My dear readers,

Answering Remaining Questions from Calvary Pandan Church Camp 2024 (6)

Question 1: How do I counsel my child, and what should I do, if I find out that my child is suicidal?

Answer 1: Counselling is every believer’s duty. Believers have the mind of Christ and the love of God in their hearts to help them succeed. The objective of Christian counselling is to solve any problem by obedience to God’s Word. In this manner, the counselee’s relationship with God is healed. A sinner must repent of his sin to experience salvation in Christ. A believer must repent and restore his holy witness and holy walk with God in Christ. To accomplish these aims, the counsellor must know God’s Word well. He needs to evaluate the issues from God’s perspective. He needs to direct the thinking of the counselee in the right direction through the right portions of God’s Word. He needs to pray without ceasing, pleading and leaning on the Holy Spirit to help him as this is a matter of the heart, which is the specialty of God the Holy Spirit. To help anyone successfully, we need to pray for the right time, the right heart for both parties and the right biblical words from God.

The desire to take one’s life is the desire of the hopeless. God’s children are the most hopeful people on earth. Their hope is in Christ Jesus, who died for their sins, so that they do not need to die in sin. There is no greater hope on earth than overcoming death in Christ. Hopelessness is found in a life on earth filled with unsolvable troubles or feelings of shame due to a mistake. The first thing you should do to help your child is to ask him if he is born again in Christ. To ascertain his salvation is crucial, for if he is not born again, the Word of God will have little or no impact on his life and his heart. God will help all His children. As a sinner without Christ, he is dead in his sin, blind to all spiritual truths and cannot understand God's Word.

But if he is born again in Christ, the Word of God will help him see and understand that having suicidal thoughts is a grievous sin. The Holy Spirit who dwells within him will sustain him and help him to overcome all sinful thoughts, including suicide and any other issues. Comfort his heart with 1 Corinthians 10:13: “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” The Lord knows the measure of his faith and how much his faith can endure, so he will hold on to his faith and not sin against God.

Tell your child how much you love him and that God will always love him, pray for him and spend more time with him. Philippians 1:3-6: “³ I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, ⁴ Always in every prayer of mine for you all making request with joy, ⁵ For your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now; ⁶ Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.”

Question 2: How do we know that Jesus has forgiven us of our sins after we have repented? Is it possible for Him not to forgive us when we commit and repent of our sins?

Answer 2: If a sinner genuinely repents and receives Christ into his heart, it is IMPOSSIBLE for God not to forgive him. Salvation is of the Lord and not man. A sinner is not saved by his repentance. He is saved by what Christ did on the cross of Calvary! Repentance is like a man stretching out his hand for the living water to drink. It is the living water that quenches his thirsty soul, not his hand that reaches out. This truth applies to all repentance, including the repentance of believers when they sin.

If he genuinely repents of his sins and receives Christ as his Lord and Saviour before God, and God will not save him and forgive him of all his sins, the following are the scenarios:

1. Jesus Christ died in vain – God the Father sent Jesus Christ, who came from heaven to be born of the virgin; Jesus lived a perfect life in accordance with God’s Holy Word, suffered as a lamb led to the slaughter, suffered the persecution of humiliation, mockery and pain, was crucified on the cross and died. Jesus Christ did all these perfectly. All that God sent Jesus Christ to do would be for nothing if God would not forgive the sinner who genuinely receives Jesus Christ (who died in his place) as his Lord and Saviour.
2. God the Father is a cruel God – After all that Jesus Christ has done, God then says to His Son: “What You’ve done is not enough to save these terrible sinners, even if they genuinely believe and receive You as their Lord and Saviour!” God would be very cruel to do that to His only Begotten Son, who obeyed His heavenly Father’s will perfectly.
3. The Holy Spirit’s Ministry is a farce – Jesus Christ cannot baptise any sinner with the Holy Spirit, and cannot send the Holy Spirit to teach and bring to remembrance the Word of God, if no sinner can be saved by what Christ did at Calvary! The Holy Spirit will have no ministry in any sinner’s life since there will be no salvation to save all sinners.
4. Christians are most foolish – Christians believe in Christ as their Lord and Saviour with all their heart, as God said they must do to be saved. After salvation, believers surrender their lives to God, obey the Father’s will, sacrifice all to follow Christ and live their lives by the Holy Scriptures. If God the Father rejects what Christ did, their lives of sacrifice and devotion would be for nothing! Billions of believers since the fall of Adam have been lied to. God lied when He said in Genesis 3:15 that the seed of a woman will bruise the head of the serpent. Christians are, of all men, the most foolish and miserable.

Thank God Jesus has promised every sinner that all they need to do is come. John 6:37: “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” It does not matter what sins they have committed as long as they genuinely come to Christ and believe. Christ will save them. The sinner might have heard the gospel of Christ a thousand times and rejected Christ a thousand times, but if he were to come on the one thousandth and one time, Christ would receive him and save him. The sinner might have persecuted Christians and put many to prison and even caused death to some, but if he comes to Jesus in genuine repentance, Christ will forgive and save him.

A born-again sinner will know he has become a child of God, for his whole being is no longer the same. 2 Corinthians 5:17-19: “¹⁷ Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. ¹⁸ And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; ¹⁹ To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.” The Holy Spirit who dwells in him will keep changing and sanctifying him to be more and more like Christ in thought, heart, speech and deed. The sanctification process helps him to conform more and more to the image of Christ in holy witness. God will wholly sanctify him when he becomes a believer, making him fit to enter heaven instantaneously. He will live a new life in Christ. Galatians 2:20: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”

The issue is not whether God will save us in Christ, but whether we come to believe and receive Christ into our hearts sincerely. Romans 10:9-11: “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. ¹⁰ For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. ¹¹ For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.”