Love & Respect Live Conference Notebook

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

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

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.

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

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.

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 with conflict.

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

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.

When you play the blame game your marriage never wins.

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

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

To stay the course in speaking words of Love and Respect, keep your heart in Scripture, trusting in and talking about His promises to help you.

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

We are worth Jesus to the Father.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

The mature one in the marriage seldom moves second.

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

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!

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

Be a part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Negative actions rarely produce positive results.

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.

The woman absolutely needs love, and the man absolutely needs respect. It’s as simple- and as difficult- as that.

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

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

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

He will feel appreciated when you recognize his problem-solving approach as his male brand of empathy.

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

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

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

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.

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”?

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.

To get offended is easy, but to forgive is within your power as you walk in His steps.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

It is hard to be negative while being thankful.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Let the Lord change you, but don’t try to change each other.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

[Women], as you enter quiet dignity, not preaching at your husband or scolding him as though you were his mother, something happens in his soul as a male.

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.

Your spouse has a need only you can fill.

God is good and wants what is best for us.

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

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

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

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).

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

Good intentions do not always produce good words or outcomes.

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)

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

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 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.

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

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