The Crazy Cycle In The Workplace - Study Guide (Download)

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

Parenting is a faith venture. As we parent “unto Christ” we reap God’s reward, “knowing that whatever good anyone does, he will receive the same from the Lord” (Eph. 6:8 NKJV)

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

With a better understanding of God’s promises, you will be on your way to a renewed mind and a changed life.

She’s not wrong for not being male. He is not wrong for not being female. When you put pink and blue together, you get purple, the color of royalty; the color of God. Together, a husband and wife reflect God’s image.

Your marriage is a test of your devotion to Christ.

There is a plan to parent God’s way, even when our children may seek to go their own way at time. The secret is to follow this plan regardless. When you do, I believe you succeed in His eyes.

God is not trying to trick you or mess with you. Trust that He wants to reveal Himself to you just as much as He wants to reveal Himself to the world.

When you relinquish an offense, you need to send that offense somewhere. So follow Jesus’ example and release it to your heavenly Father.

Words of Love or Respect must uplift your spouse, edifying- never manipulating him or her.

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

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

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

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.

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

The moment we cry to Him for help, He is already pleased. He gives us strength to love our children.

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).

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Suppressing negative feelings is not loving, respectful or very wise. Speak up tactfully.

God is good and wants what is best for us.

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.

You’re the only person in the world who can meet your spouse’s deepest need for love and respect. After all, you alone are married to your spouse.

You can be right in the argument, but wrong in your approach.

We easily see what is done to us before we see what we are doing to our mate.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Your marriage is really a tool and a test to deepen and demonstrate your love and reverence for your Lord.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Your words reveal your heart.

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

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

If husbands and wives are to understand the Love and Respect Connection, they must realize that they communicate in code. And the problem is, they don’t know how to decipher the messages they send to one another.

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

Husbands, even Jesus Himself was asked by a woman, “Do you not care?” (Luke 10:40) When your wife accuses you of not caring, decode her deeper meaning.

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

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

Trust God when the “why’s” of life threaten to overwhelm you.

Do you seek to understand or only to be understood?

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

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!

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.

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

Stay the course regardless of the child’s respect and obedience. This is the Family Rewarded Cycle: a parents love unto Christ regardless of the child.

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

It is crucial for a husband and wife to see that neither one is wrong, but both of them are very different--in body function, outlook and perspective.

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

When confronting your spouse, attack the behavior, not the person.

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.

Your spouse can affect you, but your spouse does not control you.

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).

The woman absolutely needs love, and the man absolutely needs respect. It’s as simple- and as difficult- as that.

Your hunger for God can create an appetite in your children.

Our trustworthiness rests on our truthfulness.

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!

A major step toward a happy marriage is accepting differences and working them out with love and respect.

It’s hard to realize that we would never act around our business associates the way we act around our spouse.

Whether visiting a prison, feeding the hungry, giving the thirsty a drink or speaking a word of love or respect, everything is to be done to and for Christ.

We have to step back as Christ followers and ask, “Do I have false expectations that my relationship should be romantic 99% of the time?”

Good intentions do not always produce good words or outcomes.

Focus on the positive in the midst of the negative, and the Energizing Cycle will keep right on humming.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

When a wife insists that her husband earn her respect, she puts him in a lose-lose situation.

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

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

Marriage is a test of how you unconditionally love and respect your spouse as you obey, honor, and please the Lord.

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

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

We have discovered that as women motivate their man God’s way, men are energized to love them better. It doesn’t matter if your marriage is good or seems like there is no hope. We have seen God move in powerful ways even when things looked hopeless.

Every marriage includes trouble some of the time. Do not let the 20% leaven all the rest.

We can communicate the truth in the best of manners, but the person may be so insecure he or she can only react and attack like a wounded bear.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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