Love & Respect Live Conference Notebook

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

It is hard to be negative while being thankful.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Your husband knows you appreciate his desire to protect and provide when you praise his commitment to provide for you. You empathize when he reveals his male mindset about position, status, or rank at work.

Our trustworthiness rests on our truthfulness.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Although the Crazy Cycle is not what God intends for any marriage, all couples get on it at times from one degree to another.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

His love motivates her respect. Her respect motivates his love.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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).

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

His love blesses regardless of her respect; her respect blesses regardless of his love.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

When you play the blame game your marriage never wins.

Stay the course regardless of the child’s respect and obedience. This is the Family Rewarded Cycle: a parents love unto Christ regardless of the child.

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.

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

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)

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.

“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.

Mistakes can’t be undone, but they can be forgiven.

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

Your spouse has a need only you can fill.

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

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

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

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.”

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.

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.

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