Daly Focus Blog
For many couples, money can be a source of intense confusion and despair. Most of us weren’t taught how to manage money well. We rely on tips we pick up along the way from family, friends, and social media.
On our Focus on the Family Broadcast “Finding Financial Freedom Together as a Couple,” our guests Bob and Linda Lotich are with us to share wise and godly money management principles that will bless your marriage and put your money to use for the Kingdom of God.
The Christian community talks routinely about choosing life. One expression of that is reaching out to women in desperate situations before they make the life-altering decision to terminate a pregnancy.
But what about after they’ve chosen abortion?
On our Focus on the Family Broadcast “Finding Grace After an Abortion,” we’re talking to Serena Dyksen – speaker, author, and founder of She Found His Grace, a ministry that helps women who have experienced abortion or sexual trauma – about how to help women who have suffered the trauma of abortion find grace and recovery.
It’s much easier to tell your spouse, “I love you,” than to show them through your actions.
That truth is illustrated in the number of questions we get from married couples about navigating busy schedules, financial issues, and communication and conflict. Each of these topics represent small everyday moments that easily turn into big disruptions to marital unity.
Authors Matt and Lisa Jacobson are with us on our Focus on the Family Broadcast “Learning to Love Your Spouse Well” to encourage husbands and wives to serve and love each other well.
We tend to worry about the wrong things, and nowhere is this more prominent and prevalent than when it comes to identifying and focusing on the most critical problem facing humanity.
Contrary to the elite opinions served up across the nation’s major editorial pages and on television news programs, not to mention subtly and cleverly inserted into everything from children’s television, advertisements to major Hollywood releases, it’s not the climate – and not by a lot.
To experience wholeness, five desires of our hearts must be met:
Security. Who can I trust?
Identity. Who am I?
Belonging. Who wants me?
Purpose. Why am I alive?
Competence. What do I do well?
Each of those are listed in their correct order, by the way. If you feel secure, you’re more likely to discover the deepest passions and strengths of your identity. Out of those, you’ll discover your purpose and develop competence.
Matthew 6:33 says, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”
Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.
The cost of freedom is high.
As today is Memorial Day, our Focus on the Family Broadcast “Remembering the Fallen and Their Families” is an expression of gratitude to the brave servicemen and women who have died defending freedom. We honor the fallen and offer a humble and heartfelt “thank you” to every family who has lost a husband or a wife, a mom or a dad, a son or a daughter, or even a friend or a neighbor.
On our Focus on the Family Broadcast with our guest author Wendy Speake, “Understanding the Goodness of God’s Word,” we’re discussing the topic of “feasting.” Not on food but on Scripture.
She’s written a great book called The 40-Day Feast: Taste and See the Goodness of God’s Word about how to ingest and savor the Bible and understand God more deeply.
The idea of feasting originated in the Garden of Eden. Before God made humans, he created the food to sustain them.
When my boys were 6 and 8, Jean and I took them to Disneyland. That day, they were tired, wanted their own way, and had meltdowns. My solution was to say, “Control yourself, or you will never come here again.”
It was a silly parenting strategy on my part because Jean and I enjoyed going to Disneyland as much as the boys did. Which means I would have never followed through on the consequences I threatened.
To witness for Christ, each of us must cross what Pastor Rico Tice calls our “pain line.”
That’s the barrier that keeps us from sharing about Jesus because:
We don’t know what to say.
We don’t feel we’re “good enough” to adequately represent Christianity.
We fear rejection.
We’re avoiding pain.
My wife, Jean, is the only Christian among her four siblings. When her mom passed away, Jean called for a family conference. Everybody sat down in the living room, and Jean went through a detailed explanation of the Gospel and shared what her faith meant to her.
Even if you consider yourself an atheist, protecting religious freedom is still in your best interest because religious freedom is foundational to every other freedom you enjoy.
Among the freedoms our forefathers protected in the Constitution, religious freedom is first on the list. The freedom to worship – or not to worship – is ours simply because we exist. It is given to us by our Creator – that is, God himself.
That’s an important detail because if a freedom is given to us by the government then the government can also take it away.
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.
