I’ve heard it said “religion” is for the weak-minded, or the dumb and blinded. “Jesus is for suckers.”

Yeah well, if that’s your perception, I’m afraid you don’t get it.

Honestly, Jesus is the only reason I’m not lying cold and decayed under six feet of dry earth. He’s the only reason I’m not strapped to a gurney in an asylum somewhere, tucked away from the known world.

For me, Jesus is a spring of fresh water, bubbling up from the ground in the middle of the desert, which I stumbled on after cooking in the sun for three days.

My lips were cracked and parched, my skin blood-red and charred. I’d resigned myself to death.

His love is the first responder who showed up when I was drowning in angry waves. My lungs had filled with water as I felt myself begin to sink to the depths.

Suddenly, two powerful, nail-pierced hands snagged me from the waters, and flopped me on my stomach as I coughed up a belly full of salt water, startled to be alive.

He’s my lifeline, my Savior, my best friend and the only reason I’m alive.

The night I tried to kill myself, I emptied my locker of pills; narcotics, ibuprofen, everything.

There was no hope. No light. No laughter. I longed for death; freaking begged for it.

“Just let me die,” I said to the night.

Yet I survived. I realized what I thought was hopeless was not. I came to the conclusion that there is always hope. God’s love will always be there to wrap its gentle arms about me.

No problem is unsolvable. No situation is void of hope.

When depression seeks to overtake me, Jesus is the tiny voice on the wind, whispering, “Don’t give up. Never give up.”

When agonizing pain wreaks havoc in my body, my spirit, Jesus is the One who breathes just enough healing into my soul, just enough light into my darkness to get me through the long and lonely nights.

Jesus isn’t the lunatic who lures us into a glittery world of make believe. We have no illusions of escaping pain in this life. Sure we long for “the eternal someday,” when death shall finally roast in Hell.

But that’s not why we serve Him. That’s not why we love Him.

We love Him because He first loved us, when nobody else did. We love Him because He smiles on us when the whole world spits on us. We love Him because He’s the only One who sought us out, when everyone else had turned their backs on us.

He’s the One who yanked me from the twisted steal and burning wreckage of a sad and terrifying existence, mere seconds before my life imploded on itself.

I wrote a song once which ended with the words, “Jesus is the reason I’m not insane.”

I also wrote another song which said, “When I tried to kill me Jesus smiled and cried / told me little secrets ’bout the day He died / said He shed His lifeblood for my sins and that He’d do it all over again.”

If you can’t relate to this, you haven’t met the same Jesus I did. I’ll be praying you do, my friend.

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.”

John 1:5

Blessings.