Family and Home Archives

How to Stay Crazy in Love with Your Spouse

Most couples are madly in love on their wedding day. They’re infatuated, passionate, and convinced they’ll always feel this way.

Over time, however, the sizzle begins to fizzle. There’s the first big argument, then little annoyances creep into the relationship, and the couple soon gets caught up in the daily grind of life. Before long, one spouse or the other begins to wonder, “Is this all there is to our marriage? Where did our love go?”

On our Focus on the Family Broadcast “How to Stay Crazy in Love with Your Spouse,” my colleagues Greg and Erin Smalley are with us to inspire couples to build a lifelong, loving relationship utilizing “love secrets”:

True love commits

True love seeks God

True love fights for peace

True love honors

True love needs time to grow

True love embraces

True love endures

We’re discussing what true love looks like and how married couples can express that love to each other in meaningful and godly ways throughout their lifetime.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: family, marriage December 4, 2023 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Holiday Movie Challenge

Are you ready to take on the ultimate holiday movie challenge? It’s easy and, best of all, it will bring you together as a family. Here it is. Between now and Christmas, sit down together as a family and watch as many Christmas movies as you can.

I don’t usually recommend families spend more time in front of a screen, but I’ll happily make an exception in this case. The Christmas season is a wonderful time of year for families to reconnect.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: faith, family November 30, 2023 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Staying True to Your Marriage

The tingles can get you married. They can also get you divorced.

Dr. Gary Chapman has heard a lot of couples in premarital counseling talk about “the tingles” – that emotional flutter we feel when we’re attracted to each other.

“The tingles” play an important role in forming romantic relationships. They turn a simple hello into a lunch date, and before long the couple is so inseparable they decide to get married.

But the tingles fade.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: faith, marriage November 29, 2023 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Barbed Wire and a Well

A Colorado rancher once shared an insight with me that illustrates the balance between discipline and love in parenting. He said he employed two strategies for guiding his cattle to where he wanted them on his ranch. The first was a well. Cattle roam miles of grassland when they’re grazing, but they usually stay close to their water source. The second strategy was barbed wire. The barbs produce just enough discomfort to deter cattle from pushing beyond the boundary.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: family, parenting November 28, 2023 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Laying Your Life on the Line for Christ

On our Focus on the Family Broadcast “Laying Your Life on the Line for Christ,” I’m speaking with Virginia Prodan, who grew up behind the Iron Curtain in Romania, terrorized by dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Although he promised U.S. authorities that he would respect human and religious rights in order to gain most-favored-nation status and be awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in trade, Ceausescu’s regime confiscated Bibles, demolished churches, and persecuted Christians.

Virginia’s family members had their bank accounts seized by the government and their homes raided by armed communist sympathizers.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: faith November 27, 2023 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

What’s Your Lombardi?

When Dr. Tony Evans served as a chaplain for the National Football League, he got the opportunity to speak to players on the eve of the Super Bowl. What he remembers most about that moment was the intense focus he saw in their eyes. Each player was locked in on the task at hand: winning a championship. They weren’t satisfied with a great season or a winning playoff run. They wanted a Lombardi Trophy.

What’s your Lombardi Trophy?

Topics: Family and Home Tags: faith, family November 24, 2023 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Celebrating God’s Blessings on Thanksgiving

I love Thanksgiving.

There’s great food – thank you, Jean – and plenty of football. Most important of all, Thanksgiving is a time for thanking God for His incredible blessings.

I’m thankful for my wife and two boys and for the help we’ve been able to provide families through foster care. I’m also thankful for what God does through Focus on the Family. Marriages and preborn babies are being saved. Moms and dads are becoming better parents, and our ministry is leading people to Christ.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: family November 23, 2023 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Building Lasting Memories in Your Family

Many moms feel overwhelmed by the shopping, cooking, and high expectations of the holiday season.

But making memories doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive. One of author Jessica Smartt’s best memories is taking her first communion class. She doesn’t remember a lot of theology, but she does remember her mother taking her through a McDonald’s drive-thru to get a cheeseburger afterward. Just the two of them together, eating in the family pickup truck.

This time of year, it’s good to remember that a good reason for traditions is to connect with your children, to let them know that their family supports them, and to bond them deeply to their Christian faith.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: faith, family, parenting November 22, 2023 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Somehow Form a Family

In 1969, The Brady Bunch became the first sitcom in television history to depict what was then a new trend in America: a blended family. Mike and Carol Brady, who both had three children from previous relationships, strived hard each week to – as the theme song said – “somehow form a family.” Most of the problems they faced were humorous and easy to resolve in 30 minutes.

Unfortunately, things are rarely that simple in real life.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: family, marriage November 20, 2023 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Fueling Motherhood Through Spiritual Discipline

Before having children, author Heidi St. John’s confidence in God felt unshakable. A few years and a few children later, Heidi felt so discouraged that she could barely get out of bed.

She remembers waking one cold January morning and hearing her children arguing in another room. The day hadn’t even begun, and she was already defeated. She willed herself to her feet by opening her Bible and reading from the Psalms. She soon realized that, while she had placed her confidence in her own abilities, King David’s praises were rooted in his confidence in God.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: kids, parenting November 17, 2023 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura