, I was pacing my apartment, praying that God would help me make up the class. I knew I did not need to leave for another hour yet to get to class, but I got this urge, almost frantic in nature, that I needed to get on the bus now. I threw my things together, went out, around the corner, across the street, down the block to the bus stop. When I got on the bus, it was quite full and there was only one seat left, next to an elderly woman who gestured for me to sit down beside her. She began talking to me about what I was doing in the city and I told her what I was taking. She said she had been a nurse, but that she could never have worked in the operating room because it was so challenging. When she got up to leave at the stop she wanted, she turned to me and said, “The Lord will make you into an operating room nurse, step by step.” She got off then, and I have never seen her since, but her words have stayed with me over the years, and I recall them when I begin to worry about what is past the next step.
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I well remember our oldest daughter so worried about how she would make it, financially and otherwise, through college. My husband reminded her to take one day at a time and not look too far into the future. It was good advice now and advice we remind ourselves of quite often. There is a reason Jesus reminded his disciples so often in the same vein. She is far beyond college now and has made it through many more things.
I think being grateful for what we have today also helps us keep perspective in our lives.
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Tych talks about the Pashtuns on the prayer thread, mentioned the fact that many of Bollywood’s actors are Pashtun. Three of the biggest actors in Bollywood, Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Kahn, and Saif Ali Kahn are indeed of Pashtun origin, with a fourth, Aaamir Kahn, also having Pashtu ancestry (none of these actors are related, although they all have other relatives in the film industry). I mentioned in a response that Pashtuns were enthusiastic fans of Bollywood films. Bollywood returns the favour, often depicting Pashtuns in films, including this film song from the 1980s, which depicts the traditional musical style of the Pashtuns, in a story set in the Pashtu culture – the song is praising the virtues of love (mohabbat):
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Sounds like we have our marching orders for today . . . one step at a time. I am remembering a Stormie Omartian book Just Enough Light for the Step I am On. Also, for anyone interested, Max Lucado is doing a summer Bible stude from his book, Be Anxious for Nothing. It sounds good, but I am already doing a daily online study and also my Sunday school study.
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Now if I can just see the step I am on.
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I got sad news yesterday. One of the young guides at the cave died. He was a professing Christian from a good family. He was friendly and usually had a smile. We found out that he also had depression and maybe took his own life. He was 18 or 19, I’m not sure.
If only we could all learn to trust in the One who knows us best, and believe in the hope of eternal salvation.
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Peter, suicide is not the unforgivable sin and those who are severely depressed are not in their right minds, and thus not fully responsible for their actions. I have an aunt who is a Christian but has, in times of severe depression, attempted to take her life more than once and nearly succeeded. Yet, she continues, when she is well, as she has been for some years now with the help of the right medication, to live for the Lord in very difficult life circumstances, the kind of circumstance that many people would find unbearable to live in day after day. Christ is able to cover even the sin of suicide and eternal life was not taken from the young man because he brought about his own death.
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Janice says “Now if I can just see the step I am on”
I don’t know how she meant that. I know she has vision problems, as I do. So? Some advice.
BE sure you have something to hold on to, you don’t want to fall. And one slip could do it.
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But I came here to comment on Phos’ comment.
When you have that urge (You will know it), follow through. Satan can lie to you in some situations, but he can’t follow through.
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That is so sad, Peter. I’m sorry. Suicide is an especially difficult circumstance for family and friends afterward to comprehend and deal with and it’s natural for people to feel they should have/could have done or said more, something that would have made a difference.
Exercising & resting in a *perfect* trust at all times — in this fallen world and among fallen creatures — remains more or less elusive, depending on so many things that we go through in life. The Psalms tell that story.
My mom was a worrier by nature and I think I am, too.
roscuro, love that story.
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Oh oh, Chas just commented on Phos’ comment. Her last comment was on suicide.
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My young neighbor just put her house on the market. There has been speculation her husband ended his life and not the heart attack…but that is before our Lord and we extend grace, mercy and love to her without comment as it truly is none of our business. I am sad that she is now moving but she knows what is needed for her and her two kiddos. We have had many teen suicides in our area the past couple of years and they were professing believers no one suspecting they were at their end…for the most part not even their parents. He knows and we trust Him with the very last breath of those finding themselves with this end….so sorry to hear of this young man’s journey’s end Peter… 😞
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Mumsee, I posted and went to lunch. I just saw pewter’s post on his colleague. I’m sorry about that. But the post I made had to do with. her 9:07. I usually specify that. Don’ know why I didn’t then.
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Chas, I found it macabrely amusing. Since I deal with suicide threats a lot around here, one finds humor where one can. Suicide is a horrible thing to do to your family and friends. But I understand that it looks like the only solution to some. We know it was not the only solution to the brother of three of our children, we were always available to him. But it is the way he chose and his sibs and bio parents and grandparents and his girlfriend and her child are still struggling with it.
Every time seventeen year old makes a suicide threat and has to go to the hospital, she comes home with more info on how to do it correctly. I wish people would stop being so “helpful”.
It is not surprising to me to see the increase in suicides in a society that is taught it comes from rocks. And I am not surprised to see it in young believers as they have not yet fully comprehended the Love living in us. It does surprise me when a long time believer takes their own life but often it is done with the help of alcohol or drugs. I do not it is the unforgiveable sin and I don’t know many who do but I am sure there are some.
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Roscuro- I realize suicide is forgivable, but how does one ask for forgiveness or repent of a sin that takes his/her life? I cannot say what happens to a Christian who commits suicide. However, I cannot fully believe that self murder is not the same as murder in God’s eyes.
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I wonder if we don’t all die with some unconfessed, specific sin?
Not to dismiss the dire seriousness of such an act, but that’s where I would take comfort in knowing that God chose us from the beginning and it is He, not us, that ultimately does the ‘hanging on’ of our oft-troubled souls in this broken world.
“But God …”
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Something interesting I read once also (without knowing how true it is): Not everyone who ‘threatens’ suicide goes through with it; but those who do take their own lives almost always have spoken of it first.
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Peter – That is a good question.
It reminds me of something a fellow believer said recently, that Jesus had already died for all of our sins, so they are already all – past, present, and future – already forgiven when we come to Christ. Maybe that is the answer?
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Hadn’t seen DJ’s 12:37 comment before writing my own. Good point, DJ.
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Bottom line, if it were up to us and our works, we’d all be lost.
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Kizzie, 12:43, exactly the point I was making as well.
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We are to confess our sins, agree with God that we have broken His rules. But, since it would be impossible for us to find all of them, we would live in constant fear if we were not assured that His death was sufficient. He does bring things to mind as He works in us, but I suspect if we understood how totally off we are, we would not be able to see His grace and mercy and would be overwhelmed. If we could see our sin in its entirety, we image bearers with Him living in us, would not be able to stand ourselves. But as we look at His redemption of us, we can begin to see clearly. None of us are there yet. The forgiveness is.
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Amen.
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Nightingale asked The Boy if he wants to go back to talk to the lady about his feelings (referring to the therapist he saw for a while after X’s attack on her). Surprisingly (because he didn’t like it so much at that time), he said yes.
We are wondering if X has been telling him that he is going to get custody of him. We don’t know, of course, but it is something he would do. He used to threaten her with that over the phone, when The Boy was right there with him.
Here is an article that sounds very much like X, which is why Nightingale was adamant about hiring a good lawyer. I also knew a woman whose ex-husband managed to get custody of their two sons because he was much like what is described in this:
“How Domestic Abusers Get Custody in Family Court
How Good Mothers Lose their Children”
https://families.media/how-domestic-abusers-get-custody-in-family-court
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I once talked to an employee counselor about my friend who committed suicide and my concern over if she would be in hell for having done that as her final act. He counseled me that God would look at her whole life to make His judgement, and not at that one act alone. It seemed logical and eased my concern.
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… Although that (1:23) also puts our salvation squarely on our shoulders. 😦 I think the Bible teaches that salvation is not earned by having lived a “good” life as none are “good enough” — it is a gift, completely, through the grace of God.
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Peter, if our salvation was dependent on us repenting from each individual sin, our salvation would be dependent on our works. From the Catholic practice of last rites, in order to be shriven from sins before death, to the sermon by the Pelegian heretic C. G. Finney’s on Breaking up the Fallow Ground, through meticulous and laborious confession of every sin one ever committed*, humans have fallen into serious error regarding a perceived necessity of confessing sin before it can be forgiven through Christ. Christ’s salvation is not a one time event, it is continuous. “The blood of Jesus Christ,” the Apostle John says, “cleanses us from sin” (I John 1:7). The verb tense of ‘cleanses’ in the Greek, as Pastor A so often said, signifies continuous, ongoing action. If it were true that unconfessed sin prevented a Christian from entering eternal life, then every time we sinned, we would lose our salvation and have to regain it by confession.
Murder, although a grave crime, is not the unforgivable sin either. Paul called himself a murderer and obtained forgiveness for his sins, as did David, who murdered Uriah. When John says in his first epistle that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him (I John 3:11-17), he is speaking in the context of hating one’s brother while claiming to love God – in other words, the person who hates another in their heart, as Jesus said in his Sermon on the Mount, is a murderer (Matthew 5:21-22). To hate and despise another human, whether or not one actually kills the object of their hatred, is to raise questions about the validity of one’s salvation – as should any continuous, ongoing sin that someone refuses to repent of, even when confronted with it.
Yet, while I seldom see anyone questioning the salvation of someone like Martin Luther, who in his latter years, railed against the Jews in the most hate filled of terms, I do see people questioning the salvation of those who were seriously depressed and died by suicide. The way John’s statement about the sheer evil of hating others has been twisted to shut out from eternal life those who commit suicide in their despair or madness shows a lack of mercy in the Church that is troubling. I know a pastor whose death from suicide I would describe as the final act of disobedience of a false professor of the faith, but I say that not because he committed suicide, but because of why he committed suicide. He killed himself to escape the awful scandal of his affair that was about to be revealed. He was a proud and merciless man (I have multiple first hand witnesses to those facts) highly respected in the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist world and his pride was too great for his downfall, and like King Saul, he preferred death to humiliation. But not all suicides are committed out of sinful pride, most are committed out of the darkness of depression.
A person who commits murder while insane is not held to be fully responsible for his crime. Those who commit suicide out of depression are not in full control of their minds. My aunt, after her recovery, described the mindset that brought her to suicide as a dark tunnel with only one exit, suicide. She said she thought everything would be solved by her death, not just her own pain (from an abusive childhood, but that her family would be better off if she were dead, which was a completely insane and wholly illogical thought, as she herself realized when she was fully in possession of her faculties. The only difference between the young man and my aunt is that she survived her suicide attempts, while he did not. It would be totally against all we understand of the free grace of God in Jesus Christ to say that my aunt is saved only because she survived to repent of trying to kill herself.
*ATI actually used Finney’s sermon in one of their Wisdom Booklets, and I nearly went mad trying to follow it when I was in the midst of those mental health symptoms that resembled obsessive-compulsive disorder. If you want to see why, have a look at the sermon (Warning: Do not try to follow it): http://www.sermonindex.net/modules/articles/index.php?view=article&aid=579
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I “liked” Janice’s comment, but then saw that DJ had another good point, and “liked” that one, too. 🙂
In reading Janice’s comment, though – reading it through my own understanding – I didn’t take it to mean that God would look at the person’s works, but at the person’s faith throughout their walk with Jesus. IOW, He wouldn’t only see that one faithless act, but the faith she had through His grace. Does that make sense?
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Kizzie yes, and we look to those specific evidences of the faith to comfort us in those cases — that also is helpful advice for those whose profession of faith was not really known; we can look for even small evidences of faith to cling to for comfort, though accepting that we do not really “know” the final state of those whose faith was not in very clear evidence.
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Heidi just had her summer hair cut, by Nightingale and Chickadee, and is now having a bath. The girls are both laughing about something in there, and I hear splashing.
**********
And now they are finished, and Heidi is a very happy doggie to get out of that bathroom.
Chickadee suggests we go back to taking Heidi to the groomers next year. I agree. Although the girls do a pretty nice job with her, it is difficult, and they can’t trim the hair on her head and face.
And the nail clippers broke as soon as they were taken out of the package, so we’re gonna have to take her up to get her nails clipped. (Maybe I’ll also have them trim her head and face while she’s there.)
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Like Roscuro, I also thought of the Roman Catholic system in terms of needing to confess of (all?) specific sins to be right before God.
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Fortunately, none of us will be the decider of whether or not God knew each individual. We have hope, we have confidence, but none of us know another’s heart. That is left in the Hands of God. And what Kizzie said, and DJ said, we can look for evidence. If we look too closely, we may see enough sin to convince us that no way is that person in Heaven. But then we realize we are looking in a mirror. God. It is all about God. The mystery made known to us, that He would pay our debt, in full.
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Nightingale says she is going to borrow our neighbor Denise’s dog nail trimmer. I decided to give her our dog hair trimmer, since we won’t be using it anymore, and she can get some use out of it.
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I just got here and haven’t followed the discussion. So this may not be fair to go directly to the bottom line. But here goes:
Romans 10:9
‘That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.’
Case closed
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Kizzie, that is right. I did not even think of works regarding his explanation. I thought of her majority of thinking and acting with love toward God as compared with the minority of thinking and acting while out of her right mind. She was very depressed because her uterus could not hold babies in to maturity even with bed rest in the hospital. She kept losing babies, even twins born way too soon died in her arms. Then she got divorced from a Mr. Jekyll and Dr. Hyde. I could not imagine all she went through but felt if anyone had reason for suicide . . .
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Look for evidence of faith.
Evidence of sin will be abundant in all of us so we know not to look there.
For those who never professed faith or showed any inclination toward it in this life, perhaps were openly hostile to it, finding comfort becomes harder. I knew one woman who seemed as close to a reprobate as I could imagine, she had a deep (and vocal) hatred for the Christian faith and God himself. She was an acquaintance at the old dog park I used to go to and she passed on a few years ago. She’d go on absolute tirades back in the day. I tried to share with her a couple times but got slapped down pretty quickly. 😦
A mutual friend, a lapsed Catholic, was panicking at the end of this woman’s life (she was taking care of her, she had cancer) about how to get her to embrace the Lord so she would not wind up in hell; in the woman’s last days, she had a Lutheran pastor come over to try to talk to and pray for her, but it sounds like that didn’t go far.
But at least she didn’t throw him out, I was told. So one still never knows …
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Clarification: It was the caretaker who brought the Lutheran pastor over to the woman’s house.
I kept wondering how that would go over, knowing the woman as much as I did … (She also had a very anti-Christian Twitter account and posted frequently 😦 )
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Janice (3:14) then that makes perfect sense, for some reason I just thought of ‘works’ in the original post
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What a mighty God we serve! That He can take the broken and the despised and the despicable and make us like Him! And that He wants to!
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I am doing a study in Nehemiah with two other ladies. So nice to get back into a real study. Last night the others had not prepared, but I had spent a lot of time working on the lesson and was able to lead. So nice to work through it together.
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Kizzie, even if you are going to get the dogs groomed professionally, might there not sometimes be need to groom a spot? Having never gone the professional-grooming route, I really don’t know, but would imagine there might be.
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Just got back from a quick trip to the 1st Pres Church a few blocks away to vote — only one issue on the ballot, a measure to give money to the LA school district to help fund the teachers’ strike settlement, essentially. Property taxes would go up between $100+ and $400 a year. So many of us are voting no.
That district is a mess, the teachers are well paid and have free medical care for life — I am sympathetic to the need for more school nurses and smaller classrooms, but it just seems like the district has been basically mismanaged for decades. There’s little confidence that providing more tax money at this stage will be used in the way they said it would (the language seems to allow for using it to go into pensions/medical care costs the district now is sagging beneath).
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The teacher I know will agree with you, DJ, but pointed out a large of this effort was to get rid of the charter schools.
The charter schools that parents love for their kids, in particular.
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Cheryl – Until last year, we had taken Heidi to the groomer each year, and we’d never had a problem. When her “bangs” get too long, we can trim them with scissors.
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Good discussion. Thank you all for your comments.
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Just this evening I heard of a senior about to graduate who killed himself. So sad for his family, friends and fellow classmates.
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Michelle, yes, charter schools are under heavy fire in LAUSD right now.
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