Lightbulb Moments in Marriage

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

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)

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

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

Our trustworthiness rests on our truthfulness.

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

Your words reveal your heart.

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

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.

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 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.

As a wife, if you can start to understand how important your husband’s work is to him, you will take a giant step toward communicating respect and honor, two things that he values even more than your love.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

You cannot use unholy means to achieve a worthy end.

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?”

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.”

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.

Holding back your love or respect will just keep the Crazy Cycle spinning away, but being mature and making the first move could slow it down.

Accidental sparks (unwise remarks) ignite and fuel a fire, and vroom goes the Crazy Cycle.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

[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.

We have different vulnerabilities. We can pass judgment on one another all day long or we can say God made us different and that’s ok.

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

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.

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

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

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

The difference between successful couples and unsuccessful couples is that successful ones keep getting up and dealing with the issues.

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

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

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

We easily see what is done to us before we see what we are doing to our mate.

Marriage is a tool and a test to allow God’s will to be revealed in our lives.

“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.

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.

Self-interest should never come ahead of your spouse’s interests.

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

When a husband feels disrespected, it is especially hard to love his wife. When a wife feels unloved, it is especially hard to respect her husband.

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.

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.

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)

We are worth Jesus to the Father.

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.

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

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.

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

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

If a husband chooses to be a peacemaker--taking the needs and concerns of his wife totally into account during any kind of argument or conflict--his wife will be motivated in turn to respond to his authority during stalemates.

Assuming goodwill can be revolutionary in relationships.

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.

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.

When you look to God and His Word as your ultimate source of significance and security, you don’t demand that your spouse take that role in your life. And as you draw strength from the Lord individually, He draws you closer together as a couple.

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.

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

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.

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).

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

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)

A woman needs love like she needs air to breathe. A man needs respect like he needs air to breathe.

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

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.

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

[Husbands] do you realize the power of just holding your wife’s hand?

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

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

You must distinguish between “I can’t” and “I won’t.”

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

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

When you play the blame game your marriage never wins.

Positive changes flood a relationship immediately when both husband and wife cancel the blame game!

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.

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.

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

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