Kingdom Living for the Family.Love & Respect
Kingdom Living for the Family
Pastor E. Keith Hassell
“Love & Respect”
Foundation Scripture: Ephesians 5:22-32
I. The two ingredients for a healthy marriage: love and respect.
A. Beatle’s song: “All you need is love” is not true. Five out of ten marriages end in divorce.
B. Love is what the wife needs, but the husband needs respect.
C. “Dr. John Gottman, professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Washington, led a research team that spent twenty years studying two thousand couples who had been married twenty to forty years to the same partner. These people came from diverse backgrounds and had widely different occupations and lifestyles. But one thing was similar—the tone of their conversations. As these couples talked together, almost always there was what Gottman calls ‘a strong undercurrent of to basic ingredients: Love and Respect. These are the direct opposite of—and antidote for—contempt, perhaps the most corrosive force in marriage.’”[1]
II. Husbands are commanded to love their wives (Ephesians 5:25)
A. Love’s Example: Christ who loved the church (Eph 5:25)
B. Love’s Measure: As we love ourselves (Eph 5:28)
C. Love’s Sacrifice: Giving ourselves (Eph 5:25)
D. Love’s Consideration: To nourish and cherish (Eph 5:29)
1. Nourish: To feed or sustain
2. Cherish: To hold dear, to feel or show love for, to take good care of, protect, appreciate
E. Love’s Pursuit: Oneness in relationship
1. Ephesians 5:31 “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”
III. Love demonstrates understanding
A. The wife is called the weaker vessel (fragile)
1. 1 Peter 3:7 “Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.”
2. The woman is the more delicate and fragile
3. The husband is the head but often the woman is the heart
B. The wife communicates differently than the husband
1. A man is different than a woman. The brain has two halves. One half processes logic and reason. The other half processes feelings and emotions. Biology tells us that in a man’s brain the two halves are disconnected enabling them to separate between logic and emotions in decision making. In a woman’s brain the two sides are connected causing logic and emotion to work together. The Scriptures teach that mankind has been given a mind, will, and emotions and a spirit. Each of these is reflected differently in a man vs. a woman.
2. Illustration: A man and his wife go out to eat with two other couples. The husband, being outgoing, talks to the other couples but rarely interacts with his wife. His wife feels left out and ignored. After the dinner this is the conversation that takes place:
a Wife: “Every time we go out to eat with friends I feel like I am just a fixture on the wall. You never pay attention to me. I feel that you don’t even know I am there.” (emotion)
b Husband: “I’m sorry. Next time I’ll make sure that I pay more attention to you.” (rational solution)
c Wife: “No, don’t do that. That’s not what I want.” (will)
d Husband: “I thought that’s what you said. Okay, what do you want me to do?” (rational evaluation)
e Wife: “I am your wife. It seems right that a husband would pay more attention to his wife.” (mind)
f Husband: “I understand. From now on, I will pay more attention to you.” (rational determination)
g Wife: “Now don’t feel like I want you do anything.” (spirit)
h Husband: “I am confused.” (rational disorientation)
3. Interpretation of what the wife meant:
a Emotion: “I want you to love me.”
b Will: “I don’t want you to embarrass me.”
c Mind: “I want others to know you love me.”
d Spirit: “I want you to be sincere.”
C. The wife speaks a different love language
1. Illustration: Imagine going to a foreign country where you do not know the language. All of your best efforts to communicate with the people leave you and them frustrated. There may be much conversation, but there is little communication or understanding.
2. In Gary Chapman’s book, The Five Love Languages, he identifies five love languages that people use to communicate and receive messages of love. The language they use to communicate love to you is the same language they use to receive love from you. Communicating love to another person in a language they do not understand is like saying “I love you” in a language they do not understand. The five love languages are:
a Words of affirmation
b Quality Time
c Receiving gifts
d Acts of service
e Physical touch
IV. Wives are commanded to respect their husbands (Ephesians 5:32)
A. “Respect” (Webster’s): “to feel or show honor or esteem for; hold in high regard; to show consideration for; avoid intruding upon or interfering with”
B. Card Industry
1. You never see a card from a husband to a wife that says, “I respect you.” Why? She wants to know that she is loved.
2. You never see a card from a wife to a husband saying, “I respect you” because she wants to communicate that she loves him.
C. “Unconditional respect”? We don’t have a problem expecting husbands to have unconditional love to their wives but we feel uncomfortable expecting wives to have “unconditional respect” for their husbands. Is “unconditional respect” an oxymoron? [a figure of speech in which opposite or contradictory ideas or terms are combined (Ex.: thunderous silence, sweet sorrow)]
D. Most men and women feel that respect ought to be earned. Therefore a wife does not feel like she is required to give respect to a husband who has not earned it and a husband feels that he doesn’t deserve respect that he has not earned. Therefore husbands live without the respect they need.
E. Wives common responses to “unconditional respect”
1. “How can I show respect for him when he comes across as so unloving?”
2. “He doesn’t deserve my respect—he hurt me!”
3. “I love him but when I get so upset and angry I don’t want to respect him.”
4. “Love is what matters. If he loved me as I need to be loved, maybe I would have stronger feelings of respect toward him.”
5. “Yes, I have problems that need to change, but the major problems are with him and he needs to change. The truth is he needs to love and respect me far more than he does.”
F. Wives let their husbands know when they do not feel that they love them. But men do not know how to deal with the fact that they are not respected. As a result they think, “If that’s the way she feels about me, then there’s nothing I can do. If I have to earn her respect, then just forget it.”
G. The man is in a lose-lose situation. He is responsible to love his wife unconditionally while trying to earn her respect at the same time. No wonder he gives up and withdraws from the relationship!
H. Respect is a man’s deepest value
1. A woman will die for love. Although some men will die for love, most men will die for honor and respect.
2. The military recruits by targeting the desire in a man to become a man that can be honored and respected.
3. “In one national survey, four hundred men were given a choice between going through two different negative experiences. If they were forced to choose one of the following, which would they prefer to endure? a) To be left alone and unloved in the world, b) To feel inadequate and disrespected by everyone. Seventy-four percent of these men said that if they were forced to choose, they would prefer being alone and unloved in the world.”[2]
4. Men are not saying that they do not need love. They are saying that they need to feel respected more than loved.
I. When do men need to feel respect most from their wives?
1. During times of conflict
J. What inspired your husband to love and marry you?
1. It was not primarily because you loved him, but because he felt that you admired and respected him.
V. The Crazy Cycle (Handout)
VI. It’s time to stop the Crazy Cycle!
VII. Response
A. Husbands: Determine to show unconditional love to your wife in a way that she understands it and feels it to be true.
B. Wives: Determine to show unconditional respect toward your husband in a way that he understands it and feels it to be true.
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[1] Dr. Emerson Eggerrichs, Love & Respect (Nashville: Integrity Publishers, 2004), p. 35.
[2] Dr. Emerson Eggerrichs, Love & Respect (Nashville: Integrity Publishers, 2004), p. 49.