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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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Jonathan Edwards may be the. The greatest thinker North America has ever produced. At least that's what many say. Um, I really enjoy Edwards actually. Um, after his salvation experience, when he is just like 18, he starts to write this list of resolutions. He eventually has 70 resolutions. He, he kind of compiled it over a period of about a year.
And this was common in his day to have resolutions that you were going to live by. But maybe what was uncommon is that Edwards kind of meticulously lives by these things for the rest of his life. He was a. Peculiar personality. He wasn't full of life and joy. He was, he was kind of dogmatic and rhythm and meticulous.
I, he's kind of quirky. I really like to read him, read about his life, but I wanted to read you a few of his resolutions because I think that, um, it's important to, to ponder some of these things and to think through what resolve is. Um, but he said this, he said. Resolved never to do anything, which I would be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life resolved.
I will live in such a way as I will wish I had done when I come to die. Resolve to strive to my utmost every week to be brought to a higher spiritual place and to a greater. Experience of grace than I was the week before. It said that he read these resolution, 70 of them once a month until he passed. He was so, um, again, methodical kind of, there's kind of a sobriety to the way he lived his life and intentionality to the way he lived his life.
That's super interesting and I've been thinking. About devotion for us and wanting to be a person of intimacy with God, a person of a secret place. You know, we read scripture and praise and loves faithfully, and, and I want you guys, you know, my, my friends and brothers to, to, to, um, grow in your devotional life.
Your, your devotion to Jesus and. But I've realized that as I've talked about these themes and pondered this, I've realized that I've had this kind of uncomfortable resistance in my soul to all the discipline talk that comes up when you start to talk about devotion. Um, and I'm not sure where I, where I got.
Rubbed wrong with these ideas, but it seems to me so many times that when you get into a, a men's ministry setting or you get around brothers, the, there's always some brother who begins to drive this narrative that the reason we don't have prayer lives, the reason we don't have, uh, a, a rich and robust, uh, kind of study of scripture is because we're not disciplined.
You're, if you were just more disciplined, then you would be a better Christian. The problem with Christians today is that they don't have any discipline and, um, there's actually a lot of truth to that. I've. I've realized as I've thought this through, that, um, for some reason I'm really rubbed wrong with all the discipline talk.
Though I've been disciplined in my devotional patterns for over a decade. I've read the same Bible plan and virtually the same prayer patterns. They've changed and molded over the years. But I believe in discipline. I think discipline is really healthy and helpful, but discipline for the sake of discipline can be arbitrary and so.
Understand. I try to understand what I'm saying here, that sometimes you get in this setting and there's a guy in the room who's the most rigid, meticulous, you know, type A, and he somehow twist and presents that if everyone were just this regimented with their Christianity, then we'd all be in a better place.
And it's like maybe, um. But, but discipline for discipline's sake is arbitrary. It's becomes meaningless. So many times the, the discipline that we try to promote is like, if you really want peace in your life, then you should, you should pray more. If you really wanna be a better person, then you should. I.
Read your scriptures and it's like, yeah, like I do want peace and I do wanna be a better person, but those things don't actually motivate much out of me. I don't, I don't, I don't know how else to articulate this, but discipline, which has to happen, is actually driven by what you're convicted by, what your resolutions are, what you really believe.
And so discipline for discipline's sake is arbitrary and kind of meaningless and becomes. Discipline itself becomes the goal, um, where discipline, driven by conviction, driven by faith, driven by concrete belief that actually shapes and changes me. And so, for instance, I'm convicted that marriage matters and that marriage is for life.
And so I'm disciplined with my eyes. I'm disciplined with my internet activity. I'm convicted that God loves the local church and wants the local church to thrive. That local church. In some sense, it's God's plan for the salvation of the nations. And so I'm disciplined. To show up on Sunday. I'm disciplined to give, to participate.
I'm convicted that God loves us so much that he, that Jesus in great humility took on flesh, became man to redeem me. So therefore, I'm disciplined in my. Prayer life and in my reading of scripture and in my, uh, set aside time to have intimacy with God, to see I'm not just being disciplined because I believe that discipline is the highest characteristic that a person could have.
I'm disciplined because I'm, the discipline flows out of what I believe I. I believe that God is worthy of all my attention, and so I'm gonna bring in my attention every day. I also believe, like when you talk about arbitrary discipline, I also believe that like ice cream and coke on a Friday night with your wife is beautiful.
I also believe that sleeping in on Saturday is awesome, and so it's not like discipline to me is the highest aim of life, but discipline concerning my devotional life is driven by. My core value, my core conviction, my faith, that God is worthy of my attention, that God desires my prayers, he loves my presence and my fellowship and my friendship.
And so. Um, sometimes devotion, again, intimacy with God, prayer and scripture. Sometimes I read the Bible just 'cause I want to. It wells up out of spontaneity. It wells up out of excitement Sometimes I pray and I get up at night and I go and kneel and pray or sit on the stairs and pray. Just 'cause I wanna be with God.
And those moments are beautiful. Sometimes spontaneity drives my devotional life and that's awesome. But my devotional life must. Always be driven by discipline. Spontaneity comes and goes, and I enjoy it. Discipline has to stay. It must remain. And that discipline must be driven by conviction. What I really believe.
And so let me, let me talk you through Daniel chapter six just quickly. I've loved this story for a long time and I think it's a good of, kind of picture of, of what I believe about, about discipline, about, um, about devotion and coming regularly. Remember Daniel six At this point in Daniel's life, Darius the Mead is the king of of Babylon.
And um, most scholars say that Daniel, at this point in his life is over 80. And so when you think about his younger years in life, um, and Nebuchadnezzar's dream that he interprets, um, he's taken to Babylon in his teens and kind of forced to serve Babylon is kind of the epitome of everything that Judaism hates.
People that, that aren't, aren't of his faith, that, that, that don't practice his culture. He stripped of all his kind of national identity and forced to serve, to serve, uh, a foreign nation, Babylon and. What we find in the early chapters of Daniel is that Daniel as a teenager, is super faithful to God, loyal, consistent, and that's rare and beautiful to see a teenage young man living devoted to the Lord.
And what we find in Daniel six is now he's in his eighties, and what we find is devotion Now. I love that. I can remember. Um, sitting on at church and hearing a preacher say something that preachers often say, and he was talking about David and he said David had a moral failure and God still used him.
And David was a man after God's own heart and he slept with Bathsheba. And if you, uh, could show me one person in scripture who didn't have a great failure, moral failure in their life, um, I I, I'd give you a hundred dollars or something, some kind of statement like that. And. Out of like, sarcasm and spite.
I mumbled under my breath, Daniel, because that, and it was so natural, just came out of me. Um, what I was, you know, trying to point at there is that there's actually a bit of a paradigm in scripture that you, you don't wanna miss. God uses people with moral failures, God. God loves people who have struggled and fallen and Moses has failures, right?
David obviously has huge failures. God, God does redeem the follow and he does love and use people that have major, uh, character flaws. But on the other hand, the Old Testament is not an excuse to continue in your character flaws, or it doesn't give permission, uh, just to continue on and. And sin. Actually.
There are people in the Old Testament who live really faithful lives and they become great examples of consistency. They become great examples of integrity and great examples of devotion. And what we have in Daniel is not, not David who had intimacy with God and was a man of of war, yet righteousness and then fell to us.
What we have in, in Daniel is a man who suffered. A man who was loyal, a man who in his teen years loved God, like much like David, but in his eighties is still faithful. And so I love this. Now we find, we pick up at Daniel six and we find Daniel in his eighties. Darius is the king, and Daniel has some enemies and some people who hate him because of his, uh, the favor on his life.
And so his enemies decide that they'll come to Darius and they'll propose a decree. And the decree will be that any man. Who prays or gives homage to any other God for 30 days outside of Darius himself, uh, should be thrown into the lion's den. It's really interesting because they came up with this decree after examining Daniel's life.
They watched Daniel for a while to see if there was some kind of character fall, some kind of hidden sin that they could expose him for and bring him down with. But after a while they decide that the only way that they'll ever get this man is if they can in some way manipulate the situation on the basis of his.
Devotional life. And so they release this decree. They flatter Darius for a while, and they say Any man who prays or pays homage to any other God for 30 days should be thrown in the lion's stand. And what we find is that Daniel now an old man, he does what he's always done. He doesn't go in fear, he doesn't tremble, shake at the knees, he just climbs back upstairs, opens the window, faces Jerusalem and prays three times a day.
Um, praying three times a day, this kind of pattern, this disciplined pattern, and then towards Jerusalem because he's longing for God's redemption of, of Jerusalem. And, um, of course to Yahweh alone. I love this quote from CS Lewis. He says, faith is the art of holding onto the things your reason is once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.
Faith is holding on to the things your reason has once accepted. You've believed in spite of your changing moods. So the mood now as they release a decree that anyone who prays should be thrown into the lion's den, the mood might be a little more anxious than it was before. But faith causes Daniel to do what he's always done, to pray because he's always prayed to pray because he believes in prayer and I've.
I've said this for years, and I actually really like this thought. Um, Daniel would rather risk hi a night in the lion's den than to risk 30 days without prayer. And, and on one hand it's of course he will not be intimidated out of his devotional patterns because he believes that his life is a testimony to the nations of what it means to the faithful to God.
On the other hand, I think he believes that prayer really matters. He's interceding for the restoration of Jerusalem as he faces. Uh. Faces the holy city and prays with the window open. Um. He, he thinks that God hears his prayers, that God loves his prayers and that God uses his prayer life and he doesn't know who he'd be or where he'd be if he didn't pray for 30 whole days.
He's never done that before. And the, the fear of not praying for 30 days is more intimidating than the fear of spending a night in the lion's den, and I think that exposes some real conviction. Conviction that. Prayer matters, conviction that time and God's presence matters. Conviction. That life is intimacy with God.
Intimacy with the spirit. And so Daniel does, he climbs up to upper room, he opens the window and he prays, um, towards Jerusalem again. And he's caught and arrested and brought before Darius. And now Darius is distraught. He kind of realizes that he was duped into this plan, but he's reminded that there's no way for the king to go back on the decree.
And so he's gotta go through with this and. So he sends Daniel to the lion's den for a whole night. And you know the story. The angel of the Lord shuts the lion's mouth. And I love this quote from Matthew Henry. I've loved this for years. Matthew Henry says. The same bright and glorious being that was seen in the form of the son of God with the three children in the fiery furnace had visited Daniel and it's likely in a visible appearance, had enlightened the dark den and kept Daniel Company all night.
He had shut the lion's mouth that they had not in the least hurt him. That angel's presence made. Even the lion's den, his stronghold, his palace, his paradise. He had never had a better night in all his life, and that is. Fascinating. What Matthew Hen is saying is that as Daniel prayed, and as the Lord showed up and sends the angel of the Lord to shut the lion's mouth, Daniel in the lion's den has total peace, and that does become a picture of the Christian life, right?
Like we live in the midst of Babylon. We live in the midst of the lion's den. But when Jesus is in our midst, everything's okay. Everything's fine. And so part of the reason we're so convicted to keep coming back and read the scripture and to live in prayer and to live in intimacy with God is because when I have Him, nothing else matters.
Everything else is okay. So Daniel in the Lion's den is totally at PCs, his best night ever. And it's really funny because Darius, the, the pagan king seems to toss and turn all night. He jumps up first thing in the morning to run to Daniel to see if he was spared. And it's, it's just a funny image. Darius has no peace at all sleeping in his palace and, and.
Daniel has total joy, total rest, total kind of solace as he spends the night in the midst of lions.
And I love this. I love to think of teenage Daniel praying and coming back to pray and study scripture and um, I love to think of 80-year-old Daniel interceding and believing. And Daniel nine, you see Daniel really repenting on behalf of Israel, crying out fasting for 21 days. I love to think of Daniel, uh, in his old age, still living.
Consistent to his conviction, disciplined in his devotion. What is Daniel convicted of? Like when you think about the story, you think about these patterns, these rhythms, what are the things that jump out? Well, again, I think he's convicted that prayer changes things. I think he's convicted that God hears prayer, that God loves prayer, God's commanded prayer.
And so for some of you guys, if you're struggling to be a person of prayer, you don't have a prayer life at all, and you know it. And so you just tell your friends like, I'm not disciplined in my prayer life. Like maybe the problem is not that you lack discipline. Maybe the problem is that you don't really believe that God answers prayer, that God hears prayer, that God desires prayer.
I. Daniel believes that God is worthy of his attention all day, every day. He prays it morning, noon, and evening because he wants the entirety of his day to be turning towards God, for God to have his face all day long. And some of you guys again, you say, I'm just not disciplined to to be with God. I'm just not disciplined to spend time with God.
Maybe you're not really convicted that God's worthy of all your attention, that there's actually nothing better to give your attention to a but than to the Father. Daniel believes that. God intends to restore his people, that God has a plan and a purpose, and that his prayer life and his faithfulness is a part of God's agenda to bring the people of Israel back and to write relationship with God.
And the kind of modern parallel of that is we are waiting for the return of Christ, the Spirit and the bride say, come Lord Jesus. And maybe. Part of the reason that you don't really pray and read and serve and show up for your local church is not just because you're not disciplined to go to church.
Maybe you don't really believe that God intends to use your life and your prayers and your giving and your serving to bring his kingdom and to, uh, evangelize the nation to disciple, uh, the generations. Maybe you don't really believe that. Daniel believes that God will be faithful to him in spite all the threats of Babylon.
And so because of that, Babylon does not get to influence or dictate or intimidate him out of his worship. He just won't let Babylon have a say. And the New Testament parallel in the way that, particularly the Book of Revelation paints Babylon's, Babylon kind of becomes the image of all the world's system cultural influences, culture, culture's, pressure, and in a lot of ways culture distracts culture, um, belittles the spiritual life.
And man, you're supposed to have a conviction that, that this world, that Babylon in no way gets to dictate how I live, that I belong not to Babylon, I belong to Yahweh, to the King of Kings, and. And he's not. He's, I, he's, he's worthy of all I have. And I'm not going to be intimidated or pressured or lulled to sleep by any other, Daniel like really believed some things.
He really lived some things. He was disciplined because of what he believed. And I wanna like just challenge you that devotion flows that way. Flows out of conviction, flows out of your faith, flows out of your, your, your. Your real concrete beliefs. And so my challenge for you this week, and I know this may seem a little bit silly, but just go with me.
It's Christmas, gimme a little grace. My challenge for you this week is maybe sit down with a piece of paper and I want you to take 20 minutes and give me 10 resolutions. I. Okay if, if Jonathan Edwards at 18 can start to write resolutions that he lives by for the rest of his life, if Daniel as a teenager can choose to be a person of prayer and then he's praying in his eighties, you can take 20 minutes and jot down some things that you really believe, some resolutions that you really wanna live by.
I. For me, it's like I resolve to read the entire Bible every year, and so that resolve, that conviction that I need to be in God's word for my soul, for the sake of my maturity and discipleship, for the sake of those whom I lead and disciple for the sake of my children. I need to be in God's word every day.
That conviction leads me to the discipline, which is to have a a Bible plan. I used the McShane Bible plan. I've used it for over a decade. I wanna encourage you to, to think that through, have a resolve. I have a resolve, a conviction that my kids should be prayed for every day. I'm gonna pray for my kids every day, no matter how I feel.
No. How matter, how busy life gets, no matter how chaotic my work life is. I'm gonna pray for my kids every day. That's a conviction. And that conviction leads to the discipline. And the discipline is as I do my Bible plan. I pause through separate passages of scripture and I, and I take time to go through each kid from my teenagers to my youngest is four.
I pray for every one of them. I ask God to bless 'em, to God, to use them, that their spiritual ears would hear the voice of the spirit. I have a, a resolve to be active in the local church, and so that leads to the discipline of showing up or participating of giving financially. I want you to gimme 10 dude, take some time.
Think about what do I really believe about God? I, I wanna have a resolve to, to be intimate with Jesus as often as I can to, to not just run through all the motions and not just pretend to play the parts and not live hypocritical, but to have an intimate knowledge of Jesus. Um, what are your resolves?
Gimme 10, gimme 20 minutes, and 10 resolves. And I'm praying this week that God would grow you in your devotional life, your devotional patterns, and your intimate relationship with Jesus. Alright guys. God bless.