Daly Focus Blog
Do you remember when you were first married – how you and your spouse enjoyed endless conversation, had fun together every weekend, and always seemed to have time for one another?
Do you remember how all of that changed in the years after you became parents – how every moment seemed busy with sports practice, dentist appointments, and school programs?
Once a couple has children, it’s easy for the marriage to get pushed down the priority list.
Bracelets as a form of fashion go back thousands of years, whether as jewelry made of gold, silver or even wood.
In recent years, though, bracelets have been used to help communicate a message or champion a particular cause.
My friend, Randy Hatcher, co-founder of Explore Your Faith, recently alerted me to a neat bracelet his organization is distributing. Here is how they describe it:
The bracelet is intended to be a relational, live, Gospel conversation starter.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
