Jim Daly

Guest Post: Gosnell and the Danger of False Thinking

In my role as the executive director of the Focus Leadership Institute, I try to impart practical life principles to college students. These young men and women enroll because they want to learn how to best serve their families, churches and the culture.

Each semester, we discuss a myriad of things, but if I had to boil it all down, I’d say most of our discussions revolve around two main themes:

You can’t serve well if your thinking isn’t right
Right thinking starts with using Scripture as the singular authoritative truth for how we live.

Continue ReadingTopics: Family and Home Tags: family, pro-life

These 4 Things Will Help Keep Intimacy Alive During the Toddler Years

If you’re the parent of a toddler, you might feel like you’re too tired and busy to even think about sex with your spouse – and for good reason. Your sleep schedule is off. Work levels around the house are at an all-time high. If all that isn’t enough, there’s still a rambunctious toddler – or toddlers – that needs to be cared for, played with, loved on, and disciplined.

With all that’s going on, it might be tempting for some, especially moms, to view sex as merely another item on a never-ending to-do list.

Continue ReadingTopics: Family and Home Tags: faith, family, intimacy, sex

Guest Post: Mom and Dad Together, as It Should Be

Today I’m sharing a piece by Alliance Defending Freedom’s senior opinion editor and writer, AWR Hawkins. As you may know, ADF is on the forefront of the effort to preserve the timeless, universal, and unique institution of marriage. In this piece, Hawkins makes the case for the lifelong union of a husband and wife.

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Home is a place with a function. It is the roof under which Mom and Dad, together in marriage, ground and raise a family.

Continue ReadingTopics: Family and Home Tags: faith, family, husband, parenting, wife

VIDEO: A Stirring Life Lesson

We have no idea the impact our random acts of kindness might have on the people receiving the good deed – that’s the lesson found in a beautiful Thai commercial that recently took the Internet by storm.

The ad features the story of a kindly shop owner who has compassion on a young, poor boy caught shoplifting medicine for his ailing mom. The humanity that man consistently shows the downtrodden is eventually returned to him when he needs it most.

Continue ReadingTopics: Family and Home Tags: faith, family, news

Will Someone Adopt this Boy?

He’s 15 years old. Only a child when you think of it, but too old to be adopted in the eyes of so many.

His name is Davion, and The Tampa Bay Times introduced us to him this week in a must-read article, “An orphan goes to church and asks someone, anyone to adopt him.”

We learn a bit about Davion – his sad history, the bad decisions he has made. We discover that he has begun to turn his life around, but that his heart still bears the scars of years of not belonging.

Continue ReadingTopics: Family and Home Tags: adoption, kids

VIDEO: Did You Know Martyr Jim Elliot Had a Brother?

Most Christians are familiar with Jim Elliot, one of five missionaries killed in the jungles of Ecuador in the 1950s. Fewer people know about Jim’s brother, Bert.

Bert Elliott and his wife, Colleen, were missionaries in Peru. Their work there included starting more than 150 churches, leading Bible studies, helping at a Christian school, leading drug addicts to Christ and even pulling teeth for those with severe dental problems.

There was nothing glamorous about what Bert and Colleen did.

Continue ReadingTopics: Family and Home Tags: family, friendship, pastors

Is This One of the Toughest Jobs?

Serving as a pastor is no easy task. In fact, I can’t think of many more challenging callings in life.

Consider:

A lot of people think pastors work just one day a week. The reality is quite the opposite. Most pastors are fortunate to get one day off per week. Most are on-call 24/7. When it comes to an erratic schedule, a pastor is like a firefighter or a police officer, except he has to stop at red lights, often in a very used car or truck that’s seen better days.

Continue ReadingTopics: Family and Home Tags: faith, pastors

How Do You Divvy Up Household Tasks?

Have you ever noticed that popular culture tends to see fathers as the “second-string” parent?

What do I mean by that?

Consider the familiar storyline in TV sitcoms or movies where the hapless dad can’t handle making his kids dinner or the house looks like a bomb went off because mom goes away for a weekend.

The insinuation is that mom is on the varsity and dad is still finding his way on the JV squad.

Continue ReadingTopics: Family and Home Tags: family, husband, kids, wife

No, the Church in America is Not Dying

To borrow and adapt a phrase from the late Mark Twain, reports of the Church’s death have been greatly exaggerated.

Christianity Today recently ran an article by Pastor Ed Stetzer, the president of LifeWay Research, that drives home this point. In “The State of the Church In America: Hint: It’s Not Dying,” Stetzer corrects this false narrative that the Evangelical Church is on an irreversible downward trajectory.

In doing so, he makes an important distinction – and I’ll quote Stetzer here: “Christianity is represented by people who live for Christ, not check ‘Christian’ on a survey form.”

As he fleshes out this idea, Stetzer separates the 75 percent of Americans who identify with one of three categories – those who say they are Christian because of their family history or heritage; those who do nothing more than attend church every now and then; and, finally, those who acknowledge a personal relationship with Jesus and have experienced a real life-change.

Continue ReadingTopics: Family and Home Tags: church, pastors, religious liberty

VIDEO: “How Great Is Our God” Around the World

God has given me the privilege of traveling the world. During my senior year of college, I studied in Tokyo. That experience gave me a glimpse of what I was to experience later during my early tenure at Focus, first as the international field director for Asia, Africa and Australia and later as the vice president of our international division.

All told, my travels have taken me to more than 70 countries. During each visit, I’ve had the honor of meeting with fellow believers.

Continue ReadingTopics: Family and Home Tags: church, faith, staff