Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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.
If you've been a follower of the dietary podcast for a while, you have likely noticed that we release an episode every Monday. We've been doing that for eight or nine years now, and, um, this is the first time that we've ever done a midweek show. But we came off of the retreat just last week and realized that we just get the sense that guys are super hungry to continue to dive deeper into theology, asking tough and hard and good questions.
Um, studying the scriptures. Basically anything they can do to figure out what it looks like for them to be the men that God's called them to be, which is really exciting. And so Pastor Caleb, who is my personal pastor, like I sit under his leadership at church on Sundays, um, he taught at the retreat. And then Chris Kin, who's a pastor in San Diego and one of my best friends, um, he also taught at the retreat.
He's done many podcasts here on the Dad's Hired podcast. Um, and so the three of us taught at the retreat and we were just dreaming and praying and thinking together and thought, man, it would just be cool for us to one, continue to work together 'cause it's so fun doing ministry together. But two, why don't we create more episodes during the week that guys can continue to dive in.
So every Monday still, I'll keep that episode. It will either be me doing some kind of teaching or I'll have some guest on and do some interviews as we've done again over the last eight or nine years. But then also on Wednesdays, Caleb is going to, Wednesdays will essentially be de dedicated to Caleb for as long as he's able to do it.
Again. He's still pastoring his church, our, our our church here in town. And, um, but as long as he's able, he's really excited about what God's doing at Dad's heart. So as long as he's able, he's gonna do a podcast every Wednesday. He has a six week series planned, which we're gonna dive into today. Uh, I've obviously listened to the show and it for my own soul.
Man, this is going to be so helpful. So many of you. Feel like you are in the wilderness of your faith, like, just like mundane. Um, and if you're not there, you will be there again. So, um, this series is gonna be really helpful. But beyond just this series, Caleb will continue to teach on Wednesdays. And then on Fridays we have, um, we're gonna do Q and as with Chris.
And that is completely like you can just throw out your questions. And they'll, they'll be anonymous. So when when we get your question and we ask them on the show, we're not gonna throw your name out there. So you can ask your question anonymously or you'll stay anonymous as we read your question. But we'll do that every Friday.
And so, um, again, on Mondays we'll be myself. On Wednesdays we'll be Caleb teaching, digging into God's Word, and then on. Fridays we will do q and a where pretty much nothing is off limits when it comes to theology and life and um, Bible and all that stuff. So make sure if you're not subscribed, you, you'll definitely wanna be subscribed 'cause there's a lot of content gonna start coming your way.
But that being said, uh, I'll just step out of the way here and allow Caleb to dig us into this series of what it looks like for us to find Jesus in the wilderness of our souls.
Hey man, so excited to be with you guys today. Uh, just kinda getting home, getting settled from the retreat. I was telling Jared and, and my wife, man, it, it makes my life, it's the, the best weekend of the year, so thankful to get to spend some time with you guys and all my tanks are full. One of the things I was kind of reflecting on as I, uh, made it back home and kind of settled in was a few conversations that I had with several different brothers who, I had a couple guys come up and we were chatting and they said things like, you know, my marriage is going well.
I'm dating my wife, I'm doing all the right things, and my kids are doing well. I'm discipling them. I'm teaching them The word works okay. Um, externally, everything in my life seems to be fine, but internally. I'm really struggling, like I'm really in a drought. I'm really, uh, experiencing loneliness and sorrow.
And, um, as I, as I thought about that, those, those are the ideas that the patriarchs, that the, the fathers would call wilderness themes. What, what some of these guys are saying, and I think I've been there a hundred times over, is, man, externally, everything is going well. I'm doing all the right things, but my soul is dry and I'm experiencing wilderness.
So as I, I thought and kind of pondered, I thought maybe it would be helpful to, to tackle this idea of wilderness and to try to try to aid you a little bit in your journey if this is where you are. If you're not in a wilderness season and everything's fun and fantastic, you will be soon enough my friend.
It will come your way. Um, but one of the things I thought about was, um, St. John of the cross, his work, particularly his work, um, the Dark Night of the Soul. It's really popular and has some profound and helpful thoughts that I thought I could go through and, and maybe help articulate what you're feeling and, and maybe even give you a few tools to help you navigate the wilderness.
St. John, um, he uses this imagery of ascending Mount Carmel. He was a Carmelite monk, and the idea of ascending Mark Carmel becomes a metaphor for journeying towards God, kind of the, the pilgrimage towards the heavenly city. And so in his idea of journeying towards Union with God, or journeying towards sanctification and purity, he articulated two different types of nights.
Okay, so the first type of night, spiritual night that you might find yourself in as what he calls an active night. Okay? An active night would be like you decided that because you're struggling with a particular sin. You are going to fast for two weeks, and now you're in the middle of this two week fast and you're feeling hungry and frustrated and tired and emotional.
Um, but in the process, the Lord's working and purging. Or maybe you decided because you're, you're struggling with, um, talking maybe gossip or talking too much. Maybe you decide to practice solitude. To be alone with God. And so you're trying to be alone with God more, but you're experiencing loneliness and kind of a need for fellowship.
All the things, those things can be good. They can be good tools to help you journey towards sanctification, to help you put to death the flesh put to death sin. But those things, those experiences of sorrow or frustration, when you're in a 10 day fast, that's an an active. Or, uh, a process that you initiated, you are participating in, you, you know what's going on, you started it.
Um, and the spirit's helping you, of course, the spirit's, uh, working in your life as you journey. But an active night is something that you, you played a part in and you pretty well understand. But John said that active nights only get you so far, and so fasting and. Solitude and prayer. Seasons of prayer that you initiate only take you so far in the process.
And that at some point the spirit himself begins to initiate processes and these, he calls passive nights. Okay, so a passive night is finding myself really lonely, really tired, and really dry. Not knowing why. There's nothing externally that I initiated. There's no process that I'm participating in. I'm not in the middle of a 20 day fast, but I feel frustrated and tired and maybe lonely as if I were, and these nights that he calls the passive night, the dark night are a part of a process in where the spirit begins to really act upon you, really lead you really courage.
You. That can be frustrating. And so I think for some of you guys, you're going like, externally, I'm doing all the right things on paper. My marriage is great, but my spirit, my soul is really struggling. I'm really discontent, I'm really frustrated and I don't know what's going on. And St. John says this is actually a part of the spirit's process to cleanse us and to draw us to himself.
And so. St. John would say, like, if you're in a wilderness, if you feel like nothing satisfies, you lack peace. You're just kind of, I always call it walking through the mud. John would say, the first thing you need to do is to recognize that all of your life is in the hands of the potter, right? If I'm clay in the hands of a potter.
I am in a season where externally I'm doing the right things. I'm in a season where I'm not bound in sin, uh, necessarily. I'm not struggling with addiction. I'm not sowing to the flesh and reaping destruction, right? Sometimes you find yourself in despair or depression and it's like you made the bed. You, you're living in rebellion, you're living in sexual sin, and now your marriage is falling apart and, and you made the bed and you need to repent.
And, and there's a whole process to that. But what we're talking about is the exact opposite. You've been faithful to your wife, you've been dating and communicating, but now you just feel totally dry and tired. What John's saying is, again, your clay in the potter's hands. I. When your life is surrendered to him, you've come under his lordship and God now has a, a priority.
God now has an initiative, a work in which he is shaping you and an initiative, a work in which he's making you more like his son. And, and even Jesus goes to the wilderness, right? He goes to the wilderness and vast, and he's tempted and he conquers. I always say, what, what Adam and Heath failed to do in Paradise in the garden.
What Adam and E failed to do, Jesus accomplished in the wilderness, tired and hungry. And so Jesus himself goes through a wilderness. And when you look at it, Paul, Paul, um, most believe when he goes to Arabia, he's experiencing a wilderness. Elijah has a wilderness, and, um, John the Baptist, of course, lives in wilderness.
And so wilderness is a part of God's plan for you. And so the first thing you can do is stop panicking. Stop feeling like God's love for you has somehow vanished, or God's presence has now abandoned you. If you can step out of that mindset and just lean into this idea or this image that you are on the operator's table.
The spirit has a knife in his hand and he's cutting and he's poking and he's prodding, and it's uncomfortable and it's frustrating. But if you can remind yourself that he is at work in me, there's some encouragement and some solace to have there. Saint John loved this image of a log that was cold and a log that's damp being thrown onto a fire and.
At first, uh, nothing really happens, but after a time it begins to dry out and it begins to to warm. And, but eventually the log itself is consumed by the flame. Right? Becomes fuel for the fire. And he said that sometimes it's like, uh, our life is like that log that's cold and dry, and now we're sitting uncomfortable on a flame.
But if we just submit to the process soon enough, our entire lives would be consumed with the flame of the spirit. The first thing I would say is like, you're in process and that's really okay. The second thing, what John said made the dark night, a dark night, is that God was teaching us detachment. Okay.
So he really tries to develop this idea of detachment as the opposite of being attached to things of this world. The opposite of, of finding joy and comfort and pleasure. In material things and so. Attachment is the idea that it, it kind of leads towards idolatry, right? You, you are no longer just enjoying food or enjoying intimacy with your wife or enjoying entertainment, but you've begun to go to your phone or go to.
Food or whatever it is, go to entertainment to try to find real comfort and to try to really feed the hunger in your soul. And so in the dark night, all of the things that used to bring you pleasure, all of the things that used to entertain you, all of the things that used to bring you a measure of life, they all of a sudden seem to be totally pointless and there's not much life to have with them.
And. Um, I always think, like when I've hit seasons of wilderness, I sometimes I will think to myself, Caleb, if you could just make it to the end of the work week, and if you could just get on a boat for three or four hours and just fish, then everything will be okay. But in the wilderness, being on the boat for three or four hours doesn't fix anything, right?
I just sit on the boat feeling dry and tired, and the, the beautiful scenery, the water, the sun, none of those things. Things fix me. Um, because John says, in this season of wilderness, God has tried to teach you that none of those things could ever fulfill you anyway. They're good gifts meant to be enjoyed, but in the wilderness, he really begins to delineate between good gifts and idolatry.
And he's teaching us that music or intimacy or entertainment, that those things cannot be our fountain. Those things can't be our our source. And so in the dark night, everything becomes dull and everything becomes kind of mundane and everything's kind of. Uh, un entertaining and lackluster, but in this dark night, he's withdrawing from us the ability to find solace in anything but.
His presence. And so you can keep saying to yourself like I do, if I could just get on the water for three hours, things would be better. Or you could begin to recognize that the spirit's trying to teach you to detach yourself from any form of idolatry and to come to the place. Yes, where you can enjoy being on the water with your friends and family.
But it is not what brings you real life and real joy In detachment, we find the Apostle Paul saying things like, everything to me is really rubbish. Except for to know him or the Apol or, or John the Baptist, right, has this real detachment thing where he wears what he wants to wear and he eats what he wants to eat, but it's very clear that he lives life with one mission in mind.
To know God and to play the glory and the excellencies of the God he serves in detachment. Everything else that could distract me, falls to the wayside and my eyes become. Totally fixated on Jesus, who satisfies, who becomes my fountain. And so that that state of feeling, kind of like lethargic and like everything's mundane and everything's dry, it's really intended to bring you to the place where you just keep coming and putting your face in the carpet, opening the word of God and reading and studying and saying, Lord, you alone are gonna be my fountain.
You alone will be my fountain. Um, sometimes. Teachers will, um, will use this idea of like, it's kinda a simple thought, but um, when we go to pray, we close our eyes and we're closing our eyes because we're trying to focus on the God who is not material. And so if my eyes are open, I might see the kids running or cars going by and become distracted.
And so I close my eyes so I can better focus. And the idea of the dark night is that God. Kind of closes the eyes of your senses so that you're no longer distracted. And all you can see is God and God alone. And so I would say like if that's where you are, learn the lessons of detachment, and maybe you've put too much emphasis on entertainment.
Maybe you have too great of an emphasis on material wealth. Maybe you have too great of an emphasis on what you're gonna accomplish through your vocation, and you don't have a significant enough emphasis on your. Um, your intimacy with Jesus, your quiet and hidden life in Christ. And so John said, the spirit teaches us detachment.
That was really a, a big theme that he wanted us to get. Just a couple other things that I think would help is that in the wilderness or in the dark and what John's calling a dark knight, you learn really quickly that you can't discipline your way out of it. And that's really frustrating for men because we're fixers, right?
We get. I can't tell you how many times I've looked at a, a brother in the Lord and said, man, I just feel like I'm in the wilderness. And they say things like, if you would exercise and get the endorphins going, if you would fix your diet. And, and those are, those are valuable solutions, but not solutions for the wilderness.
Those are valuable solutions for experiencing kind of law in life, but they're not, they're not solutions for the wilderness. And so sometimes. I find myself really dry and I say to a brother, man, I'm struggling. And they say, man, fix your diet. Uh, go on a walk. And I'm like, I'm eating so clean. I'm exercising every day.
Like, you don't understand. That's, that's not, that's not the issue here in the wilderness. We learned really quickly that we don't have quick fixes and we can't just discipline our way out of the night. Um, you have to begin to lead fully. The strength of the spirit and it, and it tests you, right? Like the wilderness tries you and you, you get alone and you get quiet and you're hungry and you're thirsty for God.
And I can't tell you how many times I've prayed Jesus. You said if we to the woman at the well in John four, if you knew who it was who asked you for water, you would've asked of me. And I would give you living water. And in the wilderness, I pray that Jesus, I know who you are. I'm asking you for living water.
I'm asking you to satisfy me. And, um, yeah, it's testing and it's hard, and he doesn't seem to satisfy me as quickly as I want him to. He doesn't bring immediate comfort or immediate strength. He, he leaves me learning to hunger and thirst and pray a little longer. But in the wilderness, in the dark night, you have to learn that the strength of your character, the strength of your personality, your fixer is not going to get you out of this night.
I. The only hope you have is to pray and is to commune with God and is to keep showing up and reading the scriptures, and you have to come to the place where you say, God, I can't fix this and I can't sustain this, and I'm not gonna make it another two weeks in this state. If you don't show up and if you don't satisfy me in your presence, if you don't gimme the grace.
And the strength. And so the, the wilderness does two things. It, it kills self-reliance and it kills arrogance. It kills this idea that I'm strong enough to make it through life, kind of the American dream. Uh, western prosperity. I'm just gonna white knuckle my way through this. The wilderness will kill that out idea where you no longer confess.
I'm strong. But all you can say is, man, I'm, I'm weak and I'm needy. We can needy and the spirit alone helps. And so it kills the arrogance and it teaches reliance. We learn real perseverance because real perseverance is not just doing well when everything is going well, right? If you're doing well, when everything is going well, I mean, that's easy, and my kids do well when everything's going well.
My kids freak out when the Internet's turned off for three minutes. Like when, when stuff begins to be stripped away from you, that's when you learn perseverance. And in the dark night, I cast myself on Jesus denounce self-reliance. And I really learned to persevere and to lean in the big takeaway. I would say, you know, kind of this, this first hop at the idea of wilderness.
If this guy, if this idea is helpful for you guys, I, I may do some more work on it. But the first big takeaway that I want you to lean into is God has not abandoned you the dark night. It, it in every way begins to remove the sense of God's presence. When I read the scriptures and I, and I really feasting in my, my soul seems to leap with joy that stops in the wilderness.
God is no less with you. Right? All that stopped was the chill bumps when I prayed. He is still very much for me and with me, and so part of the dark night is you're learning to walk by faith and not by sight because you can't see anymore anyway, right? I don't feel the right feelings. I'm having to believe the doctrine.
I'm having to believe the confession of. Faith and part of what you are forced to believe in the dark night guys that I want you to lean into is that God is for you and that He is working. He's working, he's shaping, he's discipling. He's forging you in the fire. You feel dry, you feel tired, you feel frustrated.
Your feelings can't dictate what you believe about what God is accomplishing in your life. Right now. You are in God's hands. Lean into him. Part of what you learn to do in the wilderness is just to say, God, I trust you in the mountains. I trust you on mountaintops and I trust you in valleys. Sometimes it's in the darkness that you really learn to kind of grab hold of his garment and just hang on.
Just walk with him. And so I think the big takeaway I want you to walk away with is, is this, you are not alone. You're being challenged to live as though you're not alone. Even when you feel empty and tired, you're being challenged to, to live according to your convictions and your beliefs and, and the word of God versus, um, everything in your experience being beautiful and profound.
So you're in God's hands. Learn, detachment, learn to trust and lean only on him. Learn to repent of your self-reliance and your arrogance, and just trust him. Just trust that he's at work and that, and, and you trust this, the wilderness never lasts forever. Never lasts forever. So lean in, man. I love you. I'm praying if there's anything I could do to serve you or encourage you, man, reach out on socials or something and, and I'd love to bless you and just believe it again, that, that every season that we surrender to the spirit is fruitful.
Especially the ones that hurt, especially the ones that hurt. Alright, man. Bless you guys.