Building Blocks Study Guide

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?”

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.

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.

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

No matter what your struggle- criticism, constant conflict, sex, money, parenting, harsh words- learning to communicate the Love and Respect way can help you make crucial changes and build the kind of relationship that God blesses.

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

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.

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

When you play the blame game your marriage never wins.

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

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

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.

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

A husband may deserve contempt, but that doesn’t win him any more than harshness and anger wins the heart of a woman.

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

Assume goodwill about the person you are in conflict with.

Do you bow to the influence of Hollywood or God’s Holy Word?

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.”

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

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.

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

Words of Love and Respect must include thankfulness spoken to or about your spouse; don’t fixate on weaknesses and faults.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

[Women], your self-love cannot be derived from your husband’s love. It can affect it, but it does not determine it.

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

Could you be facing a crisis in faith more than a crisis in your marriage?

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Do you seek to understand or only to be understood?

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

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 conclude that your spouse is wrong when he/she is seeking to do the right and righteous thing.

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

Your words reveal your heart.

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

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

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)

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.

Marital researchers agree that a huge percentage of communication problems between husband and wife are due not to what is said but to how it is said – the attitude and tone of voice.

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

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.

When others do not respond to our communication, we need to look first at our communication style. Is the other person incapable of hearing what we have to say? Or are we abrupt, brusque, and curt?

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.

The mature one in the marriage seldom moves second.

Your spouse has a need only you can fill.

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.

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

Do you give yourself grace and your spouse judgment?

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

We are worth Jesus to the Father.

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

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.

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

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

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.

When you come home after you have been apart, the first few moments of reconnecting will set the tone for the rest of the evening.

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

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

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.

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.

Good intentions do not always produce good words or outcomes.

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.

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

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)

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

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

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