The blog makes the argument. This is not the argument again. This is for the believer who is tired of being told to choose between Jesus and the help, and who needs a way to bring the whole weight to God this week without pretending it is lighter than it is.
Go slow. You do not have to come to this composed. A content note first: this study names depression and suicide. If you are in danger right now, stop and get help tonight. In the US, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, and tell a pastor and a trained professional. You are worth the help.
Part 1 – Say the true thing
Read 1 Kings 19:3-9 out loud, slowly. Elijah has just won the biggest spiritual battle of his life, and days later he is under a tree asking God to let him die. Sit with that order. The mountaintop did not inoculate him against the pit. Now watch what God does first. No rebuke. No “where is your faith.” God sends sleep, then food, then more sleep, then food again. The Maker of heaven tends to the body of a suicidal prophet before he says one word of correction.
- Write your own honest sentence about what you are carrying. Not the testimony version. The version you would only say to one safe person.
- Then write what you actually need this week. Rest? A call you have been avoiding? An appointment? Let the answer be as physical as bread and sleep. God was not above those for Elijah.
Part 2 – Sit in good company
You are not the first believer to love God and still need more than a service. Some of the people who knew this best learned it through the worst loss imaginable.
Pastor Otis Moss III lost his sister to suicide. For a long time he could not even say the words; he would tell people she had a terminal illness. He makes a comparison worth carrying with you: we would never tell someone with cancer to simply pray it away, so we should stop saying it to someone whose illness is in the mind. Hold that next to the way he frames the whole Christian story, that you cannot understand a resurrection unless you know the pain of Calvary. Pain is not the absence of faith here. It is the road faith actually walks.
Scripture to be near God in, not to solve:
- Psalm 34:18 – the Lord is near to the brokenhearted. Read it as an invitation to be honest, not to perform okayness.
- Galatians 6:2 – bear one another’s burdens. Ask: am I built to carry, or built to shame, the struggling person near me? Which have I done?
- James 2:14-17 – faith that does nothing is dead. Where, for you, is the faithful action a phone call you keep not making?
Part 3 – A practice for this week: hold both, and don’t let go
Dieula Previlon’s instruction for living in this tension was four words: hold both, and don’t let go. This week, practice it with your two hands, literally.
Each day, name one thing in each hand.
- In one hand, the spiritual step you took toward God today. A prayer you actually prayed. A psalm you read. A worship song you let land.
- In the other hand, the practical step you took toward help today. Water and a meal. A walk. A text to a friend. A session booked or kept. Five honest minutes telling one person the truth.
Do not let either hand stay empty for long. If the help hand is empty all week, that is the work calling you. If the God hand is empty, start there tomorrow. Anita Phillips named the whole list on purpose: plead the blood of Jesus, cast out the devil, go to therapy, take the medication, get the exercise, see your friends. Her point, in her words, is that there is no one approach to being well. You are allowed to use all of it. None of it competes with God. He provided all of it.
Part 4 – If you are the strong one
Maliek Blade keeps asking the question the strong one never gets asked. Where does the encourager go when he is empty? If that is you, this part is the assignment.
- Name the one place you are running on empty in front of a full room. Write it down. Naming it is not weakness; Blade says naming it can save a life.
- Pick one person and tell them the true number, not “I’m fine.” If there is no such person, your first faithful work this week is to find or pay for one: a counselor, a pastor, a group.
- Anita Phillips says you will not make someone suicidal by asking; people appreciate that you cared enough to hear the answer. So ask one person you are worried about, plainly, and be unafraid of the darkness they name.
Part 5 – If you are sitting with someone else’s pain
The most Christlike thing you can offer is rarely an explanation. It is your steady presence and the courage not to flinch.
- Do: show up, stay, and say “I don’t know why, and I’m not leaving.”
- Do: treat the appointment and the medication the way you would treat insulin. Encourage the help. Drive them if you have to.
- Don’t: hand them a verse to end the conversation. “Just pray about it” used to close the door lands as dismissal.
- Don’t: make their pain a teaching moment. Make it a place you sat with them.
Discussion questions
- Where have you used a worship high as the resolution instead of a step toward one? What were you avoiding doing the rest of the week?
- What did you grow up hearing about therapy and faith? Whose voice was that, and is it true?
- Anita Phillips warns against being “tricked into abandoning your God because you got help from something God provided.” Where have you seen that trick work on someone?
- Otis Moss III could not say his sister’s cause of death out loud. What words around mental illness are hard to say in your family or church, and why?
- If you are someone others lean on, where do you actually go when you are empty? Is it safe there? If not, what is one step toward a place that is?
Leader notes
This is high-sensitivity ground. Open by reading the 988 note out loud and keeping it visible the whole session. If anyone discloses thoughts of suicide, take it seriously, stay with them, and connect them the same day to 988 and to professional care; do not try to counsel it alone. Let silence sit. Do not rush anyone to resolution, and do not let the group fix people. The goal of this hour is not answers. It is that no one leaves carrying it alone.
A blessing to close
May you stop choosing between the God who made you and the help he made for you.
May you hold both, and not let go.
And when Sunday’s strength runs out before the week does, may you find that the One who fed Elijah under the tree is already moving toward you with bread.