Can Worship Alter Suicide Rates?
A few years ago I was in Iceland at a worship conference when I saw something in a very familiar piece of scripture that I hadn’t noticed before.
Iceland, and other countries on or above the Arctic Circle, face some challenges in wintertime when there is very little daylight whereby many people can be affected by depression related to Seasonally Affected Disorder (S.A.D.). This sometimes manifests itself in increased suicide rates.
It was against this backdrop that Acts 16:25-30 really made sense.
25 Around midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening. 26 Suddenly, there was a massive earthquake, and the prison was shaken to its foundations. All the doors immediately flew open, and the chains of every prisoner fell off! 27 The jailer woke up to see the prison doors wide open. He assumed the prisoners had escaped, so he drew his sword to kill himself. 28 But Paul shouted to him, “Stop! Don’t kill yourself! We are all here!”
29 The jailer called for lights and ran to the dungeon and fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. 30 Then he brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
Paul and Silas find themselves thrown into prison and tortured and tied up for no good reason. At midnight they made an interesting decision to engage in intercessory worship, “praying and singing hymns to God.”
In the darkest of circumstances they made a decision (they sure didn’t feel like it!) to worship and pray in simply obedience to scripture. Remember Paul had been a Pharisee, he knew his scripture inside out including Psalm 119:61-62 were it says Though the wicked bind me with ropes…. At midnight I rise to give you thanks.
Now get this, the consequences of their obedience were staggering but I want to highlight one in particular.
The jailer was going to commit suicide! He must have been living under a heavy cloud of fear & depression given his immediate response of attempted suicide when he thought the prisoners had escaped – even when it obviously wasn’t his fault.
Intercessory worship led to the spirit of suicide being exposed and broken from his life and he, and his whole family, came to faith in Jesus.
Now I want to put a caveat here, we don’t worship for effect, we worship because He is worth it and even if we don’t feel like and we don’t see any direct ‘results’ Jesus still deserves our affection expressed. But having said that, God does choose to do amazing things around worshipping communities.
I have been involved in an intercessory worship community in our area called Engage24 that has been on the go for over 7 years. We have this fusion of worship and prayer for our area going on regularly and interestingly, a few years ago, one of the local newspapers had a front-page story about how there had been no recorded suicides in Coleraine that particular year.
This was such a striking statistic that it made front-page news!
Don’t get me wrong I don’t want to attribute all the credit for this to Engage24 but I’m convinced that, like Paul and Silas’ example, the apparent foolishness of a group of believers worshipping and praying together can have dramatic effects on the community in which they find themselves.
Let me know what you think.
Cheers – Andy
P.S. You can read some other stories about Engage at www.andyrogersmusic.com/engage24
Iceland, and other countries on or above the Arctic Circle, face some challenges in wintertime when there is very little daylight whereby many people can be affected by depression related to Seasonally Affected Disorder (S.A.D.). This sometimes manifests itself in increased suicide rates.
It was against this backdrop that Acts 16:25-30 really made sense.
25 Around midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening. 26 Suddenly, there was a massive earthquake, and the prison was shaken to its foundations. All the doors immediately flew open, and the chains of every prisoner fell off! 27 The jailer woke up to see the prison doors wide open. He assumed the prisoners had escaped, so he drew his sword to kill himself. 28 But Paul shouted to him, “Stop! Don’t kill yourself! We are all here!”
29 The jailer called for lights and ran to the dungeon and fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. 30 Then he brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
Paul and Silas find themselves thrown into prison and tortured and tied up for no good reason. At midnight they made an interesting decision to engage in intercessory worship, “praying and singing hymns to God.”
In the darkest of circumstances they made a decision (they sure didn’t feel like it!) to worship and pray in simply obedience to scripture. Remember Paul had been a Pharisee, he knew his scripture inside out including Psalm 119:61-62 were it says Though the wicked bind me with ropes…. At midnight I rise to give you thanks.
Now get this, the consequences of their obedience were staggering but I want to highlight one in particular.
The jailer was going to commit suicide! He must have been living under a heavy cloud of fear & depression given his immediate response of attempted suicide when he thought the prisoners had escaped – even when it obviously wasn’t his fault.
Intercessory worship led to the spirit of suicide being exposed and broken from his life and he, and his whole family, came to faith in Jesus.
Now I want to put a caveat here, we don’t worship for effect, we worship because He is worth it and even if we don’t feel like and we don’t see any direct ‘results’ Jesus still deserves our affection expressed. But having said that, God does choose to do amazing things around worshipping communities.
I have been involved in an intercessory worship community in our area called Engage24 that has been on the go for over 7 years. We have this fusion of worship and prayer for our area going on regularly and interestingly, a few years ago, one of the local newspapers had a front-page story about how there had been no recorded suicides in Coleraine that particular year.
This was such a striking statistic that it made front-page news!
Don’t get me wrong I don’t want to attribute all the credit for this to Engage24 but I’m convinced that, like Paul and Silas’ example, the apparent foolishness of a group of believers worshipping and praying together can have dramatic effects on the community in which they find themselves.
Let me know what you think.
Cheers – Andy
P.S. You can read some other stories about Engage at www.andyrogersmusic.com/engage24
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posted by Andy Rogers at 10:19 pm
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