Crazy Cycle CD (10 Pack)

Negative actions rarely produce positive results.

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

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.

God is good and wants what is best for us.

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.

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

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

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

You cannot use unholy means to achieve a worthy end.

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

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!

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Your spouse has a need only you can fill.

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

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.

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

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

When your wife comes to talk to you, listen to her. Realize she is coming to you because you matter more to her than anyone else. She has certain emotional needs and only you can meet them. Sometimes she may say things that don’t make sense to you and she is apt to misspeak and exaggerate when she is upset, but don’t put her down. Instead, listen to her heart. Give her a chance to express her concerns and, as she does so, don’t try to fix her. Don’t give her your solutions unless she asks for them.

“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.”

The mature one in the marriage seldom moves second.

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.

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.

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

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

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

When you play the blame game your marriage never wins.

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 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.

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

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.

If you want your wife to express appreciation for your attempts to be loving, you must use thankful words when she tries to speak or act respectfully.

Do you seek to understand or only to be understood?

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

One thing to remember in this culture is if we say something complimentary towards one gender, we aren’t saying something against the other.

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

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.

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)

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Responding to offensive words or actions with your own offensive words and actions is damaging and unproductive.

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.

We are equal but we are not the same.

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

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?

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

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

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)

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

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

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

You must distinguish between “I can’t” and “I won’t.”

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Mutual understanding, not communication, is the key to a healthy marriage relationship.

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.

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

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

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!)

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

Your spouse has a need that you don’t have. Are you going to say there is something seriously wrong with them or will you say “Viva la Difference”?

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

Life is too short to fuss and fret over trivial irritations.

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

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

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

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.

The Love and Respect message is not about a husband earning his wife’s respect by being more loving any more than it is about a wife earning her husband’s love by being more respectful. Always love or respect is given unconditionally according to God’s commands.