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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. We're glad that you're here. If you just found us for the first time, just wanna say welcome to you. We're glad that you did stumble upon us. We're just a bunch of normal guys from all over the world who are trying to figure out what it looks like for us as men to fall in love with Jesus first, and then have that change the way that we lead our families.
If that resonates with you, if that sounds like something you're interested in, we'd love to have you part of our community. We're not just a podcast. We have an online community, thousands of men from all over the world who are like-minded. And are taking this stuff seriously. So we'd love to meet, have you meet those guys?
You can do that by going to dad tire.com. Click the community tab. It's totally free. You can jump in over there. We also have live events all over the country, all year, sometimes around the world. And so if you wanna host one of those, you can go to dad tire.com and click the conferences tab and you can sign up to host one, or you can just see all the conferences that we have going on all over the country.
They're starting to fill up quick for 2024. Yeah, so we'd love to have you be part of that. I just want to say, uh, first Merry Christmas to you guys and happy New Year as you are listening to this. Hope you had a great Christmas. You might be able to tell my voice if you're a long time listener. I. I sound sick, and that's because I've had my head buried in a toilet for the last 24 to 48 hours.
That's disgusting. I probably shouldn't have said that. I have been like deathly ill. I told Layla I in the middle of it, I like, I think I'm legitimately gonna die, which is probably not the right thing to say to your wife, but I, dude, I was, I wasn't a man cold. I promise that. I wasn't like milking it. I was so deathly ill man, I that.
Didn't feel normal. Didn't feel right. Felt like it was ah, anyway. Yeah, that was terrible. But my kids have been sick. I got sick on Christmas and uh, I heard it's going around. A lot of my neighbors are sick. It's just, uh, it's going around. It was really terrible. But I hope that wasn't your story. I hope you had a, uh, great Christmas with your family and your loved ones, and hopefully you're getting all set in for the new year.
Before we jump into the episode, I just wanna say thank you, man. You know, in November and December we always do a big fundraiser push where we try to raise our funds for the next coming up year, and our goal was to reach $30,000 because we had a donor who very generously said that he would match all donations up to $30,000.
And so we had been for the last two months trying to push that and raise those funds. We're a nonprofit and so we're primarily funded through donations anyway, we were right around like the 5,000 mark for a long time, and then we kind of moved up to 10,000 and like the last week, just so many of you, we had about 70 guys chip in to help us hit our goal, and we were able to race.
$37,206 and 89 cents in the last eight weeks, which is just, dude, it just blows my mind, man. So thank you to all of you who chipped in and gave to that goal. It helps us continue to do this podcast, to do these live events, to have that free community, to do our family leadership program, and eventually.
This year we'd like to do meetups all over the country. My goal is to have a meetup. A dad hired local meetup within a hundred miles of every listener in the United States. And so we're working toward that. Takes a bunch of like technology to figure out how to do that well. We gotta create some good curriculum for guys to go through during those meetups.
We've gotta train up leaders. It just takes manpower, technology, power. It will take a lot for us to hit that goal. It's a big goal, but because of your generosity, we're able to. Move closer to that. You can still give, obviously you can give any time if, if you're listening to this, you know, months or years from now and you want to participate in helping us move forward in our goals, you can do that by going to dad tire.com/donate.
But just wanna say thank you. Absolutely incredible. I think probably the most encouraging thing was to hear. All the guys, uh, when you donate you can actually like type in a little note and some comments and just the overwhelming majority of you who gave that wrote in those comment sections and say, and told me how dad's hired, has changed you as a man.
It's changed the way that you lead your family and you love your kids and you're more patient and you're more intentional and all that stuff. It's just sometimes I'm just staring at this computer and I'm like, is this helping anyone? So to hear your comments and. The way that it's transforming lives is really, really impactful.
So just wanna say thank you guys from the bottom of my heart, and I think we're still just getting started. God's got a lot of big things planned for us this new year. Speaking of New Year, many of us will go into, we're going into election year here in the States and I don't know, probably gonna be a little crazy and insane and.
I suspect we will see things that we've never seen before, as we usually do in these election cycles, as they get kind of more and more intense as the years go on. And so as we go into a year that is most likely going to be filled with all kinds of chaos. I just wanted to pause. There were two messages from my friends who are on this podcast, often Chris and Caleb, who come on the podcast they've shared at our events.
But I listened to two messages separately, just on my own, just as a dude, just trying to get filled by the word of God from great teachers. I listened to these messages that they separate. Gave. They've never even met each other actually. But I listened to these messages about anxiety and worry and what it looks like to rest in peace in Christ.
Both of them transformed me deeply, and so I wanted to play both of them for you. I'll play one today and then later this week I'll release another one. Kind of a part two to this, but I just want you to hear this and let the word of God kind of rest deep into your souls as men, as the leaders of our family before we go into a new year.
What we don't wanna do as men is to be the chief, like anxious guy of our family. Like we set the temperature of our family. I heard one. One guy say that as men, we set the temperature, we are the thermostat. I'm gonna mess this up. I'm terrible. We're the thermometer. We're the thermostat. I don't remember.
But the wife is essentially, we set the temperature and the wife gauges the temperature. So our wives typically have a good sense of like what the temperature is of our households, and we as man typically can set the temperature. And I'm not talking literally, although we often are the ones in control of our thermostats.
Praise God. Amen. But I mean like we are the ones who set the tone for our house, and our wives can often tell what the tone is. So she can oftentimes come to us and say like, something's off here. And then we can be the ones as leaders to say, okay, what needs to change to set the tone correctly? And so as we move into a new year, which will likely be a chaotic new year, our goal as men is to set the temperature of stability of.
Peace of we know what the future holds because we have been adopted sons of and daughters of Christ. And so we don't fear when the rest of the world breaks down and goes into pure chaos. Um, we don't as men and that's not what our family does because we serve a king who is full of peace and love and joy.
And so I just wanna set the tone for us as men and as leaders before we get started into this year. And uh, Chris is gonna give a message today. That I think will help us do that. Well, let's jump in.
Alright. My name is Chris Kin. I'm from San Diego. We are talking today about the idea in this series called Stressed. What does it look like to be functional atheists? It's kinda a weird topic, right? Functional atheism kind of looks like this. I was a high school pastor for a long time. Some of you think I'm still in high school.
I actually graduated not that long ago. And we would do like this repelling trip. Now, I'm not a big heights guy. Any of you guys like me just don't put me on the side of cliffs. Yeah. Okay. So we get up there and you always right, it's like early in the morning and then there's like that guy that greets you and he's like way too excited about life, you know?
And he is like kind of in your face, he's like, hi, I'm rad Tad, we're gonna have a rad day. And you're like, you need to chill. Like you're too much, you're too much for like six 30 in the morning. And. And I'm an introvert, right? And so that guy always wants to do like icebreaker games, like let's get to know each other.
All right, everyone, let's dance around. It's like that's my own personal idea of hell is someone just makes me be weird with strangers in a dance setting. Like that's it for me, right? My other introverts in here are like, finally, someone says something that was this guy. He gets us all amped up. He's like, welcome to back country.
Repelling, skydiving and bungee jumping. We're so glad to have you. And he like yells about everything and he's like, I'm rad. Tad, what's your cool camp name? You're like, I don't wanna play this game, man. And after he gets all amped, then every time you do any of these things, all of a sudden the guy like brings it into the most serious thing possible.
And he says, but yo. We love having fun here. Fun's important to us. But there's one thing more important than fun, and that's safety. So you've met Rad. So you've met him. It's safety. And then he like gives you really prolonged eye contact. Like, we're gonna keep you safe. You're like, tad, please do not stare into my soul anymore.
You're creeping me out. So then he starts with a spiel. He's like, but you're gonna be safe. 'cause look, we've got the strongest tension rope in the industry. I'm like. Maybe that's true. I'm not in the industry. I don't wanna be in the industry. You can tell me whatever you want about ropes right now. I don't know anything about ropes.
Except they're ropes, right? Like, I don't know, is this a good rope? Bad rope? So I take Tad's word for it and he's like, we don't just have the strongest ropes in the industry. We have the best staff in the industry. Look behind me, laser buck rock. Timber Oak Tree and Kevin, and we are the best in the business.
Do you believe this? And you're like, sure. I mean, buck Rock looks stoned, but other than that, like, great, you know, I'm Buck Rock. Okay. Can I say stoned at church? Uh, Lynn will tell me afterwards, we got the best gear, we've got the best staff, and we've got the best reputation. After 50 years of climbing, jumping, skydiving, bungee jumping, we have never lost a single person and we don't intend on starting today.
And if you don't like heights like me, when someone tells you we haven't lost anyone in 50 years, I think. Then we're overdue, right? Like, ah, man, there it is. Right? Father of five dies in repelling acts like this is gonna be my story. Now I have five kids. Did I tell you that already? Nope. Okay. There was a gasp, but an audible one when I said that.
How does a 12-year-old have five kids? Okay. He like walks through all this stuff and he is like, oh, you're ready? And then you say, yes. And then what does he say? Every time? I can't hear you, right? Yes. Okay. Yes, we're ready. And then he is like, let's go. So you like get on your big like string diaper thing, right?
And then you're, you get holster, you got your dumb hat on. And then he is like, all right Chris, let her go. Uh, alright buddy. Now what we talked about just kick off the rock and. Fall and I'm just sitting there staring at him like, I would love to drop, kick you right in the jaw is what I'd like to do right now.
Right? And I'm like shaking and I'm nervous. There's like 13, 14-year-old girls next to me going, ah, right. I think it's 'cause Rad Town was kind of good looking. So they were like, whatever you say. And so Tad comes up to me and he is like real serious. He like gets in my face way too close, like way too early, right?
And he's like, Hey, Chris, what's going on? And I'm like, I'm older than you. Like, don't counsel me in this moment. He's like, all right, is it the equipment? I'm like, no. I know it's good equipment. I maybe, I don't know. I, but it's not about the equipment, is it? About our staff? Kind of. It's kind of you, but no, I, I recognize.
It's a good staff. Okay. As repelling staffs go, I'm sure it's perfectly sufficient. Is it our reputation? No, it's not your reputation. So you know it's gonna hold you. You know that we've got the right personnel and you know, our reputation, all those things. You know that to be true. Yes. Well then just let go bro.
In this moment, I am a functional atheist. I know that what you're saying is true. If you gave me a little like a test, what do you believe concerning the equipment at Rad Tad's High Adventure, bungee jumps, tour guiding thing, I would go best equipment, best staff, best reput. I know that, but that doesn't mean I'm willing to jump.
It doesn't, it's not gonna actually affect the way that I live my life. And so often, I think in my personal life, this whole sermon, I'm gonna teach to you today for the next two and a half hours, just so you understand, is ha. If you're in a church, you're like, oh Lord. There's so many things about God, and if you're new to the Jesus conversation, maybe you're not a Jesus follower at all.
You're absolutely welcome into this, but this whole sermon is just a sermon that I need to hear and you can listen into as much as you'd like to. Okay? This is a sermon that I'm teaching to myself. You just happen to be here. Okay? This is not something I've conquered or that I've figured out or any of those things.
Worry has seeped into the church and it's made its impact and it's made his mark in a remarkable way. They were finding it when the frontiersmen, when they were starting to plant different civilizations as they're moving west, that they would go from town to town. And if there was someone in the town that worked on hats, the hatter of the town, the one who made the hats, the brims, and sealed them and everything, the guy in every town that made hats was crazy.
So they deduced. Crazy. People like to make hats. What they found over time is that what Hatters used to use to make hats waterproof is a substance called mercury. And so they would work with mercury all day to seal these hats. We only come to find out later on that mercury poisoning makes you go crazy.
So it's not that crazy. People make hats. It's that hats make people go crazy. Because as they worked with it and they were around it so much, it began to seep into their skin and then into their very cord of their system, and it drove them mad. That's like Alice Wonderland, the Mad Hatter. That's why we have that.
That's where that comes from. What I'm interested in is in my own personal life, I don't live in a vacuum as a Christian, right? I live inside of San Diego, California. Y'all live inside of Chandler or San Tan, Scottsdale, wherever the Flagstaff. I am now at the end of all the cities that I know, Goodyear.
There's one surprise. How do you even say that name without saying it? Every time? Where are you from? Surprise anyway. You don't live in a vacuum, right? Cornerstone Church isn't in a vacuum. You're surrounded by culture. And culture impresses in on us on all sides. And if you spend an hour in church every week, you spend 167 hours a week in culture.
And we can't think to ourselves reasonably, that culture hasn't seeped into the way that we think and move and breathe like the Mad Hatter. We have to sometimes do our due diligence to say. What of what I believe is biblical and what of what I believe and do is culture that has seeped into my skin. If we don't do the hard work that love requires to separate those two things, we will practice functional atheism.
I know that God is there. I recognize who he is. I I'm aware of his character, and yet, if you watched my life and the way that I handle stress and worry and anxiety and all those things, I am for all intents and purposes an atheist. There are certain categories of Christianity where the Christian should look remarkably different than the non-Christian.
There are certain categories of being. There are certain events in the Christian life that are remarkably different than for the Christian than for the non-Christian. Funerals are one of them. When you go to a Christian funeral, we call it a celebration of life, and we are kind of bummed not for the situation that they find themselves in right now as the dead person because we know that they are absolutely in a state of glory and love and delight and amazingness that they would never come back.
Even if they had a vote, they would stay there. A lot of you guys know my story, but two years ago I got a phone call that my wife passed away unexpectedly, and I was a single dad of five kids. And this is my journey that I'm on right now, and it's hard to understand that your wife passes away and if she had a vote, she wouldn't come back because she's with Jesus in her glory now.
And so we celebrate life as Christians and we go to funerals as Christians, and they, there's this glimmer of hope that the, the Apostle Paul says, we do not grieve as those who have no hope. The Christian funeral's different than the non-Christian funeral, the non-Christian funeral. You, you can't pitch hope.
What I tell you, we look back at their life and we reminisce. They had it, so they, they made such an impact. But at the end of the day, I don't know what to do with that. Christian funerals feel very different than non-Christian ones. Christian marriages can feel different than non-Christian marriages.
Christian weddings are different than non-Christian weddings because there is this echo of internality in who we are. There's this hope of what's to come. There's this idea that for the Christian Earth is as close to hell as we're ever going to get, and heaven awaits. Us. This is what we believe. We, we know that God is with us and in and through all things, that He is knit us together in our mother's womb.
We've been fearfully and wonderfully made. The Psalm says in Psalm 51, that God knows every hair on our head. He loves us. We are God's workmanship. Ephesians two verse 10, created in Christ Jesus to do good works. We know these things to be true up here. But when it comes to certain categories of our life, you wouldn't know if you watch the way that, I worry that I have a hope different than a non-Christian.
And I think for a lot of us, it is one of the key categories, the key ways that culture has seeped into our Christian world is because so many of us have given into worry and anxiety and all those things. So, and there's a reason to, oh, the world is nuts. So, but because so many of us worry as some kind of.
We have to scratch constantly. We sit around and we have just accepted it as part of our culture as Christians, we like the culture are worriers, and yet when you open up the text, you find out that this is where culture has seeped in. And Jesus calls us to something remarkably different. Here's what Luke chapter 12 says.
Jesus is speaking and he's talking to his disciples and it says this. Therefore, uh oh as good. Theologians, we always ask, what? What is the, therefore, therefore, good question, friend. Remember the book of Luke was not written episodically, right? Luke didn't write chapter 12, chapter 13. It's this one letter that he wrote to a guy named Theophilus, so that Theophilus would understand who Jesus was.
We stole the dude's mail, and now we read it to each other. Okay? So there's actually no such thing as Luke chapter two when it says, in those days, Caesar Augustus issues a decree that it so to be taken that doesn't exist, right? Luke 15 is the Perigal son, but he didn't write 15. This is one continuous thought.
It was meant to be read in one continuous setting. So whenever we read the, therefore, we have to remember this is part of an ongoing. Thought train that Luke is giving us, and Luke has just told us a story of when Jesus confronts a rich man who is enveloped in his greed and then dies suddenly after accumulating all of this wealth and the rich man can't do anything about it.
It doesn't matter how much money you have when your time's up, your time's up. Therefore, Jesus says, if this is true, if you can do every, you can bubble wrap your kids, right? They can only play flag football. You can put as many helmets on them as you possibly want to, but at the end of the day, you can even train up a child in the way that they should go.
But does that promise they're gonna follow Jesus? Does that promise that they're gonna live and step with the king? Does that promise that their life is gonna be free from pain? You can rub essential oils on whatever you fuck. Feel like rubbing essential oils on. And when your time is up, your time is up.
Can't fix it, can't stop it. And if that's the case, Jesus says, then don't worry about your life. Isn't it funny how often we hear Jesus speak and we go, you're so naive, right? Well easy for you to say, Jesus. What did you have to worry about with your sandals and your robe walking around? What did you have to worry about?
Right. You don't have modern day complications. You haven't tried to worry about what your kids are watching on TikTok and the way that your grades are improving and that a hundred thousand people applying for this one job and the economy, which is upside. You don't have to worry about all this stuff.
Easy for you to say, don't worry about your life. We got technology and it's running rampant, and it's promised to give us more freedom in our schedule. And what has it done? The more freedom that we've gotten, the more we fill our life with more junk to do. Like the sermon I'm teaching right now, it's literally, I got it from ai, it's chat, GPT.
I said, give me a good sermon on worry. And this is what it spit out. Literally the words I'm saying right now. It's teleprompter. Even me telling you it's teleprompter is on the teleprompter right now. So I had, I had a freer week, right. Lynn Winters, come teach your cornerstone. I'm like, I'm not a sucker.
Chat GPT. Gimme a good sermon on worry. And here we go. This is all in it too.
And then I backfill my schedule with more stuff to do. And yet Jesus says in the scriptures, it says in Hebrews chapter four. Jesus is tempted in every single way that we were, and yet he did not sin. It says on the cross that Jesus bears the sin and the shame and the problems and the issues that each and every one of us face, and then he crucifies them, giving them resurrection and newness of life as he comes back out of the grave on the third day, which means that you can never look in the face of Jesus if you read the text about who he was.
Here's what it says about Jesus. He was a man familiar with pain. Isaiah chapter 43, as though people would hide their face from him. If you watched his life, you would think this guy is. That the father is against this guy. The, the father would consider him stricken and and afflicted. He was in low esteem.
The Bible says he wasn't even an attractive man. He had nothing in his stature that you would behold him or that would attract us to him. His life was categorized by one central event. His death, he came to seek and save the lost for sure, but through what means? His very own rejection, mockery, crucifixion, humiliation, and eventually burial leading to resurrection.
So we can't start with the pithy ideas that Jesus doesn't understand what there would be to be worried about when he is in the garden of Gethsemane. It says He is so consumed with the thought of what is to come. He begins to sweat drops of blood. He bore every bit of our anxiety, shame, and worry on himself.
We have a Jesus who is familiar with our pain, which is why Hebrews four, verse 24 says, therefore, we can approach God's throne of grace with confidence because he knows what you're going through. So don't write him off as some naive teacher and go, well, you don't get what my life's like. He absolutely does.
And then he says this thing. He says, do not be worried about your life, what you will eat or about your body. What you will wear for life is more than food, and the body is more than clothes. He's employing a rabbinical literary device. Some of you don't care about this, but I'm gonna tell you it anyway.
It's called Call the Homer. Okay? It's a Hebrew phrase. If you wanna say it, you gotta get some call the Homer. Okay? Basically what it was is rabbis would try to help people understand God's love, grace, patience, mercy, justice, but there's not a lot of words you can use in the human language to help us understand how great God's love for us is.
So they would've to try to use analogies, these literary devices. And the one that Jesus employs right here is called Call the Homer, which is if I can get you agree to something small. Then you'll agree to something bigger. Or if I can get you to agree to something big, it'll make sense that that's something small.
I'll give you an example. Okay? My son Brady's five years old, and last week he got stung by a bee. And when he got stung by a bee, I went and I'm fixing it. And I'm just talking to him and I said, man, I wish I was there. I would've grabbed that bee and let it sting me instead of you. And he looked at me like, huh?
And then he said this phrase, dad, you would've taken a bee sting for me. Where my dad's at. In the room. Where you at? My dude right here. How many kids you got? Four. That's too many, right? That's a lot. It's kind of masochistic if you think about it. If your kid came up to you, which one's your youngest?
Hannah Boy. Hannah's a girl. How old's Hannah? 18. Let's think about Hannah when she was. Six. You look too young to have an 18-year-old Hannah. Hannah comes up to you when she's five years old, whatever. It's six years old. She says, daddy, you would take a beast sting for me. An appropriate fatherly response beyond saying, of course I would.
Would be to elaborate on that. You might say, Hannah, I wouldn't take a beast sting for you. I would. I would take a bullet for you. If you're a father, you know the end of that sentence already. If you're a mom, you already know it, and so what are we telling Hannah in that moment? We're saying, girl, you never have to question what I would go through for you because I'm willing to die for you, which includes everything before that as well.
This is called call the Homer if I'm willing to do X and everything before that is included. If I love you like this, don't question if I love you like this. This is way before that. It's the idea of helping people understand God's love and providence for them without saying God loves you and using big, heavenly language that we couldn't understand.
It's using analogies. So Jesus is going, don't worry. Don't worry about tomorrow what you eat, what you drink, what you were wearing. And then he says, isn't the body more than food? Isn't your body more than clothing? So what's he saying? He's saying. Did you know that every single second in your body, the semi-permeable membranes of your neutron, your cells, the way that your eyes are able to perceive information through your cones and rods and pupil and iris intake, all this visual data.
And right now my shirt isn't actually green, it's everything but green green's the only thing that's repelled back to you and your eye takes that in. It sees everything that's going on and it makes sense of it. And then you have to flip it upside down 'cause that's the way your brain naturally works and you're intaking all this and there's more synapses and electrical connections in your brain working right now and firing off.
Than there is in the entire county of Los Angeles combined. For you to intake those things that you're seeing, that's not even to think about what you're hearing right now. I'm just making noises. And your brain is taking those noises, putting 'em into words. Those are in sentences. Those sentences have meaning, and you're interpreting that meaning so that you know that right now my sentence is done.
Okay, so Jesus says, when's the last time you voted on that? When's the last time in your heart that you said Beat, beat, beat, beat, beat. When's the last time you converted oxygen to carbon dioxide on purpose? When's the last time you had to go through the chemical process and tell your body exactly how to do that?
When's the last time you had anything to do with the sustenance of your life on a molecular level, when never is the correct answer? 10 points for Gryffindor. Here's what this means. Jesus is saying. The much more difficult thing about sustaining life for you that I do every second of every year that you've ever been alive, that you don't even know about is being completed.
Even as I speak to you and you think that you need to worry about clothes, call the Homer. If I do this for you and every single second, that keeps you alive and functional, that you wouldn't even be able to process. If I told it to you, it would blow your mind. You think, I'm not gonna get you close. If I love you like that, you question that.
I love you like that. That's like if I told you the other day, this is a, um, kind of embarrassing, but I ran to Hawaii the other day. No, don't get ahead of me with an old pair of sneakers. Isn't that wild? An old pair of sneakers. Do you think you could run to Hawaii with an old pair of sneakers? No. You at least need a new, right.
You've missed the point. You can't run to Hawaii. It is the most isolated archipelago on planet earth. You need a boat. You can't run there. And if any of you were like, this guy did not run to Hawaii with old shoes, old shoes make it difficult to run. You've missed the miracle man. The miracle is the first part of it.
The miracle is that I've sustained you for your whole life and now you're questioning if I'll give you something so simple as cotton clothing. I brought bread from heaven. I multiplied it to 5,000 people. I am the bread of life. I come from the town of bread. That's what the word Bethlehem means.
Bethlehem, the house of bread. And you think that I'm not gonna give you bread. I will give you exactly what you need for the story I'm telling with your life. No more, no less. Do you believe that? Of course we do. We just don't believe that we're functional atheists sometimes. Hey guys, hope you're enjoying this episode so far.
I just wanna ask you a quick question. How are you planning to meet your family's healthcare needs this year? It's one of the most important decisions you'll make, and that's why we encourage you to consider Samaritan Ministries. It's a biblical, affordable way to pay your medical bills and has everything you should look for in a healthcare sharing ministry.
Samaritan members glorify God above. All else and care for one another through prayer and encouragement. It's a way for you to align your healthcare with your faith and through direct member to member sharing, you'll always know who you're helping and who's helping you. Samaritan Ministries started in 1994 with 10 households when they begin to share each other's medical bills.
And today. There are 80,000 households across the nation who share $30 million in medical needs each month. Here's how it works. There are no networks, so when a medical need arises, you choose the healthcare provider that's right for you, and you have a say in the treatment that you receive. You send your medical bills to Samaritan Ministries and they'll notify members to pray for you and send money directly to you to help pay those bills.
And when another member has a medical need, you'll do the same for them. When the body of Christ comes together to pray, encourage, and provide for one another, burdens are lifted and God is glorified. This applies to every area of your life, including healthcare. Check out Samaritan Ministries and if it's the right fit, you can join today.
Let them know you heard it here by going to samaritan ministries.org/dad tired. Again, that's Samaritan ministries.org/dad tired. Because worry has creeped up so much that we might know this to be true. We just don't live it out. If you're like me, I teach master's level systematic theology. I'm a professor, and guess what?
I know the character of God inside and out, and I grade people's papers when they turn him in and say, you don't know his character good enough. And yet, I am a worrier. Do you know how embarrassing that is? But I'm gonna guess that a lot of us are in the same boat. And we actually think it's naive for someone to stand up and say, don't worry, because it's become so commonplace.
It's mercury that's seeped into our skin. Jesus, when we allow him to speak on it, he uses call a homer. He says, if your body's working, why wouldn't your close? And then he uses further call a homer. And I love this phrase. It's so powerful. This is what I have to start telling myself when I experience worry.
He says, consider. The Ravens. How many of y'all have no clue what a raven even looks like? I'm not a zoologist. Consider the raven. It's a bird. It's a dirty bird. It is a, it's like a rat with wings. They were absolutely plentiful in the ancient Near East, and they were considered ceremonially, unclean. I'm guessing maybe somewhere around where Jesus is speaking, there's a carcass and there's a whole bunch of ravens feeding on that carcass, and Jesus walks up and keeps a distance and he says, consider the ravens.
He gives him a word picture and then he kneels down next to the raven. 'cause he is supernatural. He makes the raven sit still and he pets the, no, he wouldn't pet the raven. That'd be weird. But he points and then he says, now look at this Raven. Have you ever seen a Raven till soil? I bet you haven't. That would be super weird, right?
You ever seen a raven like mowing the lawn? Like morning bill, right? Like those little wings. No. Jesus says they don't toil or reap or sow, and yet they have food because the father in heaven sees them and knows them and their dirty little rats with wings, and if I love them like that, there's a difference between you and them.
Did you understand that? You see, they don't have the life of God. Breathe into them. This is what Genesis tells us, that when God made man, he breathed his ruach into their very soul. We alone are image bearers. We alone are Christ's ambassadors. And when Jesus came to earth, John chapter one, in the beginning was the word, the words with God.
The Word was God. He was with God. In the beginning. Through him, all things were made. The word became flesh, not raven. Flesh. Human flesh. And then he was beat and abused and rejected by humans as a light shining in the darkness. The darkness didn't understand it. He went to a cross and he died on the cross for humans, that humans for all time, not ravens, could be with him in heaven.
So consider the ravens and if they're provided for and if they're seen and they're loved, how much more if all those things are true about you as my children? What I love and care and see and know, you consider the raven and you see it's lack of striving for my attention. You see that? I see it. Now, is this some call for all of us to go, that's it.
I'm not working. And that's what God said to do. Absolutely not a raven that sits at home and goes, ha ha, ha. Ah, all day is a dead raven. Right? But the Lord provides. And the story that God's telling with our lives is different. God's telling a story with my life. My wife had intense mental illness after the birth of our fifth kid.
She ended up committing suicide. I prayed diligently, but the story of my life that God's writing was not a redemptive story of her mental health and, but I hope it's something bigger than that and I just don't know. But if God has sustained me in every single second of my life, and he, if he's told a story all around me, if he's, if he's given me his book, the Bible shows me again and again and again that if the story isn't good, then God's not done with it yet.
And if I know those things to be true, and if those really go from my brain into my heart, everything changes. But the problem with that, friends, is I'm a functional atheist and I want to stop. I'm tired of talking about how God can transform my life and I wanna start doing it. And Jesus says, if you wanna start that, you have to start metanoia changing your mind.
That's what the word repent means. Change the way that you think. You see for the atheist, if they're going through a struggle or they're going through a hard time, or if they're going through cancer, the best strategy we have for them is try to ignore it. Try to numb the pain. Try to drink yourself into oblivion.
Try to get rid of it. Try to deny it. Try to come. With some sort of outside neurotic behavior so that you don't have to face reality. The Christian resource is deeper. Jesus doesn't say, forget your problems. He says, consider the ravens and I'm with them and I love them and I know them. And how much more than do I know and love you?
And you might be saying, well, what's the difference between concern as a parent I can get concerned about things, right? Is that worry? Lemme help you out. I made a chart for you. Okay, this is a chart that I use in my own head that I had to put on paper this week, and here's what it says. If a worrisome event occurs, ask yourself one question.
First and foremost, this will change a lot of your problems. Is there anything I can do about this? If the answer is no, then any further thought is worry. It's unbiblical and it's sinful. If you go, oh, I'm anxious about this, then ask yourself, what can I do right now to fix it? Do I have the resources? Is it in my purview?
Is it my responsibility? Do I have a plan of action? And if the answer to all three of those things is yes, then I check it with wise counsel and God's word. And if it's still yes, then I'm gonna feel a pressure to execute. But for most of us, we're gonna answer no right up front. I can't do anything about this.
Therefore, any more thought is not. My responsibility anymore. The things that are outside of my control are God's job. Why do you think God keeps saying, do not worry about tomorrow? Because that's God's job. He's already there. It's his purview. It's his directorial ship. He's in charge of that. And what we do is we take things on God's desk that he's in charge of like tomorrow and worry is when we go.
God's going, what are you doing? I'm grabbing tomorrow's problems. And he's saying, those don't belong to you. What can you do about them? I have no plan, but I thought I would thinking about it a lot until I'm a nightmare to everyone around me.
A biblical understanding of letting things go is to say, cast all your anxieties on him because he cares for you. Anxieties are things that we grab onto and we tell ourselves an internal narrative. If I think about this thing enough, like an itch that needs to be scratched somehow, it'll make me feel better about myself.
Somehow it'll fix the situation if I just dwell on it enough, and you might look at people around you who are worry free and go be more responsible. Think about this more, right? If you're about to go into a job interview, do you have a responsibility there? A hundred percent Study up, no staff culture, get your practice questions in order after you've had it and they say, don't call us.
We'll call you and we'll let you know. Any more that you think about. That is called worry. 'cause you have to ask yourself, is there something I can do? Not That's gonna help your chances. Maybe I'll call them. Right? Hi, it's me. I know you said don't call. I'm what now? No longer being considered fantastic, bye.
But we don't even do the work of separation in our head. It just feels good to worry sometimes. Sometimes in order for my kids to understand stuff and for me to understand for myself, I have to break it down into the simplest term as possible. Are you ready, Christians? Don't worry. Don't make it more complicated than that.
This is what the Bible says. Jesus says, do not worry. About your life. That's pretty all encompassing, right? There's nothing else that you could possibly worry about. Don't worry about your life. That's a pretty large umbrella. That includes your finances, that includes your kids, that includes your future, that includes everything and everything.
It doesn't say, don't do what you need to do to accomplish what it means to raise your kids. It doesn't say, don't make smart, judicious financial decisions in your life. But after you've done all those things, don't worry. I don't know if this is what you want for your life, but what I want for my life is I want people to look at me and say, there's something different about the way that Chris kin lives.
There's a something different about the way he concerns himself. He's not a worrier. He isn't these things. Do you wanna know why? Because I know not just here but here, that God is in this place right now. I know that he sees me. I know that he hears me. I know that he's present. If Jesus Christ of Nazareth was sitting on this stage right now in the flesh, we would worry about nothing.
I've got a secret for you friends. Jesus Christ of Nazareth is here right now. Okay.
And the power of Jesus ascending into heaven. He says, I'm going to give you something greater than me. And we think what could be greater than you? The Holy Spirit doesn't reside around you, but as a Christian, if you follow him, he resides in us. And the spirit that he gave us is not of timidity and fear, but of power, love, and self-control.
And that self-control goes beyond just sexual self-control. It goes beyond physical self-control, and it moves into mental self-control. Christians. Don't worry, they do something else. Instead, they consider the ravens. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you for your gifts of your peace that passes understanding. To the non-believer, peace means no problems.
It's an absence of negative circumstances, but to the Christian, it's not about the negation of things, it's about the presence of something much greater. Christians aren't at peace because they don't have problems. We're at peace because we do have you. Would you remove the areas of sin in our heart when it comes to worry, where we have taken things off of your desk and tried to play the role of God, which is idolatry?
Would you help us surrender those things back over to you, the author and giver, sustainer of all life? For you are good and we are not. It is your purview and it's not ours. May we, weekly and daily and hourly, consider the ravens. Let me pray. Amen. Hey guys, as always, I hope that episode was helpful for you on your journey of becoming more like Jesus and helping your family do the same.
Jump into our free closed community by going to dad tire.com. Click the community tab and you can get started on that today. I love you guys. We'll see you next week.