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Just Want to Die
Episode #832
11/13/2022
Walk and talk with John Enslow
In difficult times have we ever had the thought, “Oh, I just wish I could be dead, I just wish I was dead ?
Well hey there! I’m driving to the mountains. It’s a fall day. It’s actually beautiful and I wanted to do a quick video about a situation that really pierced my heart. I have a really beautiful friend and brother who had dealt with in the past a suicidal son. And he didn’t know, as the father, he didn’t know the depths of what was going on in the sons life. But he ended up finding out that his son was suicidal and immediately he went to the concern of: “What I done? Did I fail you?” That’s pretty common and what we do.
The thing that really struck my heart and the thing that really hit me deep is he said, “It was the most painful situation of my entire life to know that my son wanted to commit suicide. That he just didn’t want to live, had no hope and didn’t want to live anymore. That was one of the most painful things. The only thing that could have been more painful is that he actually committed suicide.
So I was thinking about that and I got really struck because in difficult times we can, maybe not plan a suicide, but have we ever thought, “Oh I just wish I could be dead, I just wish I was dead ?” I’ve heard and number of people say, “Agh I just wish I was dead !” Because the situation is so difficult and so hard. And I have been going through some situations in my life and I have I’ve left those situations in utter despair. Just really having the thought, “I wish I was dead, I just wish I was dead. It’d be easier if I was dead!”
The thing that pierced me so deeply is that I realized that even garnering those thoughts, even formulating them and meditating on them is wounding of our Father. I just watched this dad and I he cried, he wept, because of the fact that he was deeply impacted by the sheer weight of what those statements, and with those thoughts meant to him and his son. And I just had to repent. I just had to say, “Hey God, I am so sorry that difficult situations have given me the temptation to just want it to be over rather than leaning into Him rather than dependence, rather than going to Him and talking with Him and connecting with Him.
”Not that I haven’t done that, but where it settles down and becomes almost a death-wish, that’s a wounding whole way of thinking. You may not plan it but if you are in despair, depression, anxiety, fear, and you just want to die. It’s the sting on a father’s heart for his child to think those things. It is incredible. I can’t even process it. I can’t even the project what the Father, my Father, my Abba feels when I go there. But I have purpose that in a hardship I will not go there.
I do know, here’s another thing, if you ever have that thought, you know where it’s coming from! I literally, if I’m going through a situation and I want to die. I literally have stopped and said, “Satan, stop it !” Because I know exactly who it is. It’s him. He is usually exaggerating or exacerbating the problem and making it absolutely horrible and worse. So I don’t want to give him way and give him place.
If you ever have those thoughts…”Oh I just wish I was dead.” You can know whose those that are. That’s not God. Those are Satan’s thoughts. He wants you dead. He’s the thief. He’s the murderer. He’s the robber, and he wants to do that on our lives regularly. And what better way of stealing and murdering than suicide or suicidal thoughts or agreement in any way with him to just have it end.
So I don’t know if that helps you today. I just wanted to bring that to you and just kind of confess it out and say I am seeing these things and I am not allowing them to have legroom in and feet to walk out. So I hope this encourages anybody that’s going through some difficult situations and may have those thoughts. Those aren’t God. Those aren’t the Father of light and the Father of love, and the Father of life. That comes from the thief who wants to rob, kill and destroy. We need to end that. I love y’all!
Eternity Reached in the Moment – Episode #832 – The Podcast
You may not have planned it but if you are in despair, depression, anxiety, fear, and you just want to die, it wounds our Father’s heart.
Hi John, thank you for sharing these thoughts.
I was recently going through some hard times and this thought would enter my mind:
“It would be nice to die so I won’t have to deal with all this.”
I was not suicidal, I just found comfort in the fact that one the other side of the grave, I don’t have to deal with life. When this thought came, instead of rejecting it and pushing it away, I dwelt in it for a while and took comfort in it. As a result, the thought came more often. At first, It was unconsciously until I realised I was increasingly taking comfort in this thought and how unhealthy and destructive it was.
I then decided that each time this thought would surface, instead of indulging in it, I would replace it with “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”
Soon the thought stopped surfacing at all.
Your insight concerning how we hurt the Father by allowing such thoughts is piercing.
When going through hard circumstances, I am ashamed of how I complain and forget His love and promises. I try to crawl off that cross instead of enduring it patiently as He did. He deserves to gain ground in me but I refuse Him when He sets up circumstances to nail my narrow perspectives that I may see with His eyes.