Respectfully Yours - Leader's Kit

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

When you play the blame game your marriage never wins.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Assuming goodwill can be revolutionary in relationships.

Share what God is saying to your heart, not what you think He needs to say to your mate.

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 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.

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

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

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.

[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?”

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

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

Your wife will feel esteemed when you speak highly of her in front of others.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Being a person who communicates what is true frequently demands tact, and at times it can feel like sidestepping land mines. It takes work to be both truthful and tactful.

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)

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

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.

God’s commands are there to help us, not to hinder us or hold us back as male and female.

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

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.

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.

There is a plan to parent God’s way, even when our children may seek to go their own way at time. The secret is to follow this plan regardless. When you do, I believe you succeed in His eyes.

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.

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

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

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.

[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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Negative actions rarely produce positive results.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

“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.

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

Thank the Lord for all the trouble-free moments in which you and your spouse enjoy Him, each other, your family, your ministry and life as a whole. Ask Him for the strength to accept your measure of trouble, and the wisdom to deal with the annoyances and irritations by loving and respecting each other with new commitment. (You may also want to pray about troubles at work, at church, with the children…) “But those who marry will have trouble in this life” (1 Corinthians 7:28)

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.

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.

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.

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

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).

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.

Good intentions do not always produce good words or outcomes.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God is good and wants what is best for us.

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

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

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?

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

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

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

The mature one in the marriage seldom moves second.

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.

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.

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.

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