Keep it on Christ, Chris... keep it on Christ.

God has certainly taught me much in the past year... it has been a difficult year, to be sure... but I've understood lately just how much this difficulty was necessary for God to grow me just a bit more.

As many who might read this may already know, my relationship with my ex-girlfriend was ended a little over a year ago. This has been incredibly difficult for me to deal with, because I was moving towards making the relationship a bit more... ehh... permanent, if you will. Yah. Almost bought the ring, yo. Almost bought it.

Having that kind of relationship taken from me rocked me to the core, I have to admit (mostly because she was yet another one of the idols of my idol-factory heart). I was shaken and beaten, and didn't know what to do with myself. I was so sure that marriage was where that relationship was supposed to go. But God has taught me a good thing lately, a thing which - among other things - I'm not sure I would have been able to learn without being shaken so thoroughly (coffee, anyone?).

I have been thinking about my pastor's view on evangelism, which is that the fruit of his ministry isn't really his concern, it's God's. He's always said that, as he preaches the Gospel, if God decides to fill the church with 1000 people, he will praise God. If God decides to fill the church with 10 people, he will praise God. Whatever fruit God decides to bear from his ministry should have no effect on his calling to preach the Gospel and nothing but the Gospel. He keeps it on Christ.

In meditating on this, I have realized that I was focusing so intently on the fruit that I thought would be reaped from being in a Christ-glorifying relationship with a godly woman (namely, marriage), that I completely lost sight of the fact that I had been in a Christ-glorifying relationship with a godly woman. I was part of something which brought glory to the name of the Son of God, and seemed to have forgotten how much of a blessing this was, and how both of us can now glorify Christ more fully and deeply in our separate lives, having been a part of that relationship for a time, than if it had never happened.

Praise God for His faithfulness and goodness, and for His glory! Lamentations 3:37-38, Job 1:21, 2:10.

So, my prayer is that God would continue to remind me of this as He grows me. No matter what the fruit may be that He decides to bring about in my life, that is His business to deal with, not mine. My business is to bring glory to the name of Jesus, by the power of God's Spirit, and to lead others to the foot of the Cross in any and all ways that God will choose to use me to do so. As I do that, I pray that I would remember that anything that comes about in my life as a result is simply God's will unfolding, and that His will is good.

Keep it on Christ, Chris... let God take care of the rest.