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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. I wanna thank my friends over at Range Leather for sponsoring today's episode. If you're a business owner and you are gearing up for the holidays, or you're just looking for a high quality, memorable gift for your team. You definitely wanna check out range leather.
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I was thinking about, um, a quote from Jackie Pollinger, she's that missionary, uh, to, to China that we had talked about. On the retreat, I mentioned some about her. Um, but there's a quote from her. She said, if you wanna see revival plant your church in the gutter, she's getting at. What she's poking at is this, um, kind of revival culture that always wants the next experience.
Always wants big meetings, um, lots of energy. And I really in a lot of ways was. Kind of raised up spiritually in that kind of revival culture and still have a lot of appreciation for, um. Historic revivals. So like the Great Awakening and Jonathan Edwards preaching sinners in the hands of the Angry God or, um, Charles Finney was a really, a big part of the second Great awakening and reading his journals and, um, biography in my younger years was really helpful.
So in a lot of ways I'm really, really thankful for the kind of revival culture. Let's get after the Nations. Believing for the Lost that I was, um, around. As I was developing, maturing spiritually, still obviously developing, maturing. But, um, one of the things that happened to me and that Jackie Inger is really getting at with this quote is that sometimes people start to desire the movement of the spirit and the outpouring of the spirit.
But not because they love the poor or wanna see alcoholics set free or wanna see, uh, marriages restored. They start to desire an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, primarily for kind of spiritual entertainment or. To justify their doctrinal positions or to give a fresh boost to their ministry. And so for a long time, I think I was participating in these, praying for revival, asking God to, to use me in that way, not out, out of a desire to really see the spirit of the Lord put out in minister, but out of a desire to be known, be seen, be the center of attention.
And that's a real issue there. There are a lot of ways in the spiritual life, again, we're talking about devotion and thinking about our devotion to Christ, but there are a lot of ways in which the enemy will poison our motivations. And by poisoning our motivations, we come to outcomes that aren't godly.
And so for me. To desire to be used of God in a mighty way. That was language that was used so often. Um, some of that desire produced in me a competitiveness, uh, a workspace mindset that said, if I pray more than the people around me, then God will use me more than the people around me. And if I fast longer than you, then God will use me more than you.
And so all of a sudden, everything in my. Life was very competitive. Highly competitive. I can remember this is so stupid. Here comes the stupid confession I can remember in like a ministry training setting. I. Um, you know how you'll say to people in conversation like, yeah, have you ever read that CS Lewis book or did have you ever read this book?
Uh, and I used to hate, man, I would hate if someone ever asked me if I read a book and I hadn't read it. Like that was so embarrassing for me because I needed to have read everything there ever was, um, pertaining to particularly a Christian life so that I was the most knowledgeable. If you read something that I hadn't yet read, then you were further along than me.
And so what would really frustrate me, obviously that is idiotic. Okay? Um, but when your motivations. Become polluted or poisoned. Eventually, not, not right away, but eventually down the stream, you'll find yourself, um, at a destination that you weren't actually aimed at. And so for me, I'm praying God used me, God sin, revival.
God used me in my preaching, but what was being produced in me was not a. Thorough desire for Jesus and for the gospel to come forth with clarity and for people to have their lives transformed. What was being produced in me was a very fleshy, carnal desire to be the center of attention and to be better than other people.
And that's immaturity, just immaturity at its finest. And so as we talk about devotion, we talked last week about trying to. Um, from soaring ki God's thought, thoughts, trying to allow, um, there just to be one single purpose in my life. Not to be, um, not to have a split will, but trying to, will or decide or determine just to love Jesus, to love, know, and serve Jesus.
To let that be the whole ambition of my life. Uh, to count everything else is rubbish, but to know, love and serve Jesus. That is the, the aim of devotion. Remember we said to know and love Jesus. For the long haul that there would be an attention to him and a perseverance in our devotion. When we start to play with these themes and these ideas, one of the things that I would wanna say right up front is you've gotta make sure that your motivation to be a person of devotion is pure and untainted, that the enemy doesn't poison your.
You're well. And so I wanna show you a few places in scripture that I think are really interesting in times where, particularly the Apostle Paul, um, points out that there are spiritual leaders or teachers or other ministers who are mo motivated by false desires because they're motivated by false desires.
They're. Their ministry is gonna be tainted. And remember, according to Paul one Corinthians chapter three, that our lives are gonna be tested by fire. Our life's work will be tested by fire, and all is gonna be exposed when everything is said and done. And so we wanna make sure that we are building, laboring, praying, studying with pure motivations, that when it's all exposed, at the end of the day, it'll be known that what we did was because we saw Jesus.
To be so beautiful and so worthy, and in reality, what I really wanna hit at is the pure motivation for devotion has to be thankfulness for the cross of Jesus. That has to be what drives you. You cannot let your motivation be anything other than thankfulness for calvary. Okay, so here's a few places of false motivation from the scriptures that I think are interesting to think about.
Um, Philippians one 15 through 17. Paul said some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill. The latter do it out of love knowing that I'm put here for the defense of the gospel. He's in prison. Former proclaimed Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely thinking, uh, not sincerely, but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment.
So some preached Christ from envy and rivalry and outta selfish ambition, hoping to make Paul jealous. As he's in prison, there are several things to say right away. Is there a chance that my motivation to love, serve and proclaim Christ and know Christ is driven by envy, envy, or rivalry? Philippians two, 19 through 21 is a passage that I fought a lot about, and you should think about.
Paul says this, um, obviously same letter. I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon so that I may be cheered by news of you. For I have no one like him who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare, for they all seek their own interest, not those of Jesus Christ. So Paul's saying to the church at Philippi, I'm gonna send you Timothy.
He's the best, uh, servant, the best, most faithful minister I have. He's genuinely concerned with the welfare of the church, so his motivation, his genuine concern for you and your spiritual benefit, everyone else, he says for they all, everyone else seeks their own interest. They have their own, um, motivators, their after their own glory.
Obviously, to some extent, these ideas are about preachers serving, doing ministry. But again, these kind of motivations, well, up in so many ways. The, the worst seasons of my spiritual life, the absolute worst seasons of my kind of Christian pilgrimage were seasons where I allowed selfish ambition, conceit, um, a desire for my own interests to drive what I was up to.
Um. I was thinking about Paul saying this, or, um, forgive me, James saying this in James four three. He said, you, you have not, because you asked, not talking about prayer. And when you do ask, you don't receive because you ask wrongly to spend on your own passions. So James here is talking about prayer says that sometimes we pray with the wrong motivations.
We don't get the answers to our prayer because we ask wrongly. We're praying only because we're, we want to see prosperity or future benefit for our personal lives. We're not praying out of a desire to see God's kingdom. We're not. Here's the heart of devotion seeking first. Kingdom and believing God will add all else to us.
And so a couple things that kind of pop out at me when I think about this. Um, one, talking about not wanting your devotion to be poisoned. One, um, make sure that you're not. Praying, reading, spending time with Jesus because you want to be seen as the spiritual one in your circle of friends or in your local congregation.
The goal of being a person of devotion is not so that people see me and think how holy. That man is actually the scriptures promote the exact opposite idea right when you give. Don't let your right hand know what your left hand is doing. When you fast, don't make a big show or display of it. When you pray, go in your closet and shut the door.
Pray to your father who is in secret and all of these concepts. The idea that Jesus is teaching primarily there in the Sermon on the Mount is that humanity in its natural kind of carnal state wants to be seen. We wanna be seen as pure, we wanna be seen as holy. We wanna be seen as people of discipline and devotion that.
If you allow that to drive your devotional life, if you allow those desires to drive your commitment to Christ, you are gonna end up at a destination you never wanted to to head towards. You're gonna be so self-centered and arrogant and proud, and God resists the proud. And so right away allowing. Um, people's opinions of you to drive your devotional life will lead you to a position of pride, and you'll actually find God resisting you, and you used prayer and fasting, and the study of scripture and the spiritual disciplines to arrive at a position of spiritual arrogance.
The motivation steered you in a direction that's not fruitful and not beneficial. So you wanna be really careful that you just don't live life to be seen a certain way. And so you've gotta practice those Sermon on the mountain things like your prayer life should be devoted and passionate and lively, but you don't have to tell everyone about how long you prayed or when you fast.
You don't have to brag about it. Uh, when you give, you don't have to talk about it constantly. You've gotta learn to be somewhat close to the chest with your spiritual life. Otherwise you'll feed ego and land in. Pride, and that's an awful place to be. Another thing you, you don't want to allow, shoot, how do I say this?
Well, you don't want to allow, uh, any kind of workspace system to infiltrate your devotion, and so I. There are some truths, right? Like when you read scripture often you sow the word of God into your spirit. You're gonna naturally grow. You're gonna, you're gonna get stronger. You're gonna, uh, be better at combating sin.
You're gonna have a lot of wisdom. Uh, and dealing with relationships. All of those things are, are natural benefits to being a person devoted to the scriptures. But you don't wanna think about your devotional life like you think about. Like your workout plan. It's, it's not like if I do A, B, C, then I get abs.
Um, it just doesn't work that way. The spiritual life is just not that way. Sometimes you do A, B, and C, you fast, you pray, you study, and what you get is suffering. And the suffering is god's sometimes God's grace in your life to further lead you into Christ's likeness. But A, B and C don't always produce.
Better outcomes, better benefits. And if you allow that kind of mindset to settle in, I need to do my devotional life, I need to participate, have an active devotional life so that I get the consequences, you are just gonna slide straight into this kind of workspace mentality and that kind of workspace living brings condemnation, bring shame you, you begin to wrestle with, and I've wrestled with this a lot over the years.
Um, what is praying enough? Okay, when, if you ask 10 people, do you have a prayer life, they may all say yes, but they may all mean totally different things. And so prayers can be really frustrating 'cause like, is 30 minutes enough? Is an hour enough? It's two hours enough. And if you allow, if you allow for this mindset of like, I have to pray two hours a day, or I didn't do enough and I'm not gonna get the right outcomes, um, man, you can really frustrate yourself really quick and find yourself driven by.
This kind of self condemnation, this spiritual checklist that becomes so heavy and so burdensome that you feel like you can't breathe. And what I have to do, and I think I think everyone has to do, is in each season you kind of learn to walk with the flow, walk with the spirit, and to. To stay with his flow and what he is up to.
And so, practically speaking, for like maybe the last three or four weeks, I wake up early and I go to a coffee shop and I read, and I sit and I think, and I pray. Um, but today I woke up and it was like, I, I am going to, I'm gonna go for a walk. And I went for a long walk and prayed and had a good time with Jesus.
Um, but if I allow the, like, the discipline to become a work that I have to check off in order to get the result, um, none of that is actually about intimacy. And your spiritual life at the end of the day has to be driven by desire to know him. And you don't say to your wife every day like, you know what?
We are gonna go. To pick your favorite restaurant. We are gonna go to our favorite restaurant every night of the week for the rest of our lives. And if we don't do it just the same way, then our marriage is gonna fall apart. Like that's a heavy, stupid burden to carry. What you do is you kind of find the flow of friendship.
I. And the devotional life is so much like this. You have to find your flow of friendship with the Holy Spirit. It's not gonna look like mine. It might not look like your pastors or even your mentors. Your flow of kind of friendship with the spirit is a little bit organic. You get all the tools and you know, journaling and praying and reading and fasting, all the spiritual disciplines of solitude and, and generosity.
You have all those things kind of in your tool belt, but you have to learn to find the kind of flow of friendship with the spirit and to walk with him today to ask of him, you know, what would you have for me today? But if you allow this. Burdensome checklist thing to follow you around. You're gonna find yourself in a workspace system really quick.
And people always talk about Mormonism and they'll say, Mormons are the best neighbors. And it really is because there's this workspace mentality, like if they're not the best neighbors, then there's punishment to be had, and that's just not Christianity. We have nothing to earn. We're not trying to, uh, put in a, B and C.
So God will give us out love and affection. We have love and affection. What we are trying to do is enjoy it. We're trying to enjoy, uh, enjoy God. And so the idea of conceit, uh, selfish ambition is huge. Like you can't, like, especially if you. I have a particular burden for God to use you in your life. For me, wanting to preach at a really young age, my devotional life in many ways was, was motivated by selfish ambition.
I'm gonna do the most so that I'm, uh, so that I excel later in life. And you just gotta be really careful that your devotional life again, is not. You don't view it as a staircase that if I do the right things, that I'm gonna climb up to a place of prominence. The goal of devotion cannot be prominence, can't be to be seen.
It can't be to outwork people. It's not competition. It can't be driven by envy to show everyone else how great you are, that you're better. Like none of that can drive you. Um, and you've gotta be really careful that those things aren't, that enemy doesn't sow those things into your motivation. With all of that being said, if Paul says, I've got no one else, like Timothy.
Who's sincerely concerned for you? Everyone else is driven by selfish ambition. Then we have to land in this place of like, there's a solid, uh, trap here. There's a solid, um, way in which the enemy wants to pollute or poison my well of devotion. And if that is established, then we have to ask the question, well, what is.
The motivator of the devotional life. If I don't wanna allow selfish ambition or workspace stuff or to be seen, if I don't wanna allow any of that to poison my motivation, what should be my motivation? And again, your motivation should be that you are so moved, broken. Thankful for the cross of Jesus Christ that you wake up every morning just so kind of enamored with him, excited to serve him.
I was telling the church, the church I pastor this weekend that I. Um, psychologists will say that thankfulness is one of the greatest tools, like if you wake up or before you lay down at night, if you'll write down like three things that you're thankful for. It al almost eradicates anxiety and fear.
Thankfulness is a really interesting thing and I was telling the church that like your number one thing that you should be thankful for every day is the cross. Is the idea that Jesus is my substitute. That I deserve punishment, that I deserve wrath, that I deserve judgment. But what I get instead is endless love and affection and mercy and sonship and eternity, and the presence of a father who loves me.
And that exchange is wild. And that exchange, the weight of it has to be the premier motivator of your life is like when I wake up and I want to be in his presence, it's because I'm thankful and I'm. And I'm excited and, um, I don't always, you know, emotions are fickle. It's not always like I wake up, can't wait to pray, but underneath the groggy, didn't get enough sleep, need coffee.
There is this stable conviction that Jesus has been so good to me. I'm gonna get to it today. Again, it might not be, look, I'm giggling, giddy, happy every morning when I'm praying this morning. As I walked, it started to rain on me. And, uh, it's not like I was. Perky yet I hadn't had any coffee. Um, but there is just in me like, he's so good.
He's so good. He's so good. That revelation of the goodness of God towards you, towards me has to drive. I. Our devotional life has to drive my single-mindedness to just love him, know him, and serve him for the rest of my life. It can't be, I wanna prove something to other people. I wanna be seen as the most spiritual.
I want to get, get, get. If I do all of the devotional things, then I will get it easier. Life. None of that can drive who you are. The only thing that can drive it is, God, you have been so good to me and you are so kind. And I am so thankful and when that drives my spiritual life, instead of winding up in pride or winding up in a workspace religion, where I wind up is in intimacy, is in friendship with God, is in relationship and.
Health, spiritual health and vitality. So anyway, I know those are kind of interesting thoughts, but I just wanted to lobby that before you, as we talk about devotion and think about devotion, that it's really important that you don't allow your motivators to be poisoned or polluted by selfish ambition or can see or gain, but that you are motivated, driven by one thing.
He's so good and I'm so thankful. Alright man. Bless you. Reach out to me. If there's anything I can do for you, I'll be praying for you this week, and just so thankful for you guys and thankful for all he's doing in this community.