Daly Focus Blog
April Fool’s Day is about catching people off-guard with surprises they never see coming. Like the prank pulled on residents of Sitka, Alaska on April 1, 1974. People woke up that morning to black smoke rising from the crater of Mt. Edgecumbe, a volcano just a few miles away that hadn’t erupted in nearly 800 years.
That morning, 911 was flooded with so many calls that the Coast Guard sent a helicopter to investigate. The source of the trouble, it turns out, was not lava or hot ash.
God’s light often shines the brightest when circumstances are at their darkest and most bleak.
Which makes today’s world an opportunity for Christians to be salt and light by recommitting to studying God’s Word and allowing the Holy Spirit to work through us into the lives of others – our families, our neighborhoods, our churches, and our communities. We are ambassadors for Christ, called to be prepared to “give a reason for the hope that is in us” (1 Peter 3:15).
Rich Griffith is a single Dad of three teenage sons, all of whom he adopted. He soon realized that despite ministering to teenagers for many years, he didn’t know how to disciple his children as a parent. Neither do a lot of parents.
And that is why Rich likes to help parents teach their children how to engage their world by discerning which voices in their lives are helpful and harmful. The wisdom for determining whether or not a voice is worth listening to is discovered through what he calls the “Three Ts”:
Time.
Pastoring can be a tough, stressful job.
Most of us don’t realize how true that is because we’re only with our pastors for an hour or two on Sunday mornings and have little understanding of the time and energy necessary to keep the church moving forward.
Did you know that the average pastor works 50 to 74 hours per week, doing all kinds of jobs – teacher, counselor, worship leader, business executive, even janitorial and maintenance work?
Infidelity is one of the top reasons why marriages end in divorce. That should come as no surprise. It’s hard to repair the gaping wounds that an affair rips into a relationship. Many couples choose to walk away. Even Christians often view infidelity as a “get out of jail free card.”
Josh and Katie Walters know firsthand the betrayal and devastation of infidelity. They now serve on staff at Seacoast Church, a multi-campus ministry in South Carolina, but six years into their marriage, Katie confessed that she was having an affair with one of Josh’s best friends.
For 20 years, Jessie Minassian has been a spiritual “big sis” to teen girls and young women. She offers encouragement about love, dating, loneliness, purity, and living out faith in relevant ways.
She’s joining me on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly to help teen girls create a godly identity – from which comes a well-balanced and happy life.
Jessie and I discussed how navigating family conflict can be like a paintball battle, why you may need to turn down the volume in your busy, noisy life so you can hear from God more clearly, and the positive impact of smiling more.
When things go wrong, we say, “Life spiraled downward.” What we mean is that bad choices quickly multiply.
But good choices multiply as well. In the same way that life can spiral downward, it can also spiral upward. How? One small step at a time.
Nobody likes being told to be patient. Suggestions like, “Take it slow” or, “Just stack one good choice on top of another” are never popular. We’d all rather go from A to Z in one leap.
My dad left our family when I was five years old and died an alcoholic a few years later. My mom died when I was nine. Hank, my stepdad, walked out on my siblings and me the day of her funeral. After that, I lived with a foster family for a year, but they were so toxic that my life got worse, not better.
Given my broken childhood, hosting a nationally syndicated radio show about all things family has been an unexpected gift to me.
According to the National Association of Anorexia and Associated Disorders, someone will die from an eating disorder every 52 minutes.
One in five women experience an eating disorder by age 40, and 95% of eating disorders begin before age 25.
Those shocking number underscore the serious nature of this tragic problem. Eating disorders are complex issues with no quick solutions, affecting men, women, and children.
Author Krista Dunham developed an eating disorder after struggling with perfectionism for years.
Let me ask you three questions.
First, if God said to you, “I will answer every single prayer that you pray this week,” how many people in your life would you pray to receive Jesus?
Second question: Are you praying for them now?
Christians often grow weary of praying for someone – or give up entirely – because nothing seems to be happening.
Which leads me to my third question: What if, as we pray for others, God does something in us?
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.
