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.
Hey guys. Welcome back to the Dad's Tired podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by our good friends over at Back Gate prayers. Mother's Day is just around the corner. Just a heads up for you guys, and you're probably, what quickly comes to mind is maybe flowers or candy or a card, but you can actually get her something much more special, something much more personal.
Back gate prayers. They're a long, longtime friend of our ministry for many years. They create personal prayer cards that encourage people to pray for their children. Back gate prayers. Would love to. Create a personalized set of prayers for your wife to pray over for your children. You can send them your favorite picture of your kids, along with their names.
They'll create beautiful, thoughtful, and meaningful set of prayer cards. There's 20 Biblically based prayer topics, including praying for your children's salvation, their growth in Christ, their integrity, discernment, humility. A servant's heart and protection, just to name a few, one of my favorites. I've got a, a set of these on my desk.
One of my favorite is praying, uh, just for my children's giftings. This is the prayer. It says, may my children eagerly use the talents. You have given them to serve others as they do. Let them hear your affirmation, fuel your joy, and give you glory. Thank you for these special gifts graciously given to them.
That prayer comes from Romans 12 verses six to eight, Matthew 25 verses 21 in one Peter four, 10 and 11. Uh, I pray that often for my kids, and it's a constant reminder for me as I see those prayer prompts on my desk. These cards sit in a handmade wooden block for the first time. They're offering cherry blocks in addition to the Aspen Wood block stand.
These are really beautiful. It's not just like a, it's, of course, it's a prayer card set, but it's also just a really beautiful like art set that you can put anywhere in your house, and it's gonna look really good. These prayer cards are a favorite personalized gift for dad. Tired listeners. They've been a hit for many years.
Allow back gate prayers to come alongside you and your journey of praying for children. It could be the best Mother's Day gift she'll receive. We hear that all the time. Remember also, grandmas love to pray for their grandchildren, so you can give these to your mom or your wife's mom as a gift to encourage them.
Mother's Day is just around the corner, so don't hesitate on this. The deadline for ordering is May 1st coming up very, very quickly. You can use the coupon code. Dad tired for 10% off. Again, go to back gate prayers.com. Use the coupon code. Dad tired, and you'll get 10% off your order.
Kyle, super excited to be hanging out with you today, man. I've, I've been looking forward to our, our conversation. I remember reading one of your books, as I'm sure you hear that all the time. You had a real popular book back in the day. I couldn't, you just told me, you just told me right before we hit record that you are now a grandpa, which I'm looking at you, bro, and I feel like we're like, okay.
The same age. So you, you're doing a great job. Yeah, well, we started young. That's the key is to, uh, start young. We're young and had no idea what we were doing, but now I can keep up with my grandson. So do you feel like you know what you're doing now? No, no. I've learned to fake it a little bit more, a little more confidence and, uh, actually the great confidence comes from knowing.
How many things work out, you know, they work themselves out. I stressed way too much when, uh, my four kids were growing up about different things I couldn't control. So these days I feel more confident, even though I'm pretty sure I still have no idea what I'm doing. Dude, un un go one layer deeper on that last thought.
Like stressing out about things that you don't have any control about. 'cause a lot of the guys who are listening are gonna have kids. Where we're still stressing about stuff. Yeah. Well, for me, the way that came to the surface as a dad was frustration. Some people might say anger. I think that's too strong of a word.
I like frustration. That feels more acceptable. What it really was was fear. You know, I would, I. See the different challenges my kids were going through. I have three girls and a boy, and I recognized how little control I had to fix things, how little control I had to make decisions over them, and that, that fear caused frustration for me.
And as I look back on it, you know what would've been helpful was to recognize how many of those fears were. In the moment, fears they didn't, things worked out. Maybe not exactly how I thought they would, or maybe different than in some cases I hoped they might. But over time, you know, I've learned to trust God more as a father, recognizing that he loves my kids more than I do.
So. Yeah. Yeah. So for me it was, it was frustration that was really rooted in, in fear. Well, I think you probably put words to what so many dudes are feeling right now. Like I always say too, I've been saying this for a long time, but, uh, and I stole it from somebody somewhere, but it's essentially, I. The idea that anger is never the first emotion.
You know? Like it's always, it's, there's some, I always tell myself and trying to tell other guys like, what is it? Try to get past that, that emotion of anger and then just get to the first emotion. What, what's behind that? And I think you just probably hit the nail on the head there that it's actually fear.
I'm just scared. Yeah. I don't have control, which for a guy it's pretty terrifying. Yeah, humans. It's terrifying, but it is. Yeah. Especially if you are a guy who is wired to want to fix things and be a rescuer. The masculine impression I had as a boy growing up was that as a man, I. You know, I am always the rescuer.
I'm not the person who ever needs rescued. That sets you up for some challenging times as a dad because there's so much that you can't rescue from, and then there are so many times you need help from other people. And if you think of yourself as a rescuer, you're less inclined to ask for help. You know, for me, the two big things would be fear and sadness.
That has felt like I have struggled with as a dad or as a man, right? Like, sadness never felt like a very masculine quality to me, like Right. If you would've said to me, are you sad? I'd say, no, I, I'm not sad. I'm not, you know, you're not gonna hear me whine or complain or, and to understand that it is okay to be sad.
Right? It's okay to have some. Recognize there's some things over here as a dad that, you know, I'm sad about. Instead of letting that become anger or frustration over the things I can't control, let me just go ahead and be sad about it and grieve it and instead of holding onto it and letting that surface in, in anger.
Super interesting man. 'cause we just had, we were, had a counselor on here a couple weeks ago. We were talking about that exact thing, like I don't think. That I've met very many. I was trying to rack my brain as I was saying that out loud, but like I think I've met one dude in my life who sent me a text one time.
This was actually real recently. And he just, he told me, I just feel really sad Uhhuh. And I was like so proud of him for just saying, just saying it. 'cause so many of us feel that or, or we feel it, but we don't even know we're feeling it. So we say, so we use other words. Yep. To describe it, you know, and I think what you described there is like, I oftentimes we'll come back to I feel angry or I feel frustrated.
But a lot of, a lot of what dues are feeling, whether we want to admit it or not, is just we're sad. Yeah. Yeah. And so one of the things I've learned to do is to share that with some other guys. I. Who can't do anything to fix the situation. So I've got a buddy that I talk to, tried to talk to once a week, and you know, I'll tell him three things that are hard for me.
He'll tell me three things that are hard for him and, and neither of us try to do anything about it. We are just like, man, that's hard. That's really hard, man. I'm sad for you. Thank you. Thank you. Talk to you next week. And if you would've asked me about that 10 years ago, I would've said, that is ridiculous.
Like that would've felt like a waste of time. And if you can fix my problem, I'm happy to tell you about it, but I'm not gonna tell you about it if you can't do anything about it. But I was studying in Galatians five, in, in the New Testament where it talks about, uh, bear one another's burdens. And in doing this, you'll fulfill the law of Christ.
That bearing one another's burdens is an idea of carrying weight. I. Together, that's, it's like a box that's too heavy for one person. So if you ask somebody else to carry it for you and sharing something that's hard or sad or disappointing is not a weak thing to do. It's an important part of being fulfilling the law of Christ that we have some.
Buddy, another guy that can just help carry some of that weight. I think it's, I would've never, I would've never thought it would be as significant as it is for me as a father and as a husband. Let me take us on a little bit of a rabbit hole on that, what you just described, which by the way. I haven't even got through me introducing you.
I got through, we jumped right in, man. We did, yeah. Got through, uh, my a DD like kicked me out halfway through your introduction, we started going down, uh, a different path. I'll come back to it, I promise. Okay. So on what you just described there, I was talking to a group of friends. I meet with a group of guys every week, try to, like you said, we try to meet every week, and how do you balance in the Christian community?
You're pastor, you're pastoring you, you know, you're trying to shepherd people well, how do you balance? Having these, or promoting these really small groups of friendships where people can get to that level. Specifically, dudes. 'cause this is hard for guys, right? So let's just say we, we tell every guy, you need community, you need a group of friends like you just described.
Bro, I'm just gonna meet with you and I might even just tell you, here are three things that are tripping me up, and I'm not even asking you to fix 'em. I just need somebody that I can confess this to, share this with, whatever. Yeah. How do you balance that, which is super healthy with, we need to grow this, we need to have, can your group become 10 people big?
Can it become 15 people? Is it a closed group? Would Jesus want you to become. Only have like three people in your group or five people in your group, or, does that make sense? The question I'm asking between like I, I guess to put it frankly, having an exclusive group of tight-knit friends. Versus like an open, we get together every week and anyone's invited.
Yeah, I think you need both. I think once you reach a certain point with the exclusive group of tight-knit friends, you might not need to meet together every week. Like there's, you know, there's different ways to stay connected. I. You know, I've got a group of guys like that, that we were in a group together, kind of a formal men's group that we, you know, worked through some different curriculum together, and then we just decided, hey, we're, we're gonna stick together even though we're not gonna keep meeting together every week, even though we're gonna be a part of starting other groups.
And, and so we've done that a lot. Honestly, a lot of it's through tech streaming and then getting together once in a while around a campfire and some of those things. But, you know, I'll tell you to me. What helped us get to that place quickly? 'cause that's the hard part, right? Is it takes time. Is we had, we had, this day, there's, you know, about six of us we had, this day, we took a Saturday and we just said.
Hey, we're gonna share all the ugly parts of our story. No one wanted to do it. Several of the guys thought it was ridiculous. But you know, there was a, like, there was a Navy SEAL in the group. There was a former NFL player in the group. There was, and when those guys I. Did it. Everybody else did it. You know, when you hear them go there, then it becomes contagious.
Like you're like, oh, all right, well if he can do it, I'll do it. Yeah. And I think more than anything else we did that hey, we, we don't really have any secrets from each other. I think that had a huge impact in connecting us for life, right? And to me, the way you get there with guys is you model the way, you know you gotta do it yourself if you're the leader, but then if you have somebody in the room that can set the temperature for that, I.
Man, it can microwave those relationships really quickly. And I, I experienced that and I saw that. And so we still stay connected even though, even though it's not weekly and even though we're a part of other, other groups now. That's super helpful. 'cause I think a lot of guys, that was like a really practical, maybe tactical thing that I know a lot of guys listening are, they're trying to figure out like, okay, how do I have like.
Two or three friends like that. I like the way you said, kind of microwave that like instant, you know, make, make something, push it further along faster. I love that idea. But it's hard to do in a group of like 15 or even like in a couple's bible study, you know, there's a lot of guys, it's like I meet with my wife and her friend, you know, we've got like five couples from the church, and it's like, yeah, honestly, dude, you're not really getting to that level.
Mm-hmm. I'm not gonna share. All my shortcomings with 15 other people in a living room that I might see in two months if they're consistent, you know? You know what's shocking though, is I totally agree. I have gotten, I've had friends like that too, you know, my wife's friends that I hang out with. What's shocking to me is if.
As a man with your guy friends, with your buddies, if you will go there and people kind of really are hungry for it. I, I was sitting at this, uh, lunch the other day with, with guys who, you know, are all pretty high achieving driver guys and, and one of the guys had been going through something difficult and he said, Hey, can we just go, can we just go around the table and say what we really appreciate about each other?
And I thought to myself, what are you doing, bro? Like this, this is weird. Yeah, this is making weird quick, and, but he started it off and he did it and I could not believe how the guys responded to it. And then how afterwards they were all. You know, they were all hungry for it and, and so, you know, don't underestimate, I guess you know how much you need that.
Yeah. But how much some of the other guys who would never show it will respond to it if you initiate it, you know? That's true, man. I agree. I working with guys all over the country, I couldn't agree with that more. Like I see it all the time and I completely agree. Alright man, let me rewind back to our introduction.
Okay. Yeah, let's do it. One of the things I was gonna say as we were starting our conversation was I read one of your first books. If not, it might've been your first, not a fan. Uh, was that your first book? Yeah, it was my first book. Yeah. Yeah. Which, congrats, bro, on your first book. Just exploding. That's quite, that's quite, yeah.
That's great. The, the others have done fine, but uh, yeah. Uh, you know, you said the bar so high. Bless that one. So that's cool. Yeah. A lot of guys will have read that book or heard about it and a lot of guys will have, this is the first time they're ever hearing about it. But one thing that we talk about, like a lot here at Dad Tired is.
It's impossible to be the kind of husband and father that God is calling us to be without first being just a, a deep lover of Jesus and his gospel. And the fact that he's changing us personally as men and as that's happening. It's really hard to be a crappy husband and father. Like, um, it just overflows from us.
And so we say a lot here, like, we're trying to fall in love with Jesus and help our families do the same. That's good. That's, that's, that's really what we're trying to do. So one thing I loved about that book is that kind of the. I mean the whole, it sums it up in the title, but are you a follower of Jesus, like a true disciple of him or are you just a fan?
I'd love for you in your own words. Maybe just like, can you recap, I know it's probably hard, but can you recap like your heart behind that book in just a couple minutes? Yeah, absolutely. The idea of a fan, you think in terms of a sports fan. Of, uh, stick with my generation of Michael Jordan. Right. Like I could tell you about him.
You know, I had a poster on my wall. I, I knew the different stats, et cetera. I sure didn't know him. I just knew a lot about him. And, you know, I think that's the idea of, I. Being a fan instead of a follower where you, you, you know about Jesus or you know the right answers and you're happy to cheer on some things, but there's a difference between that.
And knowing him, you know, being a fan is this idea of wanting to be close enough to him to get the benefits, but not so close that it costs you anything. You know, being a fan is the idea that. You look a certain part on the outside, but it doesn't necessarily reflect a relationship or, or, uh, where your heart is.
And so the call there is. Matthew chapter seven. It is to know Jesus. It is to know Him in a way that is genuine. It's real, it's daily. It requires sacrifice. It, it's saying yes to him even when it means saying no to yourself. It is following him when? When it requires humbling yourself. One of the things I looked at as I was writing that book was how challenging or how uncomfortable.
Does my relationship with Jesus make me because Jesus said, oh, if you follow me, you take up a cross and follow me. Carrying cross isn't a comfortable thing to do. So, um, is my relationship with Jesus challenging me in that way? And so, you know, just taking a hard look, the way I talk about it in the book is kind of a define the relationship, a DTR talk with Jesus, really honestly, looking at it and not settling for a fan version.
I think, man, for you guys who are listening, like if you just asked yourself that one question, if that was maybe your one takeaway from today's episode to just ask yourself, is following Jesus challenging me? Mm. Like, is it making me uncomfortable in some way? Is it forcing me to die to some area of my life?
Yeah. And if not, if you can't say yes to that, which I'm dude, as I'm repeating that question to myself, I'm like. Convicted and you know, need to spend some time with the Lord today and ask that question myself, but I just challenge you as a listener, like what is Jesus calling you? To die to today? Or where is it just super comfortable and you're like, all right, that's probably, I'm probably not where Jesus would want me to be.
And again, that would be for your good and for his glory. Not just to like make you uncomfortable for the sake of making you uncomfortable. This isn't like some other weird world religion or some hippie thing, which is like we've seek towards, we fight for uncomfortable stuff just for the sake of being uncomfortable and grow discipline or whatever.
But we know that it's actually we die to stuff because Jesus says it's better. What he has for us is better. Yeah, I agree a hundred percent With that, I will say. That, you know, denying yourself requires practice like me. Here's what I mean by that, is if the spiritual discipline of following Jesus means that I've gotta say no to myself when I deny myself things like sleeping in, if I deny myself things like, well.
Watching more than an hour of YouTube shorts, if I, every time I say no to myself, I am learning something about denial, and that does have spiritual implications, meaning that the, the more I learned to say no to myself, the more in tune I am to saying yes. To Jesus and things that will require sacrifice.
Does that make sense? And so I think practicing denial is a worthwhile practice in and of itself. That's a really good like add-on and clarification there, I think too, like isn't that so such a big part of fasting? Yes. Great example. Yeah. Because food in itself is not sinful. Right? Right. But the practice of saying no.
To my impulses is practicing helping me practice for things that are much deeper and much more spiritual. Yeah, that's a better example because that's a, you know, that's a, a biblical example, but yes, when you do that, you are, here's the way I picture this, is if I'm following Jesus, I'm trying to hang onto him, but hang on to him.
Also means letting go of some things in my life. And if I'm, if I'm trying to hang onto him without letting go of some other things, I'm not gonna move very well. I'm not gonna follow very effectively. Like, it's this practice of, of both hanging on and letting go and fasting fast. Like prayer is hanging on, fasting is letting go, and it requires both.
Yeah. Well man, selfishly, I wanted to just have a conversation with you 'cause you that I thought that book years ago was really, really helpful for me on my journey. But you just, you're coming out with a new book called When Your Way Isn't Working, finding Purpose and Contentment through Deep Connection with Jesus.
I was reading the description of that book and I'm like, oh dude, that's like all of us who are, who are part of that Tired. You said when you're worn out. When you feel discouraged, when you think you don't have what it takes, what is the one thing that Jesus wants you to, to never forget that alone. Like just even just that question.
If we stop there, so many guys can resonate with that. Like, dude, I feel worn out as a dad, as a man. I feel discouraged. I feel like I don't have what it takes to do this. So I would love to kind of shift gears and talk about this new book that you have in like your heartbeat behind that. Yeah, it, you know, it fits into our conversation.
It's rooted in John 15, five. Where Jesus is traveling with his closest followers, his disciples, he's heading towards the Garden of Gethsemane. Or he is gonna be arrested and he wants them to be prepared for what's gonna come at them. And so he says to them, I'm the vine. You're the branches. If you remain in me and I remain in you, you'll bear much fruit.
But apart from me, you can't do anything. You can do nothing. And so Jesus. Gives them this image or this metaphor of, I'm the divine, you're the branches, so you stay connected to me when no matter what happens, just stay connected to me. Like that is the key to living this fruitful, productive life. And, and the way I talk about this in the book, I think is especially helpful for us as dads is when my way isn't working, when I'm really struggling and I've got, you know, I raised three teenage daughters.
And you know, my son's 18 now I know what that's like to feel frustrated, to feel worn out. I know what it's like to feel anxious because what I'm trying is not working. My instinct in those moments, and I think a lot of dads can relate to this, is to, I. What I'll call, produce my way out of it. Like I am going to come up with a task list and an action plan.
I'm gonna listen to these podcasts, write it out, and I'm going to focus on production. What do I need to do to fix it? And it's not that those questions are the wrong questions, but they're out of order. It's connection. And then production. It's staying connected to Jesus and then letting production flow out of that connection.
Because what we tend to do, especially as men, is we focus on production because we have something to show for it, and we underestimate connection because it's not always very tangible. What I mean by that is if I go home from work today, beautiful evening out, I need to mow the grass. My wife wants me to go for a walk with her.
I will. Lean towards mowing the grass, not because I like that more. I don't, I'd rather go for a walk with my wife, but the grass needs to be mowed. And when I'm done mowing the grass, I can point to it and say, look what I did. I, I got this done connecting with my wife by taking her for a walk. It doesn't feel very productive now.
It is, but it's cumulative. You don't see it in the moment. And, and so connecting has a way of always getting second place to production. And so if you take this in your relationship with Jesus as a dad, there is nothing more productive you can do. Then prioritize your connection to Jesus. Mm-hmm. So for me as a father, you know, my son's getting ready to graduate from high school.
I'm thinking through. All these things, you know, what have I not talked about with him? What do I need to make sure to teach him? What parts of discipling him do I need to shore up? You know, I'm thinking through all these things. The most effective thing I can do with him is make sure that I am staying connected.
Closely to Jesus. If I do that, these other things have a way of bearing fruit. If I focus on all these other things, but don't take time to prioritize my connection to Christ, I can't do anything. It's not gonna work. If it does produce something, it won't last long. Like it all comes down to that, to that intentional connection.
And so that's really the call for this of this book is, you know, when you find yourself in a place, when your way isn't working, double down on your connection with Jesus and see how that creates production. See how that addresses this area of your life where you're experiencing this frustration or this.
Anxiety. I think one of the questions like even as you're describing that, one question that I was trying to ask myself honestly was, am I convinced that I can produce fruit outside of Jesus? Because it's not just that like. You know, I might be able to do this better. Maybe I'll be a better dad if I'm not connected with Jesus.
But I mean, the passage says apart from me, like you can't do anything. You can't bear any of this fruit. So then I had to ask myself like, well, do I, am I convinced of that? Am I convinced that without Jesus, I'm not able to produce fruit, like you said, at least fruit that matters. Mm-hmm. I might be able to mow the lawn, but the the lawn's gonna grow back next week.
It's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I might be able to like, fake enough stuff or kind of like muster up the energy to like, make my household seem in order for a little bit. Yeah, but we're not talking about eternal fruit here. Right. And that was really like, okay, I'm trying to, I'm not gonna be able to produce any kind of eternal fruit.
I'm processing everything you said out loud, you know? But another thought, I thought I might be able to get my son to comply a little bit better if I'm just doing it in my own strength. But if I want to actually raise a disciple who I'm gonna send out into the world, yeah. And I'm not gonna be around all the time anymore.
It's gonna take way more than my like skills or wisdom I. I'm gonna need the fruit of the spirit of Jesus in me in order to do something worthwhile and long lasting in his life. Yeah, no, that's good. I, what you're describing there is, uh, is a dependence that a, a branch. Knows it has on the vine, like meaning that a, a branch on its own is just stick.
You know, it's not, it's not gonna do anything. It can't bear any fruit. It, uh, a branch has to be connected to the vine. I would challenge dads with this kind of the, a branch life of, you know, what's it look like then, you know, for you to live connected to Jesus. So here's what I think a lot of us do. We schedule production and we try to fit in connection.
Meaning if I wake up in the morning and I look at my calendar, almost my entire calendar is gonna be built around. What do I need to get done? What tasks do I need to get finished? You know, what's on the to-do list for today? Almost everything on my calendar tends to be around production. And then if I've got time.
I'll work on connection. You know, I'll get some time with Jesus while I'm driving to work and I'll get some time with my wife when we get in bed at night and I'll try to get some time with my kids. We try to fit it in and, and one of the things I would really challenge Dad with is this idea of what, if you flip to that, I.
What if you prioritize connection and so you said, look, I'm, I'm gonna give Jesus my mornings. I think one of the most effective things you can do as a dad is to give Jesus your mornings. If you do nothing else, but just say, I'm gonna give Jesus the first 30 minutes of my day, the first 15 minutes of my day.
It'll change the tone of your home. It'll change the rest of your day if, if you start the day connected to him. And so if you schedule it, you say, okay, I'm gonna prioritize that connection. I. And when I get home from work, I'm gonna prioritize connection with my wife, and I'm gonna take 15 minutes. I'm gonna sit on the couch with my wife.
At this time of the day, and I'm not gonna have my phone with me, I'm, I'm just gonna connect to her and with my kids at night, I'm gonna go kneel down, down beside their bed for 10 minutes or however long you set your timer if you have to, but you schedule a connection the way you would typically schedule production and see if that doesn't produce.
The kind of fruit that you've been trying, you know, that you want to see in your life, in your marriage and, and with your kids, if you kind of took the same approach to the connection as you would, you know, more intuitively with production. That's really good, man. And I've, I've felt the fruits of that.
Like I schedule a walk at night before bed with each of my kids, one, one-on-one walk. Love that. And uh, when I do it. The fruit of it is like, you can see it throughout the day and throughout the week, and when I don't do it, we feel it. Mm-hmm. Last week we did an episode called Dads Who Dwell, and we were talking about just one of the miracles of God is that he just dwells with his people, like he just, he just with them.
Pray like Emmanuel, God with us, you know, tabernacle among us. Really crazy. I was thinking I didn't, I don't think I said this in that episode, but I was thinking like, I wonder if we would be better dwellers with our family if we dwelled more with the father. Hmm. And it kind of goes to what you were just talking about.
Like if I started my day just dwell, like really loving the presence of God. Yeah. To just spend 15, 30 minutes an hour with the Lord and just like. Enjoying the presence of God and his word, and his spirit and his presence. If I would actually be a better dweller. Yeah, with my wife and kids. Yeah, I, that's really good.
Don't you think that what's hard for us as men is that doesn't seem productive. It's not that on, on paper. If you're talking to me about it, I'm like, yeah, no, that makes sense. I, I agree that's important, but we don't do it because we have so many other things that feel pressing. My call here is to understand.
Depressing nature of, of that relationship with Jesus. To understand that like that is much more urgent than what we intuitively recognize. And the guys that you see who as husbands and fathers where you're like, man, that's the kind of fruit I want to bear. That's the, that's the kind of marriage I want to have.
That's the kind of. Like they're doing this, uh, you know, they're, they're doing this. And so you have to do it enough to realize the fruit. Like, if you do it a little bit, you're like, oh, okay, this really does work. It's a little bit like working out, you know, if you do it enough to see the impact, it's easier to keep doing it.
But man, it can be, it can be really hard to start those practices and, and get it going, but once you do, you start to, you start to experience the, the impact of it. Totally. I think too, I a hundred percent agree with that. I think there's also a spiritual element to it, like there's a battle being waged for our souls and distraction like it is.
Some, some of it's just practical. I. And some of it, I, I'm just convinced there's like a deep spiritual element to that, and I don't know what that all looks like, but I'm just convinced there is one happening around. Well, I'll tell you man, I, I mean, I'll just be honest with your crew here. I, you know, knowing I'm talking to other dads, I'm 47 and I've never.
Thought that I would need to, for example, limit my screen time. I, I thought, nah, this is something my kids, you know, my kids in their twenties, uh, they need to pay attention to this. I'm gonna help them do this. And, and somewhere during the pandemic I started watching like YouTube shorts that are just interesting.
You know, things that are, you know, they weren't dark or evil or sinful. They were distracting and I didn't realize it. My wife. At one point, she's like, you know, I feel like you're in the evenings. You're just laying on the couch for longer than you think on your phone. And I'm like a really gracious way of saying, yeah.
Yeah. And I'm like, and I was defensive about it. But then I started looking at it and I'm like, golly, I, I think she's right. And it just, it was very subtle and I had to cut that off like I had to, well, to use my John 15 imagery, like that had to be pruned because it was keeping me from connecting. And I had, I just think that there, looking at your life through that lens of saying, look, there's some things that aren't necessarily bad in and of themselves, but if they are distracting you from that kind of connection, you, you, you gotta prune 'em.
You've gotta prune them. I want to end with this, uh, pick your brain on this thought. 'cause I've heard you use the word temperature or like thermostat, and I think you've said it twice since we've had been talking today. I had a pastor I worked for when I first started ministry, he would say that the, I think, I'm sorry if he's listening and I'm butchering, I said it, man.
But he would say something to the effect of like, husbands. Set the temperature of the household and our wives. This is obviously general here, and wives generally are the thermostat, meaning I think that's how it was. I'm probably butchering it, but kind of what your wife did. Mm-hmm. Like our wives kind of get a read on what the temperature is, but we're as dads, the ones setting the temperature.
Yeah, I was convicted of that recently. 'cause I could tell I was in a funk like, like two weeks ago and just in a bad mood, grumpy. And I couldn't really quite put a finger on why, but I, I picked up that I was changing the tone of the house. Like I noticed two of my kids were also becoming grumpy. Yeah. And I'm like, oh dude, I'm the one setting the temperature here.
And then my wife is the one reading. The household temperature really well. Like, she's the one like, Hey, I think you're sitting on the couch longer than you think you are. Yeah. I think that's a really funny, gracious way of saying that. But you know, you, my wife will say similar things, you know, like, Hey, you're being, you, like you're, you're being really grumpy and you're like setting, it's, it's affecting our kids.
So she gotta read on that. I mean, you, you're just a step ahead of me in this parenting journey. Like, has that been your experience or do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, no, that, that has been my experience. I do think that the challenge there is that it's really easy to underestimate how true that is, and then the only way to to see how you're doing with it is to humble yourself enough to listen to your wife.
My wife feels very valued. If I will say to her, Hey, what am I not seeing here? How can I, you know, set the tone a little bit differently at dinner time to help with some of the, you know, instead of having, I. Having her come and say to me, Hey, you're, I think you may be on the couch longer than you think you are.
You know what, what's much more effective is for me to regularly check in with her, kind of check the temperature with her, because I, I think that's, you know, it's not always true, but I think it is generally true that, that she can recognize some of those things. And, and, and I think it's also generally true that we don't do a great job of receiving it.
You know, we can be defensive. We can be prideful. And you know, there have been plenty of times as a husband and father, if she's gonna point out how I'm doing, sitting the temperature in the room, I respond exactly the wrong way. You know, I become defensive and double down on my, uh, double down on what I'm doing.
And so I think the challenge there is to, as to humble yourself. Ask, listen value, and then be willing to, you know, adjust the temperature. That's spiritual leadership. Yeah. It's humility. That's right. To recognize the giftings that our wife has and to humble ourself enough to say, Hey, what is your read right now?
And then to respond accordingly. That's spiritual leadership. It's not demanding all the time, and it's not, uh, my way or the highway. It's recognizing everyone on the team and their value and uh, the wisdom that they contribute, and then being humble enough to say, okay, we're gonna. I take that advice, that thought and run with it.
I heard a, literally, yesterday I heard a, a 15-year-old boy, uh, he was talking and his friends called out something. They're like, okay, you're being dramatic or you're doing, I don't remember what the language was, but they called out something about what he was saying and the 15-year-old boy was humble enough to say, not defensive.
He said, oh, is that something I do a lot? Like he was curious Oh yeah. About his own behavior and his friend phone out and then they had a little dialogue and I remember I literally, I paused. It was something we were watching and I paused it as I was watching these 15 year olds and I turned to my wife and I'm like, I want to have that kind of mature, no doubt.
Yeah, that they could be able to say, somebody could point something out in my character and I would, instead of being my first being defensive, say, okay, I hear that. Is that, tell me more about that part of my life and, and how I, I'm like, dude, that's great. That is great. If you can do that at 15, I have this thing that I talk about with guys, I call it, um.
Plus or minus three of 40. And basically, here's my argument that between 37 and 43, and you know, it's not a science, but between 37 and 43, we'll either start asking those questions or we never will, like, you know, is that something I do a lot where we start to become a little bit more aware of our role and how we're showing up in different things.
So, you know, to be able to do that as, as a younger man. Is a huge, is a huge win because it, you know, for most of us that comes a little bit later. Why do you think it's that, that age range for guys? Do you think it's, uh, you'll either become set in your ways or you'll be, you'll grow enough in maturity to be humble enough to recognize you got blind spots?
I think that the plus or minus three of 40 idea is this idea that. In that range, you start to realize the things you can't control. You start to realize, you know, reverence to my book, but you start to realize what ways aren't working. And you're either going to ask yourself some self-aware questions, or you're gonna double down and, and defensiveness and pride say, Hmm, I, you know, it is too hard or it's too painful to ask some of these things.
And so I'm, I'm just going to. I'm gonna stay on the path I'm on, even though it's doing damage to my relationships, even though it's not bearing the kind of fruit that I need. I think there's something around that age, right? Yeah. Where you start to recognize those things and then how you respond is gonna determine a lot.
Yeah. Wow. That's really good. I think as a final takeaway here for you guys listening. We were talking about how hard it is to be connected first before being productive, and I guess the question I would ask myself and I'd challenge you to ask yourself is how is it working? Not doing that. Does your life feel fruitful?
Do you look at the areas of your life when you look at your marriage, do you feel like it's abundant in fruit? Do you feel like when you look at your relationship with your kids, it's like abundant in fruit? Just your overall mental health, your spiritual health, when you just look at all those things, is it like, man, this tree is thriving, or does it feel like a dead stick that has fallen off the tree or is barely getting any water?
And so, um, yes, it's hard, but I guess we just have to ask ourselves what are the consequences? What does it look like to not be connected to the vine? And that we would be, as Kyle just said, humble enough to be men who say, to have self-reflective questions, who ask ourselves hard questions. Honestly, and take the answer and adapt according.
Go on Amazon and just Google Kyle's books. Uh, you're gonna find a ton of good ones on there. You've been writing good stuff for a long time, man, and uh, I'm excited about your new book When Your Way Isn't Working. Finding purpose and contentment through Deep Connection with Jesus. Really appreciate you taking the time, bro.
This has been really, really helpful. Thanks. Great to visit with you.
Hey guys. Hope you enjoyed that episode and that it was helpful for you on your journey of becoming more like Jesus and helping your family do the same. If you have yet to pick up a copy of the newest Dad's hired book, it is now available wherever books are sold. We'd love for you to get a copy of that to help you along in your journey.
I. We love you. We hope that this was helpful, and we'll see you next week.