Love and Respect Husband and Wife + Logo Mug Set

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

A marriage relationship will be energized when couples learn how to motivate each other God’s way.

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.

Love and Respect is a faith venture, not a formula.

The Crazy Cycle is, indeed, “the evil of folly and the foolishness of madness” (Ecclesiastes 7:25).

We all need love and respect equally. But, during conflict our felt needs are as different as pink is from blue.

One thing to remember in this culture is if we say something complimentary towards one gender, we aren’t saying something against the other.

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!)

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

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.

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

If you want your wife to express appreciation for your attempts to be loving, you must use thankful words when she tries to speak or act respectfully.

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

If you want your husband to express appreciation for your attempts to be respectful, you must speak thankfully when he tries to be loving.

When you play the blame game your marriage never wins.

Your husband knows you appreciate his desire to protect and provide when you praise his commitment to provide for you. You empathize when he reveals his male mindset about position, status, or rank at work.

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.

Unconditional respect is as powerful to him as unconditional love is to her.

His love motivates her respect. Her respect motivates his love.

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).

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.”

When parents genuinely trust and follow the Lord and His ways, their faith spills over onto the children.

We have different vulnerabilities. We can pass judgment on one another all day long or we can say God made us different and that’s ok.

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

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)

When you love or respect unconditionally regardless of the outcome, you are following God and His will for you.

There is a discrepancy between who we want to be and see ourselves to be and how we actually sound in voice and writing. But with self-reflection and honesty, we can turn the corner and improve our communication. We need only evaluate what we are about to communicate.

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

Thank the Lord for all the trouble-free moments in which you and your spouse enjoy Him, each other, your family, your ministry and life as a whole. Ask Him for the strength to accept your measure of trouble, and the wisdom to deal with the annoyances and irritations by loving and respecting each other with new commitment. (You may also want to pray about troubles at work, at church, with the children…) “But those who marry will have trouble in this life” (1 Corinthians 7:28)

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

It is so easy to draw wrong conclusions about a spouse’s character and motives due to an occasional flare-up or silly comment.

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

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).

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

You can be right but wrong at the top of your voice.

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

Our research shows that couples who pray together are more apt to reap all kinds of benefits, including better and more frequent communication, going on “dates” more frequently and having sex more frequently.

When Jesus said “turn the other cheek,” He wasn’t saying to be passive wimps. He was teaching that physically people can control you but if you turn and give the other cheek, suddenly you’re in control and you’re making the choices.

Do you seek to understand or only to be understood?

Research shows that 70% of the couples who were extremely unhappy in their marriage, but hung in there and worked through the tough time, identified themselves as being very happy five years later.

[Husbands] the most powerful weapons you have are your ears. Just listen to your wife, and she is much more likely to feel understood.

Holding back your love or respect will just keep the Crazy Cycle spinning away, but being mature and making the first move could slow it down.

The Love and Respect message is not about a husband earning his wife’s respect by being more loving any more than it is about a wife earning her husband’s love by being more respectful. Always love or respect is given unconditionally according to God’s commands.

Don’t conclude that your spouse is wrong when he/she is seeking to do the right and righteous thing.

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

Men are solution oriented, they love to solve problems. They want to be helpful.

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

At the very bottom of things, in every case and in every conversation, you can do your marriage a huge favor by assuming she is seeking to feel loved or he is seeking to feel respected and give your spouse some grace!

Responding to offensive words or actions with your own offensive words and actions is damaging and unproductive.

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.

I had often asked God to compensate for my mistakes, but in return had I thought He would give me perfect children?

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

Our trustworthiness rests on our truthfulness.

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.

Share what God is saying to your heart, not what you think He needs to say to your mate.

“With eyes of faith, envision Jesus standing just beyond the shoulder of your spouse and listening to every word you speak in every conversation, pleasant or tense. When you speak lovingly or respectfully to your spouse, you are speaking to Christ. Your spouse just happens to be there too.” This truth has sanctified the lips of many. Instead of giving their spouse a verbal whipping or choking on the idea of saying anything positive, now some spouses are motivated to speak words of unconditional love or respect.

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.

Self-interest should never come ahead of your spouse’s interests.

You both forgive for one simple but profound reason: because you know Christ has forgiven you!

You speak lovingly or respectfully no matter how your spouse may speak to you in return. Your spouse is not the reason--good or bad--why you speak unconditional words of love or respect. God is the reason, and as you depend on Him, you will become increasingly able to speak lovingly and respectfully to your spouse.

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

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

Marriage is a tool and a test to deepen and demonstrate your love and your reverence for Jesus Christ.

She’ll feel at peace with you when you let her vent your frustrations and hurts and don’t get angry and close her off.

Do you give yourself grace and your spouse judgment?

Assuming goodwill can be revolutionary in relationships.

How we react to a situation reveals more about us than about the other person.

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

Pink and Blue perceptions not only affect seeing, they affect hearing as well. Women hear with pink hearing aids and men hear with blue hearing aids. Even more important to understand as you and your spouse seek to gain better communication, you can hear the very same words, but each of you will hear different messages.

Above all trust God when the “whys” of life threaten to overwhelm you.

The difference between successful couples and unsuccessful couples is that successful ones keep getting up and dealing with the issues.

Unconditional respect, like unconditional love, is all about how one sounds (tone of voice and word choice) and appears (facial expressions and physical actions).

We are equal but we are not the same.

When you’re truly Christ-centered, instead of child-centered, you will be a more effective parent in the long run.

Don’t pressure yourself with perfection. We are going to fail. A righteous man falls 7 times but gets back up.

The parent-child relationship is as easy, and as difficult, as love and respect.

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

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.

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

When evil comes at you, you’re the one who makes the choice of whether or not it is going to go into you.

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. Love and Respect reveals why spouses react negatively to each other, and how they can deal with such conflict quickly, easily and biblically.

Your spouse deserves the truth from you. Do your best to tell it with love and respect.

Your words reveal your heart.

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.

Don’t label each other as bad because you differ on how you solve your troubles.

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.

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.

Often the apparent issue isn’t the real issue; the real issue is always a matter of love or respect.

You may believe that the careless, unloving or disrespectful words you speak are because your spouse is causing you to speak this way, but Jesus says that it is coming out of your heart.

Women give a report to build rapport. Men bond through shoulder-to-shoulder activities without talking.

Feeling unloved, a wife gets defensive and acts offensively without respect. Feeling disrespected, a husband gets defensive and acts offensively without love.

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.

As strong and powerful as marriage bonds can become, our deepest dependency must be on the Lord, not another human being.

No matter how difficult your spouse may be at the moment, your spouse does not have control over your reaction; you do. You may be experiencing disappointment, frustration, or anger, but you always have a choice.

Your spouse has a need only you can fill.

God is not pink. God is not blue. God is purple. When two become one, they have the potential of displaying God’s attributes and character.

It’s crucial to communicate with the right tone of voice and the right expression on your face.

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.

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

A woman needs love like she needs air to breathe. A man needs respect like he needs air to breathe.