How God Saved This Man From Suicide and Transformed His Life
By Movieguide® Contributor
Editor’s note: The following story discusses suicide. If you or someone you know battles harmful thoughts, please dial 988 for help.
If you knew Jay Lowder as a 21-year-old, you’d never expect him to become a full-time evangelist, author and speaker.
“I know what it’s like to be without hope. I know what it’s like to struggle with [thoughts] of suicide day-in and day-out,” he said.
As a young man, Lowder struggled with alcoholism.
“Because I was battling an alcohol addiction, my life had really just got put into quicksand,” he said on an episode of the “Jesus Calling” podcast. “I was really in a rut and I was going nowhere. On top of all that, it was about that time that me and the girl I had been dating for quite some time split up. I also lost my car and I also lost my job. The addiction fed into the depression, the depression fed into the addiction. I began to contemplate, Is my life really worth living?”
One day, Lowder looked at himself in the mirror and couldn’t take it anymore. He smashed the mirror with his fist, and “the pieces of glass that were left in it, I remember thinking, ‘That’s my life. As broken as this mirror is, that’s exactly who I am.'”
He hit rock bottom and began to question God.
“Was God real? Was everything that I was ever told going to church authentic? Was that real?” Lowder recalled thinking.
In that moment, he took out his .22 caliber pistol and decided to take his own life. But God had other plans.
“As I’m literally putting pressure on the trigger, I heard somebody pull up on the gravel driveway outside,” Lowder explained.
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His roommate unexpectedly returned home early.
“Ralph, what are you doing home, man?” Lowder asked his roommate.
Ralph replied, “It’s the craziest thing, Jay. You know my dad, you know how hard my dad is. You know that my dad’s never let me off work early in my life. My dad walks up to me and says, ‘Why don’t you take the rest of the day off, and I’ll pay you for the full day?’”
Lowder wasn’t sure why Ralph’s dad let him off work early, but he took that as a sign from above.
A few weeks later, he found himself attending an event hosted by an evangelist who also attempted suicide.
“The guy gets to the end of his message, and he says this: ‘Some of you grew up in church. You heard all about God. You can quote John 3:16. You’re religious, but you’re lost. You profess Christ, but you don’t possess Christ,'” Lowder remembered. “It was at that moment that I realized, ‘Man, I’m lost. I don’t know God.’ He concludes his message by quoting John 3:36, and that verse says, ‘He that has the Son has life. He who doesn’t have the Son doesn’t have life.’ When he said that, it’s like, ‘That’s me. I’m living, I’m breathing, but I don’t have a life. He said, “If you want forgiveness, if you want Christ in your life, I’m going to ask you to get out of your seat and come forward. I want to pray with you and lead you in a prayer.”
At that moment, Lowder accepted the free gift of forgiveness and salvation, something we can only recieve when we put our faith in Jesus Christ.
He was called to ministry in 1989 and started Jay Lowder Harvest Ministries, “an organization dedicated to reaching diverse groups of people with the message of Jesus Christ.” He shares the gospel around the world.
“I love how God takes the things that the enemy brings to destroy you, and turns them into a weapon in your hand,” he said previously. “I believe Satan tried to get me because he knew there was potential. I sometimes wonder if he regrets taking me to the place that he did: he thought it would destroy me and now it’s the very thing that’s ruining his kingdom. That brings me great satisfaction.”
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