The Love & Respect Experience (Audiobook)

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.

[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.

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

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

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

Assuming goodwill can be revolutionary in relationships.

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

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.

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.

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)

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

Good intentions do not always produce good words or outcomes.

Self-interest should never come ahead of your spouse’s interests.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Always see your mate as an ally. Feedback is of little use if you see your spouse as an enemy. Giving and receiving constructive feedback is based on feelings of goodwill in both partners. Both of you need to remember that, even if you don’t always agree and even if you become irritated or angry, you are friends, and neither of you means to hurt the other.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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

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)

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

We are equal but we are not the same.

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

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.

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

When you’re truly Christ-centered, instead of child-centered, you will be a more effective parent in the long run.

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

You cannot use unholy means to achieve a worthy end.

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

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.

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.

Be quick to listen and understand and you have a much better chance of being understood.

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Life is too short to fuss and fret over trivial irritations.

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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 mature one in the marriage seldom moves second.

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

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

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.

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

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

God is good and wants what is best for us.

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.

Often the apparent issue isn’t the real issue; the real issue is always a matter of love or respect.

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.

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.

The Love and Respect message is not about a husband earning his wife’s respect by being more loving any more than it is about a wife earning her husband’s love by being more respectful. Always love or respect is given unconditionally according to God’s commands.

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.

Our trustworthiness rests on our truthfulness.

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.

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!

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

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

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.