The Crazy Cycle In The Workplace - Study Guide (Download)

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

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

Your marriage is a test of your devotion to Christ.

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.

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

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

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)

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

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.

Negative actions rarely produce positive results.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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 a wife asks, “Do you love me?” She is not trying to put her husband on the spot. She is simply looking for reassurance.

When you play the blame game your marriage never wins.

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

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

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

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

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.

“Respect is a man’s deepest value. I have had numerous men tell me, ‘I would rather live with a wife who respected me but did not love me than live with a wife who loved me but did not respect me.’ These men are not saying that they are indifferent to love. They know they need love, but they need to feel respected even more than they need to feel loved.“

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

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

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

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.

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!

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

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 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.

We are worth Jesus to the Father.

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?

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. Love and Respect reveals why spouses react negatively to each other, and how they can deal with such conflict quickly, easily and biblically.

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

Your spouse has a need only you can fill.

Most marriages will succeed when obeying the command to Love and Respect.

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.

No matter what your struggle- criticism, constant conflict, sex, money, parenting, harsh words- learning to communicate the Love and Respect way can help you make crucial changes and build the kind of relationship that God blesses.

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

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

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

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.

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).

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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!

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

If a husband is commanded to agape- love his wife, then she truly needs love.

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

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.

Your spouse can affect you, but your spouse does not control you.

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.

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.

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

Marital researchers agree that a huge percentage of communication problems between husband and wife are due not to what is said but to how it is said – the attitude and tone of voice.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

You cannot use unholy means to achieve a worthy end.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

We all need love and respect equally. But, during conflict our felt needs are as different as pink is from blue.

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

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

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

It is hard to be negative while being thankful.

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

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

Assuming goodwill can be revolutionary in relationships.