Conference Notebook - Digital Download (Old)

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.

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

Assume goodwill about the person you are in conflict with.

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.

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)

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

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.

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

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

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

Your spouse may meet many of your needs, but your deepest dependency should be on your Lord.

“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.

A strong woman of dignity puts on respect out of her love and reverence for Jesus Christ. She trusts that His word not only protects and empowers her, but also rewards her with incomprehensible eternal blessings.

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

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

Your spouse has a need only you can fill.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.”

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

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.

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.

We have discovered that as women motivate their man God’s way, men are energized to love them better. It doesn’t matter if your marriage is good or seems like there is no hope. We have seen God move in powerful ways even when things looked hopeless.

Do you give yourself grace and your spouse judgment?

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

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

Good intentions do not always produce good words or outcomes.

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

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.

If husbands and wives are to understand the Love and Respect Connection, they must realize that they communicate in code. And the problem is, they don’t know how to decipher the messages they send to one another.

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?

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Your words reveal your heart.

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

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

Assuming goodwill can be revolutionary in relationships.

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.

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

Just because you’re offended doesn’t mean the other person is offensive.

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

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 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.

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

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 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?

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.

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)

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

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

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.

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

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.

[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?”

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.

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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

Clarifying is what you do before you step on your mate’s air hose and deflate his or her spirit. For example, you are having a typical conversation, but you can tell there is a misunderstanding. One of you isn’t being clear or isn’t hearing correctly. Then and there you clarify the misunderstanding before your spouse’s spirit deflates. You lovingly or respectfully clarify matters so that your spouse will not feel unloved or disrespected. The reason you take pains to clarify a seemingly small matter is to prevent the situation from becoming a love and respect issue that needs decoding. Clarifying is what you do to stay off the Crazy Cycle and keep positive, energetic feelings flowing between the two of you, to keep yourselves on the Energizing Cycle.

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

Words of love from a husband are like good medicine that brings life to the marriage.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Before hitting send, ask yourself, "Have I listened carefully and understand the exact issue on the table?"

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

The moment we cry to Him for help, He is already pleased. He gives us strength to love our children.

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

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.

When evil comes at you, you’re the one who makes the choice of whether or not it is going to go into you.

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.

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.

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

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