Two Hearts Beat as One

Details

Published on Sunday, 01 January 2012 00:00

“Two Hearts Beat as One”

Vince & Susan Santacesaria

“Two hearts beat as one.” The words on the banner hanging in our room at the Marriage Encounter retreat hit like an armor-piercing bullet. We were to find out later that the banners were distributed to the various couples only after much prayer. 

So, this was God’s doing. That message was from God. Perhaps that is why it stung.  God has a habit of getting right to the point when we finally open ourselves up to Him and honestly seek His healing in relationships.

“Two hearts beat as one.” That definitely didn’t describe our marriage up until that point.  Following Susan’s rededication to the Lord and Vince’s salvation, things didn’t miraculously get better. After all, we were still two sinners coming together with loads of baggage trying to create a holy matrimony. 

As the weekend retreat wore on, the banner stopped mocking and began to entreat us to follow the directive from Genesis 2:24:“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. ”We typically associate this verse with weddings. We think of the bride and groom leaving their parents’ homes and moving in together to become their own family.But, God had worded the banner so as to point out where we were in our marriage and where He wanted to take us.

“They shall be one flesh.” “Two hearts beat as one.” If we truly were one flesh, wouldn’t we then have one heart? What was God trying to tell us? Whose heartbeat do we follow? Earlier in the Genesis 2:24 it says, “Therefore, shall a man leave… and cleave unto his wife.” Surely, that must mean that the wife’s heart is the one they should follow! But, wait, in Ephesians 5:22-23a God says, “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife.”  Of course, there’s also Genesis 3:16b:“and thy desire [shall be] to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. ”That sounds more like two hearts beating as two, like ours. 

No, God wanted to take two hearts with all that He had already done in them and all that He was yet to do, and make them beat in unison as if they were one. The only way God could do that was to get us to see our need to develop hearts patterned after His. For us, that meant learning all we could about who God was, what He    expected of us, and how to be obedient to His Word. Practically, that meant reading the Bible daily, being in prayer for our marriage and for each other, and seeking the Lord’s will for every aspect of our marriage.

It is in reading the Bible that we discover God’s characteristics. If we are to be holy as He is holy (1 Peter 1:16), we have to know what that holiness looks like so we know the goal. We’re supposed to be putting off the old (We know what THAT looks like!) and putting on the new. Therefore, we need to know how to “dress in that new garment.” 

Since God is love (1 John 4:16), 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 gives us some idea of what God’s character is like and what we are aspiring to become - patient, kind, selfless, etc.We not only seek what God wants of us individually, but also what God wants of us as a husband and a wife. Ephesians 5:33 tells us, “However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.” And, in Galatians 5:22-23, God plainly details what a godly attitude looks like as we seek to fulfill the roles of husband and wife in the power of His Spirit. The Bible clearly spells out our roles and God’s expectations of us. These are His goals for marriage.  We need to make them our goals, as well. 

Knowing what God expects of us also requires prayer. How many of us pray as earnestly for our marriages as we do for a lost relative to come to a saving knowledge of Christ? Pray earnestly for one another, not to change your spouse, but to see your spouse become a husband or wife after God’s own heart. Pray for them to be receptive to what the Lord wants to do in them. We teach in our Pre-Marital Class that, as iron sharpens iron, God uses your spouse to mold YOU into the man or woman He wants you to be. So, don’t forget to pray that you will be receptive to what the Lord wants to do in you, as well.

Finally, in seeking the Lord’s will for every aspect of our marriage, we submit our wills to His. We search Scripture and seek godly counsel in handling disputes and making decisions. With both of us looking to God, we are facing the same direction and are able to move forward together, rather than looking at each other, opposing one another, and attempting to move forward in some kind of awkward tug-of-war dance-step. It’s only when we can authentically say to God, “Not my will, but Yours be done,” that we find that two CAN walk together in perfect peace.With both of us submitting our wills to God, “Two hearts beat as one.” 

That banner still hangs in our bedroom some 25 years later. But, now it stands as a testimony of what God has done in our marriage. To God be the Glory!