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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.
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Jay, so excited to be hanging out with you today. Man, there's so many things I wanna talk to you about, but before we jump into that, maybe just tell us who you are and what you're up to these days.
Yeah. Well thanks for having me on, Jared. Really glad to be on with you. I am a dad and a husband. Um, been married to Jenny for 15 years.
We've been together for over 20, so she's my best friend. Love of my life, and we've got two young kids. I. So I'm a dad of an 8-year-old named Harper, and then a 5-year-old named Simon. And so they keep us quite busy. And then I have the great joy and honor of serving in pastoring a church here in Silicon Valley, right in the heart of Silicon Valley, uh, in San Jose, California Church called Westgate.
And then, yeah, from time to time I, uh, do some writing and curriculum stuff. So yeah, it's a, it's a good life. Awesome
man. San Jose, bro. That's my old stomping grounds.
Yeah, yeah, totally. So just,
just so we can get all the shallow stuff outta the way, tell me some of the teams, who are the teams you're rooting for over in San Jose?
Oh my
gosh, man. Yeah, I'm a hometown kid. I've been here basically my entire life, so I've, I'm a diehard basketball fan. Okay. So this could take up an hour of this podcast if you wanted to. I, uh, like I'm, I'm like a real hoop head. I go to Summer League in Vegas every year to damn see all the first second year players.
Um, but I've been a Warriors fan since the late eighties, so fan. Okay,
so not a bandwagon fan.
No, dude. Get outta here With the bandwagon fans. You have to have gone through the wilderness of Yeah. The nineties and two thousands, you know, to be able to enjoy the 2010s and the 2020s. So, yeah, no, I became a fan.
Back when, uh, we had run TMC with Mullen and Tim Haraway, Mitch Richmond for a couple of years and have stuck through it. And then I, you know, I love the Niners big Niners fan. We've got some Niners who are part of our church here and so it's fun.
Well, this is where we'll have to end it, man. I'm a Raider fan, so I'm glad to have you today.
No, it's over. Well, blessings to you. Yeah, we'll pray for you guys and that's awesome, dude. My mom, uh, her work would get free tickets sometimes. Oh, sweet. And they would, from time to time, maybe once a year, they would like, they'd pick an employee to take the family out and so she, yeah, they would Raider tickets.
So I just, you know, maybe once a year got to go with my mom to a Raider game. That's kind of what got me hooked. But yeah, it's hard to be a Raider fan. Honestly. I told my mom, like real recently, I'm like, dude, I don't think I can do this anymore. I think I'm out. You know, I think I'm,
you guys got Garoppolo now though,
so we'll see.
We'll see how it goes. Yeah, we'll see. It has been the last, like three decades. You have a new book coming out, which I really wanna talk about, but when I was looking through some of your stuff, I actually came across another book of yours that you put out that I, that really caught my attention. That analog Christian.
Mm-hmm. Cultivating contentment, resilience and wisdom in a digital age that really like stuck out to me, man. 'cause Hmm. Quite literally last night I made a decision. Our church is going through like a prayer and fasting season right now. So I made a decision last night. I'm like, I'm going to turn off my phone and just spend the last hour of my wake time just spending some time with the Lord in prayer, and I was laying down.
And dude, my mind could not stay on like a single thought for like, longer than 30 seconds. And I was trying to pray through it. Like, like, Lord, I, I don't want to be distracted. I don't wanna, yeah, like, calm my mind, calm my heart. But I felt all the like, I don't know the word, all the, uh, ramifications of the digital age, you know?
Yeah. It's like my brain was just longing for quick information. Yeah. You know, and it's like, and it was like quite literally affecting my prayer life. In the moment. But anyway, you wrote a whole book about that, like what made you write that and, and what were some of your learnings?
Similar reasons. You know, just in my own life, I've told people before that book, analog Christian, I wrote, it's really just a long 50,000 word prayer.
It's just the stuff that I. Recognized I needed so desperately in my life. I've had the same exact experience as you multiple times, and I don't think we're alone. I think folks listening to this have had similar experiences. I. And there's a reason for it. I mean, there's a lot of brain science neurology that that tells us that the brain, the human mind, they call it neuroplasticity, which means it's a fancy way of saying like your brain is like clay.
It can change, it can get rewired. You know, there's that phrase in, in neuroscience, they say neurons that fire together wire together. And essentially what they mean is if you train your brain to operate a particular way, your brain will begin to change, to begin to crave the things that you teach it to crave, and to be unable to engage in ways that you don't necessarily practice on a regular basis.
It's like exercise, you know? Like if you never go to the gym and then one day you wake up and you're like, you know what I'm, I think I'm gonna run a marathon. You're gonna die. Like your body has not been trained to do something like that. And it's the same thing with our brains. So I think what so many of us experience in the digital age, because we train our brains.
All day, every day to need the sort of quick dopamine hit of scrolling down on your phone. You see the little thing spinning and then it pops back up and you're just waiting. You're waiting for the hit of like new emails or new notifications or another sort of new story or bleacher report. What else is happening with the Niners?
Whatever it might be. Your brain gets wired that way, so then. We sit down and we try to have meaningful, deep, extended sort of conversation in prayer with God, or maybe a long extended time at the dining table with a family, or your kid is like, dad, let's play and. Your kid is 10 and he doesn't wanna play the stuff you, you know, like you're an adult.
So now you've gotta like focus your energy in a way and be patient to engage that process and it becomes increasingly challenging. Because our brains have been trained 8, 10, 12 hours a day to operate in this sort of frenetic shallowness of quick hit dopamine shots. So I think that's what you experienced.
It's what I've experienced many times, and I just realized, I came to the point where I realized I don't think this is the life. God has for me and it. It's not to say that the internet is the devil or something. I think there are great uses for it in moderation, and if we can leverage it for our good, rather than allowing it to form us into people we don't want to be.
I. So that's really the heart of it. That's why I wrote the book. I, I kind of wrote it for myself.
Yeah. Yeah. Man. It's interesting that you said it. Your analogy of like, exercise or running was funny 'cause I was literally last night trying to like, exercise and it was like I was doing this program and it was pushing me so hard.
I'm like, I can't do that. Like, I'm, I'm physically not. At a place where I should be doing this right now. Yeah. My head is way more excited about this than my body is capable. That resonated with me deeply. I I understand that real personally today as I'm very sore sitting in this chair. Yeah. I think when we think through like the digital age and just like social media, the internet and the palm of our hands, I think maybe surface level, we would just say, yeah, I'm, it's probably getting a lot of my time.
And I probably should put it down 'cause my kids deserve more of my time. I think a lot of dads would just kind of leave say that and that again, that would be kind of surface level, which that is true. It's, yeah, sucking up tons of our time and our kids should be getting more of our time that we're, we're giving to whatever email or social media or news, whatever.
It's
right.
But there is something deeper going on, what you just described, like to say it's not just a distraction. So I can give my kids that time. It's not just a replacement of time that we're talking about. It's like a rewiring of the brain. Yeah. And that's a much more serious thing because then now we're talking about you trying to sit down, uh, I pointed over here to my bed where I was laying, but you trying to sit down or lay down or spend some time with and with Jesus and you can't effectively, or like with any kind of deep.
Meaning, and now you're, you're, it's not just your time needs to be replaced. It's like it's impacting your discipleship journey. Yeah. Who you are becoming. Yeah. That's a big deal. It's bigger than just like, you know, I wanna give my time. It's like this is actually who I'm becoming as a man. I. You know what I mean?
Yeah, that's exactly right. I think people, not even Christian thinkers, but people who are doing a lot of work in the digital age and specifically how digital realities are affecting us and informing us, they call the digital age, the attention economy, that really, the way the entire apparatus works is.
Digital devices and digital platforms and social media, news media, on and on, they are vying for our attention. Our attention is the commodity that's being exchanged on the digital marketplace. And what's really interesting about that is, to your point, who we become is who we give our attention to. Like the thing you fixate on, that's the thing.
Naturally, you just. Become, you're talking about exercise, like we all have friends, right? Who, who go overboard to an unhealthy extent, where literally all their attention goes to exercise. It's just the crafting of the perfect body. That's not necessarily bad, but it can become really harmful if that's the thing that matters most to you, you know?
But it's a great example of, of what happens to us spiritually. I think we all have good intentions. We wanna be the sort of people who. Embody the way of Jesus as fathers and husbands, and as just as men. But good intentions get you very, they get you very little. You know, like it doesn't, good intentions are not the path.
It's practice, it's discipline, it's attention. Attention trumps intention every time. It's a thing you give your attention to. So that means we have to be mindful every waking moment of every day. As I sort of mindlessly scroll this feed. What is it doing to me as I give my attention to this thing? How is it forming me?
How is it shaping me and is the person it's shaping and forming me to be the sort of person I actually wanna be? Is it the sort of man God's called me to be? And I think asking those questions and then answering those questions honestly. And then doing the hard work of, with discipline and practice responding, you know, to those questions is everything.
That's how we're gonna become the people God's called us to be.
I have, we do a, we have a what's called a family leadership program, and we have guys go through this exercise where they, they just try to look. Back on the last 24 hours of their life and just think through all the things that they let into their eyes and ears.
Mm.
And the point is that we're trying to make is you to say that the things that you're watching or listening to aren't shaping you as a man is incredibly naive. Yeah. And I think what you're talking about that neuroplasticity.
Yeah.
Did I say that right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what's happened. Like it's actually reshaping and forming our brain and to think that it's not as just really foolish.
That's right.
Yeah. Yeah.
Agreed. Yeah. What we consume is, is almost everything, you know? Yeah.
You know what's fascinating too, man? I was thinking there used to be times where I would travel in different parts of the world, primarily if we did like mission stuff. Back when I was working at the church, we'd go to poor countries or third world countries.
One thing that I loved about being in those places is the lack of technology at the time, especially like you could just sit and have long meals or you would sit out on a porch or near a fire or whatever for hours at a time, just having rich conversation. I remember always coming back and feeling like that's the thing I miss most.
The, the. The being slow and able to sit and just talk to somebody. Yeah. About deeper things or even just like talk to somebody for a long time. It's interesting, I say that like almost in past tense because even when I've been to some of these countries now, like everyone has a phone. They could be like, yeah.
Living in a hut. Yeah. And they're pulling out their phone, looking at YouTube. It's really like.
Yeah.
It's kind of sad in, in many ways. You know, I, I, I don't know if that's the right word, or even if that's the right way of looking at that, but it's,
yeah.
It's affecting the whole world, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.
Yes. It's, this isn't just like an American problem.
Yeah. No, that's undeniable. It is a global issue. I've had similar experiences. It's a recent phenomenon probably in the last 10 years or so, where you go to the most impoverished parts of the world where literally, you know, we've had mission trips. Teams go from here to parts of the world where they don't have clean drinking water.
So that's one of the things our churches, our our church focuses a lot of energy on, is raising money to build wells. And so we've sent teams out to participate in the actual physical building of particular wells. So these are parts of the world where literally they don't have water to drink, and yet there's 15 year olds with phones, with smartphones.
It's crazy. It's crazy. You know, it's wild. It's so crazy. So, and that's not an indictment on them. It's an indictment on the cultural moment that we're in.
Yeah.
And, um, and how addicting. These devices can be,
yeah. What was your aim in the book? Like, what did you want for that particular book? What was your hope that people would, when they're done with it, like what did you wanna push them toward?
Yeah. You know, it's interesting, the book, obviously, it, it confronts and it addresses our digital addictions and, and what those things are doing to us. But really it's a book about Paul's words in Galatians five about the fruit of the spirit. So really the hope was that. Anybody who reads the book might consider deeply what the spirit of God actually wants to do in them, and how the spirit of God wants to form them, you know, into people of love and joy, and peace and patience, kindness, goodness, you know, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
And how are digital addictions actually work against those virtues and characteristics of God's spirit? So the hope and desire was one. To increase the awareness of how much we need the spirit of God to reform us and reshape us. And then two, maybe most importantly, to give people both practical paths forward and also the necessary inspiration and encouragement to take the necessary steps to invite God by his spirit.
To form us. And that's gonna mean like literally practical things like put your phone down when you get home, put it away. You know, there's some stuff from Andy Crouch about, treat your phone like a toddler, you know, put it to bed before you go to bed, wake up before it wakes up. Those sorts of things. So that was my hope with the book.
Yeah. Andy Crouch has been on her show a couple times and he, every time I, I'm like throwing away lamps, you know, afterwards I'm like, light getting candles afterwards I'm just like, dude, I want to go back to, you know, it's What are some of the things you do in your home? Yeah. Especially with your kids like.
In this digital age, what are some things that you're trying to do to just shape their habits early on? Yeah,
so what I just, you know, kind of rattled off quickly. That's something that we do. Our phones stay docked in a docking station in our kitchen. They don't make their way into our bedrooms. We do try to, every night my wife and I try to go to bed, try to put the phones to bed before we go to bed so we're not staring at these screens while we're lying in bed.
That's not the last thing we do. And our phones are not the first thing we look at when we wake up in the morning. So that's, it's a simple practice, but it's an important one for us. That's been really helpful. It, it calibrates us. It reminds us to be present and human with one another. When I get home every day.
I'm not necessarily great at this all the time, but I've actually been getting a lot better in the last year or two. It's a non-digital experience when we sort of wrap up our day together. So when Jenny and I come home and we're with the kids, they're playing, yeah, we try to cultivate a non-digital experience.
So there's no phones, there's no laptops or iPads. You know, there's no onscreen entertainment. We're trying to spend actual, physical, you know, analog time together. Um, with our kids specifically. You know, this isn't rocket science. It's certainly not anything revolutionary or new. Lots of parents do this, but we highly limit screen time with them.
So our kids get to, as long as they behave well during the week, they get to watch. They basically get like two hours of screen time on Friday evenings. You know it's movie nights so they can pick a movie and and watch a movie. Beyond that, there really is no screen time. There will be a little bit for my daughter when it comes to school.
She'll do some math projects on a app that her classroom uses, but beyond that, there's really no screen time. My kids are eight and five, so they're not yet at that age where they're like clamoring for their own phones. But my 8-year-old, she's getting there. You know, she'll be 12 in the blink of an eye and I'm sure at that point as she hits middle school, you know, all her friends are gonna have phones.
So my wife and I are, are navigating some of that. How are we gonna do that? And. Right now I think we're leaning toward very strongly leaning toward a non-smart phone device for her where it's really just pure communication text and, and phone calls. And I'm sure that's gonna lead to all sorts of fights in our home.
But you know, we're pretty committed to that, I think because of some of the data out there about what social media in particular is doing to young people, especially young girls. So, yeah,
so that's kind of where we're at. Hey guys. I hope you're enjoying this episode so far. Just wanna take a quick break and remind you about our family leadership program.
We do a lot of things at Dad's Tire to try to help guys lead their family well, but this is probably the most impactful thing. We've seen Serious Live change, tons of families change through this program. We want to give you an exclusive offer just through the podcast. You won't find this anywhere else, but if you go to dad tire.com, click the Family Leadership Program.
And when you go to checkout, just use the promo code. Podcast, all one word, all Caps podcast, and that will get you a hundred dollars off the entire program. There are no other deals like that. We don't do this anywhere else. We just know that our podcast listeners are our most engaged guys, and we want the most engaged guys in there because we believe that the most engaged guys take it seriously and as a result of taking it seriously, they see serious life change in their own life and in their families, and in their marriages.
So again, go to dad tire.com, click that Family Leadership program, use the promo code podcast. And you can get a hundred dollars off today and jump into the next cohort. I love you guys. We'll jump right back into today's episode. You? Well, I have a 12-year-old, so just I have 12 down to two. So we've got the full gamut of like all the things that I'm like changing diapers and having like the sex talk and a matter of minutes.
But one thing that we found to be really helpful with that, 'cause my, my 12-year-old son, all his friends have phones and they're all like, dad, why can't you know, my son's like, why can't I get this phone? What we've found, I've tried all the devices that are kid friendly, non-smart, all this stuff. The thing that I've found to be most helpful is the Apple Watch and.
You know, it's an expensive investment upfront, but it's actually a, a pretty cheap monthly investment.
Yeah.
For the service. And he has no internet access. He can just text us and call us and I can track him all the time. Yeah, that's great. So that, it's actually been the most practical thing out of all the things I've tried.
Yeah.
I've even done well. We've had sponsors that I've, you know, I've tried other products that I really wanted to work. Yeah. But the Apple Watch has just been really, I guess any smart watch probably could do that. Yeah. But you know, essentially you're, you could call 'em and text them and track 'em and, but they can't be on social media and they can't look up the things on the internet
that I know of.
That's a good heads up. Thank you. Yeah. I'm gonna keep note of that. That's great.
Yeah. One thing that, when you were saying that like your, you put the phones to bed at night and you guys try to have like this analog experience before bed. Like I was just thinking if as a listener, if you don't think you're addicted to your phone, just try that for like a week.
Yeah. Just try not to have your phone by your bed at night as you That's right. With, for you and your wife and just watch it like how much your brain, your flesh is fighting for that. Yes. It's really crazy and I'm, I'm saying that out of experience 'cause I've tried it and it's hard. It's like, it's embarrassingly hard.
How hard it is to like just set the darn thing down.
Yeah,
dude. Okay, so you just wrote a book on Colossians. What was your heart behind that?
Yeah, yeah, we, we did a study guide with some video curriculum that comes along with it. You know, it was birth, I mean, almost anything I create that makes its way out into the world.
It's always, the genesis of it is always first and foremost, just my own life. And then. Secondarily, what's happening here in our local church. So we taught a series on Colossians several years ago, and the impetus for it one, I mean, just to study the scriptures, obviously, but two, I just think what Paul, the writer Apostle Paul has to say in Colossians and the context of what's happening in that ancient city Colossae, uh, at the time in the first century, I just thought it had so many parallels for our day and age, you know, and.
Really the at the heart of the matter, what Paul was trying to make clear in Colossians, I think, is that Jesus is at the center of it all. Right? That at the end of the day, Jesus is the son around, which all other things, including our lives orbit, and one of the reasons amongst many, but one of the key reasons I thought that was such an important word for our day is because of the fact that we live in probably the most individualistic autonomous.
Culture. In human history, there is not one thing. We as Westerners and specifically as Americans, there is not one thing we will defend more fiercely than our individual autonomy. Do not infringe or impose any views that are not my, how dare you? You know, we consider that violence, but when I look at the scriptures, not just in Colossians, but Jesus's own words, you think about.
You know, in the gospel of John in chapter 14, what does Jesus say? He says, I Jesus, I am the way. I am the truth, and I am the life. No one comes to the Father, but through me and coming to the Father, essentially what that means is like no one experiences salvation and life and life to the fold, except through me.
That is a bold claim in an individualistic autonomous culture to say that there is no other way. You know, in a culture that says, well, my truth is my truth, and your truth is your truth. To say, no, that's not how truth works. Like I am the truth. That means everything else is a falsehood. If there's anything or anyone in this.
Life that tells you that you can experience life and life to the full. That's not me, then that's a lie. You know? To say such a thing is incredibly bold. And I just felt like, man, that's a word for our time. You know, these ancient first century words from two millennia ago. These are truths for, for our day and age, you know?
And Paul says. In Colossians, he's actually confronting and attacking something that biblical scholars call the Colossian heresy. There's some debate about what that heresy specifically was, but that's beside the point. The way Paul attacks the heresy is really profound, and chapter two, he says to these Christians, he says, listen.
Pay attention and see to it that nobody takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition. And to me, I was like, oh my gosh. If there is a word for the cultural moment we are in that, is it. Wow. You know, see to it that culture does not take you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophies.
Wow. That depend on human tradition or human culture, or societal norms, or what TikTok tells us is true, or good, or right, or beautiful. So that's really where it came from. I just, my sense was that for our church, our local congregation, sort of wading through the waters of culture today. I just felt like what Paul has to say in this letter is hard to listen to, but so necessary.
That's where it came from.
Yeah, it's hard dude. And uh, I would imagine it's especially hard where you're at. Yeah, you're in the Bay Area, on the West Coast, bro. Like you're, you know, that where kind of the, the genesis of these ideas start on the coasts and work their way in. And so to say something like, to make, to reiterate Jesus' claim, I love the way you said it.
If anyone else is telling you that this is truth outside of Jesus. You're being lied to. Yeah. That's a crazy claim. You're right. Yeah. That's like a, that's an insane claim in our culture right now. Yeah. I know you've thought through like some just church future stuff, future of the church stuff. I know you like, you think through that a little bit.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on a little bit of what I just said there. That, that, you know, things are happening on the coast and kind of working their way in. Yeah. Like when you just zoom out from your experience and what you're seeing. From Capital C Church, what are some things you're seeing? Like if you were just looking out into the future 5, 10, 15 years as you're processing, what are some things that are taking notice to you?
I mean, a couple of thoughts At a high level, I. I think it is true that these big sort of coastal epicenters, you know, on the west coast and the east coast, I mean, you can just look at even, for example, like a political map and you'll see it gets very blue on the edges and very sort of red in the middle.
And I think sometimes based on where we live and sort of our upbringing and, and a bunch of things, we assume that those colors. Mean, okay. In the, in Middle America, it's conservative with conservative Christian values, and on the blue sort of coastal cities, it's very progressive, liberal and very anti-church, anti-Christian, post-Christian, whatever you wanna say.
In some regards that's true, but I actually think in many ways two dynamics are at play. One, just because a place is politically conservative in the way that. You know, media tells us conservatism works. That doesn't necessarily mean, and, and you, you could speak to this probably better than me having lived on the West Coast in Portland, which is maybe the most progressive liberal city in America.
And now living in South Carolina, which in so many ways is so dramatically different than Portland. Well, the reality is anything can become an idol. So, you know, the late great Tim Keller, he famously wrote that. Idols are not always bad things. Idols are good things that become God things. So there can be, for example, political ideologies that we would consider conservative with air quotes, but those ideologies, if they become the thing you worship, if they become the main thrust of your life.
That's an idol. You know, it's just as much of an idol as some sort of wacky, progressive liberal ideology that exists in Portland or San Francisco or Silicon Valley or New York City, or Boston or wherever. So that's one thing I think that the dichotomy needs to shift in terms of how the church thinks about idolatry, and I think that is the key.
I think we live in an idolatrous culture that wants to. The writer, he's an atheist, you know, but, um, David Foster Wallace, he gave this really famous speech, commencement speech at Kenyon College many years ago, and he said that famous line, he's an atheist, and he said, everybody worships, everyone worships every human on the planet.
I'm paraphrasing it, but every human on the planet is a worshiper. Whatever you lean your life toward, you worship that thing. That is your God. So that's true for all of us. So I think that's one of the shifts that's coming, is that I think increasingly so the sort of dividing lines we've painted between Christian parts of the country and non-Christian parts of the country, those dividing lines are being erased.
And I think we're gonna begin to see a shift that really following Jesus means. Again, coming back to Colossians in some ways, placing Jesus at the center of your life. N not an ideology, not a particular sociopolitical leaning, but Jesus. Risen and ascended at the center of your life. And so that shift I think is already happening.
The other thing I would say is the sort of the movement between, from the coast to middle America, that movement has accelerated in large part because of the digital age. So the 14-year-old in Ohio or Wyoming. Has TikTok just like the 14-year-old in New York City or in la so because that's where most emerging generations are spending the most of their time.
This whole idea that the genesis of these very progressive or post-Christian ideologies began on the coast and slowly trickle to the middle. That's not really true anymore. They don't trickle slowly to the middle. They just, IM with immediacy at the speed of the internet, find their way to middle America.
So I think those lines are gonna be blurred. And then sort of as a result of that, getting back to some of the more traditional paradigms. Yeah. The reality is, I think the conversation around. Some of the hot button issues and what the scriptures have to say about those issues. I think followers of Jesus are just gonna, we don't really have a choice in the matter.
We're gonna have to do the hard work of having a rich, robust, biblically sound theology of cultural issues. So like at the forefront of probably most people's thinking, especially for those of us listening. Who are dads trying to raise children in what is like this, the complexity of our cultural moment.
This is just as an example, like the conversation around sexuality and gender. I don't think it's gonna work in the next 10, 15 years. It will not work for us to sort of turn a blind eye and say, well, that's a complex issue. Let's just love Jesus. Because the two are forcibly being married to one another to love Jesus and to be a person of love in the world is going to force us.
Um, and I think this is a good thing in many ways to do the hard work and begin to help not just ourselves, but our children and emerging generations. Think biblically and robustly about things like sexuality and gender, because if we don't do the hard work of painting a compelling, beautiful, loving vision of what God says to us through scripture about what it means to be a man and a woman, and what sexuality is or isn't, or what marriage is or isn't.
And if we don't do that in a way that embodies the way of Jesus, the ethic of Jesus, which is always full of compassion and love and grace and gentleness, and at the same time, is relentlessly committed to the truth, not my truth or your truth, but the singular truth, if we don't do the hard work of helping ourselves and emerging generations embody all of that together.
Then culture is gonna consume them. And I don't say that to be a fear. Mongerer, perfect love casts out fear. I don't think we have to fear. I think we have to let love drive us, love for God and love for people. One, you know the people that have been entrusted into our care, our families, our children, our churches, our friends, but also love for the particular communities we belong to, our cities and our neighborhoods and our schools and our workplaces.
And that's hard work, but I think it's necessary work for the church to continue to thrive, uh, in the years to come. Wow.
Wow. Really, really well said. I, I read a statistic recently where they were talking about why young people end up leaving the faith altogether when they leave the household, and one of the reasons was because they just believe that their parents are completely naive to the way that the real world works.
Yes. Which I think speaks to what you're saying just to say. This is what our family believes. It's what we've always believed. So you're just gonna believe it too and hope that that works when they're sent out to the real world, just as really naive and dangerous for us to as parents. I love the way you said that.
Create a compelling theologically sound truthful and loving. Argument to our kids. This is why we believe what we believe and what the scriptures say about it, so that when the truth or when the lies come, and they can just compare it to what they know to be true. Yeah. Um, man, really, really well said.
Thank you brother, for spending some time with us. Say was the Colossians, is that a small group study? Like can guys get that and go through it in small groups or is it preferably just individual? How did you write that?
Yeah, it's both. I mean, it could be used individually, but the study guide itself is designed with discussion questions that are very much sort of applicable directly to, you know, everyday life.
And then there's a series of videos, you know, about 18 minutes long where I just go through each chapter and give a summary, sort of overview and some thoughts on it, which is all designed to propel. People toward conversation. But yeah, it, it can be done, you know, on your own. But I, I think for me, at least on a personal level conversation in a group of trusted friends is, is always the most helpful.
Yeah. Sweet man. Well, we'll put a link to that in our show notes, but thank you brother. This was so good. It was great to meet you and pick your brain a little bit. You got a lot of wisdom and I was, I was grateful for you to share it with us today.
Yeah, it was a joy. Thanks for having me on.
Thanks, man.
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. I don't really like doing this. But you sometimes you have to like hack the algorithms in order to just grow as an organization. And the only reason we want to grow as an organization is 'cause we want more guys who are experiencing the gospel to raise kids who experience the gospel.
'cause we think that that changes the world when dads like step up. And lead their family well when they love Jesus with every ounce of their being and they teach their kids how to fall in love with the creator of the universe. We just think that our communities get better, our states get better, our countries get better, the world gets better.
We get a bigger glimpse of the kingdom of God on Earth. So that's our main motivation. And so if you want that, which that sounds weird, but you know, like who doesn't want that as a follower of Jesus? Anyway, in order to like hack the algorithms, you gotta do certain dumb things, but one of them is leaving a review.
So if this podcast is helpful for you, I always feel weird asking you to like, review our podcast. It feels weird, but I think you guys understand what I'm my heart behind all of that. If you leave a review and you just tell us what you think of it, and uh, really what you're doing is you're telling other people who might stumble upon the podcast and they're just wondering, is this worth it?
If you can just tell 'em, you know, one sentence thing about how this has been impactful for you. It helps us a ton. Uh, it helps the ministry and it also helps us get in front of more people. And, uh, again, we get to see the gospel go further throughout the world. So that's our goal anyway. I'll, uh, stop awkwardly rambling through that.
I love you guys. I hope this episode was helpful for you. I'll see you next week later.