family Archives

Focus on the Family Best Seller List

Week ending July 3rd:

Growing Kids with Character (by Hettie Brittz)
Parenting Your Powerful Child (by Kevin Leman)
Happily Ever After (by Ginger Kolbaba)
Unoffendable (by Brant Hansen)
Kingdom Marriage (by Tony Evans)
Doing Good Is Simple (by Chris Marlow)
Raising Kingdom Kids (by Tony Evans)
Making Happy (by Les & Leslie Parrott)
Through the Eyes of a Lion (by Levi Lusko)
The Children’s Illustrated Bible (by Selina Hastings)
ESV Economy Bible
A Lifelong Love (by Gary Thomas)
Miracle in Shreveport (by David & Jason Benham)
Enjoy!

Topics: Family and Home Tags: events, faith, family July 6, 2018 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Goodbye to a Home

The Independence Day holiday evokes warm memories for many of us. From firework shows to backyard family celebrations, July 4th is a seasonal high point. I hope you and your family have fun plans for tomorrow.

In that spirit of nostalgia, I wanted to share a poignant essay penned by my friend and colleague, Joel Vaughan. Joel, who serves as our chief of staff, recently lost his mother. A few years earlier they said goodbye to his father.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: events, family July 3, 2018 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Parenting 101: Learning Your Child’s “Language”

Is your child a rosebush?

A palm tree?

A pine?

How about a boxwood?

God wires our children with unique personality types. The nuances can be quite diverse, but they’re also finite to the point where a model of four personality types can explain them.

There’s power in personality. It’s a window into a child’s soul that parents can look through to see their hearts and to know how to lead them forward through life.

Hettie Britz is an author, a speaker, and one of the foremost voices in parenting advice from a biblical perspective in South Africa.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: broadcast, family, kids, parenting June 28, 2018 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Guest Blog: Why My First Year of Marriage Was Both Easy and Hard

By: Ashley Durand

Everyone said marriage would be hard.

But our first year of marriage wasn’t hard in predictable ways.

Sure, there were little adjustments here and there, tiny conflicts like agreeing on how much to budget for groceries or what time to go to bed. But we had a lot of fun together, laughed constantly, and loved each other more every day. We led small group and kids club at church, and felt God’s hand of blessing.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: family, husband, marriage, wife June 27, 2018 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Reaching an Adult Child Who’s Turned Away from God

Luis Palau is one of the most well-known evangelists in the world. And yet, for many years, while he stood in front of stadiums of people and witnessed thousands respond to his call to receive Jesus, his own heart was aching for his son, Andrew, who had turned away from God.

Luis and his wife, Patricia, saw him moving in the wrong direction, and they did everything within their power to guide him back. But there came a point, Andrew says, “where I had wandered so far away from God that all they could do was have faith.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: broadcast, faith, family, parenting June 25, 2018 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Depressed by Headlines? Here are 3 Reasons to Be Joyful

Do the headlines and circumstances of the world sometimes get you down? Do they irritate and frustrate you? From the border debate to the ongoing political wrangling on various other issues, we exasperate easily, don’t we?

My friend Dr. Tim Keller, the former senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, once preached a sermon on “The Christian’s Happiness.” He used Romans 8:28-30 as the basis for his message.

I think his three main takeaway points will encourage anyone regardless of where they find themselves emotionally.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: events, faith, family June 20, 2018 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Thoughts on the Border Crisis

The controversy at the southern border continues to churn. Like many of you, I’ve been following its many twists and turns, straining to gather reliable information and, at times, struggling to separate the fact from the fiction. There is a lot of bad and biased information out there. To be sure, emotions are running high on both sides, a consequence of the very real human concern and the highly partisan nature of our times.

As I’ve previously indicated, separating children from their parents can be harmful and traumatic.

Topics: Current Events Tags: family, kids, policy June 19, 2018 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

How Parents Can Get Back Their Power from a Child Who’s in Control

Why do kids misbehave?

Dr. Kevin Leman offers these 3 reasons:

Attention-getting
Power
Revenge

He says the strong-willed child has been given a bad rap. We want our kids to be strong-willed. When the world tells them, “Do everything we do,” we want our son or daughter to know right from wrong and to have the conviction to stand for it.

What you don’t want, Dr. Leman says, is the “powerful child.” They have an agenda.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: broadcast, family, kids, parenting June 18, 2018 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Miracles on the Baseball Diamond

My dad had a bad habit of breaking his promises. So when I was 11, and our trip to a Dodgers baseball game almost fell through, I thought for sure it would be just one more disappointment in a long line of them.

We were running late that day, and we just barely missed the bus to the stadium. Honestly, I figured my dad would do what he had always done in circumstances like that: offer a weak apology and take us home.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: faith, family, relationships June 15, 2018 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Guest Blog: The Power of a Father

By: Joe Battaglia

Whether we like it or not, all fathers are teachers.

Some are absent.

Some are reluctant.

But children will learn SOMETHING from their dad.

Even if it’s nothing.

The question is what do we want them to learn, and from whom?

I became acutely aware of this scenario in a rather strange way—by shopping with my daughter when she was about 13-14 years old.

While we were at a mall, my daughter asked to go into a very hip, fashionable store for teens to buy a shirt.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: faith, family, parenting June 14, 2018 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura