Love and Respect Husband and Wife + Logo Mug Set

A husband may deserve contempt, but that doesn’t win him any more than harshness and anger wins the heart of a woman.

Unconditional love or respect is never wasted. Hang onto this promise: “Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary” (Galatians 6:9).

Negative actions rarely produce positive results.

Be a part of the solution, not part of the problem.

When you come home after you have been apart, the first few moments of reconnecting will set the tone for the rest of the evening.

Your wife will feel esteemed when you speak highly of her in front of others.

Thank the Lord that in the very beginning He created them male and female – Blue and Pink. Ask Him for patience and ever-growing understanding of how men and women see and hear differently. “He created them male and female, and He blessed them.” (Genesis 5:2)

Trusting and obeying God’s Word because we love and reverence God never, ever makes us a hypocrite! When the alarm goes off in the morning, we get up, even when we don’t feel like it getting up. Because we do what we don’t feel like doing, does that make us hypocrites? No, it’s a sign we are responsible people. Showing respectful behavior when we don’t “feel respectful” is evidence of maturity.

To not forgive is to shoot yourself in the foot and put extra gas in the Crazy Cycle.

I have concluded that those of us in the church who believe we have the Truth are not using the whole truth. A crucial part of God’s Word has been completely ignored, or perhaps simply gone unnoticed, when it has been there right under our noses the whole time! Many Christian spouses know Ephesians 5:33 and can at least paraphrase it. The Apostle Paul tells husbands to love their wives as much as they love themselves, and wives are to respect their husbands. But is anyone really listening? Perhaps the first step to better communication between husband and wife is to hear what God’s Word clearly says. --Emerson

Your spouse has a need that you don’t have. Are you going to say there is something seriously wrong with them or will you say “Viva la Difference”?

When the wife flatly says her husband will have to earn her respect before she gives him any, she leaves the husband in a lose-lose situation. Now he is responsible for both love and respect in the relationship. He must unconditionally love his wife and earn her respect.

Most marriages will succeed when obeying the command to Love and Respect.

When you play the blame game your marriage never wins.

Do you understand that God feels compassion for you, no matter what you have done or what your circumstances may be?

We all need to wrestle with the spiritual truth that God is good. If you don’t believe God is good, you won’t trust His word. If you don’t trust His word, you will find excuses to ignore His commands.

Your spouse can have a need that you don’t have and that’s okay.

Your marriage is a tool and a test to deepen and demonstrate your love and reverence for Jesus Christ. God is using your spouse to bring you an eternal reward.

Ladies, be careful. “A nagging wife goes on and on like the drip, drip, drip of the rain” (Proverbs 19:13).

As a husband, if you can grasp that you don’t always have to solve your wife’s problems, you will take a giant step toward showing her empathy and understanding.

A parent needs to feel respected, especially during conflicts...A child need to feel loved, especially during disputes.

If a husband is commanded to agape- love his wife, then she truly needs love.

Often both spouses have goodwill but are not deciphering each other’s code. She criticizes out of love, but he “hears” only disrespect. He distances himself to prevent feelings from escalating, which is the honorable thing to do, but she “sees” only his failure to be loving!

When you look to God and His Word as your ultimate source of significance and security, you don’t demand that your spouse take that role in your life. And as you draw strength from the Lord individually, He draws you closer together as a couple.

In the ultimate sense, your marriage has nothing to do with your spouse. It has everything to do with your relationship to Jesus Christ.

We can all have moments of anger, but this does not mean we have to lose control and sin.

Unconditional respect means we confront their wrongdoings respectfully. We do not become uncivil because they are. Who they fail to be does not determine who we will be.

Optimism or pessimism? It is always a choice, no matter what your natural temperament.

Your wife feels you are open with her when you discuss financial concerns, possible job changes or ideas for your future.

Thank the Lord for the goodwill each of you has toward the other. Ask Him for strength to give each other the benefit of the doubt during moments when someone’s goodwill seems to be lacking. “He who seeks good finds goodwill, but evil comes to him who searches for it.” (Proverbs 11:27)

Mutual submission is the only way to live fairly together with mutual authority.

When we feel crippling discouragement by the sinful choices and outcomes of our kids, we must not let this permanently deter us from parenting God’s way.

Before hitting send, ask yourself, "Have I listened carefully and understand the exact issue on the table?"

Your marriage is a test of your devotion to Christ.

Words of love from a husband are like good medicine that brings life to the marriage.

Just because you may feel unloved or disrespected does not mean your spouse is sending that message.

Marriage is a tool and a test to allow God’s will to be revealed in our lives.

Will we decide how we see God based on our circumstances, or will we see our circumstances in light of how we view God?

If a husband chooses to be a peacemaker--taking the needs and concerns of his wife totally into account during any kind of argument or conflict--his wife will be motivated in turn to respond to his authority during stalemates.

Fight like a loving man and a respectful woman. Fight fair.

We are equal but we are not the same.

As you pray together, you will truly learn to love and respect together.

Though the end can be worthy (to be loved and respected), when each uses unholy means (unloving and disrespectful words and actions), it will not achieve those ends. We must treat others as we expect them to treat us. To deny this makes us arrogant or fools, or both.

Always try to look at your spouse the way Jesus does.

A most significant point of this book is this: If what we think is true, kind, necessary, and clear, we need to have the courage to hit send. This isn’t about refraining from speaking; this is about speaking.

Recognize your different gifts--how each of you (Pink and Blue) functions according to God’s perfect design.

We send each other messages in “code” based on gender, even though we don’t intend to. What I say is not what you hear, and what you think you heard is not what I meant at all.

Thank God for His forgiveness of your mistakes. In trying to be a loving man or a respectful woman, we blow it. Owning up to mistakes is never easy, but it is always the way to move forward. Take good care not to accuse your spouse of mistakes as you pray. Also, pray about any forgiving to be done in the family, any forgiveness that needs to be asked. Children may need forgiveness (and what about Mom and Dad?). “There is no one on earth who does what is right all the time and never makes a mistake.” (Ecclesiastes 7:20)

Life is too short to fuss and fret over trivial irritations.

[Women], as you enter quiet dignity, not preaching at your husband or scolding him as though you were his mother, something happens in his soul as a male.

There is power and freedom that comes in understanding that no one can cause you to react in a certain way. It is your choice.

Wives, to energize your husband do an activity with him, shoulder-to-shoulder, without talking.

A wife has one driving need: to feel loved. When that need is met, she is happy. A husband has one driving need: to feel respected. When that need is met, he is happy. When either of these needs isn’t met, things get crazy with conflict.

Be friendly. Be friendly. Be friendly. Watch what happens.

A man has a natural, inborn desire to go out and “conquer” the challenges of his world – to work and achieve.

Let the Lord change you, but don’t try to change each other.

To build a lasting legacy, use proven wisdom that you glean from the Lord.

God’s commands are there to help us, not to hinder us or hold us back as male and female.

When you possess a forgiving spirit, words of Love and Respect will flow authentically from your lips- and realize that the Lord Himself is listening to you at moments like these. He knows you are not powerless, but actually full of power that He has granted you.

As mature men, we need to take leadership and put this out on the table. We must acknowledge our feelings- we need to feel respected. However, as we do this we must acknowledge our wife’s feelings- she needs to feel loved!

Your spouse may meet many of your needs, but your deepest dependency should be on your Lord.

Accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative with lots of love and respect in between.

The key to motivating another person is meeting their deepest need, especially during conflict.

Knowing my spouse will not be able to love or respect me perfectly, I commit to having a forgiving spirit so that I may never speak hatefully or contemptuously.

This is the Rewarded Cycle: His love blesses regardless of her respect and her respect blesses regardless of his love.

As a wife, if you can start to understand how important your husband’s work is to him, you will take a giant step toward communicating respect and honor, two things that he values even more than your love.

He will feel appreciated when you disagree with him only in private and honor his authority in front of the kids.

Refuse to let evil turn you into a contemptuous and hateful person.

You can experience hurt, but it is your choice to hate.

Thank God for joining you together and for allowing you to trust Him to help you, whatever the issue. God is there for you and expects you to look to Him to keep you together as a team, so ask Him for His help in the smallest of concerns. “So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” (Matthew 19:6)

You must “ask God from the wealth of his glory to give you power through his Spirit to be strong in your inner selves.”

So I encourage every husband and wife to commit to the Jesus Way of Talking. Instead of allowing the stress of the situation to control you, you can say to yourself, “Because I love the Lord and I know that He rewards every good word, I am going to be truthful even if my spouse is not. I will also be uplifting, forgiving, thankful and scriptural in my speech because my ultimate goal is to please the Lord. Whatever my spouse’s weaknesses or bad habits might be, I will not let them cause me to sin with my lips.”

Being friendly to her man is one of the most effective things a woman can do to strengthen her marriage.

Money squabbles don’t undermine love and respect; they simply reveal unloving and disrespectful attitudes, which are the real reason why a marriage can start to wobble on the Crazy Cycle.

Always see your mate as an ally. Feedback is of little use if you see your spouse as an enemy. Giving and receiving constructive feedback is based on feelings of goodwill in both partners. Both of you need to remember that, even if you don’t always agree and even if you become irritated or angry, you are friends, and neither of you means to hurt the other.

Just because you’re offended doesn’t mean the other person is offensive.

We get on the Crazy Cycle because without love a wife reacts without respect, and without respect a husband reacts without love.

We fool ourselves into thinking the other person causes us to be the way we are. They really don’t! But if we lock into that idea, we become helpless, hopeless victims.

When your wife comes to talk to you, listen to her. Realize she is coming to you because you matter more to her than anyone else. She has certain emotional needs and only you can meet them. Sometimes she may say things that don’t make sense to you and she is apt to misspeak and exaggerate when she is upset, but don’t put her down. Instead, listen to her heart. Give her a chance to express her concerns and, as she does so, don’t try to fix her. Don’t give her your solutions unless she asks for them.

No matter what your struggle- criticism, constant conflict, sex, money, parenting, harsh words- learning to communicate the Love and Respect way can help you make crucial changes and build the kind of relationship that God blesses.

To stay the course in speaking words of Love and Respect, keep your heart in Scripture, trusting in and talking about His promises to help you.

When a husband feels disrespected, it is especially hard to love his wife. When a wife feels unloved, it is especially hard to respect her husband.

Here is the secret to marriage that every couple seeks and yet few find: Unconditional respect is as powerful for him as unconditional love is for her. It’s the secret that will help you achieve a brand new level of intimacy.

He will feel appreciated when you recognize his problem-solving approach as his male brand of empathy.

To get offended is easy, but to forgive is within your power as you walk in His steps.

Through Jesus and Peter, God set forth His standard for living in the unconditional dimension: choose to be loving even when the other person is not; do what is right regardless of the treatment you receive. I believe this standard applies directly to marriage. A husband who speaks lovingly to his disrespectful wife will be rewarded; and a wife who speaks respectfully to her unloving, not-worthy-of-respect husband will be rewarded. Whether you are husband or wife, the reward is what can keep you going in the midst of the craziness: knowing that God commends you, knowing that you have found his favor for your words and actions.

In your marriage be the first to “seek peace and pursue it” (1 Peter 3:11)

Your position in Christ is what counts, not your less-than-perfect performance.

Mutual understanding, not communication, is the key to a healthy marriage relationship.

Your husband knows you value his friendship when you tell him you like him and you show it (he knows you love him, but he often wonders if you really like him).

Accidental sparks (unwise remarks) ignite and fuel a fire, and vroom goes the Crazy Cycle.

We must bring our identity in Christ to our parenting—we must not derive our identity from our children.

We are worth Jesus to the Father.

God designed the woman to love. He’s not going to command her to agape her husband when He created her to do that in the first place. God is not into redundancy.

Christian maturity involves a lot of things, but surely it includes knowing how to process your anger.

Always remember that Pink and Blue have different wiring, different preferences. Assume your spouse has goodwill toward you, no matter what. Both of you can be right, while being different.

We are either going to give in the darkness or we are going to give into the darkness.

God is good and wants what is best for us.

You have to become proactive, rather than just trying to stop the reactive.

When a husband feels disrespected, he has a natural tendency to react in ways that feel unloving to his wife. (Perhaps the command to love was given to him precisely for this reason!) When a wife feels unloved, she has a natural tendency to react in ways that feel disrespectful to her husband. (Perhaps the command to respect was given to her precisely for this reason!)