Motivating Your Man God's Way: Discover One Word that Energizes Him to Love

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Do you seek to understand or only to be understood?

Assuming goodwill can be revolutionary in relationships.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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)

You have to become proactive, rather than just trying to stop the reactive.

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

Good intentions do not always produce good words or outcomes.

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)

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.

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

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

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

When a husband feels disrespected, it is especially hard to love his wife. When a wife feels unloved, it is especially hard to respect her husband.

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

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).

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

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.

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

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

We are equal but we are not the same.

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.

Unconditional respect is as powerful to him as unconditional love is to her.

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

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

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.

Do you give yourself grace and your spouse judgment?

[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?”

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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?

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

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

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

Your marriage is a test of your devotion to Christ.

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

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

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)

You cannot use unholy means to achieve a worthy end.

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

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

Research and experience prove that men and women see and hear differently. Recognizing these differences and adjusting to them is absolutely necessary for reaching mutual understanding and better communication.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

God is not trying to trick you or mess with you. Trust that He wants to reveal Himself to you just as much as He wants to reveal Himself to the world.

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.

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.

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

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.

Don’t label each other as bad because you differ on how you solve your troubles.

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.”

It’s so easy to dismiss our spouse as childish because we don’t have the same vulnerabilities they do.

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!)

“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.“

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

God is good and wants what is best for us.

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.

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

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

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

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 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.