Jim Daly

When life gets tough, we want solutions.  Immediately.  We want heartbreak, confusion, and physical pain all to just disappear.

But overcoming life’s obstacles is rarely easy. It takes faith. And patience. That’s how reality is constructed.

A few years ago, here in Colorado, a late spring snowstorm dumped a couple feet of heavy, wet snow. Tree limbs all over the neighborhood were broken. In my own backyard, one tree lost almost a third of its branches.

Continue ReadingTopics: Family and Home Tags: faith

You won’t believe what I did the other day. I rented a jackhammer and used it to chip away the concrete foundation of my home. It was a lot of work, but I was determined to finish the job. When I did, about a third of my home was perched atop a large, gaping hole.

I didn’t chisel away the foundation as part of a home improvement project. I wasn’t making way for a new addition.

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Popular author and relationship expert Dr. Gary Chapman illustrates conscience as a five-gallon bucket strapped to our backs. Doing wrong against our spouse or anyone else is like pouring in a measure of liquid.

After a few mistakes, the burden we carry gets heavier. After a few more, heavier still. Eventually, our conscience becomes so full, so heavy to bear, that the contents spill out in unhelpful ways, on us and our spouse.

In Acts 24:16 of the King James Bible, the apostle Paul says of himself: “And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God, and toward men.”

The word “exercise” is the Greek word gymnaso, from which we get the English word, “gymnasium.” The word can also be translated as “discipline.”

Paul says, “I discipline myself.” To do what?

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One of the most important qualities to being an effective parent is a willingness to overcome personal barriers that get in our way. My own dad provides a sobering example of how destructive it can be when a parent stays stuck.

One of the few times he showed up to one of my baseball games, he was stone-cold drunk. When I came to bat, I was so mortified I couldn’t move. Dad yelled awful things at the umpire as pitch after pitch zipped past me.

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Years ago, when Jean and I moved into our current home, the truck was unloaded, and we pulled the lid off each box one by one and looked through every item.

So much stuff went into the trash that I thought it would be helpful to get one of those big trash bins used at construction sites. It was fantastic. I was throwing stuff away left and right.

That’s when the trash fairies showed up.

I’d spend an evening happily tossing one item after another into the garbage.

Continue ReadingTopics: Family and Home Tags: faith