Daly Focus Blog
Here at Focus on the Family we’re joining with believers around the world in remembering Dr. Billy Graham and his amazing life and legacy. I hope you had a chance to listen to today’s special radio program featuring a message from the famed evangelist. He is considered the most important and influential evangelist of our time, and rightly so.
Although Focus is a ministry centered on marriage and parenting, it’s no secret that evangelism is central to everything we do.
What if you loved your spouse every day like it was your first day together?
Becky’s dad told her that was his secret to a happy marriage. “Every morning,” he said, “I wake up with your mother, and I treat her like it’s our very first day together.”
That advice inspired Becky … until she thought of what her behavior ought to look like if she loved her husband like that. Then her heart sink a little.
Where is God?
Isn’t that the question most of us ask in times of trouble? How can we live with strong faith day in and day out when there’s not even the certainty of the next heartbeat?
Julie and John Manning are living those questions. In the middle of their son Hunter being delivered by C-section, Julie started feeling lightheaded and dizzy. The faces of the physician, surgical staff, and the anesthesiologist went blurry and their voices echoed in the background.
There’s a well-known story about two shoe salesmen who both went to the same region to look for new opportunities. The first salesman was disappointed to he discover that everyone in the region was shoeless. He called his wife and told her, “I’m coming home. No one here wears shoes.”
The second salesman arrived a short time later and was immediately excited. He called his wife and told her, “Honey, everybody here needs shoes.”
Same circumstances, but two very different outlooks.
God has given married couples a wedding present.
Sex.
The Lord designed physical intimacy to be enjoyed by both husbands and wives. First Corinthians 7 tells us that sex is rooted in mutuality. Husbands are to be sensitive to their wives’ needs, and wives are to be sensitive to their husbands’ needs. Marriage is about serving one another, not demanding your own rights.
Sadly, we live in a broken world that undermines God’s sacred designs. Secular culture portrays sex as primarily for the man.
Parenting is only for adults.
That’s what Dr. Emerson Eggerichs tells parents who struggle with what he calls the “family crazy cycle.”
It works like this: When children feel unloved, they tend to react in ways that feel disrespectful toward their parents. When parents feel disrespected, they tend to react in ways that feel unloving to the child.
And the cycle starts to spin.
Parenting is only for adults because it’s up to mom and dad – not the child – to stop the crazy cycle.
When my two sons, Trent and Troy, were born, I thought they would be a lot alike. More to the point, I thought Jean and I would be able to raise them the same way.
Boy, was I wrong.
Trent and Troy share a lot of the same interests, but spend an afternoon with each of them, and you’ll find out just how different they are. Trent is thoughtful and super-smart. He may be the smartest one in the whole family.
The struggle against perfection begins the moment in childhood when you first recognize that other people expect you to achieve and to measure up. From your performance at school or at work to your performance at home as a parent and a spouse – almost everybody wants or needs something from you.
The pursuit of excellence can fill your life with a lot of great things. It can motivate you to work hard and to excel, for yourself and for others.
I recently had the opportunity to have lunch with Kirk Cameron. He’s a good friend to Focus and he’s currently promoting his new movie event, Kirk Cameron: CONNECT.
Those of you of a certain age will remember Kirk as the teen star of the Growing Pains TV series in the 1980s. More recently, he has starred in a number of successful faith-based films, including Left Behind and Fireproof.
CONNECT addresses a subject that is very important to all of us here at Focus, and if you’re a parent, it’s probably important to you as well.
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.
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.
