Success In Marriage Begins At The Foot of the Cross

Just some of my mental wanderings this morning . . . .  I know, it is too long . . . . Yep, it is one of those never ending stories of Jesus and His love.  Hope these ramblings make some sort of sense to you . . . . they do me.

Ever since my dear Susan passed from this life to the next I have spent a lot of my time looking at the creation of man and the becoming “one flesh” in Genesis 1-2 with an eye toward how getting a good understanding of that event illuminates the whole of Scripture. 

Understanding how and why God created man in the first place will go a long way toward helping us understand where God is going with the human story. Our lives are indeed in His hands but they are there with purpose. In my mind that purpose is to bring us back to where we started . . . . namely, man’s pre-fall condition.

God has not changed His mind about mankind. God still wants fellowship with man; He still wants man in the Garden of Paradise; and, He still wants man there in innocence. To this end he set in motion His plan for our redemption.

I seems clear to me that when God says that man and woman become one flesh He is saying that they are no longer two free agents but they are a new living unit. I will say a great deal more about that down the road.  Suffice it to say that I have come to believe that a right understanding of the creation of man as recorded in Genesis 1-2 will shed a great deal of light on the rest of Scripture and what happens when one is reconciled to God and restored to his original state. The marriage sanctified by God becomes a reflection of God’s love.

Keep in mind Scripture states emphatically that God is love (the converse of that is not the case, i.e., love is not God). Scripture abounds in expressions of God’s love for his creation. Additionally God has a particular focus on loving Man. We are, if I Corinthians 13 is correct and it is, to both experience, reflect and demonstrate God’s work in our lives as He purposes. And that is where I want to pick up on the love that Susan and I shared.

David and Susan
December 23, 1966

Loving Susan came so easy to me. As time passed I realized fairly early in our marriage that the love we shared was exceptional. Over time that love grew deeper, stronger and more abiding.  I know as Dean Martin used to sing, “Everybody loves somebody sometime.” That may well be true for everybody else . . . . truth is I don’t know that everybody loves somebody sometime. I rather think you either love or you don’t love.  Real love, like God always finds away.

What I do know is that the love Susan and I shared was “deeper than the ocean and wider than the sea.” We had reached the place where we completed one another’s thoughts. We still felt that little tingle when we held hands and I so miss the way she would say, “I love you” with an ever so gentle squeeze of my hand. 

I’ve thought a lot about the love Susan and I shared over the years and how it developed and matured . . . . how it moved from the earthy to the heavenly. I am not sure the kind of love we shared with the depth of commitment it engendered is humanly possible. It is something that God does in us.  I have come to believe that God works in a handful of human relationships to demonstrate what His love looks like. 

I remember in response to a young man who asked what the secret to a long marriage was I said to him that , “for marriage to be what God intended it to be it has to be a threesome . . . . namely a man, a woman, and Jesus Christ.” I rather suspect that what Michael W. Smith wrote in his song “Friends” is true of marriage. “Friends are friends forever if the Lord's the Lord of them . . .  And a lifetime is not to long to live as friends.” Keep in mind that there was no life in man or woman until God’s breathe was breathed into them It is the Spirit that gives life and it 

Susan & David
in 52nd. year of a 54-1/2 year marriage

Don’t misunderstand, the love of which I speak is a reflection of His love . . . . . something akin to a display of the “Love of God dwell in you richly” to the point that it is viewable. God did not allow us to develop this kind of love for our own betterment, though it certainly worked out that way. I believe His purpose for our experience went beyond our redemption to a demonstration of how love is to work between a husband and wife and to reflect how the love of God works in ones' life.

However, for us our experience with God’s love in our shared life is the kind of love we have.  I say "have" because this kind of love never ends. It is akin to eternal life. The body dies but we live on.

What I do know is that I, for one, now understand better the meaning of Ephesians 3:18-19. . . . . I believe I have a better experiential grasp of “how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge.” Such love opens the door to so much richer an experience with the love of God and a fuller “measure of all the fullness of God.”

I have mentioned how as Susan and I looked back over our lives we came to see everything that happened from the day we were born until this present hour was choreographed by the hand of God. That process seemed to give positive meaning to both the good times and the not so good times. Perhaps that explains in part why Jeremiah 29:11 was her favorite verse . . . . .  “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.

So here is my “take away.” No one can have the kind of love that Susan and I shared except that love be born of the love of God. That does not mean that life is all giggles and smiles. In fact it may very well be just the opposite. It is a life filled with the experiences of both pleasure and pain; of gain and of loss; of want and of plenty; and just the every day verities of life. However, in all of that is a demonstration of the truth that Love never fails. 

I am grateful that God has allowed us to walk the journey with Him that has been ours. And, here is the best part . . . the journey continues as my dear Susan walks the streets of gold with our Lord Jesus and I walk the streets here below with our Jesus and I look forward to joining them on that walk there in Paradise. Truly one in the Spirit and one in the Lord.  

Let me make clear, what Susan and I share is a pattern for what others can have it is not a replication of what we have. Your experience with the love of God and how it finds expression in  your life as a couple (really a new living unit) will be colored by the specific purpose God has for your life but also how He determines to bring that purpose to completion in you. It will be uniquely yours. Remember, He has the right, the will and the power to use us as He chooses. Be grateful he does so within the context of Jeremiah 29:11. 

But regardless of the day-to-day details we all begin at the same place . . . .the foot of the cross. That’s where the real journey begins for all of us.

You say that sounds terribly exclusive and I tell you, “Indeed it is.” It is exclusive to God’s children . . . . namely those of us who by faith have accepted Jesus Christ as Lord.  You see this is the essential experience required to have such a relationship as Susan and I shared. It was a gift of God’s love to us and not us only but “unto all them also that love his appearing.”

When did I realize what God had been doing for the last 75 years of my life . . . like just about everything else in life not until it was taken.  I specifically learned two things:

First, until Susan left for Heaven I did not fully comprehend the height, depth and width of our shared love and how significant it was to who I am and who Susan and I together are.

Second, I learned something about the height, depth and width of God’s love expressed Calvary. God the Father and God the Son experienced something that day that they had never experienced . . . the pain of separation. I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus . . . . the one who died for me.