Family and Home Archives

My Christmas in Isolation

As the COVID-19 global pandemic rolls on, Americans are faced with the prospect of spending a much quieter Christmas than usual.

Sadly, many will be celebrating it completely alone, isolated out of concern of infection or blocked from seeing loved ones unable to make the trip.

Forty years ago, halfway through my sophomore year at Cal State San Bernardino, I found myself in a difficult and similar situation. There was no pandemic or call for social distancing, but for me there may just as well have been.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: christmas December 21, 2020 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Discovering the Secrets to a Lifelong Romance

Did you get married to work a job? To do laundry? To pay bills?

Of course not. Yet, most couples wind up with marriages in exactly that kind of “ho-hum” condition. Sooner or later, the euphoria of the wedding ceremony fades away and life settles into a daily grind of often-mundane activity. Careers are chased, children are born, and ever-larger homes are purchased. Or newer and newer cars sit outside of garages filled to the roof with stuff we’ll never use.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: marriage December 21, 2020 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

The Best Choices You Can Make for Your Marriage

Researchers say that, on average, a person makes 35,000 decisions a day.

Creamer in our coffee or black?

Get out of bed now or later?

Scratch our head with our left hand or our right?

Answer our phone or not?

There’s one decision that we often don’t think of as a choice – loving our spouse. We talk about love as if it’s an outside force. We say, “It was love at first sight.” Or we “fall in love.” Love is a feeling that we chalk up to chance or chemistry rather than making a conscious decision to act toward our spouse in loving ways.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: marriage December 17, 2020 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

How God Redeemed My Teen Pregnancy

“I’m pregnant.”

Would you know what to do if your teenage daughter made that announcement? It’s not a pleasant situation to think about. But it’s the moment of truth for you as a parent. How you react sets the tone of your relationship with your child moving forward.

When you first hear the news, you’ll feel like the floor has dropped out from beneath your family. It’s a scary, uncertain time for you and for your daughter.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: family, pregnancy December 15, 2020 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Leading Others by Following Jesus

Whether you lead a business, a church, or a family, the wisest approach is to pattern your leadership after people who know how to lead well. And who demonstrated leadership better than Jesus Christ himself?

Willie Robertson of A&E’s Duck Dynasty is with us on our Focus on the Family Broadcast “Leading Others by Following Jesus,” sharing an inspiring message about how to emulate the leadership principles that Jesus modeled while He was on Earth.

Topics: Family and Home December 14, 2020 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Progress in the Battle Against Pornographers

Follow the money.

It’s been a bad week for Pornhub, an online website that reportedly records 3.5 billion visits per month – and those of us who have been fighting pornography’s scourge are relieved to finally see some progress in the battle to expose the industry’s wickedness.

First, The New York Times released a rightfully scathing rebuke of the horrific site, highlighting its pervasive distribution of pure evil ranging from “rape videos” to underage exhibitionists.

Columnist Nicholas Kristoff’s graphic expose has reverberated in social media since its publication last Friday.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: addiction, pornography December 11, 2020 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Are Your Five Core Needs Being Met?

For you and me 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 safe and secure, you’ll feel empowered to discover your identity – your deepest passions and strengths. Out of those, you’ll discover your purpose and develop competence.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: faith December 10, 2020 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Combating the Lies That Can Destroy Your Marriage

Satan wants to destroy your marriage.

That’s no scare tactic. Satan hates marriage because it reflects God’s divine image and is a mechanism through which He influences the world. Strong, healthy, god-fearing marriages produce strong, healthy, god-fearing families and communities. One of the most powerful forces on Earth is a loving, committed couple who use their gifts to love and serve others.

The way Satan attacks couples is through lies that promote relationship myths and fairy-tale expectations.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: marriage December 8, 2020 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Championing Your Son Through His Battles

Remember the days when your boys climbed jungle gyms and went up and down slides? They cultivated friendships and learned to navigate their world on the playground.

Now that they’re teenagers, the playground is social media. They connect, form relationships, and shape their identity by measuring themselves against “influencers” in the virtual world.

Your son’s online presence could be summarized by “more accessibility, less accountability.” Back in the day, things like pornography and dangerous worldviews were “around,” but they weren’t finding their way into a child’s world through every Wi-Fi signal in the house.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: children, sons December 7, 2020 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

How to Have a Better Sex Life by Understanding Your Love Styles

Sex is the one activity that differentiates marriage from every other relationship. You can have a great conversation with a friend. You can have lunch with a co-worker. You can go on vacation with a neighbor. But if you’re following God’s design for relationships, sex is only rightly expressed through marriage.

Milan and Kay Yerkovich say that dynamic is hugely consequential when a couple can’t negotiate their sex life in healthy ways.

They say each of us identifies in some way with one of the following love styles:

Avoiders are emotionally distant and detached.Pleasers can be excessively nice and always want harmony.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: marriage, sex December 3, 2020 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura