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Browse through and read hundreds of articles on the topic of marriage
You’ve probably heard the phrase “happy wife, happy life” before. Maybe it’s in the context of something simple, like choosing what restaurant to eat at or not leaving dirty clothes on the bathroom floor.
The idea of unconditional respect for the husband has always been the Love and Respect message’s unique feature, based on Ephesians 5:33. Many books stress Paul’s instruction for husbands to love their wives (“each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself . . .”), but few spend equal space if any at all, to the rest of the verse (“. . . and the wife must respect her husband”).
Many wives share disappointment that their husbands rarely talk to them at a deeper level. “Emerson, when we were dating, we used to talk long into the night getting to really know each other. What happened to him?”
In the beginning, after God had created Adam and placed him in the garden to cultivate it, He said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him” (Genesis 2:18).
In the Bible, we find two realities to which we are to respond: God’s commands and God’s promises. God calls us to obey His commands and trust His promises. Most of us have sung the song "Trust and Obey,” which captures these two quintessential truths.
In the Bible in Ephesians 5:33 God commands a husband to love his wife and a wife torespect her husband. God’s Command to a Husband Apparently, a husband is under divine command to be a loving person since he reacts too often in ways that feel unloving to his wife. This is less about his wife being lovable and more about him obeying God’s command to clothe himself with a loving attitude.
Q: We want to have a Love and Respect marriage, but we keep falling into our old patterns. This is harder than we thought. Are we missing something? Dr. E says: One of our chief concerns at Love and Respect is not that people hear the message, important as that is, but that couples will go on to practice love and respect effectively in their daily lives. Simple isn’t easy.
Nothing is more exciting than to hear from someone whose marriage was literally brought back to life when it appeared to be dead. Recently we heard from a wife who made a decision to obey God’s command in Ephesians 5:33, even after they were separated! Read what she says:My husband wanted a divorce.
Have you ever heard the expression “unconditional respect”? For most, this is a contradiction of terms. Like Jumbo Shrimp. Doesn’t respect need to be earned? Most everyone says, “Love is unconditional but respect must be earned.” Unearned respect strikes us as an incongruity like “disciplined gluttony.”
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