Family and Home Archives

Focus on the Family Best Seller List

Week Ending November 19th

Take Your Life Back (Stephen Arterburn & David Stoop)
Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story (Ben Carson, MD)
8 Simple Tools for Raising Great Kids (Dr. Todd Cartmell)
10 Things a Husband Needs from His Wife (Erin Smalley)
All the Colors of Christmas Advent Calendar
How to Stop the Past from Controlling Your Future (Stephen Arterburn & David Stoop)
Upside Down Prayers for Parents (Lisa T. Bergren)
Adventures in Odyssey Children’s Bible
Under Our Skin (Benjamin Watson)
You Have a Brain (Ben Carson, MD)
Swipe Right (Levi Lusko)
The Sacred Search (Gary Thomas)
Adventures in Odyssey: Advent Activity Calendar
Adventures in Odyssey: Countdown to Christmas Advent Collection
Standing in the Fire (Tom Doyle)
Enjoy!: The Gift of Sexual Pleasure for Women (Cliff & Joyce Penner)
Raising Kids of Character (Dr.

Topics: Family and Home November 21, 2017 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Practical Help for Adoptive Parents

If I handed a baby to you, the infant would likely snuggle face first into your shoulder for comfort.

That’s not how it was with my colleague John Fuller’s youngest son. They adopted him when he was nine months old. Even as a baby, he would physically turn away when he was held. He’d accept chest-to-chest and back-to-chest snuggles, but never face-to-face.

That’s how deep attachment issues in adopted children can run. Many children who have lost their parents in some fashion suffer from a sense of rejection and lack of emotional connection that reaches to their soul.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: adoption, broadcast, family November 20, 2017 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

This is What Happens When You Affirm Your Husband

Marital relationship studies generally examine the factors that contribute to the downfall of a marriage. One revolutionary study took an opposite approach. It followed 373 happy, successful couples for 22 years and looked at what went right.

One of the pivotal conclusions the study reached was that couples enjoyed higher marital satisfaction when wives affirmed their husbands. That’s a simple enough premise, but it can be surprisingly difficult for many women to do.

Christian women desire to be good wives and desire to connect with their husbands.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: broadcast, marriage, wife November 17, 2017 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Escaping the Prison of Your Past

“Why should I focus on my past? It’s over. I can’t change anything about it.”

Answer: If your past still affects your present, it’s not really in the past.

Wounds from our past can imprison us within ourselves. Satan is a master at dredging up old hurts and using them against us. Sinful and dysfunctional behavior today is often in reaction to the pain that litters our yesterdays.

Guilt, shame, bitterness, resentment, and anger are a long, slow path to destruction.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: broadcast, church, faith November 16, 2017 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

What’s the Best Family Dog?

Several years ago, I asked whether or not you thought pets went to Heaven.

The response was robust!

Personally, I’ve always appreciated how Dr. Billy Graham responded to that question:

“God will prepare everything for our perfect happiness, and if it takes my dog being there, I believe he’ll be there.”

But today I thought I’d ask a less eternally minded question, but a practical one nonetheless:

What’s the best family dog?

According to the American Kennel Club, here are the ten best:

Topics: Family and Home Tags: family November 15, 2017 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Simple Tools for Raising Great Kids

What can you do tonight to deepen your relationship with your children and empower them to develop strong character?

Simply this: in a genuine way that fits you and your child, make an effort to connect. It doesn’t have to be expensive, complicated, or excessively time-consuming. Even the simplest gesture of love, affection, and physical touch can strengthen the relationship between a parent and a child.

That advice comes from clinical child psychologist, Dr. Todd Cartmell, my guest on our Focus on the Family Broadcast “Raising Kids of Character.” He’ll be providing equally helpful answers to questions that many parents ask:

How do I get my children to listen to me?

Topics: Family and Home Tags: broadcast, family, parenting November 13, 2017 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

In Honor of Veterans Day

John Murphy was on a routine training jump at Fort Bragg when it happened.

He’d just gotten home from a deployment to Afghanistan a couple of months before. John was a proud soldier who was so eager to serve, he dropped out of a full Army ROTC scholarship at Michigan State so he could go straight into active duty.

John grew up with godly parents who loved the Lord and who loved him. But he was a nominal Christian at best.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: broadcast, church, faith November 10, 2017 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Inspiring Boys to Become Men

It’s been said it’s “easier to build a boy than to mend a man.” I agree. So how do we build the next generation of boys into men?

John Wooden was the men’s basketball coach at UCLA for nearly thirty years and is widely recognized as one of the greatest coaches in the history of the game. The dominance of his teams remains unprecedented into the modern era.

Surprisingly, though, his lessons on the court had more to do with being a man than with basketball.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: broadcast, discipline, kids, relationships November 9, 2017 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Returning to a Godly Perspective on Sex and Romance

One of the most powerful forces God created for humanity exists in the realm of love, sex, and romance. The potential for both pleasure and blessing is virtually immeasurable. So is the potential for destruction.

As a group, Millennials and younger generations don’t tend to believe that. A significant percentage see sex as a purely physical experience. That shouldn’t surprise anyone. From an evolutionary standpoint, there isn’t anything sacred about sex. If there is no God, then sex is strictly biological.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: broadcast, intimacy, relationships, sex November 7, 2017 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Guest Blog: The 8 Ways Adoption Has Changed Your Life

I know what you’re probably thinking.

The headline of this post is a bit much. It’s a bridge too far. A significant overstatement.

Sure, you have a great deal of respect for adoption and adoptees, but has the institution of adoption really changed your life and the way you live?

After all, the odds are pretty good that you weren’t adopted. Just between two and three percent of American children are.

Maybe you know somebody who was adopted – or whose family adopted.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: adoption, broadcast, family November 1, 2017 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura