Daly Focus Blog
Author Amy Carroll remembers the moment God’s love for her broke through the condemnation that the pursuit of perfection had left hanging over her like a dark cloud.
It happened on a trip to India where she was speaking at a women’s conference. To help the attendees visualize God’s love, the women participated in mock weddings, where they walked down the aisle as brides and imagined Jesus waiting for them as their groom.
One of the last women to participate was a 90-year-old woman.
In set 16 of the That the World May Know series, titled “Cultures in Conflict,” Bible teacher Ray Vander Laan leads viewers on a journey with the Apostle Paul as he preaches in Athens, Greece on Mars Hill and founds the church in Corinth.
Along the way, Ray highlights Paul’s tremendous ability to share God’s truth in a way the culture of his day could understand.
In Corinth, for example, one of the most important structures was a temple dedicated to Asclepius, the god of healing.
Christmas is one of the most special times of the year. That’s partly because of the lights, the decorations, the parties, and the presents that we exchange.
But those things can also distract us from the true meaning of Christmas. On our Focus on the Family Broadcast “Embracing the Reality of Christmas,” we’ll hear from author Al Andrews as he shares a dramatic reading called “A Walk One Winter Night.”
It’s about a Christian man who feels Christmas has become just another holiday, more of a burden than a blessing.
Marriage is central to what we do here at Focus on the Family.
We believe that marriage is the foundation of the family. We also believe that God’s design for marriage is a relationship where both husband and wife are committed to loving and caring for one another for a lifetime.
The problem is, men and women are selfish creatures, and their selfishness comes out in all kinds of unhealthy ways. One of the most devastating aberrations is an affair.
Is your child a rosebush?
A palm tree?
A pine?
How about a boxwood?
God wires our children with unique personality types. The nuances can be quite diverse, but they’re also finite to the point where a model of four personality types can explain them.
There’s power in personality. It’s a window into a child’s soul that parents can look through to see their hearts and to know how to lead them forward through life.
Hettie Britz is an author, a speaker, and one of the foremost voices in parenting advice from a biblical perspective in South Africa.
Are you an avoider?
A pleaser?
How about a chaotic or a vacillator?
Those are four of the five the love styles you and your spouse likely see in your marriage. Their various combinations describe the core patterns driving a couple’s interactions and the problems they cause.
Avoiders and pleasers don’t experience much conflict, but for all the wrong reasons. Avoiders don’t like to have honest conversations because they get messy, and pleasers worry their spouse will get mad.
Dr. Kevin Leman humorously says of children, “We have seen the enemy, and they are small. They’re unionized. The ‘ankle-biter battalion’ is on the move, so you better have a game plan.”
I’m sure many parents would heartily agree with that assessment. To that end, Dr. Leman is with us on our program “Game Plan for Raising Well-Behaved Children” to share a wealth of practical tips that can bring order to the chaos in your home more quickly than you might think possible.
I could have been aborted.
I was born in the ’60s prior to Roe v. Wade, but even then many people felt my mother would have been justified to abort me. She was the perfect candidate. She was 42 and in a high-risk pregnancy. My dad was an alcoholic, and I was the fifth child of a marriage that was already struggling to stay together. I was born into a household in turmoil.
I could have been aborted.
In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis created Aslan, a great lion who ruled Narnia. Susan, a little girl who stumbles into the enchanted world through a magic wardrobe, asks Mr. Beaver if Aslan is safe.
“Safe?” Mr. Beaver replies. “Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King.”
God, whom Aslan symbolizes, isn’t safe, either. He has a “wildness” that we find unsettling. We prefer to think of God in terms we can more easily define, understand … or control.
Do you ever waste time with your spouse?
That may seem like an odd question. But your answer will get to the heart of what your relationship with your spouse is all about.
You see, some couples don’t do too well with “wasting” time with one another. Simply being together with no particular agenda and nothing to focus their attention on except their spouse is uncomfortable.
In other words, they have a hard time with intimacy.
Jim Daly is a husband, father and President of Focus on the Family and host of its National Radio Hall of Fame broadcast. His blog, Daly Focus, is full of timely commentary and wisdom designed to help you navigate and understand today’s culture. His latest book is Marriage Done Right.
