Respectfully Yours - Leader's Guide

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.”

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

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

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

Assuming goodwill can be revolutionary in relationships.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

When you play the blame game your marriage never wins.

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.

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.

Can you begin to trust that God feels love for you even when you don’t feel that love?

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

Clearly, in the marriage, in the family and in the household, when you speak words of blessing, you are speaking to the Lord, and for this you will be rewarded.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Good intentions do not always produce good words or outcomes.

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.

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?”

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 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.

Never give up. If you want to have a strong marriage, you need to accept temporary setbacks as part of the game.

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

Your marriage is a test of your devotion to Christ.

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

Do you give yourself grace and your spouse judgment?

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.

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

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”?

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

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

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!

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Your wife will feel esteemed when you speak highly of her in front of others.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

We are equal but we are not the same.

We send each other messages in “code” based on gender, even though we don’t intend to. What I say is not what you hear, and what you think you heard is not what I meant at all.

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.

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

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

God rewards your obedience to love and respect, even if your spouse does not respond!

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

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.

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.

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

You can experience hurt, but it is your choice to hate.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Marriage is a test of how you unconditionally love and respect your spouse as you obey, honor, and please the Lord.

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

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.

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

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

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!

“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.

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

Your spouse can have a need that you don’t have and that’s okay.

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

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.

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

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.