Jim Daly

Focus on the Family Best Seller List

Week ending July 3rd:

Growing Kids with Character (by Hettie Brittz)
Parenting Your Powerful Child (by Kevin Leman)
Happily Ever After (by Ginger Kolbaba)
Unoffendable (by Brant Hansen)
Kingdom Marriage (by Tony Evans)
Doing Good Is Simple (by Chris Marlow)
Raising Kingdom Kids (by Tony Evans)
Making Happy (by Les & Leslie Parrott)
Through the Eyes of a Lion (by Levi Lusko)
The Children’s Illustrated Bible (by Selina Hastings)
ESV Economy Bible
A Lifelong Love (by Gary Thomas)
Miracle in Shreveport (by David & Jason Benham)
Enjoy!

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Keeping the Romance Sizzling in Your Marriage

The culture is inundating us with messages that chip away at the moorings upon which God’s design for marriage is built.

We shouldn’t be surprised.

Ephesians 5:31 says, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” The next verse says, “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church” (v.32).

According to Paul, an intimate marriage says to the world, “This is a picture of Christ’s love for His church.

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Goodbye to a Home

The Independence Day holiday evokes warm memories for many of us. From firework shows to backyard family celebrations, July 4th is a seasonal high point. I hope you and your family have fun plans for tomorrow.

In that spirit of nostalgia, I wanted to share a poignant essay penned by my friend and colleague, Joel Vaughan. Joel, who serves as our chief of staff, recently lost his mother. A few years earlier they said goodbye to his father.

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Changing the World Through a Lemonade Stand

There are 150 million orphans in the world.

Every six seconds a child dies because they don’t have access to food or water.

What are you going to do about it?

That’s a daunting question, isn’t it? The scale of poverty in the world is so overwhelming that we feel paralyzed … and do nothing.

Chris Marlow is a former pastor who founded the organization Help One Now, a ministry that helps local leaders care for orphans and vulnerable families and works to break the cycle of extreme poverty in places like Haiti, Peru, and Africa.

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Parenting 101: Learning Your Child’s “Language”

Is your child a rosebush?

A palm tree?

A pine?

How about a boxwood?

God wires our children with unique personality types. The nuances can be quite diverse, but they’re also finite to the point where a model of four personality types can explain them.

There’s power in personality. It’s a window into a child’s soul that parents can look through to see their hearts and to know how to lead them forward through life.

Hettie Britz is an author, a speaker, and one of the foremost voices in parenting advice from a biblical perspective in South Africa.

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Focus on the Family President Jim Daly on the Retirement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy

We congratulate Justice Anthony Kennedy on the announcement of his retirement, and note with appreciation his 30 years of service to the country as Associate Justice, and the nearly 13 years prior to that serving on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

After becoming Focus’ President, I had the privilege of meeting with Justice Kennedy. Although we occasionally differed on the issues, sometimes strongly so, when we met I found him to be quite personable and was impressed with his dedication to the Court and to his duties there.

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Guest Blog: Why My First Year of Marriage Was Both Easy and Hard

By: Ashley Durand

Everyone said marriage would be hard.

But our first year of marriage wasn’t hard in predictable ways.

Sure, there were little adjustments here and there, tiny conflicts like agreeing on how much to budget for groceries or what time to go to bed. But we had a lot of fun together, laughed constantly, and loved each other more every day. We led small group and kids club at church, and felt God’s hand of blessing.

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VIDEO: A Win For Life and Free Speech at the Supreme Court

We’re grateful to learn of today’s Supreme Court decision in the free speech case of NIFLA v. Becerra.

This case was a textbook example of government overreach. Thankfully, the court overturned a dangerous encroachment of our time-honored First Amendment freedoms of speech and religion.

No person should be compelled by government to speak a message contrary to their beliefs. Yet, that is exactly what the California legislature did, in an attempt to force pro-life pregnancy care centers to promote the availability of free and low-cost abortions.

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Navigating the Common Challenges of Marriage

Well-known author and popular guest Dr. Gary Chapman says that if you really want the marriage you’ve always dreamed of, you have to be daring.

It takes courage to ask, “Honey, how can I be a better husband/wife to you? How can I make your life easier?” Those are daring questions because your spouse will give you an answer, and he or she will expect you to respond.

Look at that scenario from a different perspective, however, and you’ll see it as a chance to minister to your spouse’s heart with the love of Christ.

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Reaching an Adult Child Who’s Turned Away from God

Luis Palau is one of the most well-known evangelists in the world. And yet, for many years, while he stood in front of stadiums of people and witnessed thousands respond to his call to receive Jesus, his own heart was aching for his son, Andrew, who had turned away from God.

Luis and his wife, Patricia, saw him moving in the wrong direction, and they did everything within their power to guide him back. But there came a point, Andrew says, “where I had wandered so far away from God that all they could do was have faith.

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