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This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Ben Clein and Johnathan Hernandez.

Jonathan Hernandez
So our question this morning is, "if you have known some people who knew Jesus and were great human beings, but resorted to suicide, how do you continue to keep that hope that they lost so easily? So this morning I'll let you kick that off Ben.

Ben Cline
All right. Well, normally we're joined also by pastor Gary Schick over from Emmanuel church in Scottsbluff, and we just wanna say that I hope that you're having a nice time with your family. And this is a question that came to us this week and, you know, this is a very difficult question. It's a question that is difficult to talk about, even amongst ourselves really. Like, you know, if we have, you know, this question come up in a family conversation it's difficult to talk about. The subject of suicide really is, it's not only difficult, but I think it's also a very complex topic. And so, you know, just trying to address this particular question, you know, the first thing that I would say Jonathan, to our listeners is that, you know, I'm so sorry for any loss that you guys might have experienced through the tragedy of suicide. You know, it's a tragic thing. It's not something that God wants for us, and it's a very painful thing to go through. So, you know, first of all to say, I'm sorry, and we grieve with you. You know, and the second thing is maybe more of a matter of advice when we're dealing with a question like this in particular. Is that, when we come across somebody who's dealing with thoughts of suicide, you know, we don't really know everything that's going on with this person. We don't know what they're struggling with and it's typically very difficult to know what's going on in the depths of a person's heart. And so it's so important for us, if we know somebody who's struggling with this, you know, it's important for us to work with them, to try to get them the help that they need. And so there's really a number of reasons why somebody might struggle with thoughts of suicide, and we don't know exactly what that is. It might be a physical thing that they're dealing with, it might be a loss that they're dealing with. There's a whole bunch of different reasons. But thankfully there are people out there who are very well trained to help those who are struggling with this issue. And, you know, there's a national hotline that you can look up, you know, if you're struggling with thoughts of suicide. We would encourage you first of all, to get in touch with the people at this hotline. It's an anonymous thing, from what I understand, and I can give you the number right now. It's 1-800-273-8255, and that's the national lifeline for suicide prevention. So, you know it in that case, you know, you need to call that number and get in touch with them. And, you know, if you know somebody who is having, you know, thoughts of suicide and you're afraid for their safety, the best thing for you to do is also to call the local authorities. So, but anyway, that's just part of this answer, you know, getting them the help that they need. But we have a more specific question this morning, right? And that's, you know, how do we keep the hope? Well, we all face trouble, and we can all even face despair in our lifetime at some point. But each one of us, what we have to understand is that we have access to the hope that God offers to us. And one of the places that you can go to in scripture and really see the depth of human emotion, is to the Psalms. And so real quick, I just wanted to read through Psalm 6, and this is a Psalm of David. I'm gonna read to you from the New Living Translation, it says, "Oh Lord, don't rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your rage. Have compassion on me, Lord, for I am weak. Heal me, Lord, for my bones are in agony. I am sick at heart. How long, oh Lord, until you restore me? Return, oh Lord, and rescue me. Save me because of your unfailing love. For the dead do not remember you. Who can praise you from the grave? I am worn out from sobbing all night. I flood my bed with weeping, drenching it with my tears. My vision is blurred by grief; my eyes are worn out because of all my enemies. Go away, all you who do evil, for the Lord has heard my weeping. The Lord has heard my plea; the Lord will answer my prayer. May all my enemies be disgraced and terrified. May they suddenly turn back in shame." And, you know, I read through a passage like that and it's like, "well yeah, there's been times in my life where I've been there." Maybe to that extreme, maybe not to that extreme, or maybe further than that extreme. You know, we've been in places where we've been in despair and, you know, the Psalms also offer hope. Psalms 42:11, it says, "why are you cast down, oh my soul? Why are you at turmoil within me?" And then it says, "Hope in God. For I shall again, praise Him---my salvation and my God." And, you know, as we look to the New Testament, it offers the hope of God. And one of the things that I think that we can do to retain that hope that we have and to really cling to that anchor, that God is, to remember those promises. There's one in Romans 8:1 where he says "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." So if you know Jesus Christ is your savior, there is no condemnation from God. And that's, you know, something important for us to remember, to keep our hope intact. And then also, Hebrews 13:5 reminds us that God will never leave us and will never forsake us. So just some thoughts on this topic. I hope that that's helpful to somebody.

Jonathan Hernandez
Well, thank you. So I wanna try to tackle this from the angle of, how do we in our everyday life, I guess, continue to search for God and continue to walk forward in some of these areas. And so one of the first areas I wanna talk about is, examine your heart. In Proverbs 4:23 it says, "above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it." And I think that's super important, that as we go throughout life, no matter if it's listening to somebody talk to us, or what are we listening to? What are we putting into our bodies? What are we watching on TV? What type of music are we listening to? All these things that are coming into our lives, we need to guard from some; actually probably quite a bit of that stuff, cause not all of it's really edifying to us. And so we need to make sure that we are guarding our hearts, cause we're all gonna experience difficulties. You know, so we see a lot of those things. And I think also, as we guard our hearts, we also need to think and look at, how's our attitude towards things. I think a lot of times I could become a doubter or a downer. A lot of times, if I don't guard my heart and allow myself to say, "okay, what area of my life is not in order or not into the place of what Jesus wants for me?" And so I could become a downer and as I start going down that rabbit hole, unfortunately, sometimes you grab a hold of somebody else and you bring them with you. And so we need to make sure that we're guarding our hearts, checking our attitudes, making sure that they're in a good place, you know? That way we're encouraging people instead of bringing them down. One of the second things we would look at would be, meditate on God's word. How much of God's word are we actually in, you know? Cause a lot of times we say, "Hey, make sure you read your Bible." And you're like, "oh man, I'm gonna read 17 chapters today," and then in reality, I read my devotional and that's about as far as I get into the word. So we need to make sure that we are in the word: we are studying it, we are reading it. There's so many exciting things in there. You could never read through the entire Bible and say, "oh, that was boring," cause there's just so much. And there's so much that God brings to the forefront as you read through it. I mean, how many times have you been reading through scripture and then all of a sudden you say, "I don't remember reading through that," even though you've read through the Bible multiple times, and through that section multiple times. So there's always something new and exciting. We need to make sure that we are reading as, whatever it may be. If we're reading through three chapters or we're reading through the Bible in a year, there's always something that we can look for through scripture. The other thing would be to pray; how is our prayer life? You know, I know when I first started going to church, my prayer life was "God bless my food, bless my family, Amen." And that was probably about it. And you know, I remember my pastor back then, he challenged us to pray for more than three minutes and I'm like, how does that work? You know? I've only prayed for three minutes. And so then, you know, just stepping into three minutes realizing, "oh, that was actually pretty easy." We took our church through this thing called The Journey, and we challenged them to pray for half a day and just to see the looks on their faces. I was like, "I was in the same place," you know? I've been that place. But just make sure that we keep our prayer life active, you know? There's always something that we can pray for. You know, there's always something that we can go after God in prayer for. So just grab a hold of those and just say, "Okay God, I'm gonna spend, whatever it may be," you know? The fourth thing would be to renew your mind. And we could see that in Romans 12:2, "Do not conform to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you'll be able to test and approve what God's will is---His good, pleasing, and perfect will."

Jonathan Hernandez
I think a lot of times our mindsets get out of place or go into somewhere that it shouldn't be. If we're dealing with depression, then our mindset's always in that depressed place and we're always, you know, seeing those things and if you have anxiety, you know, your mindset's always, "what's gonna happen? What's gonna happen?" I've dealt with extreme anxiety in my life and I know how that can be just a rabbit hole of me just continuing to go into directions or places that God never intended for me to be in. And so, just allowing Christ to renew our minds, and we do that through reading the scripture and just allowing the scripture to really help remove some of these mindsets that we have, as we, you know, just live in our everyday world. So the next one would be to build up your faith in God, and we do that through, you know, making sure that we're in the word. Making sure that we have a prayer life. Making sure that, you know, even memorizing scripture, you know? So when we feel like the enemy is coming after us, you know, we have something to go back to, you know? If I don't have any scripture or anything like that when the enemy attacks me, what happens? "You're probably right, I'm gonna go with you," you know? But we see this as Jesus was tempted in the desert, that he had scripture that he went back to and he said, "okay, this, this, this," instead of saying, "oh, I guess you're right. Am I really the son of God? I don't know." He had scripture that he went back to, you know? He had the word of God that he used. And then we look at, offer praise and Thanksgiving. How much are we actually engaged in worship in our everyday lives? One of my friends, whenever I go over to his house, he always has praise and worship music playing. It's just softly in the background, most of the time you kind of really don't hear it. And until you really pay attention, they're like, "Hey, I know that song." And so, just finding areas, you know, places where you can just praise in that for that little bit. Just as you're driving down the street, instead of listening to whatever you're listening to put on some worship music and, you know, just spend, you know, it takes me two minutes to get to work. So that's not really a whole song, but I can listen to something to really just help me get into the place of praise as I drive to work. And then the last thing is that, make sure that we're nurturing our soul, our spirit and our body. You know, that we're actually taking care of ourselves. It's more than just the spiritual, cause we actually have a physical body here on earth. So if we're not taking care of it, well guess what, we're having to take all kinds of medication to try to get healthy. You know, so we just need to make sure that we're taking care of our bodies, that we're eating right, we're exercising, all the things that your doctor says that you should have been doing already.

Ben Cline
They know what they're talking about.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yes, they actually know what they're talking about. So make sure that you're taking care of your body, taking care of those things that you need to be taking care of. So hopefully that will help you guys as you kind of approach that in more of a daily discipline area of life. So, I guess we'll go ahead and close in prayer, unless you have something else that you wanna add to that.

Ben Cline
No, that's great. I just, you know, I think the last thing is just a word of encouragement. I mean, be encouraged in life, be encouraged in the word of God and be encouraged through prayer.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, and I think it's important too, that we are present within our relationships. You know that we can notice some signs, you know? Cause I always hear people say, "well, I wish I would've noticed a sign" and not saying that they weren't present, but a lot of times, you know, our friendships are more through social media, so we're not really seeing things. And so I think, as we build one on one in person relationships, that we're actually present in those relationships, we're hearing and we're asking the tough question, "Hey, how are you really doing?" I don't want to hear, "oh, I'm blessed and highly favored," you know, the Christian terms that we use. But actually say, "well, how are you really, really doing?" To getting down to some of those things.