Before You Hit Send

A parent needs to feel respected, especially during conflicts...A child need to feel loved, especially during disputes.

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.

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!

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Negative actions rarely produce positive results.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

“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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

I have concluded that those of us in the church who believe we have the Truth are not using the whole truth. A crucial part of God’s Word has been completely ignored, or perhaps simply gone unnoticed, when it has been there right under our noses the whole time! Many Christian spouses know Ephesians 5:33 and can at least paraphrase it. The Apostle Paul tells husbands to love their wives as much as they love themselves, and wives are to respect their husbands. But is anyone really listening? Perhaps the first step to better communication between husband and wife is to hear what God’s Word clearly says. --Emerson

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

I had often asked God to compensate for my mistakes, but in return had I thought He would give me perfect children?

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

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).

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

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.

“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.“

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.

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.

Every marriage includes trouble some of the time. Do not let the 20% leaven all the rest.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

To stay the course in speaking words of Love and Respect, keep your heart in Scripture, trusting in and talking about His promises to help you.

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

[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.

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

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.

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

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

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!

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.

You cannot use unholy means to achieve a worthy end.

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.

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

Love and Respect is a faith venture, not a formula.

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.

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

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

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

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

If a husband chooses to be a peacemaker--taking the needs and concerns of his wife totally into account during any kind of argument or conflict--his wife will be motivated in turn to respond to his authority during stalemates.

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

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.

Suppressing negative feelings is not loving, respectful or very wise. Speak up tactfully.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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).

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

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.

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

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.

Husbands, even Jesus Himself was asked by a woman, “Do you not care?” (Luke 10:40) When your wife accuses you of not caring, decode her deeper meaning.

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?”

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)

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

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.

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

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

Words of Love or Respect must uplift your spouse, edifying- never manipulating him or her.

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

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.

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

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

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?