Family and Home Archives

How Women Can Move from Loneliness to Connection

The percentages are hard to know for sure, but research indicates that 50 percent or more of all women feel lonely.

Dr. Joneal Kirby points to several reasons why those numbers are so high. For one, social media has caused an increase in superficial relationships. Some women have dozens of friends on Facebook, but very few with whom they can talk face-to-face. They don’t meet for coffee with anyone, and they have no one with whom they can get beneath the surface, share their hearts, and “do life.”

Women are also busier than ever.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: broadcast, relationships October 17, 2017 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Adopting in the Empty Nest Years

Terrie and Cal’s son is 38. Their oldest daughter is 34. Abbey, their youngest, is 12.

That’s right – 12.

How did that happen? Well, it’s quite a story. It’s something of a miracle, too. Not a medical miracle, but the sort of miracle made possible by adoption.

Before she stepped into Terrie and Cal’s lives, Abbey was removed from her biological mother at a young age, then cycled through a revolving door of adoptive families, foster parents, and residential treatment centers for adolescents.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: adoption, broadcast October 16, 2017 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

How to Steer (Not Pull) Your Kids in the Right Direction

Mom and Dad, are you a tug boat or a rudder?

You can tell by the way you motivate your children. Tug boat parents pull their children through the water to get them going the right direction. Rudder parents steer them in the way they should go.

We’re all tug boats from time to time. I know I’ve grabbed the rope and started to pull when one of my boys hasn’t made a good decision. That urge to force them in the right direction usually plays upon my concern for their health and well-being.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: broadcast, parenting October 10, 2017 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Connecting with Your Busy Spouse

Proverbs 19:15 says, “Slothfulness casts into a deep sleep, and an idle person will suffer hunger” (ESV).

Second Thessalonians 3:10 says, “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat” (ESV).

Those Scriptures and others warn us against laziness. God expects us to work and blesses us through it.

Some of us overcorrect and swing to the other extreme. The busier the better.

If “idle hands are the devil’s workshop” then busyness is his playground.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: broadcast, marriage, relationships October 9, 2017 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

What to Do When Life Knocks You Down

What do you do when you’re at the top of the world one minute and scraping the bottom of the barrel the next?

Former major league pitcher Brian Holman has had to answer that very question … many times.

In 1999, his son David fell thirty feet from a ski-lift and suffered multiple severe injuries. When he got to the hospital, doctors ran an MRI and discovered David had a brain tumor. They successfully removed it, but David had a post-surgical stroke and needed extensive rehab to recover.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: broadcast, faith October 6, 2017 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Guiding Your Young Adult to a Vibrant Faith

A young man named Billy Riley was in a philosophy program at a small liberal arts college in western Pennsylvania. His Human Origins class offered some of the greatest challenges a Christian student could ever face. Not only was he confronted with opposing worldviews, but his professor was biased in his teaching approach.

Billy was mature enough in his faith that he befriended the professor. They had great conversations and vigorous debate after each class. They eventually put together a school symposium on the existence of God.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: broadcast, faith, parenting October 2, 2017 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

A Better Way to Resolve Marriage Conflict

There’s a reason so many couples have a hard time resolving marital conflict. When a disagreement erupts, they immediately sit down, start talking, and try to work out their differences.

Kinda sounds like the correct thing to do, doesn’t it? But according to my colleague, Dr. Greg Smalley, that’s the “absolute worst” thing you could do. Working through a disagreement with your spouse is part of the equation, but it’s not the place to begin.

Jesus laid out the proper path of reconciliation in Matthew 7:3 (ESV): “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?”

Tempers can flare and hearts can close in the midst of conflict.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: broadcast, marriage September 26, 2017 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Tips to Build Your Child’s Faith Foundation

What do you do in the car with your kids? What about at breakfast or at the dinner table? How about in the backyard when you’re throwing the ball with your boys or playing “chase” with your daughters?

Scripture provides a great idea in Deuteronomy 6:6-7:

“And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (ESV).

Topics: Family and Home Tags: broadcast, faith, parenting September 25, 2017 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Understanding Teen Depression and Suicide

Focus on the Family is airing an important two-day broadcast titled “Understanding Teen Depression.”

Depression and suicide rates among kids are staggering. Everyone should be concerned. Right here in Colorado Springs, we’ve had an escalation of teen suicide clusters that is breathtaking, with two schools not far from our campus having a total of 12 suicides in the last three years.

That sort of pain is not unique to our community. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, more than 3 million adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17 report at least one major depressive episode in the past year, and more than 2 million report severe depression has impeded their daily functioning.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: broadcast, news, parenting September 22, 2017 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

How to Stay in Love after 25 Years of Marriage

When it comes to marriage, Bob Kraning and his wife, Carol, have got the experience that counts. In May, they celebrated 60 years as husband and wife.

Whenever I hear about a couple like that, I can’t help but wonder, “What’s their secret?”

Bob provides some of the answers in a recorded message called “Twenty-Five Years and Still in Love.” Their “secrets” are actually timeless truths available to all of us. That’s why this program has been a blessing to countless marriages for the nearly 30 years we’ve been airing it.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: broadcast, marriage September 18, 2017 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura