Please, God, Let Me Die
“I don’t want to do this anymore. Please, God, please, let me die. I really want to die.”
I was taken aback when I read that prayer written by a student on a homework assignment for a Seminary-in-Prison class. Most of the prisoners I’d met were surprisingly positive and upbeat. Though incarcerated for serious offenses and serving long sentences, these men spoke of having found true freedom from their sin and joy through Christ. Our students were some of the most cheerful and hopeful people I knew.
I discovered that Bill was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. He had already been incarcerated for 28 years. Only 50 years old, he faced many more years behind fences and razor wire. The thought filled him with despair.
David understood despair. In Psalm 31 he offered hope for disheartened people like Bill.
David was “consumed by anguish.” His years were filled with “groaning.” His “strength” failed him because of “his affliction.” He was the “utter contempt” of his neighbors and a “dread to his closest friends” (Psalm 31:10-11 NIV).
Yet, he was able to write, “be strong, and take heart” (verse 24).
David could take heart and call others to take heart because he knew that “the Lord was his God” (verse 14) who had “wondrously shown steadfast love” to him (verse 21). The Lord had “heard the voice of [his] pleas for mercy” (verse 22).
David knew God, turned to God, and trusted God. As he did, he found God to be a faithful and steadfast lover who “preserves the faithful” (verse 23).
God had shown him “the wonders of his love.” David knew that “the Lord preserves those who are true to him” (verses 21-23).
Even if all we knew about God were what David knew, we would know that we, too, can take refuge in the Lord. He will come to our rescue. He is faithful. He will do it.
But we know something more that gives us an even greater reason for hope when we despair. We have a better David.
We have Jesus, who is our High Priest and, right now, “always lives to intercede for” his people (Hebrews 7:25).
David Bisgrove wrote in The New City Catechism, “When you struggle with discouragement or disappointment…consider where Jesus is now. He’s at the right hand of God the Father. See him there…He is our Advocate in every sense of that word. To see Jesus at God’s right hand as our High Priest is to remember that there is no condemnation for our sins and that Jesus sacrificed himself so that we could be united with him. We have the full rights, therefore, as God’s children…so let where Jesus is now give you hope and courage to trust and follow him.”
I spent several weeks talking with Bill and praying with him and for him. I helped him see Jesus seated on his throne and also praying for him. I often reminded him that Peter wrote that Jesus’ “divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness” (2 Peter 1:3).
It took some time, but eventually, the word and prayer had an effect on Bill. The cloud of depression lifted. Like David, he was able to say that the Lord was good to him, and His face did shine upon him, even in the dark and difficult place of a state prison.
Much love, Barry
Please pray for our prison ministries. Click this link to see our April Newsletter.