Daly Focus Blog
John Murphy was on a routine training jump at Fort Bragg when it happened.
He’d just gotten home from a deployment to Afghanistan a couple of months before. John was a proud soldier who was so eager to serve, he dropped out of a full Army ROTC scholarship at Michigan State so he could go straight into active duty.
John grew up with godly parents who loved the Lord and who loved him. But he was a nominal Christian at best.
It’s been said it’s “easier to build a boy than to mend a man.” I agree. So how do we build the next generation of boys into men?
John Wooden was the men’s basketball coach at UCLA for nearly thirty years and is widely recognized as one of the greatest coaches in the history of the game. The dominance of his teams remains unprecedented into the modern era.
Surprisingly, though, his lessons on the court had more to do with being a man than with basketball.
One of the most powerful forces God created for humanity exists in the realm of love, sex, and romance. The potential for both pleasure and blessing is virtually immeasurable. So is the potential for destruction.
As a group, Millennials and younger generations don’t tend to believe that. A significant percentage see sex as a purely physical experience. That shouldn’t surprise anyone. From an evolutionary standpoint, there isn’t anything sacred about sex. If there is no God, then sex is strictly biological.
In August, I wrote about a Washington State high school football coach named Joe Kennedy who was fired for praying silently, after the game, on the field’s 50-yard-line.
At the time, I was incredulous.
As a former teenage boy who was once helped by a man in the mold of Coach Kennedy, I suggested we need more men like him.
Instead of firing him, school officials should be feting him!
In the months since I first spoke up in his defense, I’ve had the opportunity to get to know this good man personally.
Pastor Farid ministers in war-torn – and predominantly Muslim – Syria. Death threats against him are so common he can’t track them all. Except for the one instance that he was able to count them. Thirty. He knew that because they were spray painted and numbered on the front of his home.
Number one, this is how we’re going to kill you. Number two, this is how we’re going to kill your wife. Number three, this is how we’re going to kill your children.
I know what you’re probably thinking.
The headline of this post is a bit much. It’s a bridge too far. A significant overstatement.
Sure, you have a great deal of respect for adoption and adoptees, but has the institution of adoption really changed your life and the way you live?
After all, the odds are pretty good that you weren’t adopted. Just between two and three percent of American children are.
Maybe you know somebody who was adopted – or whose family adopted.
“Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33, ESV).
If you’re single, have you ever applied that verse to your dating relationships and search for a godly spouse?
Many Christian singles seek the same things in a mate as non-Christian singles. They focus on whether or not they’re attracted to one another, share common interests, enjoy each other’s company, or even if they share sexual chemistry.
Remember when you were first married? You and your spouse talked, had fun every weekend, and always seemed to have time for one another.
Then you became parents.
Now it seems every moment is busy with sports practice, dentist appointments, and school programs. Once a couple has children, it can be tough to fit each other in. Their marriage routinely gets pushed down the priority list.
It seems justifiable in the moment because parenting does require a lot from parents.
Ladies, how would you describe yourself? Would you use the word “beautiful”?
If you answer “no,” you’re not alone. In fact, according to author Elisa Morgan, the vast majority of women around the world, including Christians, don’t feel beautiful.
They see beauty in others – friends, relatives, celebrities, models on magazine covers – but they don’t see it in themselves. That’s partly because women see their outer flaws – “This is too big,” “that is too small” – but it’s also because a woman’s “ugly list,” as Elisa calls it, goes deeper, to the soul.
It’s not easy for a single mother to raise a son. It’s even more difficult when that son has autism.
Emily Colson can attest to that. Her husband walked out when their son Max was just 18-months-old, saying he couldn’t handle the stress.
And there was a lot of stress. Max’s autism was so severe that, for a time, Emily couldn’t leave home with him – not to the grocery store, not to friends’ houses, not to church.
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.
