Family and Home Archives

They Trusted God with Their Micro Preemie Baby

Kayla and Jeff got excited about all of the choices that were coming when they found out they were pregnant. Baby names. Nursery decorations. Pink clothes or blue?

But they could never have anticipated the gut-wrenching decision that doctors would soon confront them with about their baby.

Before they were married, Kayla and Jeff had been told that it was highly unlikely they’d ever be able to get pregnant. So the newlyweds were ecstatic – if not a little surprised – when a pregnancy test came back positive.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: broadcast, faith, parenting February 17, 2017 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Incompatibility Doesn’t Have to Destroy Your Marriage

Author Leo Tolstoy once said, “What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility.”

Tolstoy’s profound insight is precisely why a successful marriage isn’t a matter of fate, chemistry, or a roll of the dice. Good relationships are about finding common ground in the midst of differences that naturally occur between two people.

The problem is, a lot of couples give up on each other too easily.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: broadcast, marriage February 14, 2017 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

How to Love Your Neighbor… Without Being Weird

“And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29).

If we’re being honest, a lot of us would admit that we like the idea of loving our neighbors more than actually getting to know them and investing part of our lives into theirs.

I’m sure your family’s schedule looks a lot like mine. You’re busy with work and kids and everything that goes into making that all run smoothly. If you’re introverted, maybe just breaking the ice with the couple next door and starting a conversation is hard.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: broadcast, faith, relationships February 13, 2017 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Do You Require Excellence from Your Kids… or Perfection?

Preparing a child for adulthood is pretty serious business for parents. After all, the adult world is a competitive place, and we want our kids to be ready for it, don’t we?

That’s why we expect our children to do well in school and in their extracurricular activities. We even want them to behave with their siblings and the neighborhood kids. We parents understand how important it is for them to make good decisions in life.

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

What Would You Do with a Parenting Do-Over?

What’s the biggest “do-over” you’d want as a parent?

If you’re like many parents, your answer is probably some variation on the theme, “I wish I would’ve spent more time with my kids.”

“I wish I would’ve taken my son to more baseball games.”

“I wish I would’ve tucked my daughter into bed more, instead of yelling, ‘Good night!’ from downstairs.”

“I wish I would’ve left work more often and shown up to their games and school activities.”

I doubt any of you picked, “I’d think up a lot more rules,” as your biggest do-over.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: broadcast, parenting February 3, 2017 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Where Is God When We Grieve?

Do you allow yourself to grieve?

Some Christians push away feelings of sadness or anger, worried that those darker emotions indicate a lack of faith. It can certainly feel like God has abandoned us when we’re enduring emotional anguish so deep that we can feel it in our bones.

Think of the agony David was feeling when he wrote in Psalm 22, “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death” (14-15).

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

So You Want to do Devotions with Your Little Ones…

Chuck Colson once said to me, “By age 10, your children’s moral compass is pretty well set.”

His wisdom confirmed what Jean and I already believed from our earliest days of parenting: we only had a few short years to impart biblical wisdom and a love for Jesus to our two boys. It’s a task that we’ve taken seriously ever since. But we also discovered early that “serious” doesn’t have to mean “dull” or “boring.”

Thankfully, there’s no magical “one way” for moms and dads to pass their faith on to their children.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: broadcast, faith, family, parenting January 30, 2017 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

What to Do When You’re Overwhelmed

There’s a risk in going too fast.

I’m reminded of the time a group of friends invited me to an afternoon of road racing at a Le Mans style race track. A buddy and I were handed the keys to Corvettes, Lamborghinis, and other high performance cars and given just one instruction: “Have fun.” The track had S-turns, hair pin curves, and straightaways where you could reach speeds in excess of 125 miles per hour if you were daring enough.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: broadcast, faith, family January 27, 2017 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Meet Jaxon, a Boy Who Wasn’t Supposed to Live

A television show that never ceases to fascinate me when I’m able to catch an episode is “Antiques Roadshow.” If you’ve never seen it, antique experts travel with the show from city to city and offer appraisals for the collectibles people always seem to have tucked away in their attics.

Here’s the part that gets me: Someone inevitably brings in a painting splashed with bizarre colors or an odd-shaped figurine that makes me wonder, “Why would anyone want something like that in their home?”

Then the appraisal comes, and I discover the item is worth a small fortune.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: broadcast, news, pro-life January 26, 2017 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

The Lesson Adam and Eve Can Teach About Cherishing Your Spouse

“…to love and to cherish, till death do us part.”

A lot of us recited similar vows at our wedding, but no sooner did we walk the gauntlet of flying rice than the word “cherish” began fading from our vocabulary. We didn’t mean for it to happen. The years went by, we settled into our lives, and we woke up one day with a marriage that was missing something deeper, more satisfying.

Visible light is perceived as only one color, but shine it through a prism, and you discover it’s actually a whole rainbow.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: broadcast, marriage January 23, 2017 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura