Plucking Out the Right Eye: Part Two

(These are somewhat unfocused and redundant, but they will do well enough for now as they are.)

1) my focus needs to be on God, not a guy. In the Bible one only sees deep and abiding joy in following God’s precepts. Outside of this is utter evil, fleeting and shallow happiness, and ultimately despair.

2) I could do much damage to both he and I if I talked to him, me focusing on making him and us into my dreams of us, rather than focusing on us glorifying Christ by conforming more to His image. I see some what kind of wife, woman, person, evil greed amounts to and by God's grace am brought to see my need to repent and ask God to change me, grow my love for Him and others, make me a loving wife if I am to be one for anybody.... Real love isn't about trying to squeeze him to fit my limited, often warped notions.

Make him so mine he’s no longer his? (A C. S. Lewis character)

3) I see some how hideously wicked it is for me to even want at times to push what I sometimes think I want, rather than simply "resigning" myself to what I should be doing and thinking about.

4) keeping in mind that God is sovereign and that

5) He knew what He was doing in bringing this guy into my life

6) God works everything for good for those who love Him

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28

7) God is more than able to bring him back in the case that this guy and I would be great for the kingdom together

8) God's purposes and the interpretations I sometimes give them in my favor may be WAY different

9) when I just want to whine "but why did I have to meet a guy I had so much in common with, the obscure become wonderfully common ground, if this would happen. . ..?" I am just focusing on me (e.g., who knows how this may have helped him; and what about the fact that reality's ultimate purposes is to display God's glory?!).

10) it's having benefits like helping me learn what it means to follow God and learn endurance (Romans 5) and resignation to His will

11) in trying to fight sins I am coming to a deeper recognition of sins I need to work on now, that will deeply influence my life inside marriage or even if I don't marry, and consequently coming to realize a deeper dependency on Christ which causes me to go more to the Source of righteousness

12) I am better able to help others, ministering to those in pain

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13) it gives me another way to help others. Recently I found myself using my past with this guy to help a friend in an essentially similar situation without preaching to her, and illustrating some the depth of significance of things I talked of in one’s life, hopefully prompting her to be on guard of her own heart and letting her know I understood in a deep (though imperfect) way what it was like to live her struggles rather than just have some vague textbook concept of them

14) my understandings of God’s purposes, human needs, the means most efficient to God’s great purposes for Christian, is a hugely deficient understanding. If God had made this world and my life work according to the plans and ideas I’ve thought best, what an utterly despicable (self-centered, futile, etc.!!) disaster would result! God is the only inherent good, the only all-knowing being, the only all-wise. He is more than capable, and the only one capable, of bringing me to the joy in Him if He so wills. And for Christians, God so wills.

15) and as my friend I sent my list to pointed out, whoever has God planned for me (if anyone) is or could be better than my imaginings (though I know there will certainly be more faults found in a guy and myself than appear in my daydreams)

16) And this joy I do not need to worry about following, drinking in nonstop, or ever running out of.

Our souls need some good that shall be a suitable object of the will and affections; a suitable object for the choice, the acquiescence, the love, and the joy of the rational soul. Provision is made for this also in this way of salvation. There is an infinitely excellent Being offered to be chosen, to be rested in, to be loved, to be rejoiced in, by us: even God himself, who is infinitely lovely, the fountain of all good; a fountain that can never be exhausted, where we can be in no danger of going to excess in our love and joy: and here we may be assured ever to find our joy and delight in enjoyments answerable to our love and desires. (Jonathan Edwards)

So when the devil arrives in wayward thoughts, tempting me to sin and futility, along with praying I meditate on Biblically revealed truths to help focus my thoughts, my heart, back on God Himself. As my friend pointed out to me in close to these words, it's not even my right to think about the might-have-beens when not doing so for the sake of God's glory.