The Love and Respect Devotional

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.

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

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.

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

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

Do not live by the standards of Hollywood; trust what God says in His Holy Word.

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Your marriage is a test of your devotion to Christ.

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

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

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

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.

Although the Crazy Cycle is not what God intends for any marriage, all couples get on it at times from one degree to another.

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

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.

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

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.

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).

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

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 a husband chooses to do or say something loving, and that includes saying, ‘I’m sorry for coming across in an unloving way,’ he energizes his wife. When a wife decides to express herself respectfully, and that includes apologizing for her disrespectful attitude, she energizes her husband.

God’s commands are not burdensome, but are given to us to spare us from more pain. Why would God command you to do something that doesn’t work?

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 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.

When there is confusion, I try to refrain from attacking another for not listening carefully (which may not be the case). Instead, I take a run at communicating again, but more clearly.

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.

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

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)

Each of you must focus on what God is calling you to do toward your spouse. Do not focus on what you think God is calling your spouse to do toward you.

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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)

Mistakes can’t be undone, but they can be forgiven.

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

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.

Negative actions rarely produce positive results.

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

Husbands primarily want to hear ‘respect” talk during conflict. Wives primarily want to hear “love” talk during conflict.

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

You cannot use unholy means to achieve a worthy end.

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

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

I often stress that one of the greatest rewards any persevering spouse can have is being a good example and influence on the children in the family.

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

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

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

Clarifying is what you do before you step on your mate’s air hose and deflate his or her spirit. For example, you are having a typical conversation, but you can tell there is a misunderstanding. One of you isn’t being clear or isn’t hearing correctly. Then and there you clarify the misunderstanding before your spouse’s spirit deflates. You lovingly or respectfully clarify matters so that your spouse will not feel unloved or disrespected. The reason you take pains to clarify a seemingly small matter is to prevent the situation from becoming a love and respect issue that needs decoding. Clarifying is what you do to stay off the Crazy Cycle and keep positive, energetic feelings flowing between the two of you, to keep yourselves on the Energizing Cycle.

Your spouse has a need only you can fill.

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.

God rewards your obedience to love and respect, even if your spouse does not respond!

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

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

[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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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)

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

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

Be quick to listen and understand and you have a much better chance of being 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.

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

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

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).

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

If you are seeking positive change in your marriage, you will need to make a positive change in your attitude and actions.

The heart of my communication means the other person cannot get my heart to be unkind, unloving, or disrespectful. Instead, I have made a decision about who I will be independent of the other person. I won’t blame my unkindness on someone else.

A strong woman of dignity puts on respect out of her love and reverence for Jesus Christ. She trusts that His word not only protects and empowers her, but also rewards her with incomprehensible eternal blessings.

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

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!)

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

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.

If we subscribe to the belief that because we are equal we are the same, then we’re going to expect our spouse to respond the way we do.

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

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

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

If a husband loves his wife as he should, she will feel honored and respected. If a wife respects her husband as she should, he will feel loved and appreciated. It’s a win-win.

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

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.

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.

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

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?”

When one of you makes a mistake, control any anger you may feel and trust God completely, no matter what happens.

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