The Illumination Project Journal (10 Pack)

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Thank God for His forgiveness of your mistakes. In trying to be a loving man or a respectful woman, we blow it. Owning up to mistakes is never easy, but it is always the way to move forward. Take good care not to accuse your spouse of mistakes as you pray. Also, pray about any forgiving to be done in the family, any forgiveness that needs to be asked. Children may need forgiveness (and what about Mom and Dad?). “There is no one on earth who does what is right all the time and never makes a mistake.” (Ecclesiastes 7:20)

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

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

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

Words of Love or Respect must uplift your spouse, edifying- never manipulating him or her.

Do you give yourself grace and your spouse judgment?

“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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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)

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

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

Your husband knows you value his friendship when you tell him you like him and you show it (he knows you love him, but he often wonders if you really like him).

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

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

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

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.

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!

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

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.

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

When you play the blame game your marriage never wins.

“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.“

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

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.

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.

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

Negative actions rarely produce positive results.

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

Our trustworthiness rests on our truthfulness.

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

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).

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Do you seek to understand or only to be understood?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A marriage relationship will be energized when couples learn how to motivate each other God’s way.

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.

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

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

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

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)

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

Your words reveal your heart.

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

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.

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

The mature one in the marriage seldom moves second.

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!

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

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.

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.

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

Here is the secret to marriage that every couple seeks and yet few find: Unconditional respect is as powerful for him as unconditional love is for her. It’s the secret that will help you achieve a brand new level of intimacy.

Husbands, to energize your wife give her face-to-face time, allowing her to talk and share her feelings.

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.

When a husband feels disrespected, he has a natural tendency to react in ways that feel unloving to his wife. (Perhaps the command to love was given to him precisely for this reason!) When a wife feels unloved, she has a natural tendency to react in ways that feel disrespectful to her husband. (Perhaps the command to respect was given to her precisely for this reason!)

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