Daly Focus Blog
My childhood was tough. My mom died when I was nine years old. My stepdad walked out on my siblings and me the day of her funeral. After that, I spent almost two years in foster care. When I think back on those days now, I have to search through the darkness to find bright spots.
One of them was when I was 11 years old. My dad and I shared an afternoon I’ll never forget.
Modern Christians are, let’s say, comfortable. We like our comfort zones, our religious routines and our focus on “doing right.”
But what if God is calling us to something more meaningful and challenging, like living a life of service, sacrifice, and forgiveness in a way that transforms the world?
Jesus was a radical. We don’t often think of Him that way. Modern society portrays Him as respectable and polite. But Jesus not only touched lepers, but He also drove corrupted merchants out of the temple with a whip made of cords.
Here at Focus on the Family, we hear from parents who wonder how to guide their children through cultural messages about race and ethnicity that are often divisive and dehumanizing.
Author Trillia Newbell has a balanced, informed, and grace-filled approach. Despite the racism she’s experienced, she has learned to move through life with forgiveness, compassion, and understanding. But she also believes parents should prioritize teaching their kids proper views about race, saying, “Either we teach our children, or the culture will.”
Trillia is joining me on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly to help Christian parents teach their children a biblical perspective about racial unity.
Kristen Hatton – counselor, author, and mom of three children – says there are two types of parenting:
Reactive Parenting. Mom and Dad respond to situations as they come up, without forethought.
Proactive Parenting. Mom and Dad seek to identify and prevent potential issues before they happen.
Number two is the best approach.
But how can parents intentionally influence their teenagers with biblical wisdom in the face of a culture whose values contradict God’s word?
Kristen is joing me on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly to help parents better understand how to convey God’s truth through everyday encounters.
Everyday we’re encouraged to go out and change the world and make it a better place. But how can one person truly have a genuine impact?
I like the advice one woman gave to her six-year-old nephew when he asked her how to change the world. She told him to imagine a circle around him then said, “You change the world by doing what’s right in the three feet around you.”
That’s wisdom even a six-year-old can understand.
David Jones is living proof that you should never underestimate a father’s love.
For months, David looked forward to walking his daughter down the aisle. But then Hurricane Helene came along, causing catastrophic damage, knocking out power for millions, and shutting down hundreds of roads, including the ones David needed to get to his daughter’s wedding.
Under normal conditions, his drive from South Carolina to Tennessee takes two hours. After the hurricane, he spent seven hours in traffic that ended at a road block almost 20 miles from his destination.
Author Dave Willis witnessed the life-changing power of love on a visit to an orphanage in Guatemala called Casa Shalom, which means “house of peace.” The privately run Christian orphanage serves about a hundred kids at a time in a place where most orphanages are government-run and fraught with corruption. Some of the children served by Casa Shalom have been sex-trafficked, exploited by the very people who should have been protecting them.
On his first visit there, Dave was introduced to a young Guatemalan girl named Margarita.
Who doesn’t love a good old-fashioned roller coaster?
Richard Rodriguez probably. He holds the world record for riding a roller coaster for an astonishing 112 days. Everybody who’s attempted that record will tell you it’s an achievement of endurance, not enjoyment. A roller coaster’s wild dips and corkscrews – designed to create excitement – all lose their thrill when you’re subjected to them over and over and over again.
An endless roller coaster ride isn’t much fun when it’s a marriage, either.
When I was 14 years old, a small airplane crashed across the street from where I lived. I called 911 then ran to the plane and helped two 20-somethings out of the burning wreckage. I thought they were the only two in the plane at first. I soon realized that their fathers had also been aboard. They were dead.
I also experienced tragedy in my personal life. My mother died of cancer when I was nine.
My wife Jean and I did devotions with our boys throughout their childhoods. “What kind of devotions?” was the issue we always had to resolve.
Jean preferred formal times of Scripture reading and devotion. Her degree is in biochemistry, so it fit her personality to whip up a lesson with the creativity and skill of a schoolteacher.
As for me, I’m spontaneous and loose. I chatted with my boys about the Bible when we were engaged in routine activities, like driving back and forth to school.
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.
