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You’re tired.
Not just physically; though yeah, that too.
You’re tired in your bones. In your soul.
Trying to be a steady husband, an intentional dad, a man of God… but deep down, you feel like you’re falling short. Like you’re carrying more than you know how to hold.
Dad Tired is a podcast for men who are ready to stop pretending and start healing.
Not with self-help tips or religious platitudes, but by anchoring their lives in something (and Someone) stronger.
Hosted by Jerrad Lopes, a husband, dad of four, and fellow struggler, this show is a weekly invitation to find rest for your soul, clarity for your calling, and the courage to lead your family well.
Through honest stories, biblical truth, and deep conversations you’ll be reminded:
You’re not alone. You’re not too far gone. And the man you want to be is only found in Jesus.
This isn’t about trying harder.
It’s about coming home.
Hey y'all, and welcome back to the Dad Tired podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by Back Gate Prayers. As parents, we hold the incredible responsibility of shaping the future of our families. One of the most powerful ways we can do this is through prayer. That's where Back Gate prayers comes in.
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Alright guys, I am continuing to think on ponder kind of devotion themes, wanting to stir your devotional life. And one of the things that's helped me over the years is to read biographies and to think about, um. Men who have gone before us, their lives with God, their kind of hidden life with God. And one in particular that I always recommend is the, the life of John Hyde.
He's oftentimes referred to as praying Hyde. Hyde was a missionary to India in the end of the 19th century, early, early 20th century. And uh, again, he's known as praying Hyde. He's known for his prayer life. And there's a lot there like. I don't wanna be known as a preacher or as a man of wisdom. I'd like to be known by my children and my family as a person of prayer.
I wanted my kids to hear me pray. His uh, father was a Presbyterian pastor Smith Hyde, and I. Uh, Smith hides. Kids did hear him pray, and actually they said he prayed a lot from Matthew nine, verse 37 through 38, where Jesus said The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of Harvest to send out laborers into the harvest.
I. He heard his father pray a lot. Lord send laborers into the harvest. And his older brother, Edmond, went to seminary and decided he was gonna devote his life to serving the Lord in ministry and went to Montana to preach and caught a disease and ended up passing really young. And that marked John Hyde.
He thought often of his brothers devotion to Jesus and wanting to serve Jesus and wanting to carry the gospel to new regions and new territories. And, and his father Smith's prayer life really messed with him to hear his dad pray, Lord, send laborers into the harvest. And I would just say that, uh, devotion always bears fruit.
Um, even I don't think that Smith Hyde was praying these prayers hoping that his kids would hear, but man, just living a simple life of devotion will mess with you and will mess with your generations in ways that you can't imagine. Well, John is eventually appointed by admissions board to serve a Presbyterian.
Missions board to serve in India, and he spends his entire life in missions, uh, doing missions work in India. And his life was really profound and impactful. The missionaries there began to catch some traction as they prayed and believed, and they started to hold these conventions. This is kind of common in church history.
For a week or two, they would hold a convention where they would all come together and sometimes they would sleep in tents or kind of bored together. In these, in these large. Rooms, whatever. And they would pray and they would have services and they would share meals, there would be encouragement and just kinda these short conventions for missionaries.
And Hyde became kind of a mainstay at the conventions. And there's one story in particular that really birthed in a lot of ways, uh, the revival, the awakening that they saw in India. John Hyde was asked to speak. Um, for a group of men in the morning and he was praying the night before and he felt like the Lord was asking him to tell the men of a sin that he struggled with, a deep hidden sin that he had struggled with and how the Lord had brought him to freedom.
And he said that all night long he wrestled in prayer because he really didn't want to be this transparent before all these men. And he also, uh, kind of just felt led to preach, but he felt gorgeous. Kim. Poking him. You need to share the story of how you struggled to listen and how I delivered you well.
Um. In the morning, he shows up to the meeting really late and just kind of plainly lays that out before the men there just says that like all night I was in prayer and I felt like the Lord told me I needed to share the story of personal sin that I wrestled with and how I came to freedom. And he was surprised rather than condemnation, rather than being judged by the men, there men began to weep aloud.
They were just crying and begin to repent and confess sin, and there was just this movement of real contrition and. The, the beautiful thing that you kind of see in that story is as these men began to repent and to devote their lives to the Lord, afresh, the, their ministries, these are all missionaries, their ministries were really, um, breathed on by the spirit again, and devotion guys, sometimes it's just simple obedience.
It's not always understanding why God is asking you to do something when he is asking you to do it. Sometimes it's just doing what God asks you to do and believing it. He'll be faithful to use it and so hide. Here he is just doing what God asked him to do, just sharing his kind of own personal baggage and story of repentance and.
I love Psalm 51, 17. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. Oh God, you will not despise. As a part of Hyde's devotion, part of his real commitment to God, his hidden life with God was carrying this broken spirit, broken, contrite, and again, devotion is just simply obeying, just doing what God asks you to do.
And. He was known for this broken heart. This, this real heart of a passion zeal for for India, and he would pray long hours, often skipping meals. There's one instance where they said he prayed for at least 36 hours straight. He talks about at one point in his diary, praying and hearing the lunch bell ring and then asking, kind of asking the Holy Spirit, should I have lunch today or not?
And sometimes he would feel prompted by the Lord to get up and go to lunch with the other missionaries. And sometimes he would just keep praying and just keep kind of knocking and keep seeking. And. He started this thing. He talks about that. This is in his journal where he would pray for one soul a day for a whole year.
He prayed, God give me a soul a day. And at the end of the year he counted and he tallied up that over 400 people had given their lives to the Lord that year through his ministry. And the next year he prayed for two souls a day. The end of the year he counted, and 800 people had given their lives to the Lord.
And the next year he prayed for four souls a day. And it kind of just keeps going and. He just kind of wouldn't stop praying and wouldn't stop sharing the gospel until he saw God come through. And we see here guys, that devotion again is persistent. Devotion is long suffering. Devotion, perseveres. It prays and knocks and prays and seeks and prays and, and part of being a person of devotion is finding the burden of God and.
Being able to ponder Jesus, looking out over Jerusalem and saying, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how I long to gather you together as a hin gathers your chicks. And we see that in ha he has this broken heart as he's thought about, uh, the gospel and the freedom that it brings. And, um, so he prays when your heart's broken.
You pray and he prays, God gimme a soul and God gimme two souls. And God give me four souls. One of the big prayers that John Hyde prayed that is super interesting, he used to pray this. He would say, God, give me souls lest I die, gimme souls, or I will die. And um, I pray that prayer sometimes, and I don't think I mean it the way that he meant it.
He really had a brokenness for it, uh, for souls and I long to long for souls the way that Hyde did. And. There's this, um, the end of his life. I don't have time to tell you lots of stories from his life, but the end of his life, there's this really interesting, um, little story, a little piece, a way that God wraps his life together.
He had, um, he had prayed for so long. His posture when he prayed often was his face would be bowed to the ground on his knees with his face to the ground. And, um, he started to really struggle with some sickness, lots of physical ailments. And he goes to his. Physician and he, uh, gets this kind of checkup.
The study done and the physician after some time tells John Hyde that his heart cavity had began to shift and they thought it was because he spent so much time with his head in the ground kind of upside down that his heart cavity had begun to shift to the wrong side of his chest. And the doctor told John Hyde that as far as he could tell if he didn't stop and really rest, if he didn't just lay in bed.
For a long period of time and let his body recover that he'd die in six months or so. And John Hyde, interestingly, this is actually a really interesting thing to think about. He doesn't, he keeps praying and keeps putting his face in the ground and crying out to God, and he lives for two more years, but eventually does die from this condition where his heart had begun to shift.
And so sometimes people talk about John Hyde dying from a broken heart. Literally, he's so broken in prayer, wanting to see people come to Jesus and know Jesus. So willing to live a life of intercession, so willing to live a life of simple obedience. So willing to live a life of laid down love, sacrificial love that he, he literally breaks his his own heart through this kind of prayer.
And oh, devotion is sacrificial. The life of devotion is a life of sacrificial love, and it's always birthed from, from seeing sacrificial love from seeing the cross. And so again, we just kinda circle back around to these ideas, brothers that, um, a life of devotion, being a person that really lives faithful and lives in the secret place and lives.
Kind of a quiet life, a hidden life with God. It is always birthed from meditation and reflection upon the cross of Christ, thinking deeply about what Jesus did for us and beholding kind of the agony and the sorrow and the suffering and being really broken by it, as you consider it. This week, it was, um, I had the week off from preaching, which is pretty rare.
I just preach a lot. And, um, I was so blessed to get to sit and listen to one of the pastors that I work with, um, Thomas, preach and. We're teaching through the Gospel of Mark and we're getting close to the end. And so Thomas was, uh, really digging through Joseph of Arimathea, going and asking Pilate for Jesus' body and then preparing Jesus' body and laying it in his own tomb.
Um, along with Nicodemus. And, um, Thomas drew out this point that really messed with me, uh, for a couple days, but, um, culturally it was. Um, always the job of the women or maybe the slaves to prepare a dead body. Um, not a particularly. Pleasant job, right? Like wrapping a, preparing a body with spices, but particularly not a pleasant job when the body's just endured the most cruel crucifixion history has ever known.
Not a pleasant job when the entire back of Jesus is torn to shreds, when his head is crushed with a crown of thorns, when he is been struck in the face with a rod and beaten in the face with fist spit on. He's been. Dabbed pierced, like his body in every way is just bloody and beaten and bruised. And so now what you have is Joseph of Arimathea, who is a member of the Sanh Heian, uh, influential pious, an important man doing the job of a slave by, you know, Thomas used the imagery of his, his kind of clean.
Manicured hands now holding the, the bruised bloody flesh of Christ and, and wrapping his body and thinking about the amount of kind of bo bodily excrements and blood and all the things that would've been on Joseph's hands as he just prepares Jesus's body. Then you're driven to pondering, like, what led him to that?
What would lead such a pious, an influential and important man? To get his hands that dirty, to get his hands that bloody to care for the body of Jesus. And all we can conjure up is this idea that the cross really broke Joseph. That as Joseph saw Jesus and all of the agony and all of the love, and all of the sacrifice and all of the profound mystery and beauty and the earth goes black and the temple, uh, the earth shakes and the, uh, the veil is torn and all of the kind of drama of the crucifix.
That, that Joseph is broken by it, and because of that brokenness, he gets his hands dirty. He begins to rock, wrap and care for and wash the wounds of Christ and a life. Any individual, any individual who really begins to look at the cross, I. To consider the pure perfection that is Jesus Christ, the absolute spotless life that he lived totally void of bitterness and, and strife, like just pure and compassionate, and righteous.
When you begin to really consider the beauty of Jesus. And the horror of his sacrifice for us, that that revelation, that pondering that music and considering the cross, it leads us, it forces us, if you will. It compels us to a life of devotion, to a life of love to, to. The position where Joseph, who's the man of greats standing, is now standing in a tomb with his hands covered with blood as he wraps the body of Jesus.
And, and in some way, that's a picture of our lives, right? As we look at the cross, we, the rest of our lives, we're willing to get our hands really dirty. And what is, what's a little mess? You know, when you, when you've been loved like that, like what is. Getting up and serving and giving and praying, and nothing I do par like comes close to comparing, um, to the majesty, to the height, to the wonder of what Jesus did for us.
And so. As I think about the life of John Hyde and devotion, I think about his broken heart as he prayed and as he cried and as he fasted and he believed and he loved the people that were not his ethnicity, but really loved them anyway. And as I ponder that, I think again, of the cross and of sacrifice and of perseverance and of real love and that that revelation I.
That pondering of John Hyde and pondering of Joseph of Arimathea just presses me afresh. Presses me again to want to be a person, um, who lives a life of selflessness, a real prayer. Real devotion. I don't always meet my own standards, right? Like I struggled a little bit last week. Was really frustrated with myself last week, but today as I kind of woke up and had my coffee, just had fresh burn in me.
I'm gonna love Jesus as I pondered the cross and pondered John Hyde and pondered Joseph of Arimathea's bloody hands. Anyway, hope that helps you to keep your flame. Stirred your heart stirred in the days to come. And man, I hope you know that you're loved and that you're prayed for, and we are believing that God's not done with, with men, not done with dads in our nation.
Alright man. God bless you, pray you have a wonderful week.