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You’re tired.
Not just physically; though yeah, that too.
You’re tired in your bones. In your soul.
Trying to be a steady husband, an intentional dad, a man of God… but deep down, you feel like you’re falling short. Like you’re carrying more than you know how to hold.
Dad Tired is a podcast for men who are ready to stop pretending and start healing.
Not with self-help tips or religious platitudes, but by anchoring their lives in something (and Someone) stronger.
Hosted by Jerrad Lopes, a husband, dad of four, and fellow struggler, this show is a weekly invitation to find rest for your soul, clarity for your calling, and the courage to lead your family well.
Through honest stories, biblical truth, and deep conversations you’ll be reminded:
You’re not alone. You’re not too far gone. And the man you want to be is only found in Jesus.
This isn’t about trying harder.
It’s about coming home.
Hey guys. Welcome back to the Dad Tired podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by Classical conversations. Are you concerned about your child's current education? That it won't give them the skills necessary to succeed in any area of life? I would highly consider joining Classical Conversations as a homeschool family.
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I've told you guys this before, but my dad left when I was three years old. I'm in my mid thirties now, and I'm still just now figuring out all the ways that that has impacted me. God's actually done some really cool stuff in my dad and in my relationship with my dad, like we're. We're just learning how to restore our relationship and what I never imagined our relationship could be like.
I've just been really gracious and, and, uh, we're getting to know each other and we actually talk quite a bit now, but for most of my childhood growing up, I, we would only talk a couple times a year, see each other a couple times a year at most. And, uh, at the age of three, he decided to do his own thing.
He's apologized for that. He's really owned up and manned up to the decisions that he's made that hurt me and my siblings. But yeah, he's just a. He, God's working in him in really cool ways and, and so, but that doesn't change the reality that I grew up without a dad. Like I said, I've spent the last, I don't know, decade, really diving into how that has impacted me.
I think for most of my twenties I would've said it didn't impact me like I would've always said as a kid, teenager, and early twenties, like, it's all I know. So it didn't really affect me too much. I remember those words, like specifically coming outta my mouth saying it didn't really affect me 'cause it's all I know.
Then in my late twenties and early thirties, I realized I was able to just maybe be a little bit more self-aware and mature, a little bit more mature to connect some dots. Like, oh, this behavior is directly tied to my dad's absence, or the way that I think about these kind of things, or myself or my identity is directly tied to my dad not being there.
And, uh, so anyway, I, I haven't figured that all out. I'm still in the process of figuring that all out. My buddy was here the other day, I guess it was a couple weeks ago, but he was talking to his dad. On the phone, really basic stuff, like he was like, Hey, I'm gonna fly back home on this at this time. Can you pick me up from the airport?
It was like a really normal, basic conversation, and I felt myself getting teary-eyed. As I'm listening to him talk to his dad and he hung up the phone. He's actually about to be a counselor, so obviously that caught his attention that he saw me emotional and he's my best friend and he's like, dude, what's going on?
And I was like, I have no idea. For some reason, hearing you talk to your dad and just hearing your dad be like, yeah, I'll be there. Pricked some nerve where it was like, I'm again. Realizing how much my dad's absence affected me and impacted me. So we talk through that and, uh, all that to say, I'm still figuring that stuff out and I'm in the middle of it.
I highly encourage you, regardless of your, if your dad was always around or if he was never around or any kind of dad things, emotions that come up, just try to. Be self-aware, zoom out, try to make some ties to behaviors and thoughts regarding your childhood and your relationship with your dad, and see if those things can connect and maybe it, it might be helpful to process that with a friend or another group of guys or something.
But I, I highly, I think it highly impacts who we are as men, the way that we were raised, and specifically the relationship that we had with our dad. Once I started to make that connection, that I was like, okay. My dad wasn't there and that impacted me. I was really convinced that not having a dad around.
Was the worst thing in the world. Every child needs their dad in the home, speaking identity over them, making them feel safe in every area, not just like physically safe, but emotionally safe, spiritually building them up. I think one of the biggest roles that dads play is giving them identity. Like this is who God has made you to be, and I'm gonna speak that identity over you constantly from the time you're a baby all the way until I send you out into the real world.
I'm gonna constantly. Point out who God has made you to be and secure your identity in Christ. And I think when we don't have that as men, what we find is we grow up to be men who are really just, we have men, bodies and, uh, voices and beards. I don't have a beard. I wish I could, but. You pretend to be this man, but really you feel still like an insecure boy?
I think a lot of dudes feel that if they were honest. I don't think a lot of dudes are honest about that, but I think if they were honest with themselves, a lot of guys still feel a deep sense of insecurity and you don't really know who you are as a man, and so you're trying to, you're scrambling, you're, you're reaching everywhere for somebody to tell you you have what it takes and you're good enough.
And so some of us are finding that through work. If you just. Can crush it at work. Somebody will pat you on the back or maybe you'll get a raise. You might be financially rewarded for your hard work or your skills and your talent and somebody will say, Hey, you're doing a good job. And that feels good to hear that and a lot of us long to hear that.
And so you, you reach for it at work or maybe you reach for it in sinful ways. Somebody else to tell you, some other woman to tell you that you're doing a good job or. You look for, again, maybe just stupid habits. I say, I say stupid, but it doesn't have to be necessarily like stupid. It could just be like silly things like you crush it at some hobby that really has no impact in eternity, like fantasy football.
Or, I always throw fantasy football on the bus 'cause I used to be really big into fantasy football. But you know, you just spend time on doing stuff hoping that somebody would be like, oh, you're good at this, are you? You've got a lot of talent in this. Or man, you're doing a good job. But at the root of all of that, whether it's you're finding that, that affirmation in silly things or stupid things or sinful things, at the root of all of it, you trace it back and it's really just us longing for as men.
Somebody to tell us we're doing a good job and we have what? It takes a lot of this, by the way, we love to hear that from our wives. Our wives have such a powerful voice in us, our lives as men, to tell us, I see who you are. I see your flaws and your strengths, and I believe God's made you to be a man, to lead us and to do well.
And to that you have what it takes to, to lead our family well. Like those kind of words from a wife, man, they're powerful. But I think again, all of that can be traced back to. This deep longing to have a man tell us, Hey, this is who God's made you to be, and you can be confident in your sonship. In Christ, you have what it takes because God has adopted you into his family and he's called you and he's redeeming you.
And yes, you're not perfect today, but God's making you new every day. He will finish what he started in you. And so if he started by calling you and drawing you to himself, he will finish that. He will complete that work in you and you are becoming the man God desires you to be in right now. Like by His spirit.
He's given you what it takes to lead well, to love well, to protect, to serve well. So anyway, I think there's a huge, went a little bit of a, I didn't mean to put on like a preacher, pastor hat there, but. I think that's a huge part of a, of a dad's identity and his role, and so not having that is detrimental, man.
It's just detrimental to a child to not have a man speaking that into a child's life constantly. That's what we ought to be doing for our kids constantly. This is who God's made you to be. You have what it takes. You've been a. Adopted into his family. And I didn't have that. And I used to think that was the worst thing in the world to not have that.
And I remember even as a kid thinking, I'm never gonna give that to my kids. I'm never gonna give them that reality, that they don't have a dad around constantly speaking identity into them. And so when I became a dad, I wanted to be the most intentional man. Ever the most intentional dad ever. Like I had dreamt about being a dad for years.
And so when I became a dad, I was like, I'm gonna crush it at this because I've longed for years, decades to be the kind of man for my kids that the kind of dad for my kids that I longed to have when I was a kid. And so in many ways, I still feel that I believe everything I just said to this day, still to be true.
But here's one thing that I've, I'm maybe learning, not having a dad around is detrimental to a child. I think every family needs a man. I know that's like controversial words in 2023, but I, I believe to my core, I believe God designed it so that every family would have a man in their home leading them well.
Now obviously. God is good and he is creative and he can work with anything. We see that all throughout scripture. I was raised by a single mom. I didn't have a dad around and uh, and I still love Jesus and Jesus still loves me. And so God is gracious and there's lots of those stories. There are a lot of single moms and there are a lot of dads who have to be absent for.
At various times for various reasons. Maybe military or something like that. And so there's all kinds of circumstances. It's, I'm not naive to think that it's all black and white, but I do think what's best is that there is a man around that there is a man leading in the family. And I believe that to my core to this day.
So when a dad is absent, it's detrimental. But here's something I'm learning. I'm learning that it might be just as bad. If not worse. I don't know this for sure. I can't say this for sure, but to have a dad around, but not really present, that wasn't my experience. And so I don't really know, I don't think anybody's done any research on this, so I can't pull any data.
But I'm just wondering, after hearing a lot of stories, as I've traveled the country and world, working with guys for the last seven, eight years, and I hear stories of guys in their childhood, you know, I used to view life just through my own lens. It's all I had. It's the only data I had was my own childhood, my own circumstances.
But I've met tons and tons of guys who grew up with a dad who never left. He was in the house, he didn't bail, but he was emotionally, spiritually unavailable. And he was not really present with them. And so they would say things like, you know, my dad was there. Yeah. He provided, we didn't, we weren't like poor, we weren't homeless.
We had a house to sleep in and we had food to eat, but my dad wasn't really there. Like I never really had, I. Deep conversations with my dad. I never was, had a conversation with him where he really spoke identity into me. I don't remember my dad teaching me things with intentionality. He was just kind of there, and I'm starting to wonder, dude, is that worse?
I wonder what it would've been like for me. Again, I don't know this reality, but I wonder what it would've been like to have a dad in my home, and yet not to feel like he's not really there. I feel like that would be crushing. And I know a lot of you guys, that's, dude, that's your reality. Like you grew up with your dad.
He didn't bail, but he wasn't really there. I started thinking about this. Um, in the context of the gospel, we want to filter everything that we do and see and think through the lens of the gospel. The Bible isn't just some random stories where we, uh, we read and hopefully we get some advice on how to live as.
Better moral men like the gospel that the Bible teaches us who God is. And when we learn who God is, it shapes who we are and how we view ourselves. And we view everything through the lens of the gospel. The gospel being that God didn't bail. And, and so I tried to, like, I was trying to view all of this through that lens, and here's what I came up with.
You remember back in the scriptures, very, very beginning of the story. The Bible's one big story, the, the very beginning of the story. Everything's perfect. Very first pages of your Bible. If you're just like, I'm gonna read through the Bible from cover to cover, you get through the first page and you're like, this is amazing.
And then things take a radical turn for the worst. Adam and Eve, they sin against God. They turn their backs on God. And you would think the story would end there like that would be it. I've written about this several times, spoken about this several times, but God doesn't leave in the middle of their worst day in the middle of their brokenness, in the middle of all of creation falling apart from the cosmos, the universe, like everything falling apart from the macro to the micro is falling apart.
And in the middle of that, you see in Genesis three, chapter eight says this, God walks with them. God is taking a walk in the cool of the day, God is with him. And that passage always just blows me away, man. 'cause it's nothing like how I am as a dad. When my kids mess up, when my kids mess up, can, would they say Dad's with me, or would they say, no, dad yells at me, or Dad's mad at me, or Dad sends me away.
But God is with his kids. On their worst day when everything's falling apart, God is. With them. He's walking with them, among them, near them. The Bible says in the cool of the day, almost this language that brings kind of this calm in the middle of chaos, and this becomes like that. From the very first pages of scripture, this becomes God's reputation.
You fast forward to the Book of Exodus where they're like making statues that God's people are making statues out of. They burn, they melt all their gold, and they make these statues that look like cows and they're turning their back on God and they're. Sin. They're complaining against God and is he even real?
Or why are we even serving him? I wish we were slaves. Again, all these like really hurtful things when God has been so faithful to them. And again, you would think, all right, God would leave. God has every right to bail on them like my dad bailed on me. But what do we see? God's reputation show up again.
Exodus 25 8. He says, then have them make for me a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them. Again, this is crazy because God could have shouted from afar, he could have passed by. I again, I'm just like trying to compare this to my role as a dad, right? I'm with him. My kids are being disobedient. I jump in from time to time and I kind of, you know, give a piece of advice or I'll correct them, or I'll say something to them, but then I just move on with the rest of my day.
But what does God do? God, the father with his children, Exodus chapter 25, he makes a sanctuary for them that I may dwell among them. This is who God is with his children. He's with them. He's among them. You see in Matthew one, chapter 22, God puts on human clothes. He cannot get close enough to his children.
I. It says, and they will call him Emmanuel, which means God with us. Insane. Out of all the ways that God could have fixed the sin problem, out of all the ways that God could have rectified our sin and built the bridge to, to cover the chasm of our sin and make things right, God decides he's gonna dwell among us with us.
And if you just read that, that you start reading just the gospels, Matthew, mark, Luke, and John, and you read these, this passage, this verse that talks about God with us, I'd be like, oh, that's cool, but it's, it's so much bigger when you read it in its context that this is God's reputation. He's always with his people.
He's with him in the garden on the worst day of human history. Genesis chapter three, he's walking among them in the garden. Exodus 25, verse eight. Have them build a sanctuary for me and I will dwell what among them. Matthew chapter one, John Chapter one, God with us, God among them that I may dwell among them.
Then as Jesus is getting ready to leave in John chapter 14, he says, his disciples freak out like Jesus. How are you gonna leave us? You know, like, what? What? What are we gonna do when you're gone? Jesus says, I'm not gonna leave you like an orphan. You're not gonna be without me. I'll put my spirit. I will be inside of you.
John, chapter 14, I will be in you again. Crazy. Where did God dwell before? He dwelled in sanctuary. He dwelled in the He dwelled in a tabernacle. He dwelled in the holy of holiness. But now God says, I'm gonna put my spirit inside of you. That's how close I want to be with you. And then again, at the very end of the whole story, revelation 21.
There's this beautiful passage where God is making all things new. Finally, it's the day all of our hearts long for, and he says, I will be your God and I will dwell. I. With you. Again, this is God's reputation from the very first pages of scripture to the very last. And, and the reason I tell you all that, and I know a lot of you guys have, you've read the Da Tired books and you, you've heard the Da Tired podcast for a while, and you may have heard me talk about this before, but I'm saying all of that in this context.
I've been feeling the conviction lately that even though I haven't bailed on my kids. Which, if I'm totally honest, there have been times where I'm like, ah, dude, I don't, this is hard. I, I don't know if I could do this. I've never like the thing that's kept me, 'cause I'm like, I can't do that to my kid. I can't do to my kids what my dad did to me and what every man did to my family.
I'm not gonna leave my kids, but dude, I've, you know, if you're dad, you're like, dude, this is freaking hard, man. This is hard. So I've stuck around, I've been physically here, but man, the conviction that I feel is, am I really with them? Um, Chris Kin, who's a, he's a dad tired contributor here. He is a co-host of the podcast and done lots of episodes.
He speaks at our dad Tired retreat. Um, just a gifted teacher. He put together a series through the book of John in our dad Tired community. That's a free community, by the way, if you go to dad tired.com and then just join the community totally free. Mean to other dad tired guys. But we have a free study in there that we'll be releasing.
Publicly here real soon, but he goes through John one where he just talks about what does it look like to dwell among your kids the way that God dwells among his kids. And Dude, it's so convicting, man, because I'm here and you are probably listening and you're probably there, you know what I mean? Like, you're gonna go home tonight, or maybe you're home right now listening to this.
Maybe you're mowing the lawn or you're working out, or I don't know, maybe you're at work listening to this, or in the car, you just left your family, you're going home to your family. Like you're, you're there, but dude, are you there? You know what I mean? Like, are you really there? And I don't know, bro, like I just have this.
I have this deep conviction that I don't want my kids to be like, yeah, my, my grandpa bailed on my dad. And so my dad was committed to being with us, but he wasn't really with us. Bro, that is not spiritual leadership. That is not being among your kids in the same way that God is among us. It's not that God just pops in from time to time.
It's not that he just does these crazy miracles. The amazing part about God is that he's just with us. Most of the things that I mentioned, those passages, yes, it's miraculous that God puts on human flesh and that he puts a spirit in us. I mean, those are miraculous things, but when we think of miracles, we're like, you know, make some guy's arm grow back or feed us with, you know, one loaf of bread, turn it into thousands.
But the real miracle in all of it, the real miracle in God's reputation, from Genesis to Revelation, the real miracle is that God is just with people, God. Perfect. Spotless. Blameless. In many ways you'd be like, we have nothing in common. I mean, he's a, who are we that you would be mindful of us? The scriptures say like, who are we that you would want to be among us?
With us? I get that you would give us a book and toss it to us, or have someone else deliver it to us and give us some advice. But the fact that you, God, are just with us, dude, that's the miracle. The crazy part that, bro, listen right now you could pray and God is gives you his full attention. Think about that.
When you're done listening to this podcast and you pray and you should, we both should. When we pray we have God's full attention. He's not distracted. Try to wrap your brain around this. Somehow he's thinking about every other thing and fully engaged with you at the exact same time. I. He's not distracted you.
You have all of his attention. He is with you. He delights in you. He dwells among you. His presence is with you. His Holy Spirit is in you right now. If you're a believer, like insane, insane. And bro, I don't, I don't know if our kids will remember all the crazy things. We actually just went on a cruise for Easter.
We got away as a family, and I was speaking on a DC talk cruise. Um, somebody like, who's DC talk? It's all if you know that, uh, I won't go on a tangent. Anyway, I was speaking on a DC talk cruise a couple years ago, and I took my family with me and I was asking my son about that as we were getting off this cruise.
I'm like, Hey, you remember this was your, you went on a cruise before You remember that last one? He's like, what? No, I don't remember. I'm like, you don't remember? Like all the time, all the memories, everything We did, all the crazy stuff we did. You went to the beach, you got to snorkel. You remember all that stuff.
He's like, I have no memory of that. I'm like, it wasn't even that long ago. It's like two, three years ago. And you have no, he's like, I literally, I have no memory of it. My point is this, I don't know if our kids are gonna remember all the miraculous things, and when I say miraculous, I say that in quotes. I don't know if they're gonna remember all the crazy stuff that we did for them as dads.
I don't know if they're gonna remember all the presents that we spent a bunch of money on to put under the tree. I don't know if they're gonna remember the vacations that we felt like we had to go in debt over. Or the big memories or the things that we hoped would give them big memories. I wonder if they'll just remember, nah, dad was with me, man.
Like Dad was with me. If I needed to talk to my dad, he was there. He was fully there. Not distracted, not prioritizing a hundred other things, but, but Dad was there. I. And I wonder if that part of our reputation, if we can get there, would be evidence, would be able to point back to a God that is always with them, that we could say with integrity and with confidence.
Son, daughter, I want to be always with you because there's a God who is always with you. One day, daddy won't be here, but there's a God who will never leave you one day. Daddy will be gone, but there's a God who will never be gone. And so I'm with you, son, daughter, as best as I can. I wanna be as distraction free as I can.
I wanna give you my full attention, all of my love, all of my joy, all of my delight. I wanna give it all to you, but I really am doing it because I want you to know there's a God who gives you all his love, all his joy, all his delight, and all his attention. And so as I'm feeling this conviction, I'm inviting you to join in with me, that we would say, dude, what's taking us away from being fully present with our kids of dwelling among them?
Really not just being there, but being there. And you know what I mean by that? So what thing in your life right now are you like, dude, you're giving actually more attention to that, that person, that dollar amount, that boss. That project, what are you giving more attention to that you just say, dude, I, why is that person or that thing getting so much of my mental energy, my time, my money, like I'm gonna set that aside so that I can just dwell among them as the leader of the home.
Would that be one of our greatest qualities as men, as spiritual leaders that we dwell? Among our children, the way that God has a reputation of always dwelling among us. I love you guys. I'll see you next week.