The 4 Wills of God

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

We have to step back as Christ followers and ask, “Do I have false expectations that my relationship should be romantic 99% of the time?”

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.

She’ll feel at peace with you when you let her vent your frustrations and hurts and don’t get angry and close her off.

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

Just because you may feel unloved or disrespected does not mean your spouse is sending that message.

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

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.

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)

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

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

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)

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.

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.

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.

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

God is good and wants what is best for us.

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.

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.

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

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!

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

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).

When you play the blame game your marriage never wins.

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

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

Assuming goodwill can be revolutionary in relationships.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

It is hard to be negative while being thankful.

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

The heart of my communication means the other person cannot get my heart to be unkind, unloving, or disrespectful. Instead, I have made a decision about who I will be independent of the other person. I won’t blame my unkindness on someone else.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

You speak lovingly or respectfully no matter how your spouse may speak to you in return. Your spouse is not the reason--good or bad--why you speak unconditional words of love or respect. God is the reason, and as you depend on Him, you will become increasingly able to speak lovingly and respectfully to your spouse.

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

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

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

Thank the Lord that in the very beginning He created them male and female – Blue and Pink. Ask Him for patience and ever-growing understanding of how men and women see and hear differently. “He created them male and female, and He blessed them.” (Genesis 5:2)

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

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)

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Accidental sparks (unwise remarks) ignite and fuel a fire, and vroom goes the Crazy Cycle.

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

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

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

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.

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

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?

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

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.

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)

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

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.

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

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.

Your marriage is a test of your devotion to Christ.

Good intentions do not always produce good words or outcomes.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

When you love or respect unconditionally regardless of the outcome, you are following God and His will for you.

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.

Your words reveal your heart.

Do you seek to understand or only to be understood?

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

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.