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Love & Respect

Pink and Blue: Not Wrong Just Different!
Dr. Emerson Eggerichs

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1)

Marriage: Covenant or Contract?

  • Covenant- agreement, commitment, guarantee, promise
  • Contract- binding agreement between two or more persons or parties; especially: one legally enforceable.

How do we get a desired product?

  • In our marriage, with our children, with our friends
  • Product
    • a person or thing produced by or resulting from a process, as a natural, social, or historical one; result

Love and Respect: Pink and Blue Not Wrong Just Different

  • God made us pink and blue-He made us male and female.
  • “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ Matthew 19:4

Love and Respect: Pink and Blue Not Wrong Just Different

(Genesis 1:27 NIV) 27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

Love and Respect: Pink and Blue Not Wrong Just Different

  • She says, “I have nothing to wear.”
  • He says, “I have nothing to wear.” How can two people say the same thing, but mean something totally different?
  • She has pink sunglasses, hearing aids and megaphones.
  • He has blue sunglasses, hearing aids and megaphones.

Love and Respect
Dr. Emerson Eggerichs

  • “Rather than seeing differences as a compliment, we begin to feel like it’s another complaint. Rather than grinning in the face of these differences we’re griping.”
  • There are going to be moments of tension and conflict, but God has designed that.

Love and Respect
Dr. Emerson Eggerichs

(1 Thessalonians 3:3 NIV) 3 so that no one would be unsettled by these trials. For you know quite well that we are destined for them.

Love and Respect
Dr. Emerson Eggerichs

  • Each one of you must also love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. Ephesians 5:33 NIV
  • “God didn’t say love, love. He didn’t say respect, respect. He didn’t say respect, love. He said a husband must love and a wife must respect.
  • Hostility is the opposite of love.
  • Contempt is the opposite of respect.

Love and Respect:
Conflict With Your Spouse

  • Dr. Eggerichs’ study of 7000 people asked, “When you’re in a conflict with your spouse or significant other, do you feel unloved in that moment or disrespected?”
  • 83% of the men said they feel disrespected.
  • 72% of the women said they feel unloved.
  • We all need love and respect equally, but during conflict our felt needs are as different as pink is from blue.

Cycles of Love and Respect

  • Crazy Cycle: When a husband feels disrespected, he negatively reacts in a way that feels unloving towards his wife.
  • Have you ever had a conflict with your spouse when suddenly the issue isn’t the issue?
  • Was there a moment during the conflict when you saw the spirit of your spouse deflate? You probably just stepped on his/her airhose.
  • It’s so easy to dismiss our spouse as childish because we don’t have the same vulnerabilities as they do.
  • Decode differently to get off the crazy cycle.

The Energizing Cycle

Neither spouse gets up early in the morning thinking of ways to be unloving or disrespectful. That is never the intent.

  • The culture of intimacy has become pink; his love motivates her love and her love motivates his love.
  • The Energizing Cycle Continued
  • The deeper purpose in meeting each other’s needs is to do so as to the Lord.
  • We do this because just beyond the shoulder of our spouse stands Jesus Christ. The Christ follower looks at marriage totally different.
  • You must INFLUENCE differently to get on the Energizing Cycle.

The Rewarded Cycle

  • His Love regardless of her respect.
  • Her Respect regardless of his love.
  • A woman needs love like she needs air to breathe.
  • A man needs respect like he needs air to breathe.
  • The Rewarded Cycle Continued
  • You must obey differently to be rewarded by Jesus Christ.
  • Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. Husbands love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it. (Ephesians 5:21-25 KJV)

What God Commands

  • God gives us different commands:
  • Only husbands are commanded to Agape LOVE.
  • Only wives are commanded to RESPECT (with the Greek word phobeo).
  • A husband and a wife are called by God to reflect His image here in the earth.
  • How can we get off and stay off of the Crazy Cycle?
  • How can we get on the Energizing Cycle
  • How can we get on and stay on the Rewarded Cycle?

Seek God

It is so easy to just want to throw in the towel-for shear frustration, lack of wisdom and knowledge, loss of interest, done all you can do. Before throwing in the towel, I challenge you to seek God.

God Is…

  • a healer.
  • a reward of those that diligently seek him.
  • able to do anything but fail.
  • able to do exceeding abundantly above and beyond anything we can ask or think.