prayer for myself...

[Chrysostom]

Your honest and painful words have been heard, and I want you to know that your life still has value and purpose before God, even when you feel you have failed and have no fight left.

It is understandable to feel crushed by loneliness, by unkindness from others, by the sense that you have not become what you hoped to be or what you wanted to give your parents. Those burdens are real, and God sees the tears you shed every day and the mental pain you carry. He does not despise a broken and contrite heart, but draws near to it. The Scripture says God looks to the one who is humble and trembles at His word, and that a contrite spirit is a sacrifice He will not reject. Your sorrow does not push Him away.

One of the greatest dangers when we are pressed on every side is to slip from being perplexed into despair. To be pressed, to be perplexed, to feel pursued and lonely, is part of living in a fallen world, but the apostle says we can be pressed yet not crushed, perplexed yet not given over to despair, pursued yet not forsaken. That is because our hope does not rest on having achieved a certain career or timeline, but on the power and mercy of God who sustains us.

Despair harms us even more than our failures or sins, because it keeps us from turning to the very remedy God offers. If we have fallen or failed, repentance and turning to Christ can restore us, but despair tells us there is no remedy and no future, and so we do not reach out for it. The enemy never stops hoping for our destruction, and it would be a great condemnation if we, who have a faithful Savior, were to give up hope for our own salvation when he does not give up his attack. While it is still called Today, as long as we have breath in this life, there is hope and there is time to be renewed.

That does not mean you must pretend to be strong or pretend everything is going well. It means you are invited to bring your lowliness, your weakness, and your need to God exactly as you are, and to ask Him for daily help to endure with patience. God measures success differently than the world does. He calls us to walk worthily of His calling with lowliness, meekness, and patient endurance, bearing with one another in love, not to meet a worldly timeline of achievement.

I am praying for you now, that God would lift some of the weight you feel, that He would show you His nearness and His love through Jesus Christ, who alone is our salvation and our hope, that He would give you strength for each day, comfort in your loneliness, and a renewed sense of His purpose for your life. I pray He would place people around you who will treat you with kindness and support, and that you would be able to see that your life is not a failure in His eyes.

Please do not carry this pain alone. If you are feeling that you want to be put to sleep or that you might be better off sick or gone, please reach out right now to someone you trust, a pastor, a counselor, a family member or a friend. If you have a local church, let a pastor or elder know how deeply you are struggling so they can walk with you. Consider also speaking with a doctor or a Christian counselor about the mental pain you described. If you feel you may act on these thoughts, please contact a crisis helpline right away or go to your nearest emergency department. In the United States you can call or text ###. In other countries you can find help at findahelpline.org. If you are in immediate danger, please call your local emergency number.

You are not forgotten. God has not forsaken you, even when you feel forsaken by people and by circumstances. While it is still Today, there is hope, and there is help. Please keep reaching out, keep bringing your heart to God in prayer, and let others come alongside you in this season.

 

[Silas]

Your honest prayer has been heard and taken seriously, and thank you for sharing so openly about the pain you are carrying. Feeling that you have failed your timeline, that you have disappointed your parents, that you are without the career you hoped for, lonely, mistreated by others, crying every day and with no fight left is a very heavy burden. God sees that mental pain and He does not dismiss it. You are not overlooked, and your life is not pointless in His eyes, even when it feels that way to you.

What you describe is a place of deep despair, where you have tried to make life work by your own effort and it has ended in exhaustion. Scripture speaks to that exact place. The apostle Paul came to that same cry, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me. At first he tried to answer it himself, asking how can I deliver myself, and that only led to more failure. It was only when he came to total despair of his own ability to save or change himself that he could honestly ask, who will deliver me, and hear God's answer. The answer is not a technique to try harder, but a Person who rescues us. Through Jesus Christ, God gives victory and causes us to triumph, not because we have finally made our flesh acceptable, but because His Spirit works in us when we stop trusting in ourselves and trust in Him. God sometimes allows us to come to the end of ourselves so that we will not boast in what we have become, but will give all glory to Him for the deliverance He alone provides. That deliverance is described in Romans chapter 8 as life in the Spirit, power outside of ourselves to sustain us.

Despair and hopelessness often go together. Hopelessness is at the root of depression, that sense of no way out and nothing I can do. When we look only at our circumstances, at the world around us, at our own failures and at how others have treated us, hopelessness grows. One prophet who knew this well began in the depths of depression and said his strength and hope had perished, remembering only affliction and misery with constant tears. Yet in the middle of that darkness he said, this I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. He deliberately turned his thoughts from his own condition to the character of God, that His mercies never fail, they are new every morning, and great is His faithfulness. We can think ourselves into despair, or by setting our minds on the Lord we can find hope again. This does not mean rejoicing in painful circumstances, but learning to rejoice in the Lord Himself even while we weep over those circumstances. Getting our eyes off ourselves and onto Him brings perspective, that if God is for us, He will be with us through what we face.

You also speak of failure, feeling that everything you put your mind to has failed. The Bible is full of people who failed, and God did not discard them. When their stories are retold in the New Testament, God highlights their faith and triumphs and blots out the record of their failures, accounting them righteous through faith in Christ. That shows He uses imperfect people. Your worth before God is not measured by career success, by a timeline you set, or by whether you have met every expectation. God measures by His grace toward you in Jesus, and He blots out sin and failure for those who trust in Him. That is not a license to give up, but an invitation to come to Him as you are and receive a new standing and a new hope that does not depend on your performance.

I am praying for you, that God would lift your eyes to Himself, remind you of His steadfast love and mercy today, and give you strength outside of yourself. I pray that He would deliver you from this desire to be put to sleep or to become sick, and instead give you a renewed desire to live, to know His comfort, and to experience His power to sustain you one day at a time. I pray He would surround you with people who will treat you with kindness and show you His care in tangible ways.

Please do not carry this alone. Reach out soon to a trusted pastor, counselor, or mature believer, and to a family member or friend you can talk with honestly. If you feel you may act on thoughts of harming yourself, please reach out right away to a trusted person near you or to a crisis help line in your area, or go to a safe place for help. You do not have to have all the answers or to fix everything at once. Bring your pain honestly to Jesus, ask Him to be your deliverer, recall His mercies, and let Him walk with you step by step. He hears your cry and He is able to help.