Conference Notebook - Digital Download (Old)

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

We might say that every negative action in the family has an equal and opposite negative reaction.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

This is the Rewarded Cycle: His love blesses regardless of her respect and her respect blesses regardless of his love.

To not forgive is to shoot yourself in the foot and put extra gas in the Crazy Cycle.

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

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

Assume goodwill about the person you are in conflict with.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our trustworthiness rests on our truthfulness.

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

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

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

God is good and wants what is best for us.

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

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

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

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

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

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

We must bring our identity in Christ to our parenting—we must not derive our identity from our children.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

You have to become proactive, rather than just trying to stop the reactive.

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.

We can communicate the truth in the best of manners, but the person may be so insecure he or she can only react and attack like a wounded bear.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

God’s commands are there to help us, not to hinder us or hold us back as male and female.

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

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.

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.

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

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

How we react to a situation reveals more about us than about the other person.

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

Do you seek to understand or only to be understood?

We are equal but we are not the same.

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 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.

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

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

Avoid like the plague trying to punish each other as a means of “motivation.” Christ-followers instinctively know that this destroys any opportunity to act out of reverence for Christ. In all marital issues, love and reverence for Christ must be our primary motivation.

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.

Always try to look at your spouse the way Jesus does.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

You cannot use unholy means to achieve a worthy end.

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

Unconditional respect means we confront their wrongdoings respectfully. We do not become uncivil because they are. Who they fail to be does not determine who we will be.

Although the Crazy Cycle is not what God intends for any marriage, all couples get on it at times from one degree to another.

We can all have moments of anger, but this does not mean we have to lose control and sin.

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

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.”

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

Your hunger for God can create an appetite in your children.

The mature one in the marriage seldom moves second.

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!)

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.

She’s not wrong for not being male. He is not wrong for not being female. When you put pink and blue together, you get purple, the color of royalty; the color of God. Together, a husband and wife reflect God’s image.

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.

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.

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