Building Blocks Study Guide

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.

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

Assuming goodwill can be revolutionary in relationships.

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

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.

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.

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)

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

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

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.

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.

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

Negative actions rarely produce positive results.

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.

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

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

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!

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

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

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.

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

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

Just because you may feel unloved or disrespected does not mean your spouse is sending that message.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

With a better understanding of God’s promises, you will be on your way to a renewed mind and a changed life.

Do you give yourself grace and your spouse judgment?

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

Unconditional respect is as powerful to him as unconditional love is to her.

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

Holding back your love or respect will just keep the Crazy Cycle spinning away, but being mature and making the first move could slow it down.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Your marriage is a tool and a test to deepen and demonstrate your love and reverence for Jesus Christ. God is using your spouse to bring you an eternal reward.

Self-interest should never come ahead of your spouse’s interests.

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

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.

You cannot use unholy means to achieve a worthy end.

Love and Respect is a faith venture, not a formula.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do you understand that God feels compassion for you, no matter what you have done or what your circumstances may be?

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

Your words reveal your heart.

Men are solution oriented, they love to solve problems. They want to be helpful.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Above all trust God when the “whys” of life threaten to overwhelm you.

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

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.

Do you seek to understand or only to be understood?

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.

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.

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

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

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?”

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

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.

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.

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.

Assume goodwill about the person you are in conflict with.

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

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.

She’s not wrong for not being male. He is not wrong for not being female. When you put pink and blue together, you get purple, the color of royalty; the color of God. Together, a husband and wife reflect God’s image.

Wives, you never know: The way you handle this [conflict] might bring your husband not only back to you, but to God. Husbands, you never know: The way you handle this [conflict] might bring your wife not only back to you, but to God. (1 Corinthians 7:16)

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?

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.

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.

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

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.