Love & Respect Live Conference Notebook

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.

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

We are equal but we are not the same.

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

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

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.

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.

Do you seek to understand or only to be understood?

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.

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

You can be right in the argument, but wrong in your approach.

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

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.

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.

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

“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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

“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.“

The more we are upset at something, the wiser it is to let twenty-four hours pass before responding.

Husbands primarily want to hear ‘respect” talk during conflict. Wives primarily want to hear “love” talk during conflict.

Do not live by the standards of Hollywood; trust what God says in His Holy Word.

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.

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.

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

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

Negative actions rarely produce positive results.

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

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

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

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

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).

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

You cannot use unholy means to achieve a worthy end.

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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.

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)

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

You may believe that the careless, unloving or disrespectful words you speak are because your spouse is causing you to speak this way, but Jesus says that it is coming out of your heart.

When you play the blame game your marriage never wins.

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.

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.

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

[Women], your self-love cannot be derived from your husband’s love. It can affect it, but it does not determine it.

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

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

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

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

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

To build a lasting legacy, use proven wisdom that you glean from the Lord.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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