Jim Daly

Double Dating

Married couples need to spend one-on-one time together to be healthy. But they also need a community of couples who positively influence their relationship.

Your marriage is not an island. You need to interact with other couples – to invest in their lives and for them to invest in yours. This is especially important because so many people live far away from members of their extended family and can’t benefit from their influence. If you don’t have family support, the influence of good friends is invaluable.

Continue ReadingTopics: Family and Home/ Uncategorized Tags: family, marriage

Becoming Friends with Your In-Laws

Do you get along with your in-laws?

If you catch yourself snickering at that question, who could blame you? In-law jokes (particularly about mothers-in-law) are a mainstay of modern comedy routines and a common stereotype in movies and television shows. But within every joke there is a kernel of truth. And the truth here is that in-law relationships can be difficult.

What’s the best way to work through this delicate area of marriage?

Jean and I don’t have a great deal of experience in this area.

Continue ReadingTopics: Family and Home Tags: family, marriage

Talking to Your Kids About Sexuality and Gender

If you’re the parent of young children, maybe you’ll relate to this scenario.

Amy Davison’s children were watching a cartoon about a girl who had a crush on one of her classmates. Throughout the episode, she put love notes in the classmate’s locker. At the end, when the show revealed that the locker belonged to another girl, Amy’s ten-year-old daughter turned and asked, “Wait, what just happened? Does she like girls?”

And just like that, Amy was forced to have a conversation with her young child about the LGBT world.

Continue ReadingTopics: Current Events Tags: family, parenting

The Best Choices You Can Make for Your Marriage

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

Coffee creamer or black?

Get out of bed now or later?

Scratch our head with our left hand or our right?

Answer our phone or not?

We make so many choices that we often don’t recognize that our ability to choose is even involved.

Like this one: loving our spouse.

We talk about love as if it’s an outside force. We say, “It was love at first sight.” Or we “fell in love.” We chalk up love to chance or chemistry instead of a conscious decision to act toward our spouse in loving ways.

Continue ReadingTopics: Family and Home Tags: family, marriage

Nurturing Fathers

I’ve known a lot of guys who think nurturing children is mom’s job, not dad’s. Fatherhood should be about strength, they say.

I agree, but instead of picturing a bouquet of flowers, picture a mighty oak tree. It’s the tree’s strength that allows it to provide and protect and nurture the wildlife around it.

That’s fatherhood. Nurturing dads have strong character, but a gentle spirit that enables them to handle discipline issues without criticizing or being harsh.

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Giving Your Teen Freedom to Become an Adult

When should a parent decide, “My child is old enough to live completely free of my influence”?

By the way, “Never!” is not a good answer.

Children on their way to adulthood have always struggled for independence against their parents. What’s changed is how parents view childhood between the ages of 13 and 20.

The concept of “adolescence” has only been around for 100 years or so. The terms “adolescent” and “teenager” were first used around 1941.

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The Golden Triangle of Freedom

America has functioned remarkably well for over 200 years.

Much of that success can be attributed to what historians call the “Golden Triangle of Freedom.” The three points of the triangle are:

Liberty.

Virtue.

Faith.

The relationship between the three is important. Each one relies on the other for its existence and well-being. Liberty requires virtue. Virtue requires faith. Faith requires liberty.

Liberty is freedom. It’s the ability to govern oneself. That means you’re free to choose your own path so long as what you do positively benefits everyone else in the community.

Continue ReadingTopics: Current Events Tags: faith, family

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.

I suggest a change in perspective. No, you can’t fix the world’s problems. But you can do good right where you are.

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Supreme Court Reaffirms Founders’ Commitment to Freedom of Thought, Conscience and Religion

Advocates of religious freedom and conscience exhaled this week as a majority of justices affirmed the constitutional rights of every American to practice and preserve their faith beyond the doors of a traditional church.

Friday’s 6-3 decision in 303 Creative v. Elenis, authored by Justice Gorsuch, wasn’t just a win for Lorie Smith, it was also a victory for anyone who supports free speech protected by the First Amendment.

On Thursday, a unanimous court held that Gerald Groff, a former United States postal worker and an evangelical Christian, who had been told he needed to work on Sundays, was entitled to religious accommodations.

Continue ReadingTopics: Current Events Tags: faith

Creating Mayberry

At some point, we’ve all wished that we could live in a place like Mayberry, the small North Carolina town from the Andy Griffith Show. And why not? We’d have neighbors like Barney Fife, Floyd the Barber, and Aunt Bea. Imagine waking up every day in a community where everyone was sweet and thoughtful to each other and where things rarely got out of hand. Even Otis*, Mayberry’s town drunk, was entrusted with his own key to the jail so he could let himself in and out every night.