Love & Respect - Communication

Welcome to lesson two in our “Love and Respect” series, for those of you that are following along in the book, we are in chapter two. Before we begin, for all of you that were here last week, what do you remember about the lesson?

{We covered the Scriptural perspective and basis of the entire book. This was an in depth look at Eph 5:33}

For the record let’s look at what the verse says:

Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband. NASU

How are we to view this instruction from God’s word?

· Husbands are to love their wives.
· Wives are to respect their husbands.

What escape clauses are there? Are there any conditional aspects to this? Can this approach to relationship apply anywhere else in our lives? (It applies, in principle, to all adult opposite gender relationships. Men are to have loving attitudes toward women, and women are to have respectful attitudes toward men, it is only the boundaries that change)

At the end of the lesson we took a look at the diagram on page 5, called “The Crazy Cycle”, let’s take another look now. What does it say to you? (Expect many different and interesting answers, all of which have some value to the class.)

Here is mine. It reminds me of a clock, and we begin the cycle at midnight, hands straight up! (Maybe it is an attitude of surrender) The situation is this, a relationship exists, and the man is not demonstrating a loving attitude to the woman. The woman tolerates this for a while, until approximately two o’clock. She then begins to react to the unloving environment established by the man. This reaction goes on for another couple of hours, which gets us to four o’clock.

The man then starts to feel dissed (disrespected), but he soldiers on for four hours, until about 8. He then has had enough of this “stuff” from the woman, so he starts to dish out some unloving attitude. That goes on until about 10 to 10:30, when he feels like he has finished his “I’ll show her” performance. She starts to feel unloved again, and it is almost noon, so it must be time to start to get back at him!

What is happening here? There are four phases that are happening. The two “time outs” where love and respect are missing, and the two reactionary periods when one or the other is dishing it out. Today we are going to look at the times when we dish it out; the time outs are covered in a later lesson.

Before we look at the “dish it out times” I want us go back to the “I surrender” comment I made earlier. The way the cycle is drawn out, it has the women doing the surrendering, but I hope we can all agree that the cycle could just as easily drawn with the “without respect” at the top, where the men would be surrendering.

When we surrender in this cycle who or what are we surrendering to? (Ask for suggestions) My answer is this, we have three permanent enemies in our daily lives:

· The flesh.
· The world system.
· Spiritual forces.

It is to one of these that we are surrendering, and possibly all three at one time. Let’s consider a couple of passages of Scripture here, first let’s look at Romans 8:5-8

For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. NASU

The key verse here is verse 7, where it identifies that the mind set on the flesh, does not subject itself to the law of God. What does this mean? (Allow a little time for answers and discussion) My personal answer is that it is talking about the self-centered mind. The mind of a person who is internally saying, “I’m going to have things my way”. If that is the “mind set” of an individual how will they be able to love and respect? In fact, turning it around, we could say that if you are not demonstrating love and respect, you are showing how self-centered you are! I don’t know how you might feel after hearing that, but I was not pleased with my level of self-centeredness after I meditated on this issue in my life.

The second piece of Scripture to look at is Ephesians 6:10-13. This is in the last part of the letter Paul writes to the church in Ephesus. It comes almost immediately after our series focus verse of 5:33, and is the final, and because of that, most important instruction that Paul gives in his letter

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. NASU

In verse twelve Paul identifies the other two sources we all struggle with. The first is “the rulers, powers and world forces of darkness”, which I called the world system. The second is “the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places”. In practical terms what do these two things mean? It means that the social, cultural, political and legal systems are working to affect us to not live by God’s word. It means that somehow, the unseen powers of darkness are also trying to influence us to not obey God.

Does anybody have examples of this? Some I can think of are:

· Easy and “no-fault” divorce.
· Tolerance. We are supposed to “tolerate” certain behaviors.
· Political Correctness. (Certain statements of truth are not permitted)
· Public Lies. For example “Bush lied, people died”, or “I didn’t have sex with that woman”.

As we begin to grasp what a challenge it is to be loving and respectful, we are basically facing a question like this, “Am I going to try to do things God’s way?” A natural second question could be, “okay I understand the problem, where do I start”? This brings us around to where we were earlier, let us look at what we “dish out”.

When I say, “dish it out” what types of words come to mind? Speak, talk, connect, interact, stick it to him/her. There are many things we can say, but the one that I like the best here is “communicate”. Let’s list some of the ways we “communicate” with the opposite sex.

· Voice, talking face to face, or on the phone, where an actual voice is heard. Some sub-sets of this include, volume (from whispering to shouting), tone (from gentle to rough, or loving to sarcastic) and message (from I love you to I hate you).
· Facial Expression, you probably know that there are several hundred combinations of facial expressions, as a result of the many facial muscles we have. Each of them contains a different message! You might not know that there are entire organizations dedicated to the science of facial expressions; they have web sites and all kinds of information about interpretation of facial expressions.
· Mouth, another way we communicate. Tight lips or wide toothy smiles tell us something. Did you know that back in the 1950s we were all taught to never show our teeth to an alien, because humans are the only species where toothy smiles are a friendly gesture?
· Eyes, I have heard the eyes called the window to the soul, well there might be some truth to that. Eyes speak to us. I remember when my wife and I were first connecting; she could tame me in an instant with her eyes.
· Posture, we all know when someone is really listening from how they are sitting, or if they have their arms crossed, or maybe they look like they are a million miles away. Body language can be so telling, and almost impossible to hide.
· Space, does anybody here, apart from me, have a problem with personal space? I absolutely hate it when people get into my personal space, it is so disrespectful. When someone gets in my face, I have no idea of what they are trying to communicate; I just want to get out of the situation.
· Code, this is the one that I really like. Men speak one language, and women another, and this applies to all of the modes we have discussed. The words we select, our voice tones, body posture and facial features differ between men and women.

At this point, after talking about “codes” I would like to try a simple exercise. I am going to hand out a sheet titled “What do they mean?” Take a couple of minutes to fill it out. Give your best answer to the phrase or gesture I’ve listed for when a woman says or does it, and then do the same for a man. I’ve given an example in the first line. The phrase is “I have nothing to wear”, my answer is that women mean, “I have nothing NEW to wear”; men mean, “I have nothing CLEAN to wear”.

(After a few minutes, start to ask for what people wrote down) As we can all hear each of us has different answers to these few simple examples. How can that be? We all speak the same language and live in the same social culture don’t we?

In researching the general subject of communication I have discovered that it is a very soft science. For example, various studies show that verbal communication accounts for as low as 7% or as high as 33% of all communication, but all the studies agree that non-verbal communication is much more significant than verbal. Also some researchers have estimated that an individual has more than 200,000 non-verbal gestures available, the high number I saw was 700,000. Even 200,000 non-verbal gestures is a “wow” number to me.

Our book has some very good major points to make on this subject of communication. If you have the book with you let’s open them up and take a look at some. We will start at page 31:

· The “issue” isn’t always the “issue”. We all know this don’t we? We do, but we don’t always remember to remember do we? All of us fall into the trap of thinking that whatever is raised in a conversation by somebody is what they really mean. The reality is that the first issue raised is usually not the real issue, and we would all benefit from remembering that. How? The amount of conflict we get into through misunderstandings would go down if we actually addressed the real underlying issues.
· On page 38 – Men hear negative criticism as contempt! There are two levels of negative criticism that a man experiences. Personal and non-personal, both are damaging to him although at different levels. Personal negative criticism will almost always result in the man feeling disrespected. The longer it goes on, the worse it gets, the more definitive it is, the worse it gets. Men, can you give us some examples? Non-personal negative criticism puts a man’s guard up, and gets him ready for a switch from criticizing something or someone else, to attacking him on a more personal level.
· Also on page 38 – Women feel silence as hostility. When a man simply says nothing, the message he seems to deliver to the woman is “I don’t care enough about (the subject) to comment”, and this is understood, as “I don’t love you”. For a woman this makes complete sense, for men, that is a ridiculous statement. Men sometimes close up to avoid exposing their feelings. Exposing feelings sometimes results in further ridicule (in their mind) and so they protect themselves from being hurt. Some men choose to not respond because they know they are angry and will lash out at their wife, who they love.

Do you recall from last week’s lesson that I stated that this series is going to be a challenge? Well, here is the challenge this week.

For the men – don’t lapse into silence toward the significant adult females in your life this week. Make an honest attempt to explain your feelings and thoughts, no matter how they may react. If you are angry, say so, and state you need some time to process what you are experiencing. Agree on a time to get back to the issue.

For the women – do not negatively criticize the men or what they do this week. Make an honest attempt to deal with perceived problems using “I” statements. An “I” statement frames an issue in terms of the first person not the second. An example is, instead of saying “you haven’t finished fixing the leaking shower head”, say “Is there any way I can help with that leaking shower?”

For both – Talk about the real issue, stop prancing around hoping that the other person can read your mind, they can’t!

Now you all have your homework assignments, I guess we can close. Before I do, let me ask if there are any questions on today’s lesson?

Finally, in the context of understanding that we have three “enemies” trying their best to mess up all our relationships, I’ll leave you all with this message from Scripture. In the “Message” paraphrase of 1 Peter 3:8-9 it says:

Summing up: Be agreeable, be sympathetic, be loving, be compassionate, be humble.