We-Harmony: R.e.s.p.e.c.t. Series

Welcome everyone to We-Harmony.com. Every once in a while I feel like it’s important for me to talk about our relationships, because when Jesus was asked, what are the greatest commandments, the first commandment is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and the second one is to love your neighbors as yourself. Well, I don’t think there’s a more important, human relationship that we have than the love relationships we have between a husband and a wife, boyfriend, girlfriend,...however the things going to work. Please don’t think this is just for marriage. This is for relationships, because we need to understand how to relate to each other. We’re going to use the Bible. We’re going to be in Ephesians 5. If you want to turn over there, we’re going to be talking about a very important passage from the Bible about what it means to be male and female.

You may not understand this, but we’re different. Here are the top ten things only women understand:

TOP TEN THINGS ONLY WOMEN UNDERSTAND

10. Cats’ facial expressions

9. The need for the same style of shoes in different colors

8. Why bean sprouts aren’t just weeds

7. Fat clothes

6. Taking a car trip without trying to beat your best time

5. The difference between beige, ecru, cream, off-white, and eggshell

4. Cutting your bangs to make them grow

3. Eyelash curlers

2. The inaccuracy of every bathroom scale ever made

AND, the Number One thing only women understand:

1. OTHER WOMEN

Did you know that men and women are wired differently?

Matthew 19:4 "Haven’t you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator ’made them male and female,’?

It doesn’t take being around the opposite sex very long to figure that one out. God wired men and women quite differently. Someone sent me some statements made between spouses and how we tend to hear things differently. Look at some of these on the screen.

Dr. Emerson Eggerich wrote this book, Love and Respect. I’m going to use a lot of stuff from it today. And he said it’s like men have a blue mega phone and blue hearing aide, and women have a pink mega phone and a pink hearing aide. And whenever you say something out of your blue mega phone and it’s heard in the pink hearing aide, it comes across differently than what it would if it was blue and blue.

On the screen

WHAT HE HEARD HIS WIFE SAY, "You’re way too stupid to be trusted driving alone in bad weather at your age."

WHAT SHE ACTUALLY SAID, "Drive carefully, dear."

WHAT HE HEARD HIS WIFE SAY, "Honey, why don’t you put your head in a vice & I’ll turn the handle until your skull explodes."

WHAT SHE ACTUALLY SAID, "Honey, why don’t you turn off the basketball game and let’s just sit and talk."

WHAT SHE HEARD HER HUSBAND SAY, "It’s your lot in life to stop whatever it is you’re doing in order to serve my every need!"

WHAT HE ACTUALLY SAID, "Honey, do you know if we have any more triple-a batteries?"

WHAT SHE HEARD HIM SAY, "Life as we know it will cease to exist unless you can alter the space-time continuum!"

WHAT HE ACTUALLY SAID, "Honey are you almost ready?"

WHAT HE HEARD HIS WIFE SAY, "I’m going to make you wish you were dead for the rest of the week."

WHAT SHE ACTUALLY SAID, "Tell me the truth, honey. Do I look fat in this?"

Look at verse 21, Ephesians 5:21; "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ."

That’s the place we need to begin in our relationships. As a matter of fact I’m trying to do this series so that it’s not just about marriage. This is about relationships period.

This series is for everyone. This information is stuff that Denise and I just really learned a couple of years ago, and I’ve never taught from it. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to do this series. It’s been so simple and so important.

But it starts here -- submit. EVERYONE SAY "I SUBMIT"

Ephesians 5:33, However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

You do realize that countless studies have now shown that a man’s greatest need in life is to be respected, while a woman’s greatest need in life is to feel loved. God is so amazing. He knows how we have been created and how we are supposed to work.

Can I just say something about the Bible? It’s always right.

We are just figuring out this respect thing 2000 years after God told Paul to put it down.

John Gottman -- University of Washington -- why marriages succeed and fail --