The Love and Respect Devotional

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.

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.

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

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

“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.

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

“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.“

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.”

There is power and freedom that comes in understanding that no one can cause you to react in a certain way. It is your choice.

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

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

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

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

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

We are worth Jesus to the Father.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Every marriage includes trouble some of the time. Do not let the 20% leaven all the rest.

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)

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

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

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

There is a plan to parent God’s way, even when our children may seek to go their own way at time. The secret is to follow this plan regardless. When you do, I believe you succeed in His eyes.

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)

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.

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.

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

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

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

Do you seek to understand or only to be understood?

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

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

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

Both Judas and Peter denied Jesus Christ, but there is a huge difference between a Judas and a Peter.

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

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

It is hard to be negative while being thankful.

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

Share what God is saying to your heart, not what you think He needs to say to your mate.

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

When you relinquish an offense, you need to send that offense somewhere. So follow Jesus’ example and release it to your heavenly Father.

Always see your mate as an ally. Feedback is of little use if you see your spouse as an enemy. Giving and receiving constructive feedback is based on feelings of goodwill in both partners. Both of you need to remember that, even if you don’t always agree and even if you become irritated or angry, you are friends, and neither of you means to hurt the other.

God is good and wants what is best for us.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Our trustworthiness rests on our truthfulness.

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

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)

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Since it is easy to focus on the negative, focus on your mate’s good qualities and express thanks with positive words of Love or Respect.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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!

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.

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.

His love blesses regardless of her respect; her respect blesses regardless of his love.