Before You Hit Send

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

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

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.

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

Research and experience prove that men and women see and hear differently. Recognizing these differences and adjusting to them is absolutely necessary for reaching mutual understanding and better communication.

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

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)

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.

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.

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

When we feel crippling discouragement by the sinful choices and outcomes of our kids, we must not let this permanently deter us from parenting God’s way.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Your marriage is a test of your devotion to Christ.

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.

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

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).

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

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!

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.

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.

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

Respect for the husband is just as important as love for the wife.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

Do you understand that God feels compassion for you, no matter what you have done or what your circumstances may be?

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

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.

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

Do you seek to understand or only to be understood?

Your spouse has a need that you don’t have. Are you going to say there is something seriously wrong with them or will you say “Viva la Difference”?

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.

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

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.

Before hitting send, ask yourself, "Have I listened carefully and understand the exact issue on the table?"

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

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

Do you give yourself grace and your spouse judgment?

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

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

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.

We are worth Jesus to the Father.

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

Refuse to let evil turn you into a contemptuous and hateful person.

The more we are upset at something, the wiser it is to let twenty-four hours pass before responding.

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

“With eyes of faith, envision Jesus standing just beyond the shoulder of your spouse and listening to every word you speak in every conversation, pleasant or tense. When you speak lovingly or respectfully to your spouse, you are speaking to Christ. Your spouse just happens to be there too.” This truth has sanctified the lips of many. Instead of giving their spouse a verbal whipping or choking on the idea of saying anything positive, now some spouses are motivated to speak words of unconditional love or respect.

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

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

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.”

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

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.

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

Negative actions rarely produce positive results.

When sorting out how to slow down the Crazy Cycle, it helps to remember that men are commanded to love because they don’t love naturally, and on the other side, women are commanded to respect because they don’t respect naturally.

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

Our trustworthiness rests on our truthfulness.

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

Whose voice are you listening to: Hollywood or God’s Holy Word?

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

No one can really practice Love and Respect unless he or she does it as unto Jesus Christ.

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

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

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

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

The Lord made women (Pink) and men (Blue) with differences, and He expects us to recognize and deal with those differences in a loving and respectful way.

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

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

[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.

Being a person who communicates what is true frequently demands tact, and at times it can feel like sidestepping land mines. It takes work to be both truthful and tactful.

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

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

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.

Just because you’re offended doesn’t mean the other person is offensive.

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.

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

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

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.

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

The parent-child relationship is as easy, and as difficult, as love and respect.

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.

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

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.

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.

Wives, you never know: The way you handle this [conflict] might bring your husband not only back to you, but to God. Husbands, you never know: The way you handle this [conflict] might bring your wife not only back to you, but to God. (1 Corinthians 7:16)

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.

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!

You have two ears and one mouth; use them proportionately.

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?”