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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 guys. Welcome back to the Dad Tired podcast. Glad that you're here. Before we jump in, I wanna thank my friends over at Samaritan's Purse for sponsoring today's episode. Samaritan's Purse does this thing called Operation Christmas Child, which has been reaching millions of children each year. With the good news of Jesus Christ through simple shoebox gifts, they have reached more than 209 million children since 1993 and over 170 different countries and territories all over the world, and they've done it through a shoebox gift.
Anyone can do this. Anyone can send one of these shoebox gifts out. You can do them as a family, as a small group, a church group, a community group, homeschool group. For your neighborhood, it doesn't matter. Anyone can do these, you can send it out and you will send joy to a child in need. And it also, beyond just giving a great gift to kids in need all over the world, it is setting them up to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ and be plugged into the local discipleship, which is why I'm a huge fan of Samaritan.
Purse. They use this as an opportunity, as a key to unlock the door, to get into these kids' lives, the parents' lives, and they will be able to share the gospel and get them plugged into local churches. You can pack shoe boxes full of toys and school supplies, personal care items, and then you'll drop it off at a drop off location during National Collection Week, which is November 13th through the 20th.
So you gotta do these quick like today. Make sure that you signed up to get. To be able to get a box filled up. You can also do this online if you're just, you feel like you're too busy, you don't have the time to fill a box online, you can do this online. Again, I highly recommend that you do it in person with the people around you, but if you can't do it online so that it at least can get done that way.
The good news of Jesus Christ is gonna be shared alongside your gift. They're gonna be invited into a discipleship program. You can learn how to pack a shoebox, you can view all the gift suggestions, and then you'll be able to find the nearest drop off location near you by going to samaritans purse.org/cc.
Again, that's samaritans purse.org. Slash occ. Again, that's November 13th through 20th is collection week, which even as I say that, I am blown away that we are already in November. My kids have been begging me. My wife has been begging me to do Christmas lights. I found this company called Oelo, which does permanent Christmas lights.
I don't want to get up on the roof every year and risk my life for the sake of some lights. I love Christmas lights, actually, but I just, it just feels like so much work to like detangle these whole things and put them up. I had done, done some research on like what are the best permanent lights out there that I can use an app, I can set all kinds of colors and patterns and scenes and just be able to do it all from the app and make my house look awesome, be the best looking house on the block.
And I want these things to last a really long time. I. I found Oelo. I reached out to 'em. I said, Hey, I want to be a customer of yours and I want you to help us get more dad tired guys with your product. And so they said We would love to partner with Dad Tired. They are sponsoring this episode as well, and they're such a cool company.
They're coming out to put these permanent lights on our house, and I promise you. It will be the talk of our neighborhood. 'cause these things are so, so cool. If you go to their website, oow.com, you will be able to check out all the samples. You can get a totally free quote. If you just say, Hey, dad, tired Sent me.
Then they'll know that you heard about them through the Dad's Tired podcast. But they'll give you a quote and tell you what it would look like. You could either do these yourself, you could hang them yourself once, and they'll be up permanently. They last over a hundred thousand hours, which means like.
Decades of time that these things are gonna last. Or you can have a professional installer come out that's part of their team and they will put those up for you. They do these all over the country. Again, they look phenomenal. You can control everything through the app, any holiday scene, or even if you just wanna use 'em for security lights, you can do that as well.
Super cool company, super cool. Product o wello.com. That's OELO. OEL o.com. Check those out. All right, that being said, let's dive into today's episode.
Sometimes I'll get emails and messages from guys that tell me all the ways that the dad tired book has impacted them. Or shape them in some way. One of the most common stories that I hear from guys who have read The Green Dad Tired and Loving It book is an incident that I had with my daughter while we were fishing.
If you haven't read it or it's been many years since you've read it, I'll try to give you a really brief I. Condensed version of the story, but at the time we were living in Oregon. I live in South Carolina now, but we were living in Oregon and my mom and my sister were visiting us from California, which is where I'm originally from.
They came up to visit and I love to fish, and so I said, Hey, why don't we go out to the river? There's rivers and lakes everywhere in Oregon. I said, why don't we go out to fish? And so we went to this dock on the river and we were fishing and my sister caught. The biggest fish, the biggest bass I have ever seen here.
I thought for sure she was s snacked. If you're a fisherman, you're like, you know what I'm talking about? Like the rod was just bending all the way into the water. I'm like, there's no way that's a fish. I've fished her many times. I've never caught a fish that would bend the rod into the water that much.
I'm like, you're snagged. And she's like, I don't think I'm s snacked. And I help her reel up this fish and she pulls it up and it's just the most massive bass I've ever seen. And so she's like, get a picture. Get a picture. So I take out my phone and I snap a picture of her. With this huge bass so that she can show off all her social media friends, and I go to put the phone back in my pocket.
Everything's chaotic when you're catching fish. So I put the phone back into my pocket and as I do, the phone misses my pocket. It bounces, it hits the dock, falls off of the dock into the water and sinks to the bottom of the river. It was like, you know, a car crash and everybody's just looking at each other like, oh my gosh.
And I'm like, oh, whatever. Oh, well, sorry for you. You're never gonna get to show off this fish that you caught. Nobody's ever gonna believe you. You're gonna be a true fisherman. So anyway, it's a bummer. At the time we were like really serious about trying to get out of debt, and I was like, I was counting every penny that was coming out of our account.
And so I'm like, all right, we're gonna have to pull out of our emergency fund. And my thought was at that time, we're trying to get outta debt, don't take any new line items of debt. And so I thought, I'm just gonna go buy a brand new phone. So I went and paid cash for a new phone. Two days later, we go back out to the river.
My mom and sister have gone home and it's just me and the kids. And I'm thinking, all right, I'm gonna be a good dad. I'm gonna take my kids fishing. I love to fish, so I take them fishing. We're on this dock and I'm with my son, who is about five at the time, and my daughter, who is about three years old at the time, my 3-year-old daughter says, daddy, I'm bored.
Can I watch your phone? I'm like, no, baby. I, you know, come fish with us. We came out here to fish. We're not trying to look at screens. She's like, daddy, please. I'm so bored. Can I watch the phone? So, you know, I want to fish and I don't want to hear this nagging the whole time. So I'm like, all right, fine, you can watch my phone.
And I said, baby, you remember just a couple days ago, daddy dropped his phone into the river, so make sure that you are very careful. And I positioned her in the middle of the dock so that there was no way if she dropped that phone in any direction that it would go, it could possibly go into the water.
So she's watching Peppa Pig on YouTube as me and my son are fishing and we're out kind of out there. On the river kind of away from everything else. And so the Internet's not great, and she said, daddy, the, the Internet's not working. I said, well, just give it a minute. Just give it a minute. Well, she says this two or three more times where it gets to the point where all of her 3-year-old patient's tank had emptied out, and she decided in her anger that Peppa Pig was not loading in the way that she could watch it.
The best decision that she could make at that moment was to throw that phone as far into the middle of the river as she could, and I will, dude, I will never forget this moment. She took that phone, brand new, two day old, paid off iPhone, and she chuck that thing as. Far as she could into the middle of the river, and I remember just standing there watching that thing flip end over end in the middle of the air and then hit the water and then sink down to the bottom of the river.
Two phones in two days. When I tell you that I lost it on her, like lost it on her, that would be an understatement. I saw a level of anger. In myself that I didn't even know was there. I just scream, what are you doing? Why would you do that? My son, who's very emotionally intelligent was like, I'm out. You know?
He's like, dad, I'll pack up the car. I'll see you guys back at the car. He was only five at the time. He just took off. He knew it was like an explosive scene, and he knew how mad I was. I'm just screaming. I'm surprised nobody called the cops that I know of. I mean, I'm just screaming at my daughter. I pack her up in the car, I'm throwing the tackle box and the fishing poles in the car, and I'm just so angry, like, how in the world could she have possibly done this?
All of the anger that I could have possibly had was being poured out verbally on my daughter and before I had kids. I used to imagine what it would be like to be a dad. I actually, I didn't grow up with a dad, and so I would. Even at a young age, like as a teenager, and I knew I was kind of getting ready to find a wife and potentially start a family one day I was thinking about what kind of dad am I going to be?
And I would imagine like that I would take my kids fishing, I would imagine playing baseball with them in the backyard. I imagine family vacations, and I imagine like a long. Calm and thoughtful conversations around the dinner table, which is, I can't even say that without laughing now with four kids.
What I did not imagine was my daughter throwing a brand new phone into the bottom of the river. I didn't imagine me screaming ever in my imagination that I ever think that I would be screaming out my little girl. I never frankly, even thought about, I never imagined me disciplining them like. As I dreamt about being a dad, discipline was not something that I was thinking about, but somehow in my dreams, my kids were always perfectly well-behaved.
Discipline, didn't seem to make all the daydreams and fantasies of what it would be like to be a dad one day. I posted this video the other day on Instagram about discipline. It ended up having a lot of conversation about it in the video I just said, discipline isn't just about teaching our kids to share or how to keep their hands to themselves.
Discipline teaches our kids that sin always has consequences. It will always lead to the death of something beautiful. Death of trust, death of joy, death of relationships. Death of peace, discipline, the small things so that they can avoid the pain of the bigger things. And the video seemed to be well received.
People seemed to really like that. But one mom left a comment that seemingly resonated with a lot of other people. This was her comment. She said, okay, but I. I need help with how to discipline. And I noticed on her particular comment that several people had liked it, which told me that there are probably others who got into this whole parenting thing without thinking much about how to discipline their kids.
Maybe they too had daydreamed about being a parent one day and they just didn't think about. Discipline side of it, and so that leaves many of us to the point where we're just learning on the job. I want you to think about that first story that I just shared about me and my son and my daughter fishing at the river and her throwing the phone into the river.
I. As you think about that, it likely brings up some kind of emotion in you as you picture what you might have done in a similar situation. Maybe you could imagine maybe your child has done something crazy or they've thrown some huge tantrum or embarrassed you in front of a lot of people, and maybe as you hear that story, you can.
Feel tight in your chest or there's something in you that's like, okay, I probably would've done this, or I would've done that. I actually took my kids on another fishing trip. We were kayaking this. You can tell I'm like obsessed with fishing. I apologize. It's a great way. I, I love fishing because there's no technology usually.
Involved, uh, there's no technology involved. You get a lot of slow time with your kids, which there's just not a lot of that. Like, it's just to have like unhurried un rushed time where you could just sit in silence. It teaches your kids patience, teaches them how to sit in silence. It just forces you to be together for long periods of time.
Conversation is always typically very good or can lead to good things. And so I just really like fishing. So when I. Talk about all these fishing trips. Yes, I love to catch fish, but I love to do it with my kids because it creates such a great parenting environment. But anyway, we were on a, the fishing trip on a kayak and I had just bought this brand new pole for myself.
Super excited to use it. And the same daughter who threw the phone into the water many years ago was now asking to use this brand new pole. And she's grown up, she's turned into just such a sweet. Beautiful kind. In her early years I was like, either I need to put her in a psych ward or I need to go in a psych ward because I don't think we can make this.
She was so hard, like hardheaded. Just she, she was impossible. She was strong-willed. As strong-willed as it can get, and I was like, I don't know if I can do this. As she gets into her preteen years, she's just. God has really, really shaped her and molded her. And I'd like to think discipline is part of that.
I think the Holy Spirit and prayers are a big part of that. But anyway, we're on this kayaking, fishing trip and she was asking if she could use this new pole and I was like, ah, babe. Yeah, I got this one for me. Like, I got you. You have a pole. Will you always use this pole? It's a great pole. Your pole's awesome.
You know daddy's gonna use this one. I just got it. I haven't really even had a chance to use it. She's like, come on dad, please you. I really like. The color of yours, which I'm like, that doesn't matter. But you know, she's like, please, daddy, I really like the color of your pole. Can I please just use it? So finally I relented and you know, we're on this kayak.
There's four of us, me, my two older kids and my young one. So we're just like all packed into this. It's like embarrassing this long. It was a, I guess it was an inflatable canoe, not really kayak. So we're all in this thing and it's, it's uncomfortable, it's tight, but we're trying to make the best of it. So I kind of awkwardly hand her the pole and she's starting to fish and.
She goes to turn around to grab something and the little girl, my littler daughter, bumps her and it, the pole just drops out of her hand and starts to sink to the bottom of the river. I'm like, baby girl, there's sin in the camp. There's like curse on your life. I don't know what's going on here, but I cannot hand anything to you near water.
I didn't say that, but she, this brand new, expensive pole starts to sink to the bottom of the river. I want you to think about that. 'cause in the moment I was angry. I just lost another expensive thing. The same daughter dropped something expensive into the river. I felt very similar emotions. I didn't lose my cool like I did when she threw the phone years ago, but it's a really, really similar.
Situation, but my discipline in that moment was different. And I wanted to ask you, like if we just pause for a second, I want you to ask yourself why. I imagine if you are listening to this and you heard that story of her dropping that pole into the water, she was being a little bit careless, but it wasn't totally her fault.
But you have to ask yourself, or I'm asking you to ask yourself why does that one feel different? Both of the results were the same in the sense that I lost two very expensive items in the bottom of the river that I'll never get back. In the first one, I lost the expensive item in the middle of the river because she threw it in the second one.
She was being a little bit careless and got bonked by her sister, and I lost the expensive item in the river. But the point is the outcome. Of the expensive item was the same. And in the first one, I lost my cool, like in fact, I'm not sure if I've ever screamed at my kids or been more out of control in my emotions and my anger toward my kids than I was at that moment when she threw the phone in the river.
But this one felt different. And I'm imagining even as you listen to the story, it feels different to you. And so I'm just asking you why. Why does that one. Feel different to you than the first one, and I'm sure you have all kinds of thoughts and answers going on in your head as I even described that.
You remember that story in the Bible where Jesus encounters the woman at the well. It's in John four. Jesus has this moment with this woman. The story tells us that she has had multiple husbands. That the man she's currently with is not her husband. Essentially, she's being with men outside of marriage.
She's sleeping with men outside of marriage, and Jesus encounters this woman at a well, and they're both there seemingly to get water, so she's gathering water. Jesus wouldn't have even been appropriate culturally speaking for him to speak to her, but he says to her essentially. Can I get some water as well?
And she says, you know, who are you? Why are you talking to me? Don't you realize the cultural ramifications of what's happening here? You're not supposed to be talking to me. And he starts to get after her heart, he starts to talk about her husbands or the man that's not her husband, which really starts to jolt her.
She's like, who is this man that knows my past, that knows things about me that nobody else should know? Certainly this man shouldn't know. But what Jesus is doing, he catches her, essentially. He's essentially saying, I know you're sinning. I know you're sinning. And what he could have done was immediately just start to discipline that behavior.
What are you doing? Yes, I know exactly who you are. I'm the God of the universe. Why are you doing this? I told you not to do this. I told you that sex and for intimacy and relationships was for the context of marriage. And yet, look at you. You're sinning. You're so outside of my design. But what does Jesus do?
He says something really interesting to her. He says, listen. Essentially what he's saying is your soul is really thirsty. He uses a water analogy, which is so appropriate being that they're at the well. He uses this water analogy and he says, listen, your soul is thirsty. Don't you want water that would make you never thirst again?
And she thinks we're, they're still talking about water. So she's like, yeah, of course I want water. That would make me never thirst again. Give it to me. And Jesus says something profound. He says, in order for your soul to never thirst again, I'm paraphrasing, but he says, essentially, for your soul to never thirst again.
You need to drink of me. I am what will satisfy your soul? What was Jesus doing there? Jesus was parenting. Her heart, he wasn't getting after her behavior. Yes, he always would go and sin no more kind of attitude that Jesus had. Of course, stop doing what you're doing, but before we get to the behavior, let's first talk about what's going on in your heart.
This gives us an idea. This gives us a glimpse of what the Father is like. Jesus once said. If you've seen me, you've seen the father. So if we want to know what God the father's like, is he different than the Old Testament God, it's Jesus like the nice hippie and God's the old grumpy God. The old grumpy dad.
Jesus says, no, you wanna see what the father's like. Look at me. I am like the Father. I am a glimpse. I am a mirror to show you guys what the father's like. Well, what's the father? Like he parents, the heart. How does the father parent? He always seems to parent the heart. This is why you see verses like in Matthew five, where Jesus said, you have heard it said you shall not commit adultery.
But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery in his heart. And he says later in Matthew 15, but what comes outta the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person for out of the heart. Come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness slander.
These are what defile a person Jesus constantly is talking about. Listen, you're talking about, you guys are all so worried about managing your behavior. What I'm concerned about, what the father's concerned about is what's going on in your heart. And so then we have to ask ourselves as Christian parents, alright, what does this mean for us?
As somebody who is a follower of Jesus trying to raise little disciples in our home, what does it mean for me to know that God parents, the heart? Well, it means that to parent like God parents us, our highest priority is not behavior modification. Our highest priority is heart shaping. We are working with the Holy Spirit to help our children have hearts that look more like his.
And for me, and I would imagine most parents listening to this discipline gets most messy when parenting becomes about me and not about my child's heart. Catch this if you feel stuck on discipline or you feel like you're kind of scattered in discipline, or you don't really know the big picture in discipline or the long game of discipline.
Usually when things get messy. When it comes to discipline is when the parenting or the discipline becomes about me personally as the parent and not about the bigger picture of my child's heart. When my kids annoy me, when I ask them to do something and they're loud or they're disruptive, or they get in the way of what I'm trying to do, or maybe they embarrass me in front of other people, or maybe they do something that makes me think I'm gonna have a bad reputation around these other people, or I might be out of control whenever it becomes about me, discipline gets out of whack.
Discipline is not about you. Discipline is about your child's heart. Every time your child sends, they are giving you a glimpse into their heart, which is the perfect opportunity to start sharing the gospel with them every time your child disobeys as a gospel opportunity. And so I wanna get as practical as we kind of wrap up here, I wanna get as practical as I can here.
My goal as a dad is to constantly contrast the difference between the kingdom of this world and the kingdom of Jesus. One thing we have to keep at the forefront of our minds is that as cute and as snuggly and as funny as our kids are, they are innately sinful. I hate to be the one to tell you this. Oh my God.
You know the Dad's tired podcast. But your kids aren't good. They're not good kids. They're not good people. Neither are mine. My kids aren't good. They're not good people. In fact, they're evil. They're wicked, they're rebellious. They are prone to sin. Psalm 51 shows that David describing that we are all sinful from the day we are born.
Your kids like, don't grow out of sin. This isn't like a phase that they're in and they're just gonna grow out of it and turn into these nice, obedient little angels that never do wrong. This isn't a phase. Your kids don't grow out of this. In fact, the sin will only get worse and will only have deeper consequences.
And your job as a Christian parent is to help them understand just how much their sin will destroy their lives and the lives around them. If your kids are not disciplined well, their sin will take the beautiful things that God designed around them and they will turn them into a mess. We have to flip our mindset.
We may think it's cute right now when our little three-year-old son throws a tantrum and he's stomping his feet on the floor and hands on the floor. We may think it's like kind of adorable how your not a big deal, how your little five-year-old girl tells a little lie. She's sneaking something that's not, you know, she shouldn't be sneaking.
She tells a lie. It's a little fib. It's not that, you know, it's, it's harmless. It has no big consequences on it, or no big consequence to it. It's just these little sins, you know, it's not that big of a deal. But listen, I want you to picture them. 10 years from now, I want you to picture your kids 20 years from now with that exact same behavior.
It's not cute anymore. There's nothing beautiful. There's nothing cute about a man who loses control of his emotions, who pours out his wrath on his wife or his kids who screams much like the way I did, or even deeper ways. There's nothing beautiful about a man who's violent for the wrong reasons. When I say that, I mean the caveat of like, sometimes it requires a man to protect his family, but you know what I'm talking about.
For a man to lose control of his emotions, to become violent, to become mean. With his words, with his actions, maybe even physically. There's nothing beautiful or cute about that. There's nothing cute or beautiful about a woman who can't tell the truth, who constantly lies or gossips or treats people wrong.
There's nothing cute about that. And so as we see this behavior in our little kids, and right now we kind of throw it off because it doesn't seem like a big deal. Listen, sin always leads to death. For our three and five year olds, it might seem cute and innocent, but fast forward it 10 years from now, 20 years from now.
It's not cute, it's not innocent. It's incredibly destructive. It will always lead to death. And this is why we are so serious as Christian parents about disciplining their hearts right now. And so what do you do when your 3-year-old does have a tantrum, like they inevitably will today, or your 5-year-old does tell a lie about the cookie or the piece of candy that they stole.
I wanna dive into that a little bit, but listen to me before we jump into this. Before I say anything more about this, I just wanna say. Listen, I'm a rookie dad, like I've been on this parenting journey for just over 12 years. I have four kids. My oldest is just about 13. My youngest is two. But listen, I can't speak to you like a veteran.
I don't have adult kids who love Jesus. I'm in the thick of it right now. And so, uh, I feel like I said earlier, like I'm learning on the job. And so please, as I try to get a little bit more practical as we wrap up, please take everything I'm about to say with like heaps of. Salt, you know, and they say take it with a grain of salt.
Like just pour out all the salt over what I'm about to say and filter it through a biblical lens through older, wiser pastors and mentors. And, uh, this is just one dad to another. Like trying to figure out what does it look like to raise disciples who love Jesus and parent their hearts while I am in the.
Thick of it right now, and I certainly don't have this all figured out. So, uh, these are some things I'm trying and we'll see. And I've seen some fruit of it as I'm starting to get into pre-teen years, but, you know, talk to me 15, 20 years from now and, and I'll see if I wanna delete this episode and or if I stand by what I say.
Hey guys, we're gonna jump into some practical stuff here to end the episode, but I just wanted to take a minute and say thank you to all the guys who every month donate to the dad's hired ministry. I'm thinking about Tyler in Johnstown, who donates an Evan from Howard, Matthew from Yuba City. I. Brett from Union Ben, from Franklin.
I mean, there's just so many guys who, there's about 200 of you actually who every month say, I support the dad tired ministry. It's given something to me and I want to give back. We use that to scholarship guys into our program, to keep the costs down for churches, to do conferences, to keep the cost down for our annual retreat.
We help guys in need. We try to be really quiet, but there are guys who are experiencing dads who are experiencing very serious. Medical issues with their kids that we try to help out with, and marital issues that we try to help out with. Again, our goal is to equip as many dads as possible in whatever way possible, to help them become the spiritual leaders of their home.
This podcast retreat books, the free online community, our conferences, all the stuff that we do, we are geared to helping men become the men that God has called them to be. Because we believe that it's not just politicians or just policies or all these things that are gonna change our world. We really believe it's the gospel of Jesus Christ infiltrating the hearts of men.
And when they get ahold of it, changes the way that a man loves his wife, loves his kids, loves his community, and we really believe that that will change the whole world. So if you have been impacted by the ministry you believe in, that kind of thing, we would love for you to join us back. At the end of every year, we try to raise anywhere from 20 to $30,000, which is a big chunk, but it helps our little ministry move into the next year with confidence.
We would love to have you help us do that. You can do that by going to dad tire.com/donate. Again, dad tire.com/donate. Would love for you to partner with us and give in that way. I love you guys. Let's jump into the practical stuff. When my little ones, uh, like I said, I've got a almost 5-year-old, almost 3-year-old.
She's two and a half right now, and my daughter turns five, uh, in a couple weeks. So I'll just say three and five. When my three and 5-year-old, my goal for them is to start to introduce them to the reality of King Jesus and his kingdom, and what his kingdom's like, and how it's so much different than the kingdom of this world.
And so I want to teach them about king Jesus, which in his kingdom. We learn that sin always has consequences and always takes beautiful things. Sin always takes beautiful things and it makes them messy, and so what do I do when my little one lays on the floor because she can't have another piece of candy and she starts to throw a tantrum?
Or what do I do when my 5-year-old does tell that light? The goal for me is to quickly introduce really quick punishment. The goal here is not to give deep theological discussions. The goal is just to lay a foundation that essentially is saying this every time. This is why we wanna be consistent with little ones.
There are always consequences for sin. That's the goal that we're trying to teach our little ones. If I could go back from my older ones who are almost 13 and 11, if I could go back with them, I would talk less during their little years, like when they would. Sin and be disobedient. I would give long lectures that maybe it worked, maybe it didn't work.
I don't know if it was completely necessary. What I'm doing now with my littler ones, it's nice to have like a redo. Uh, what I'm doing with my littler ones is essentially just trying to be as consistent as possible when they sin to teach them. Sin always has consequences, always. And so if I catch my little girls in sin, there will be quick.
Punishment. The Bible doesn't give us like all the list of pun, ways to punish your kids for sin. So with my older ones and even with my little ones, um, there have been times where I've had to give little swats on their bottom, their little diaper butt. Now, I don't wanna turn this into a. Spanking episode or a, you know, best Ways to Discipline episode.
Best Ways to Give Consequences Episode. There's tons of ways. Like there's books on time in versus time out, uh, spanking versus no spanking. Listen, for some of my kids, a little swat on their little diaper butt change. They never did that behavior again, or at least they thought twice about it. The second time for some of the kids, a little swipe on their diaper but meant nothing like they, they would look at me and smile and do it again.
And so you just. The goal though for me was always, not necessarily how we gave consequences, but the fact that there was always consequence for sin. That's what I'm trying to teach them. What I would start to do if I had little ones again, which I do. So I'm, I'm telling you, here's something you can do.
You can start to say things like, after they have some kind of small consequence or consequence based on whatever they did, the consequence after that, you can say something like, sin always leads to death of something I. And so that's it. They probably won't even understand what you mean there, but the goal again is that we're just starting to introduce gospel truth.
We're starting to introduce that there's a different kingdom. The kingdom of your ways, your sinful ways, the world, your selfishness, your selfish desires. We'll, eventually, if I let you free to roam on that path will end in a ton of destruction, 10, 15, 20, 30 years from now. And so I want you now as a little 3-year-old and a little 5-year-old to learn really, really quickly.
Sin always leads to death. Sin. Always has consequences attached to it, and so again, it might be, Hey, go sit on the stairs. I don't like timeouts as much. I know, again, the Bible doesn't instruct us on all the little ways to give consequences, but I've adopted the idea of having them. Be removed from the activity, but still near.
And so they may go sit on the stairs and watch the family play the game or watch the movie or what. You know, as the family watches the movie and has popcorn, they may have to sit off to the side again, still near them. I don't want them completely isolated. I like the fact that they're near, I. But there is some kind of consequence.
Maybe it's a little pat on their diaper bottom. My 2-year-old, you know, that she doesn't want, even the thought of getting a little thump on her diaper bottom. I keep saying diaper bottom, that feels awkward. A little pat. You know, she doesn't even the thought of it. She doesn't like that, and so it will change her behavior.
Again, I don't wanna get into the nitty gritty of how you should give consequences to your children. Decide that between you and your wife, the main goal here is that you're consistent. Every time there's sin, there is consequences. Now. As they get older, again, I've told you I've got almost preteens now.
As they get older, the consequences become bigger and the conversations become longer. This is the key part here. The consequences become bigger, the conversations become longer. The other day I caught my daughter who's older telling a lie, and this is a big deal 'cause we've been talking about this since they were little babies.
And so they know that sin is serious and this was a big deal. She deceived. She purposely deceived me. And so when I went into her room, I gave her consequences. You will not be able to play with your friends for the rest of the week and these activities that you had planned on doing with them, you will not be able to participate in those activities because what you did was wrong.
But before I gave all those consequences, I asked. I said, baby girl, what died in our family tonight? And without hesitation, she said, trust and joy. My daughter knew that because of her decisions to lie. That sin always leads to death. And what died that night was trust. The trust between her and I died.
There was death in it, the death of our joy that we were having that night in our house and died, and she was able to very quickly tie those dots. When I asked her what died tonight, she said, trust and joy, and I was so proud. Yes, she lost the chance to participate in some activities with her friends the next day.
But if we left it there, if all I did was just give punishment, you shouldn't have done this, and now you're in trouble. You're grounded. It would've simply been behavior modification, but Christian parenting requires more of us. We must parent the heart. And the next time my daughter thinks about making that same decision, hopefully she doesn't just ask, am I willing to lose some activity time with my friends?
But instead, I want her to ask, even if she does this subconsciously, am I willing to let things die in my life? And in this way, she isn't just choosing sin, she's choosing Jesus. She's choosing the kingdom of God. Instead of saying, I don't wanna do this, she's saying, you know what? I want life. I don't want to choose death.
I want life. I recently told you guys on this podcast several weeks ago, and I told the guys at our dad Tired retreat, the story of the day I was leaving for our dad tired retreat. My daughter was experiencing very serious, serious medical things that were really terrifying. She's okay now, but they were really scary in the moment I was calling doctors and hospitals and trying to get this figured out.
Meanwhile, I'm trying to also get on a plane to ghost. Be part of the dad tired retreat. And, uh, as this is happening, my older kids are having a fight. I can hear from downstairs that their fight upstairs is starting to escalate and it's getting more and more intense to the point where they start screaming at each other and one of them's crying and it turns into this whole thing.
And I go upstairs and I just pour out my wrath again. I, I talked about this on the podcast recently. Or I turned my fear of what I was feeling with my daughter into anger, and I poured it out on my son specifically. And then I went downstairs and I immediately felt regret. And I told my wife, I'm like, why did I do that?
I, I responded the wrong way. I'm just feeling scared about my daughter or about our daughter, and I'm, I shouldn't have poured that all out on him, even though what he did was wrong. And I went upstairs and he was on his floor and he was trying to act like tough and mad and I just sat next to him and. I ended up kind of pulling him near me and he started to cry and I said, buddy, what's going on?
What are you feeling? And he said, I'm just so mad at myself for doing that. I'm so mad that I treated my sister that way. I can't believe I did that. And I said, what do you think died? And again, he said, the death of our relationship and the death of our joy died today. These are two examples of my kids being able to recognize that sin leads to death.
And I think it's because when they were two and three and four, we just always said that sin always leads to death. Sin always has consequences. And now they're starting to make quick ties that their choices can either bring life kingdom of Jesus' stuff or their choices will bring death. I just held him there and it was such a powerful, emotional moment.
I still gave him consequences. He still had the consequences of his sin. He lost out on things. He heard the things that he will be missing out on, but the thing that he was crying about most was not the. The things that he would be missing out on. The thing that he was crying about was the death of relationship and joy with his sister, among other things that died in that moment, and he was starting to recognize that he was feeling that the consequences of sin and that it was leading to death.
I. Psalm 23 says that, uh, you know this verse, you've heard it a lot of times, but it says, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. It goes on to say that the writer says that you are talking about God. He says, your rod and your staff, they comfort me. Catch that.
Your rod. He's referring to us being like sheep and God being our shepherd, and he said, you're Rod and your staff. They comfort me. That word rod is the same rod and word used all throughout the Psalms when referring to discipline. You've heard it. All those, the psalm verses that say, do not spare the rod.
Do not spare the rod. And some people use that for spanking arguments. Other people just say, you know, it just means discipline. And again, this podcast isn't about spanking. The main goal that we get there is that don't withhold discipline from your kids. And then that same word rod, it talked about in the psalm is the word that the writer says, it comforts me.
The Rod comforts me. Listen, our kids, your kids don't want to be free range wild animals to do whatever their flesh wants to do. They may think they want that, but they don't. They don't wanna make up their own rules and run wild. They aren't comforted in that they aren't comforted in the ways of the world.
Their soul made in the image of God intrinsically, knows that the kingdom of Jesus is better. The rod, the discipline of Jesus is comforting. And so don't neglect to discipline the hearts of your children. Don't neglect to show them how ugly their sin is. Be consistent. Every time they sin, it's serious.
Whether they're three years old or 13 years old, it's serious. There is consequences for sin. Sin is ugly and it always leads to death. And so we don't neglect to show them that because one day they will encounter the beautiful ways of Jesus. The one who takes all these messy things and makes them beautiful.
And so for us as dads, would we raise children who crave the beautiful things of Jesus who are eventually gonna be used by God to join him, to be part of the redemption of this world? May we offer the same invitation to our kids that Jesus offered the woman at the well that day, come to me and your soul will never be thirsty again.
Listen, friends. God has invited you into a beautiful redemption story. Your kids need more than behavior modification. They need heart change. I. In this way, in the middle of tantrums, in the middle of the lies, in the middle of the fights, in the middle of the meltdowns, God is using you to bring his kingdom here to earth just as it is in heaven.
Hey guys. Thanks so much for listening to that whole episode. I hope that it was helpful for you on your journey of becoming more like Jesus and helping your family do the same. Again, I just wanna give a shout out to the 200 guys who are committed to making sure that these episodes keep getting put into your ears all around the world.
I'm thinking about Brendan from Austin, Micah from Bluffton, Brandon from Charlotte. Matt from Leesburg. These are just a few of the names of guys who are committed to seeing the gospel infiltrate the hearts of men and helping them become the man God's called them to be. So if you wanna be part of that group, we would love to have you join us.
You can go to dad tired.com/donate. Again, that's dad tired.com/donate. I love you guys, and I'll see you next week.