DEAR LIBBY'S RELATIONSHIP ADVICE

QUESTION/PRAYER REQUEST: I hope this doesn't sound selfish or trivial, but the man I've been dating for a while (and was going to marry) broke up with me. I love him unconditionally with all my heart. The parting was unreasonable. I feel he has some personal problems and runs away from the slightest conflict and has trouble dealing with past and present feelings. I will always love him and I'd do anything for him. Would you please pray for us to find our way back to each other? Thank you and God Bless, Valerie

ANSWER: No, Valerie (Joe, Linda, Thomas, etc.), your prayer request does not sound trivial or selfish. I'm sure you are feeling a lot of need and hurt right now and it is hard to even think straight with that kind of pain in your heart/soul. But, I cannot pray for you to find your way back to each other, as that may not be God's will for either of you-whether temporarily or permanently. But I can and will pray for God's will which has already been set in place in heaven regarding each of you to be done on earth in each of your lives.

I can and will pray that each of you will focus upon tearing down the strongholds and self-defensive and self-protective patterns of thinking in your souls so that you can receive God's healing in your souls that you will be ready for any divine direction from Him. I can and will pray that soul ties between your soul and this other person's soul are loosed and broken, so that you will both be able to hear God's healing and guiding words clearly. You cannot do that when your mind, will, and emotions are being bombarded with words coming from your soul's desperation, pain, unmet needs, and unhealed hurts.

I can and will pray that God will give you great grace and mercy and understanding personally so that you realize that WHAT YOU NEED to want and desire and ask for is what God has already lovingly planned and prepared for you to have. If that is a relationship with this other person, then you need to trust that the Lord has allowed or even caused him to be separated from you at this time so He can speak to him and heal him and prepare him to be a good mate.

God is his(her) Healer, Teacher, and Savior-not you.

God is not at a loss as to what to do here! He is prepared to do a great work in both of you, but you both have to surrender to that work. You cannot make someone else surrender, but you can make the choice that you are going to surrender. You need to have the faith that even though God's perfect work may not end up how you think it should, He really does deserve your confidence that He will do what will make both of you the most fulfilled and happiest. Faith in God is trust and confidence in His goodness, power, and love working towards you-all times, all ways, all for your blessing!

God will see that His work ends up preparing both of you for your destiny plans and purposes that are for good and not for evil, plans and purposes to prosper you and give you hope for a great future (Jeremiah 29:11). He did not send His Son to die for you so that your future could be held hostage while you were grieving over a broken human relationship. He has always been working His greater plans to fulfill both of you beyond any present beliefs or ideas or hopes you have right now of finding your purpose and fulfillment in each other.

Some fear that their "other persons" won't listen to or surrender to God's perfect plans if left to their own thoughts and beliefs. Now just stop and think about that for a minute. Like you are going to be able to get this other person to listen to God when God doesn't seem to be able to? Do you think that God's plans for your life would include a mate who will not listen to Him, with God holding you responsible for whether or not they do? The perfect mate He has chosen for you will listen to Him, even if it takes a little while for that person to work out his(her) trust issues with Him. You can trust God to see that this is accomplished in His timing. Someone who absolutely will not listen to and surrender to God's plans cannot be His perfect choice for you, can they? So, either way, God is still in control, isn't He? The point I want to make is that you might as well let Him do His work while you begin to work on what you can accomplish. That means getting your soul aligned with Him while He implements His best plans, whatever they are. And whatever they are, you can be assured that you will not be disappointed.

If God cannot get direction into the soul of the other person at this time to guide him(her) to the truth of His destiny plans for each of your lives, then this other person is definitely in need of some surrendering, healing, understanding, and restoration of his(her) own soul. Hear me carefully, this is something that is between him(her) and God-and God does not need you to help Him complete this divine work! The simplest and best possible prayer you can pray for this other person is: "Not my will, Lord, but your will-as you have already set it in heaven-be done in this person's life on earth." Too many hurting and needy men and women think and say, "I just love this person so much, I'm willing to go through any sacrifice or pain God wants me to go through to help him(her) get healed so he(her) will want my will-oops, I meant so he(her) will want God's will!"

God's ultimate plans and purposes for you do not include making you a sacrificial lamb to complete some other person's healng so he(she) can fulfill God's destiny plans for his(her) life, or for your life, either! Would that not put you in control of the other person's destiny-based upon whether or not you were willing to be his(her) sacrificial lamb? Do you want others' choices of whether or not they are willing to be your sacrificial lamb to hold some kind of control over your ability to cooperate with your destiny plans and purposes? Hello? God has already made provision for a "once and for all" Sacrificial Lamb Who guaranteed everyone's right to a fulfillment of their awesome destiny purposes in Him.

Jesus Christ died to make a way for you to walk into His glorious destiny plans that have been prepared and waiting for you since before you were created in your mother's womb. These divine plans may include many sacrificial things that God will ask of you, but you do not know what they are right now. The one thing you must know right now is that you need to surrender every human desire and hope for personal fulfillment that you have attached to any other person. Note that I did not say you need to permanently write this person out of your life, or that you need to file for a divorce if you are married. But you do need to surrender your finite, human desires for personal fulfillment from other people to the larger scope of God's infinite plans for you. If you do not, you will forever be at the mercy of the fact that human beings will never be able to be perfect for you. Jesus Christ alone can be the perfect One in your life, and when you know how to take all of your needs and hurts to Him and let Him fix them, then you have safety and freedom to let your other people be who they were meant to be.

Let God be God here and be willing to withdraw yourself from the line of any other person's destiny preparations, trusting that God will put your paths together or separate your paths according to His larger infinite purposes for both of you.

Realize that you, in your finite way of viewing things through the powerful filters of your own unmet needs and unhealed pain, may well create hindrances and delays as well as go through a lot of unnecessary pain yourself if you try to stay finitely involved in this phase of God's infinite work in another person's life. Finite means with limits, with an ending, and without any eternal viewpoint. Infinite means without limits, without any ending, and always with an eternal viewpoint.

Trust God to do what is best here, and trust that He is not going to secretly cut you out of your blessings. In fact, you may well need to ask yourself why you are in so much pain and fear of loss right now. If you really do trust God to be working everything for your best and the other person's best (which you have implied you want), shouldn't you have more divine peace right now? Peace and contentment is possible in all things, even while feeling some emotional pain from the break in your human relationship. Take a reality reading on your overall level of peace in spite of your soul's fear of a permanent loss. Are you resting in and at peace with God's love and ability to work out the best plan for everyone involved, or are you feeling desperate to communicate to God your desires and your ideas of what the best plan is?

Taking a phrase from pop music here, there "ain't no mountain high enough, ain't no valley low enough," nor devil nor man nor woman nor opportunity nor career nor deception that can keep this man(woman) from you if God has chosen this person as His best for you! If you really trust God and have confidence in Him, you can relax and rest in Him because of that-and get on with your life.

The best way you can do that is get yourself in line for some personal restoration, healing, and divine understanding from Jesus! Set your will to do some focused praying. Prayers that do not include one word about the other person or the relationship-and you may be very surprised at just how hard that is for you to do right now! Begin to bind your will to the will of God and bind your mind to the mind of Christ. Bind yourself to the truth in the Word which requires you to immerse yourself in the Word daily in order to hear from God-not just to use the Word to try to find promises to hold God to! Loose the effects and influences out of your soul of every wrong agreement you have ever spoken, entered into, or believed. Then loose your soul's finite desires and scheming and efforts to get what it believes to be the only possible thing, person, position, or outcome for your life that will make you happy.

Ask the Lord to work in you so that you will be healed, restored, renewed, and ready for a truly wonderful relationship with whomever He has chosen to be your perfect mate or Mate. Please reread the previous sentence and allow Jesus to explain to you what it really means. I would also strongly suggest that you get Breaking the Power, my second book, to gain a deeper understanding of the inner drives coming out of the powerful unmet needs and unhealed hurts that your soul has both barricaded and buried behind stronghold thinking. Your soul's awareness of the destructive forces of those sources of need and pain is what keeps driving it to find its own answers and solutions, the very thing that catapults so many people into wrong relationships. There is a prayer in that same book called the Training-Wheel Prayer to Prepare for a Mate. Here are a few lines from that prayer:

"I bind myself to your will and purposes for my future, Lord, so your plans will be fulfilled in my life-whether they are plans I think I want or not . . . if I desire (this relationship) only to fill an empty place in my heart instead of seeking to fill it with you, show me how to change. I bind myself to pure motives for wanting a (relationship), not just to meet my unmet needs, heal my unhealed hurts, or resolve my unresolved issues. That is placing unrealistic expectations on any human. (Help me to understand that) no man or woman could ever fulfill such expectations. You alone can fill me with grace, bathe me in love, meet my deepest needs, heal my worst hurts, and resolve my oldest questions and issues (and make me whole) . . . I've felt like I've been trapped in a vacuum where nothing is ever enough. I don't want to be in that needy and painful vacuum any longer. I want to be a fully satisfied source of hope and blessing to others. No one will ever place their hope in you from watching a Christian life that always seems unsatisfied, needy, and in pain. But I know that many can receive hope from a life that was once like that, but has now been changed and made whole by you!

"I do not want to force my way past your will into a relationship only to see my needs suck all of the joy, peace, and life out of a mate . . . and please forgive me for the times I have blamed you for my loneliness and not having some person devoted to caring just for me. I know that you have been protecting me and others from the hurt and heartbreak a wrong relationship brings . . . Jesus, if there is a special man/woman you have chosen and are preparing just for me, I bind him/her to your will and purposes. I ask that you draw him/her into a strong, whole relationship with you. I ask that you teach him/her to see you as the focus and center of his/her life, just as I am asking you to do with me. I bind myself and him/her to your timing. I will not seek to find any such person through my own efforts. You will know if and when the time is right for both of us to come together into a relationship" (taken from Chapter 5 of Breaking the Power).

Tell the Lord that you are voluntarily reporting for Destiny Duty-ready, willing, and able to begin learning how to cooperate with His plans and purposes for YOUR life while He gets on with preparing the rest of the world for theirs. Rev. Liberty Savard