One Heart Discernment – Members Content

God’s Desire

Throughout your married life, God will frequently place before you the invitation to be more life-giving. Sometimes this invitation will take the form of conceiving a child, at others it might be to take up a ministry or get involved in a community initiative. At times God will call you to reform your lifestyle in order to be more available to a family member, engage in a spiritual growth opportunity such as a retreat or study course, or share your financial resources with another. In fact, all Christians are called to use their resources (time, money and skills) in the service of others.

Decision or Discernment?

The key difference between a decision and a discernment is the presence of God. When we actively seek to involve God by basing our choices on God’s principles for living and prayerfully seek God’s guidance, we can be confident in the wisdom of our choices. This applies to both individual and couple decisions.

As a couple, the call on your life-giving energies needs to be discerned with careful consideration of your responsibilities to each other, to any existing children and to your community. In all your discernments, remember that God will only ever desire what is in your best interests. You can trust God to guide you in your decisions by adapting the Stop-Reflect-Connect Decision Making tool to a discernment process.

The One Heart Discernment focusses not just on building our unity as a couple (Values-Based Decision Making), but on also being united with God’s heart. It is not just two hearts becoming one (husband and wife), but three: husband, wife and God.

Of One Heart

How do we know what God wants? How do we ‘read’ God’s heart? Firstly God’s heart doesn’t change. So we can get a good starting point from the scriptures and the teaching wisdom of the Church. Any time we are tempted to make a choice that contradicts, for example, one of the Ten Commandments or a sacred teaching of the Church, we can be sure that we have probably withdrawn our heart from the circle of unity with God’s heart.

Secondly, having been created in the image of God, placed within us is the desire for union with our Creator. Our deepest heart’s desires are a reflection of God’s desires. When we open ourselves to God’s influence and unite our heart with his, God’s desire is allowed to flourish in our heart and become our own desire. In other words, our own desires conform to God’s desires. Once we have consciously and deliberately conformed our heart to God’s heart, we can listen to our heart’s desire and know what God desires.

Tool: One Heart Discernment

When making decisions on how to express your life-giving energies, (e.g. when to conceive/adopt/foster a child, what method of family planning to use, how much income to give to charity, whether to take up a ministry etc. your love and acceptance to him/her.) trust God to guide you:

Stop: Pray the One Heart Prayer

Lord, unite our hearts with your heart.
If you desire us to make this choice,
remove from us any fear or anxiety
and fill us with enthusiasm for this to happen.
If this is not your desire for us,
grant us peace and contentment,
and fill us with enthusiasm
for other ways of giving life to others.
Amen

Reflect:

Desires: What do you want? What do you think God’s desire is for you?
Values: What good will come of this choice? How will it give life to each other, to your family, to your community?

Connect:

Embrace: How can you embrace the other’s value?
Evaluate: Of the choices before you, what is in the best interests of your marriage?