Family and Home Archives

Ditching the Cranky Monster Mom

There’s an old saying: “If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”

In most homes, Mom sets the tone. She’s the temperature gauge. If she’s in a great mood, everything else will run smooth.

Many women enter motherhood envisioning themselves as patient, kind, loving, soft, and gentle. And when they actually have a child, they’re confronted with the reality that children have a will of their own from infancy.

Children have an incredible way of pushing a mom’s buttons and triggering what author Becky Kopitzke calls the “momster.” Motherhood will find a way to squeeze out the most sinful parts of a woman, even one who strives to be under control and in tune with God.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: parenting April 9, 2021 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Improving Your Marriage as a Blended Family Couple

If you made a list of all the bad things that you never thought would happen, what would you write down?

For some, picking up the broken pieces of your life and starting over again with a blended family might be at the top of that list.

This new chapter may have come about through death or divorce or some other circumstance, but the challenge is the same: how to overcome the difficulties common to blended families and give this new part of your life its best chance to thrive.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: family, marriage April 7, 2021 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Using Your Unique Personality to Share Your Faith

What do you feel when you read this Scripture? “Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest’” (Matthew 9:37-38).

What about this one? “And he said to them, ‘Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation’” (Mark 16:15).

Do verses like these about evangelism excite you? Or do they strike fear into your heart?

Topics: Family and Home Tags: faith April 5, 2021 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

GUEST POST: The Power of Easter

By Pat Fitzpatrick

As a young teacher in Atlanta, I developed a mentoring friendship with a colleague who taught Old and New Testament survey. George was a master of the English language like none other I have ever met, which was made even more impressive by the fact that English was the sixth or seventh language that he had mastered in his forty-five years on earth.

I often reflect on a conversation he and I had in the school’s dining hall in the late 1980’s.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: easter April 3, 2021 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Examining the Evidence of Easter

Author Lee Strobel is a skeptic by nature. As legal editor for the Chicago Tribune for many years, he was trained not to accept anyone’s word at face value. Every fact was confirmed by at least two sources before it was printed. They even hung a sign in their newsroom which said, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”

Lee’s skepticism eventually became cynicism … and then atheism. “If there is no God,” he reasoned, “if there is no heaven, and no ultimate accountability, then the most logical way for me to live is as a hedonist, someone who only pursues pleasure.” And that’s what he did.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: easter, faith April 2, 2021 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Enjoying Special Days with Your Family

A few years ago, Jean and I held a special gathering on Easter Sunday. Our boys Trent and Troy were there, as were our two foster children – 8 and 10 – and a few friends and their children.

As I chatted with the adults in the living room, squeals of laughter erupted out of our kitchen. We all went to investigate and found Jean sitting on the floor covered by Easter grass, and surrounded by dozens of plastic Easter eggs, all opened and the contents strewn across the floor.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: family April 1, 2021 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Four Reasons You Can Believe With Confidence that Jesus Really Rose from the Dead

The essence of our Christian faith rests on the reality of Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead on Easter Sunday.

Although C.S. Lewis is often credited with the succinct summary that Jesus Christ was either a liar, lunatic or Lord, it was the Scottish Christian preacher “Rabbi” John Duncan who once observed in 1859:

“Christ either [1] deceived mankind by conscious fraud, or [2] He was Himself deluded and self-deceived, or [3] He was Divine. There is no getting out of this trilemma.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: easter, faith March 31, 2021 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Filling Your Marriage with Joy

How big is your marriage’s “joy gap”?

Dr. Marcus Warner and Chris Coursey, authors of the book The 4 Habits of Joy-Filled Marriages, describe a “joy gap” as the length of time between moments of joy.

If you apply that unit of measurement to your marriage, how long has it been? Days? Weeks? Months?

Your joy gap can be especially lengthy if you’re waiting for your circumstances to change, for your spouse to make you joyful, or for God to zap you with joy.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: marriage March 29, 2021 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Roma Downey and Mark Burnett Introduce a New Movie and a Message of Hope

As we prepare for Palm Sunday this weekend and the beginning of Holy Week, I want to encourage you to watch a great new film about the most significant day in history – the day that literally transformed the world.

The movie is called RESURRECTION and it comes out on Discovery Plus this weekend.

On today’s Focus on the Family radio broadcast, I had the privilege of speaking with the film’s producers, Roma Downey and Mark Burnett about it.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: hope March 26, 2021 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

The Journey Back to My True Identity

Our culture is undergoing seismic shifts in moral reasoning.

A daughter of friends of mine began her college career at a university here in Colorado. At the orientation, both students and parents were warned to use correct pronouns when addressing others. Offending others through the misuse of pronouns was grounds for expulsion from the school.

The conversation surrounding transgenderism is rapidly deteriorating into a monologue. Rather than sincere discussion about science, truth, and compassion for those who struggle, power drives decorum, insisting that people of faith accept gender transition without dissent.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: genders, transgender March 23, 2021 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura