Motivating Your Man God’s Way (Book Set and Free CD)

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

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 with conflict.

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.

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

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

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

As you pray together, you will truly learn to love and respect together.

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.”

Your words reveal your heart.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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)

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

It is hard to be negative while being thankful.

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

Your marriage is a test of your devotion to Christ.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

A parent needs to feel respected, especially during conflicts...A child need to feel loved, especially during disputes.

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

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).

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

God is good and wants what is best for us.

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

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

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

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

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.

God is not trying to trick you or mess with you. Trust that He wants to reveal Himself to you just as much as He wants to reveal Himself to the world.

Words of wisdom for all husbands and wives are these: We easily see what is done to us before we see what we are doing to our mate.

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

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

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

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.

[Husbands] as the church places her burdens on Christ, so a woman needs to place her burdens on her husband. When she shares with you, don’t assume she is asking you to solve the problem. Ask your wife, “Do you want a solution or a listening ear?”

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

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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

“Living happily ever after” means knowing how to deal with the imperfect parts of life.

Your wife feels you are open with her when you discuss financial concerns, possible job changes or ideas for your future.

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

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

Troubles over sex and money do not cause a marriage to go under. The lack of love and respect during conflict cause the marriage to go under.

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

Do you seek to understand or only to be understood?

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

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

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

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.

Thank the Lord that in the very beginning He created them male and female – Blue and Pink. Ask Him for patience and ever-growing understanding of how men and women see and hear differently. “He created them male and female, and He blessed them.” (Genesis 5:2)

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

When you play the blame game your marriage never wins.

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?

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

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

You cannot use unholy means to achieve a worthy end.

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.

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

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.

Do you give yourself grace and your spouse judgment?

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

Often both spouses have goodwill but are not deciphering each other’s code. She criticizes out of love, but he “hears” only disrespect. He distances himself to prevent feelings from escalating, which is the honorable thing to do, but she “sees” only his failure to be loving!

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)

We are worth Jesus to the Father.

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.

Though the end can be worthy (to be loved and respected), when each uses unholy means (unloving and disrespectful words and actions), it will not achieve those ends. We must treat others as we expect them to treat us. To deny this makes us arrogant or fools, or both.

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

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.