The Love and Respect Devotional

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.

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

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.

Do you give yourself grace and your spouse judgment?

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!

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Your marriage is a test of your devotion to Christ.

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

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

His love blesses regardless of her respect; her respect blesses regardless of his love.

When we speak before we think, we widen the chances the other person(s) will be notably hurt, frustrated, confused, angry, fearful, or offended by something we’ve communicated.

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.

Husbands, to energize your wife give her face-to-face time, allowing her to talk and share her feelings.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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.

Do you believe that there is a God who really loves you and wants to help you?

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

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.

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.

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

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. A wife can choose to be disrespectful or respectful. A husband can choose to be unloving or loving.

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

We blame people for the bad things we do, but take credit for the good things we do.

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

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

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

You cannot use unholy means to achieve a worthy end.

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

It’s so easy to dismiss our spouse as childish because we don’t have the same vulnerabilities they do.

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.

“Living happily ever after” means knowing how to deal with the imperfect parts of life.

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

When a husband chooses to come across lovingly even though he feels disrespected, he can prevent the Crazy Cycle from spinning and possibly getting out of control.

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.

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.

Truth will carry its own weight if delivered respectfully and lovingly.

Since it is easy to focus on the negative, focus on your mate’s good qualities and express thanks with positive words of Love or Respect.

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

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.

Getting married reveals, usually sooner than later, an incontestable fact: your spouse cannot possibly meet all your needs and desires

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

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 a wife feels unloved, it can be such a shock to her heart that she is oblivious to her disrespectful reactions toward her husband, though any man watching could see it plainly.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

When a wife asks, “Do you love me?” She is not trying to put her husband on the spot. She is simply looking for reassurance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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

It’s true that women have intuition and that men should listen to them. It’s also true that women have blind spots and need the insight of their husbands.

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

The mature one in the marriage seldom moves second.

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

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)

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

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.

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

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.