Respectfully Yours - Leader's Kit

A marriage relationship will be energized when couples learn how to motivate each other God’s way.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

A husband may deserve contempt, but that doesn’t win him any more than harshness and anger wins the heart of a woman.

“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.

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.

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.

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

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

When evil comes at you, you’re the one who makes the choice of whether or not it is going to go into you.

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

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

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

Our trustworthiness rests on our truthfulness.

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

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)

Clearly, in the marriage, in the family and in the household, when you speak words of blessing, you are speaking to the Lord, and for this you will be rewarded.

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.

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

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

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

“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.“

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

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

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

When a wife asks, “Do you love me?” She is not trying to put her husband on the spot. She is simply looking for reassurance.

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

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)

A most significant point of this book is this: If what we think is true, kind, necessary, and clear, we need to have the courage to hit send. This isn’t about refraining from speaking; this is about speaking.

Do you seek to understand or only to be understood?

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

We send each other messages in “code” based on gender, even though we don’t intend to. What I say is not what you hear, and what you think you heard is not what I meant at all.

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

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.

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.

Your words reveal your heart.

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.

Assume goodwill about the person you are in conflict with.

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.

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

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.

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).

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

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.

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.

Negative actions rarely produce positive results.

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

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

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

Knowing my spouse will not be able to love or respect me perfectly, I commit to having a forgiving spirit so that I may never speak hatefully or contemptuously.

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.

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

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).

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

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

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.

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.

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

Do you give yourself grace and your spouse judgment?

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

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)

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

It is hard to be negative while being thankful.

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

How we react to a situation reveals more about us than about the other person.

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

[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.

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

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

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

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

Here is the secret to marriage that every couple seeks and yet few find: Unconditional respect is as powerful for him as unconditional love is for her. It’s the secret that will help you achieve a brand new level of intimacy.

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

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

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

Your wife feels you are open with her when you discuss financial concerns, possible job changes or ideas for your future.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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