The Illumination Project

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)

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

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

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

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

God is good and wants what is best for us.

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

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

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

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.

Good intentions do not always produce good words or outcomes.

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

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

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

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).

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Your spouse has a need that you don’t have. Are you going to say there is something seriously wrong with them or will you say “Viva la Difference”?

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

A woman needs love like she needs air to breathe. A man needs respect like he needs air to breathe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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?

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

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

When you relinquish an offense, you need to send that offense somewhere. So follow Jesus’ example and release it to your heavenly Father.

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.

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

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

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!

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

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

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)

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.

[Husbands] as the church places her burdens on Christ, so a woman needs to place her burdens on her husband. When she shares with you, don’t assume she is asking you to solve the problem. Ask your wife, “Do you want a solution or a listening ear?”

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Husbands, to energize your wife give her face-to-face time, allowing her to talk and share her feelings.

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.

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

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

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

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

You cannot use unholy means to achieve a worthy end.

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

Your spouse has a need only you can fill.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Mutual submission is the only way to live fairly together with mutual authority.

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

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.

It is hard to be negative while being thankful.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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 we feel crippling discouragement by the sinful choices and outcomes of our kids, we must not let this permanently deter us from parenting God’s way.

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.

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

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

When we speak before we think, we widen the chances the other person(s) will be notably hurt, frustrated, confused, angry, fearful, or offended by something we’ve communicated.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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).

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?

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

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

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.

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