The 4 Wills of God

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

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

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.

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.

Marriage is a tool and a test to allow God’s will to be revealed in our lives.

Your marriage is a test of your devotion to Christ.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

It is hard to be negative while being thankful.

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!

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

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.

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)

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

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. Love and Respect reveals why spouses react negatively to each other, and how they can deal with such conflict quickly, easily and biblically.

Words of wisdom for all husbands and wives are these: We easily see what is done to us before we see what we are doing to our mate.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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?

The mature one in the marriage seldom moves second.

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

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!)

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

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.

So I encourage every husband and wife to commit to the Jesus Way of Talking. Instead of allowing the stress of the situation to control you, you can say to yourself, “Because I love the Lord and I know that He rewards every good word, I am going to be truthful even if my spouse is not. I will also be uplifting, forgiving, thankful and scriptural in my speech because my ultimate goal is to please the Lord. Whatever my spouse’s weaknesses or bad habits might be, I will not let them cause me to sin with my lips.”

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Do you seek to understand or only to be understood?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Don’t pressure yourself with perfection. We are going to fail. A righteous man falls 7 times but gets back up.

When you play the blame game your marriage never wins.

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)

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

When a husband chooses to come across lovingly even though he feels disrespected, he can prevent the Crazy Cycle from spinning and possibly getting out of control.

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.

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.

We get on the Crazy Cycle because without love a wife reacts without respect, and without respect a husband reacts without love.

[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.

Could you be facing a crisis in faith more than a crisis in your marriage?

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.

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

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

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

Negative actions rarely produce positive results.

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.

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