Respectfully Yours - Leader's Kit

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

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.

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

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

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

Negative actions rarely produce positive results.

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

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

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

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

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).

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.

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.

“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.“

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

Our trustworthiness rests on our truthfulness.

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

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

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

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

The mature one in the marriage seldom moves second.

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

We are equal but we are not the same.

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

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

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.

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.

When a husband feels disrespected, it is especially hard to love his wife. When a wife feels unloved, it is especially hard to respect her husband.

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!)

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Assume goodwill about the person you are in conflict with.

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

Marriage is a test of how you unconditionally love and respect your spouse as you obey, honor, and please the Lord.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

We are worth Jesus to the Father.

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

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)

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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)

Your marriage is really a tool and a test to deepen and demonstrate your love and reverence for your Lord.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Research and experience prove that men and women see and hear differently. Recognizing these differences and adjusting to them is absolutely necessary for reaching mutual understanding and better communication.

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.

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

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

God is good and wants what is best for us.

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 have two ears and one mouth; use them proportionately.

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

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

You have to become proactive, rather than just trying to stop the reactive.

You cannot use unholy means to achieve a worthy end.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

“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.

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.

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!

When you play the blame game your marriage never wins.

It is hard to be negative while being thankful.

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

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.