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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.
Are Christian Dads Too Soft? | 470
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Jerrad Lopes, Host of Dad Tired: [00:00:00] So many of you are struggling with sins that you've been struggling with for a long time. You've carried around shame for a long time. There are parts of you as a man that you hate. You look at your sin with that disgust and you hate it about yourself. There are parts of you that you hate about yourself, and dude, I know that feeling so, so well, so well that it almost ended me that there were things about me that I hated so much that I was willing to give up my life, to leave behind and to give up everything that I love.
Because that shame was so, so heavy on me. Hey guys. Welcome back to the Dad Tired podcast. We believe here at Dad Tired, that strong families begin with healed man. And I'm confident that today's episode is going to bring you some healing so that you can be the man, the husband, the father, the disciple that God has called you to be.
I'm excited for you to hear this episode. Before we jump in, I do wanna thank my friends over at Dwell Bible for sponsoring today's episode. Uh, I've told you before, I am on a four year Bible replan. To be totally honest with you. I've slacked a little bit. I just, I'm in a season of life where I'm trying [00:01:00] to be fully transparent.
Um, but I. I'm trying to do just one chapter a day, and when I am, I'm using the Dwell Bible app to do that. Um, what I love about it is it puts listening first. So if you download their app, which by the way, they're gonna give you 25% off to subscribe to their platform, but when you download it, you can pick the voice that you want to use.
It's, again, it's puts listening first and when you choose the voice. Um, it doesn't sound robotic. They have lots of different voices and translations for you to choose from, but it, it's like a real voice and it's a calming voice. Um, they also have background music, like a bunch of different background music.
So one of the things that I like to do is end my day or start my day by just getting into God's word and either calming myself before I fall asleep, or call me myself before I start. A busy and chaotic day as a tired dad. Um, so anyway, they're a great app. Again, if you wanna put listening first, get back into the word, find a way that's not robotic, and um, has voices that are really natural and [00:02:00] calming, and get you in the right head space before you tackle your day or end your day.
Highly recommend that you check them out. If you go to dwell bible.com/dad tired. You can get a 25% discount today. Again, that's dwell bible.com/dad tire. That being said, let's dive into today's episode.
Hey guys, I have no notes. I have no real even probably cohesive thoughts, so if you just bear with me. I was like taking my kids to school today and I was trying to explain to my daughters why one song that we were listening to this worship song had the phrase. The Lamb of God, and they didn't know what the Lamb of God necessarily meant.
They couldn't explain that in deep theological terms. Obviously they're just young, small girls, and so I was explaining to [00:03:00] them this beauty of the gospel I was telling them, which was a very graphic story about how. In the Old Testament, they would have to, families would have to sacrifice these animals.
And my daughter, one daughter in particular, loves animals. And so she was like, why would, why would God have them do that? Why couldn't they just pray and ask for forgiveness? And I was saying that the reason that these animals were sacrificed was because it was symbolic. It was showing that this innocent life, this animal did not commit the sin, and yet the blood of that animal was going to cover up or atone or take the place of the guilty.
Person or family who was committing the sins. And it was essentially God's way of saying, yet your sin is serious. It deserves death, but instead of you dying, this animal's going to die in your place. And so they would sacrifice or kill lambs very, um, you know, light conversation for the car right to school.
Just really get that mental image in there. But I was trying to explain to them that, you know, that the idea was that the innocent animal was taking the place of a guilty [00:04:00] person. Or a guilty family for doing something sinful. And God wanted to demonstrate for them. He wanted to show them, he wanted to give them a, a live picture.
Imagine slitting the throat as a family of an innocent animal. That's pretty, I mean, just take your pet like we got a new dog within the last year and uh, just imagine, I don't know if this was the same analogy, I don't know if these animals were pets necessarily, but you know, for a kid it's kind of traumatic.
To kill an animal, to see its bloodshed and the idea, the reason you would ask yourself like, God, why are you doing this? This feels way too intense. Well, the reason is because God was saying, this isn't, your sin is intense. It deserves death, and instead of you dying, I. This innocent animal will take its place.
And so in the beginning of the New Testament, when John the Baptist is baptizing people in the Jordan River and he sees Jesus, this man walking up, he stops and he pauses and says, behold the lamb of God. Who comes to take away the [00:05:00] sins of the world, and I'm driving and we're sitting at a red light and I'm turning my back, or I'm turning around to tell this line to my kids and my eyes well up with tears because there's something so incredible when you just think about the simplicity of the gospel, bro, you deserve death.
Your sin is a very, very big deal. And God, instead of having you sacrifice. Countless. Think about all the thousands, millions of animals that were slaughtered to cover up their sins. And then this guy shows up the spotless Lamb of God, Jesus himself, the one who would take away sins for not just one family, one person for one year or one sin, but for all people who choose to believe for all sins, for all time.
I mean, that's such good news, dude, and I'm just in the moment in the car ride. My kids probably don't even know what's going on or why this is making me cry, but I'm just reflecting back on my sin and that it is a big deal. The things I've done [00:06:00] are wrong, and they grieve God's heart deeply. Whether I consider them small or big sins, the things I've done have grieved God's heart deeply, and I because of my sin deserve death.
And that might feel harsh, but to a perfect God, a God who only knows perfection in his presence is only perfection. There is nothing that has a blemish in his presence. He cannot tolerate sin. If he could, then he wouldn't be God. If there was anything sinful or not perfect around him, he wouldn't be God.
But he's perfect in every way, and everything about him and around him is perfect. And so he requires perfection to be in his presence. And all of us will never live up to that standard. None of us will, will be able to present ourselves in such a way where we look perfect and without blemish. And so God says.
Because of your blemish, you cannot be in my presence. But I love you so much. I love you so much that I [00:07:00] want to be in your presence. And so instead of an innocent animal taking your place, I will send my son the perfect, innocent, spotless lamb of God, my lamb, to take your place so that instead of you dying, he dies, so that you might have forgiveness of sins forever and spend eternity with me forever, man.
I get emotional thinking about it right now because when you sit in the weight of your own sin and you really look at it and how wicked and gross and heavy your sin is, I. His grace, just when he says, I'll take care of all of that, it feels so much heavier. It feels so much like, man, the grace is so deep.
Where am I going with this? Well, I'm going, maybe I've had too much coffee. Or, you know, last night I was praying and I'm just, I, I took a long time off of Dad tired to do my own recovery journey, to deal with my own sin, to look my own sin in the eye, and then I've. I kind of [00:08:00] jumped back into dad tired, and I found myself when I jumped back into work here at Dad, tired, and, uh, just busy, busy, busy.
And I, I like doing this. Like this is really, really fun for me and to see guys and to fall more in love with Jesus. This is all super fun for me, and so I get kind of, I don't know, for lack of better words, addicted to the grind. I like it. I really enjoy it. I enjoy the work. Partnering with God on mission for him.
And then in some ways I've just kind of, I went in work mode and I've just lost sight of kind of the beautiful tenderness of, of sitting in your sin for a while. Sitting in your sin isn't beautiful. But what's beautiful is blessed are those who are persecuted. Blessed are those who mourn. And when you're mourning over your sin.
You're blessed because you're like, dude, God, it's incredible that you saved me. I remember, you know, weeks after coming out of, uh, intense recovery and intense counseling and I was in my shower and I was just singing these worship songs at the top of my lungs and I was crying in the shower, and it was like I was singing worship for [00:09:00] the first time because.
I believed every line that I was saying, I am a wretched sinner. How great it is that God rescued me, that he would look upon me, that his rod and his staff there would comfort me. His discipline would comfort me that he, who am I, that God would be mindful of me, and he is mindful of me and he pours out his grace on me.
And I kind of miss that as hard as this last six months have been. I kind of miss already just this, like that desperation, that brokenness. That inside of like just, man, I am so sick and I desperately need a doctor. Now, here's where I'm going. The point I'm trying to make most of my life, I've looked at my sin with disgust, and in many ways I should because my sin is disgusting.
Again, it grieves the heart of God. It's heavy, it deserves. The sacrifice of life. Something dies because of my sin. And the same is true for you. Your sin [00:10:00] is destructive and it deserves death, and God can't tolerate it and he won't tolerate it. But here's what happened for me most of my life. For most of my life, what that turned into was deep, deep shame.
I knew how wicked my sin was. I knew how awful my sin was, and as a result, I would feel deep shame. I would stand on stages and I would present the gospel and I would try to encourage men, and then I would get in my car and I would drive to the airport and I would think. Who am I to even be teaching this stuff?
Like I've got my own mess, my own junk, my own wounds that I haven't dealt with, my own sins that I haven't dealt with. I'm a hypocrite, and because of all my sin and as I would look at it, I would feel just such deep, deep shame. When I got to this intensive, a lot of people have asked me, a lot of you have asked me like, Hey, what was the intensive like, I just had coffee with a guy recently and he asked me like, dude, what was it like?
What was it like to go away for two weeks and to have no phone access, no access to the outside [00:11:00] world and to just like dig into all the deep, hard gross parts of your life. Like what was that like? And I keep telling people if I knew that everything that they were gonna have me do there. I wouldn't have gone.
It was so intense, dude. It was so intense. I guess it, I keep coming back to, it was like surgery, you know? Like I know I have cancer in me. And finally, instead of just pushing it off and pushing it off, pushing off, at some point I was like, I just need to deal with this cancer. I need to go under the knife and have it be cut out.
And that's what this felt like. I knew I was gonna go under the knife. And if you're in the operating room and you're normal, you're, you're not like a, uh, you know, psychopath that can just cut people like a surgeon. A normal person if you see a surgery room, I've never been in a surgical room, but I imagine it's gruesome.
You know, like one time my wife's a nurse and one time she said like, you have to be a little bit, I apologize for all my surgeon listeners listening, but you know, you have to be a little bit psychotic to just grab a [00:12:00] knife and to cut, start cutting into some humans. And I had never thought about it that way, but I'm like, dude, that is, it is a little bit weird.
To do that. And in some ways it could be, it is gruesome, you know? And so I, I've never been in there, but I imagine there's, it's just, it's kind of a gruesome scene and that's what going away for this intensive felt like kind of. It was gruesome, dude. It was like they just, just, let's rip you open and let's just deal with every childhood thing, every sin, every dark part, everything that hurt you, everything that made you cry, everything that you wanted, hide away everything that you never wanted anybody to ever know about you.
Let's confess it. Let's look at it. Let's look at it from every angle. Let's put it under a microscope. And it was so intense. And dude, we would do these sessions in the morning. So essentially the way it would work is you would do these group sessions where you, you're with the same nine guys the entire time.
So you do these group sessions in the morning, and then you would do, you take a little lunch break and then you do group sessions. So it's just like all day, every day you're intense therapy. And in group sessions, they would oftentimes just hone [00:13:00] in on one person and that person you didn't know. But that one person would have to basically unravel their deep traumas, their deepest sins, and wound in front wounds in front of the whole group.
They just kind of got spotlight and you never knew, like, I, I'm still to this day, I'm like, did they plan that they were gonna pick that person that day, or was it just that person happened to say the wrong thing at the wrong time? You know, it's one of those things where you're like trying not to make eye contact with the counselors and you're like, oh, geez, am I, do I say something now?
Or if I don't say something, or are they gonna pick on me? If I do say something, am I gonna say something wrong? So you're just like trying to not get picked on, you know, you're trying to not be the guy that becomes the subject matter for the conversation. But by the way, everyone's gonna get picked at some point.
So I don't know. We're like day two into this thing. And for whatever reason, bro, the spotlight of the counselors is moving across the room and it just hits me. And I'm like, all right, man, this is it. I'm going to, and I had made a commitment, I'm going to put a hundred percent effort into whatever they ask me to do here, even if this is so uncomfortable.
Which [00:14:00] it was all so uncomfortable. But I just made a commitment, like, dude, I've been trying to be the god of my own life. To control my own life, to, to run my own life. And I'm failing. I'm not doing a very good job. And so I need, I need help. I have to humble myself and I'm willing to do whatever they ask me to do.
And so Spotlight gets put on me and they start digging in. They start pressing in about my childhood and my father wounds and all this stuff. And they say they had this big, like, uh, I'm probably giving away too much here from their stuff. I, their. Whatever. There's this bookshelf and they've got all these props and they're using these props constantly to do this kind of like psychodramas or you know, reenact some kind of pain, and so they say, Jared, I want you to go over there and to grab something that you think represents you as a child.
And, uh, so I go over to the shelf and I'm, I'm two days into this thing and I see this monkey here. If you're watching on YouTube, which please go over to YouTube, subscribe over there. I grab this monkey, and part of the, I'm [00:15:00] gonna cry. Darn it. Don't cry. I grabbed this monkey and uh, I grabbed the monkey initially.
The reason it stuck out to me was because my daughter, she's four and her favorite animal is a monkey. I grabbed the monkey initially because I thought of her and I really missed her. I couldn't get ahold of her. I didn't know what she was doing. So I grabbed the monkey and uh, but I also grabbed the monkey because you can see if you're looking at this monkey, you know, monkey's got kind of big ears.
I grew up with like big ears. And that was kinda a, a big part of my childhood. Like, uh, I got made fun of a lot for having big ears. A lot of people made fun of me for that. And uh, I didn't think that was a big deal. You know, really just kind of natural childhood stuff. And it wasn't like my biggest trauma certainly.
But there's, they called those little t traumas. Just kind of these little moments that you learn like, okay, this is, I have to be someone different. 'cause if I'm just this, then if I am who I am, people are gonna make fun of me. And um, so I picked it 'cause it kind of rep, it felt like it looked like me as a kid.[00:16:00]
So I grab this monkey and they say, Jared, I want you to imagine that this monkey is you as a little boy, and for the rest of your time here, which is two weeks, I want you to take that monkey with you everywhere you go. And every morning we would start every single morning with a hike. We'd wake up at 6:00 AM We would go on a hike for about an hour as a group, then we would drive into and start our counseling sessions.
And so they said, every hike you go on, I want you to take that thing everywhere. When you're at dinner, take it, put it in your bed with you at night. Like wherever you go, take that monkey and dude, I'm like, what in the world could you do? You know how weird it is to show up to a hike at a public trail? As a grown man with a monkey stuffed animal, I'm like, dude, I'm gonna, I'm gonna have bigger problems here.
I'm gonna get the cops called on me. Anyway, I took that monkey and what started out as just like this dumb little exercise, by the time I was done at two [00:17:00] weeks, I. It was hard for me. I put my original monkey, I gave it back to them. I really wanted to steal it, but I told myself, I'm not gonna be a liar and I'm not gonna do thing.
I'm not gonna sneak things. And so I gave them their dumb monkey back, even though I felt like I should have been able to take it. I gave it back to them and I immediately actually, my wife, ah, I'm feeling emotional today. My wife bought me that one, which is the exact one I had when I was there. Um, but that monkey represents me as a kid.
Um, every time I would start to feel that shame, dude, every time I'd start to feel this, like this overwhelming shame, I would just look at that monkey, which was the exercise, and they would say, what did that monkey need? What did that, what did that boy need? And it's crazy how when you look at your sin through the context of compassion as a little boy, you don't really feel shame anymore.
You feel a lot more compassion. And this is where I'm going. So many of you are struggling with. Sins that you've been struggling with for a long time. You've carried around [00:18:00] shame for a long time. There are parts of you as a man that you hate. You look at your sin with that disgust and you hate it about yourself.
There are parts of you that you hate about yourself. And dude, I know that feeling so, so well, so well that it almost ended me. There were things about me that I hated so much that I was willing to give up my life, to leave behind and to give up everything that I loved because that shame was so, so heavy on me.
And I know some of you feel that, that there are parts of you that nobody knows about. There's pain that nobody knows about, that you hate, that you have a real hatred towards. And I guess the point I'm trying to make here. Because I wonder if you could just set you as a man dealing with that pain or that sin or that habit or that shame.
If you could just set that aside for a second, look at it objectively and think, I wonder [00:19:00] what that little boy with that pain needs. 'cause here's the thing, man. You started out as a little boy who. You weren't perfect. We were all born into sin, but you, you started out as like an innocent kid and you were doing what every human wants just to like, be loved, be known, feel safe, feel seen, and at some point in your life, and I don't know if it was when you were three or when you were 15 or 20 or whatever, at some point you stopped feeling safe.
And you stopped feeling secure and you stopped feeling seen, and you stopped feeling valuable at some point. And so what you did is you likely turned to something to numb that bad feeling. And all of us, by the way, are doing this regardless of where you're at. Like you have pain in your life and you're doing something to numb it.
And that might be you're working [00:20:00] really hard just to show and to prove to your dad or to your brothers, or to that guy who made fun of you in third grade, that you are something that you can do something with your life, that you can make something of yourself. That you're not weak, you are tough, but something in you is just trying to stick it to somebody.
Maybe you just, you really, really wanna be seen by your wife, by your dad, by your friends, by your coworkers, by your boss, somebody. You just really wanna be seen, and all of this is stemming back to something, and so you're working super hard. Or you're, you're numbing out or you're just trying to escape.
But all of it, everything that we're struggling with is some lie that we believe I'm not valuable. I'm not good enough the way I am. I have to work harder, I have to be smarter. I have to be more attractive. I have to have more savings in order, feel peace or say like, whatever. Some lie you believe that some point has caused you.
Then to soothe that lie, I believed a lie, and now to soothe the pain of that lie, I have to find something. Work, [00:21:00] alcohol, drugs, porn, sex, affection, identity as the funny guy, hobby money. Something is trying to soothe the pain that that lie is causing and instead of, because that it never works. If you've been around dad tired a long time, I call that salt water.
You keep trying to drink fresh water and it's just salt water, it actually makes you more thirsty. All the things that you keep going to refresh your soul just keep making you more thirsty, and so you just keep getting, your soul is more and more thirsty and you're just hungry, like something, please, please give me rest please with something satisfy my soul and nothing is, and there, because of that, you hide.
Nobody really knows you. Your wife doesn't fully know you. Your kids don't fully know you. Friends don't fully know you. You know yourself and you know the deep, dark parts in your head. And, and there are parts of you that you hate [00:22:00] because you keep soothing and, and the way you're soothing is causing you to feel shame and you hate those parts of yourself.
And I guess I would encourage you like, dude, what if you just stopped and looked back for a second and you looked at that little boy, that little monkey. You're saying, what did that kid need? And bro, that was the most healing thing for me to be able to say, yes, my sin is disgusting and it breaks the heart of God and it's gross.
But also I get why I've done the things I've done. I get it. I was thinking about this on the way home today. I'm not a Bible scholar. I'm not a theologian. I'm not that smart. In fact, that's a lot of insecurity for me, to be honest with me, to like be in this spiritual kind of role. And I just don't feel that smart.
And I forget Bible stories and I can't memorize scripture that well. And I'm not good at history and I'm just like, I'm not that smart. And I was trying to think in the scriptures and, and as much as my [00:23:00] brain could rack up, like I, I don't remember any times in the New Testament where Jesus got angry at sinners for being sick.
Jesus never really got mad at people for being sick. He did get mad at people for being arrogant, for thinking that they weren't sick and not needing a doctor, but for everybody who recognized they're sick. For everybody that showed up at the feet of Jesus and said, God, please, I believe you and I need you.
For every person that showed up and said, I'm so sick. I really need you. God, his heart wasn't mad at them for being sick. Jesus' heart was compassion. His heart broke. And so I wonder if you today could encounter that side of Jesus, that he's not looking at your sickness with hatred. He doesn't hate [00:24:00] you because you're sick.
God does get mad at arrogance when we think that we're not sick and we try to pretend we're not. Act like we don't need God. But I've never seen Jesus in the New Testament be mad at people who recognize that they're sick. And so instead of seeing your sickness and feeling this deep shame and hatred towards yourself, would you encounter a God who actually has deep compassion for you and would say, son, I don't want you to be sick anymore.
Come to me, all you who are weary and I'll give you rest. Do you want water? He told the woman at the well who was sick and looking for satisfaction, he looked at her and said, do you want water? That would never make you thirsty again? And she said, of course. And he said, then drink of me brother. Like, God, he's not disgusted by you.
I hope you hear me. I'm not minimizing your sin. He really does not tolerate sin, but he's not disgusted by your sickness. He's [00:25:00] a doctor with compassion who wants to heal you, and so your role is to humble yourself enough to say, God, I'm sick and I really, really need help and I really want to find your healing.
I want to find your rest. I just want you guys to start to feel what I felt as I carried around that stupid little stuffed animal around that I get why. I went after the things. I went after I get why I sought medicine that I thought would heal me and soothe me. And I have compassion. And now that I see it, it's just so much more easier to find healing.
'cause now I can recognize in myself like, oh, you're just. I feel those things, when I feel those temptations, when I feel that gravitational pull to go back to something that used to, that I thought used to satisfy me or used to think would satisfy me, I just look at it and say, oh no, that's just my little boy.
That's just little Jared coming out saying, no, this used to give him comfort in the past and all he [00:26:00] really wants is comfort right now. And you don't need to find comfort in that because that what you're believing is a lie. You're not valuable based on how much you can perform or how much money you have, or how successful you look, or what you look like or what people say about you.
You're just valuable because Jesus loves you deeply. You're a son of the most high God, and exactly as you are right now. He delights in you. He really, really, really loves you, and that's what that little boy needed to hear. Hey, buddy, you're okay. You're fully loved right now. You don't have to be anyone different than you're trying to be.
Just love you fully right now. I hope that that helps, man. I really do love you guys. Thanks for being on the journey with me. I'll see you next week.