Daly Focus Blog
“How much is enough?”
Somebody asked John D. Rockefeller that once. His answer?
“Just a little bit more.”
I wonder if most of us secretly agree with him. We try to be content, but it’s hard with so many shiny things to choose from and advertisers convincing us of needs we didn’t know we even had. We’re easily lulled into believing that we could be happy if we had just a little bit more.
But how much is enough?
As author and speaker Lee Strobel tells it, someone once came between him and his wife, Leslie, that almost destroyed their marriage. It wasn’t a co-worker or an old boyfriend.
It was Jesus Christ.
Leslie had become a Christian. Lee remained a staunch atheist.
Their worldviews were diametrically opposed to one another. The friction that created is why God gave us the sort of wisdom found in 2 Corinthians 6:14, which says, “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers.”
Yokes were heavy wooden implements that were fitted over the necks of two animals, so they could pull a plow together.
Ask a 20-something a few generations back what their religious affiliation was, and chances were the answer would fall within predictable lines: Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, or Jewish, for example.
Ask the same question of today’s young adults, otherwise known as “Millennials,” and you might hear something new.
“I’m spiritual,” they might say, or “I believe in a higher power, but I’m not religious.”
That’s because Millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996) are more comfortable than any other generation in identifying their religious affiliation as “none of the above.”
In fact, about 35 percent of adult Millennials are religiously unaffiliated, according to Pew Research Center.
The miraculous, hope-filled story of Easter might have been closer to a Shakespearean tragedy if God had left it up to the men.
Judas betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver and hanged himself. Peter denied Jesus three times. Thomas doubted the Resurrection. And all of the disciples hid fearfully behind locked doors for three days. And when they were told that Jesus had risen, the message “seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe it” (Luke 24:11, ESV).
Parenting can be messy.
From your children’s earliest days, you set boundaries, you discipline, you pour your life into your kids and trust that they’ll be drawn to your Christian faith and embrace it as their own. But one night, years later, your head hits the pillow, and you stare up at the ceiling through the darkness, distraught and wondering, “Where did we go wrong? We raised our kids in church. We prayed with them. We read the Bible to them.
“You may ask, ‘Why is God landing in this enemy-occupied world in disguise and starting a sort of secret society to undermine the devil? Why isn’t he landing en force, invading it?’ Well, Christians think He’s going to land in force. We don’t know when, but we can guess why. He’s delaying. He wants to give us the chance of joining His side freely.” – C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Profound truth like that is why C.S.
Over the course of the last seven years, I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Tim Keller many times. The senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, Tim is one of our most popular broadcast guests.
He’s also become a good friend.
A quiet, cerebral, steely man of sound doctrine and strong conviction, Dr. Keller has been referred to as the C.S. Lewis of our time, and with good reason. A gifted teacher and preacher, whether in print or speaking from the pulpit, he knows how to engage both the head and the heart.
Life Magazine once published a list of the “Most Important Events of the Millennium.” Among the top ten were the discovery of germ theory, the Holocaust, and the writing and signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Number one on that list was the Gutenberg Bible printed in the 1450s and the first book to be mass produced. According to Life Magazine, no other event in the past 1,000 years has changed the world as dramatically as the Bible becoming available to the common person.
I want to tell you a story that recently made a big impression on me.
A few weeks ago, Rick and Linda (not their real names) checked into our Hope Restored Marriage Intensive Experience at the Focus on the Family Retreat Center in Branson, Missouri.
The counselors at Hope Restored specialize in bringing severely broken marriages back from the brink of divorce.
Rick and Linda’s union was in deep trouble, riddled and rocked by infidelity, among other things.
The beauty pendulum swings both ways for young Christian girls and women.
To one side is a woman’s God-given desire to look and to feel beautiful. That pursuit usually involves some combination of exercise, hair style, cosmetics, and clothing choices, all of which must work together for a woman to feel attractive.
The other side of the pendulum diminishes outer beauty. Women are told that how they look or feel is inconsequential. Real beauty is only on the inside.
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.
