A Promise Made Before the Moment

“I made a covenant with my eyes, how then should I look lustfully at a young woman? (Job 31:1, WEB)

Job says, I have made a covenant with my eyes; how then could I gaze at a virgin? What strikes me here is the timing. Job does not describe himself wrestling in the middle of temptation, white knuckled, deciding in the heat of it what he will do. He describes a decision he made earlier, in a calm hour, and a covenant is a binding thing rather than a passing mood. He settled the question before the question arrived, so that when it came he was not starting from scratch.

Most of us try to make these decisions at the worst possible time, in the exact moment our judgment is clouded and our body is arguing hard for the very thing that will hurt us. We stand there negotiating with ourselves while every part of us that wants to give in gets a vote. We lose because we are deciding too late, in a courtroom where the outcome was rigged before we walked in. Job had already told his eyes where they may and may not go, so when the moment came the answer was old news, a thing settled long before it was tested.

There is a strange freedom in settling something in advance. You are no longer at the mercy of how you happen to feel at eleven at night. You can decide today, while your head is clear, what you will do the next time your wife is asleep and the house is quiet and the phone is in your hand. You can decide where the phone will be, and whether you will be alone, and who you will text if the pull comes.

Make the covenant now. Tell God the terms plainly, name the exact situations you know are coming, and ask him to hold you to what your clearer self has already decided. Then when the hour arrives, you are not deciding again. You are keeping a promise.