Daly Focus Blog
Today, on a special Memorial Day edition of our Focus on the Family Broadcast titled “Honoring America’s Veterans,” we’re raising the flag in honor of those families who paid the ultimate sacrifice so that we might celebrate freedom.
As Scripture says, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 5:13, ESV). In our case, we owe gratitude to generations of military personnel who have helped secure and maintain our freedom.
Every couple walks down the aisle dreaming of love, romance, and a life of happiness together. In fact, our marriage team here at Focus reports that 93 percent of Americans say a happy marriage is one of their chief objectives in life.
And, yet, the statistics also show that a significant percentage of relationships will end in divorce, and about half of those will occur within the first seven years of marriage.
Why? How does the beauty and promise symbolized in a wedding ceremony deteriorate into a failed marriage and the ugly reality of divorce?
May is National Foster Care Awareness Month.
We’re honoring all those who have stepped into the world of adoption and foster care on our Focus on the Family Broadcast “The Complicated, Beautiful Life of a Foster Mom” with our guest Jessie Gallaher. She describes her difficult yet rewarding journey of adopting five children from foster care – all at once!
When they first brought the kids home, many people told Jessie and her husband, “Just love them, and time will heal all of their wounds.” But like most adoptive parents, they discovered that raising children with traumatic backgrounds also requires structure and consistency.
Imagine this scenario: It’s your child’s job to clean up their room, but hours have gone by and they still haven’t gotten the job done, despite repeated reminders from you.
How should you respond?
Lecture them? Ground them? Clean up the room yourself?
The answer is to let good boundaries be your guide. One of the most important functions of parenting is to teach your children how to respect appropriate limits.
Setting healthy boundaries has a lot of benefits, and primary among them is helping children to develop self-control.
A lot of moms say they feel overwhelmed and stressed. Is it any wonder? They’re struggling under the burden of unrealistic expectations – some self-imposed, and some imposed by the culture.
In both cases, the “ideal” mom is often portrayed as a woman who is not only a full-time mom at home, but a fulltime employee outside the home. In her free time, she’s a Girl Scout troop leader, bakes treats from scratch for her kids, and still has time to accompany her children on every school field trip.
Remember the name Ivan Pavlov? He was the Nobel Prize-winning physiologist, best known for his experiments involving ringing bells and salivating dogs. It may not surprise you to learn that he conducted other scientific tests as well. One in particular, I believe, illustrates a significant challenge facing our culture.
The project went like this: Pavlov trained dogs to distinguish between circles and ovals. When they pointed their nose at a circle, they received a reward. When they selected an oval, they suffered a penalty.
Have you ever felt discouraged because God doesn’t seem to be answering your prayers?
Pastor Mark Batterson has. He was diagnosed with asthma at age 3 and suffered life-threatening attacks for years. At age thirteen, he was rushed to the hospital and spent days in intensive care. Both he and his parents feared that he might soon take his last breath.
For 40 years, Mark never went anywhere without his inhaler and used it almost every day.
On today’s Focus on the Family radio broadcast, I mentioned that corporate forces have refused to lease us space on some of the massive digital billboards in Times Square for our upcoming “Alive from New York” event.
In many ways, this blockade only confirms what we’ve long known. There are many people who don’t want the world to see these images of pre-born life, because the abortion industry is predicated on a lie – namely that a baby is just a blob of tissue inside the womb.
When you walked down the aisle, what was your vision for you and your spouse? Did you want a “nice” marriage?
A “friendly” marriage?
A “we get along” marriage?
Probably not.
Most couples are searching for intimacy, connection, romance, and excitement. But years into their marriage, many husbands and wives are bored. Life has settled into a routine – a rut, really – and they’re not connecting like they once did.
If you’ve reached that place in your marriage, you might be thinking, “This isn’t what I had in mind.” The good news is that’s not what the Bible says God has in mind for you, either.
Do you have a hard time believing that God loves you?
Many people do. An accusing voice in their heart or mind says, “If God really knew me, knew the things I’ve done, He wouldn’t love me.”
Jamie Ivey used to see herself that way. She’s sharing her story on our Focus on the Family Broadcast “Living Free from Shame and Guilt.”
Jamie grew up in a Christian home, went to youth group, signed purity pledges, and did everything Christian parents hope their teenagers would do.
Jim Daly is a husband, father and President of Focus on the Family and host of its National Radio Hall of Fame broadcast. His blog, Daly Focus, is full of timely commentary and wisdom designed to help you navigate and understand today’s culture. His latest book is Marriage Done Right.
