Mother & Son

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 key to motivating another person is meeting their deepest need, especially during conflict.

Negative actions rarely produce positive results.

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.

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.

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.

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

Marriage is a tool and a test to deepen and demonstrate your love and your reverence for Jesus Christ.

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

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

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

Pink and Blue perceptions not only affect seeing, they affect hearing as well. Women hear with pink hearing aids and men hear with blue hearing aids. Even more important to understand as you and your spouse seek to gain better communication, you can hear the very same words, but each of you will hear different messages.

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.

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

He will feel appreciated when you disagree with him only in private and honor his authority in front of the kids.

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.

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

When there is confusion, I try to refrain from attacking another for not listening carefully (which may not be the case). Instead, I take a run at communicating again, but more clearly.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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

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?”

It is crucial for a husband and wife to see that neither one is wrong, but both of them are very different--in body function, outlook and perspective.

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.

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)

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

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

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).

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Assuming goodwill can be revolutionary in relationships.

We are worth Jesus to the Father.

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

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

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).

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

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.

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!

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Thank the Lord for the goodwill each of you has toward the other. Ask Him for strength to give each other the benefit of the doubt during moments when someone’s goodwill seems to be lacking. “He who seeks good finds goodwill, but evil comes to him who searches for it.” (Proverbs 11:27)

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.

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

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)

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.

Being friendly to her man is one of the most effective things a woman can do to strengthen her marriage.

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

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

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

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

“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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Don’t conclude that your spouse is wrong when he/she is seeking to do the right and righteous thing.

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.

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

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

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.

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

You speak lovingly or respectfully no matter how your spouse may speak to you in return. Your spouse is not the reason--good or bad--why you speak unconditional words of love or respect. God is the reason, and as you depend on Him, you will become increasingly able to speak lovingly and respectfully to your spouse.

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.

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.

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

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

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)

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.

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

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