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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.
The other day I was hanging out with our interns that we have here at, at College Ave. It's a church that I pastor here in San Diego College Ave. And, uh, our interns were asking this question to one another and I thought it was a really interesting question, mainly because of the way that it was phrased.
And the question is, what is your aesthetic wrinkle? And I always thought, uh, you know, as I'm hearing them, I'm trying to pick up from context clues what I mean, because I don't wanna be the old guy that goes, what does that mean? If it's like. Kind of hip and happening, but I figured out pretty quickly essentially the notion is, is there anything about you that if someone looked at you from the outside, so maybe you are prototypically, the fisherman hunter type, and camo is kind of your go-to color and you liken yourself a bit of a woodsman and outdoorsman, and yet.
You have an aesthetic wrinkle, which is you're also really, really deeply into figure skating. So like figure skating would be your aesthetic wrinkle. Like it's the thing in the, in your whole brand, the brand that you have as a person, there's something that would just kind of throw everyone off if they found out that it was true about you.
And. Um, so they kind of asked that question to everyone. And, uh, one of mine that I was thinking about is when I was like, in junior high and high school, I was extremely into WWF, like before it was WWE f back in the day, and then it switched to wwe. But I just remember watching that and. And my brother and I would like practice all the moves on each other and like try to power bomb each other and suplex everything and just thought it was awesome.
So like at that time it was every Monday and Thursday, but it was this ongoing drama, like, um, how my mom watched soap operas. This was this ongoing drama. You'd have these people who were fighting and fighting for the belt and, but they had interpersonal relationships and romantic interests with the women that were involved.
It was, it was just intriguing to me. And I remember one of my. Favorite wrestlers of all time, which this doesn't make me unique to anything. It's probably a fairly boilerplate for most people watching it. That season of WWE is the Rock. Like before he was Dwayne Johnson and an actor, he was a fairly unknown wrestler named Rocky Maya Via, and they really tried to, he was originally a heel, which in wrestling terms is, he was kinda a bad guy.
No one liked him and. That was kind of his mantra. He was this, uh, bully, but the bra bowl, the, the, the Italian style, like all these, they tried to really lean into that aspect of who he was. And, uh, they, they kind of remade him a few different ways until they finally landed on, uh, the Rock. And Dwayne Johnson was a football player at the University of Miami and kind of struggled to find his way.
And then all of a sudden they had a, particularly a particular season of WE. Where they began writing scripts where the rock was kind of this more heroic figure. And Kurt Engel, who was this all American guy, the Rock, would, uh, fight with him and the undertaker, the whole nine. It was, it was just so intriguing and I just remember thinking about the rock and um, how for so long in my life that his.
Character and behavior really epitomized masculinity in my perception. Um, you just don't mess with this guy. And when he speaks, everyone listens to him. And sometimes there'd be these like moments that would just have you off the couch like. With your hands on your head going, oh, when you know, there'd be like Chris Jericho, one of the guys he was fighting would start talking and the rock would just go, you shut your mouth.
And he would like stop him from talking. And his whole, if you smell what the rock is cooking, he would raise his eyebrow and no one messed with him. And every once in a while he would turn on his own tag, team partner just to show that he can't be trifled with. And I just remember thinking that that level of like.
Big angry, mean aggressive. Don't mess with me. Shut anyone down if they're trying to talk to you. Uh, essentially live people, leave people in a state of fear when it comes to you. Was was like peak masculinity. And yet I found out in my life, uh, the people that I went to, to figure out what it meant to be a man, weren't, weren't really people like that.
It was remem I remember this when I was a, a youth pastor at, uh, north Coast Church, up in Northern San Diego County here, Oceanside area, um, in an in, in a town called Vista. And it's a big church. And so as a youth pastor. You would get a lot of these students who would come in and my favorite were like these junior guys, these junior boys that would come in and you know that they've struggled most of their life with masculinity.
Most of them, I would say the ones that were the bigger problems, almost always had a dad issue in their life. Either a lack of a father and abusive father, something like that. But there's one kid in particular, I'll, I'll call him Greg, for the sake of, um. Confidentiality. Not that I don't think he'd mind, but I didn't get his permission explicitly to talk about this.
But, uh, Greg showed up and signed up for our, uh, summer camp. And at our summer camp, it was house boating. So we would like take 10 houseboats out in the California river Delta. We would lock them together and make this little island to ourselves. And you could go from houseboat to houseboat and whatever.
So she had guys, boats and girls boats, and you could stand on top of the boats and inside each boat had a different activity or whatever it was. And. So I, I remember one day recognizing this Greg character who had been thrown out of a bunch of different schools and, you know, we were told to watch him closely and he may or may not have brought drugs with him.
And so we were always keeping an eye on those things and he really bought into the whole Jesus conversation early on in the week. And after he bought into the Jesus conversation, one thing that I recognized is that he was paying attention to what I was doing. He was like watching me. And as I would go from houseboat to houseboat, the different leaders, um, you know, these guys that have been my friends for a long time, like I'd wake up in the morning and I'd like ask 'em how they're doing.
I'd give 'em a hug and kinda walk by and ask him, how can I help you? Like, what does it mean to serve you today? Or, um, maybe we would sit down and, and talk about some stuff, but we would talk about like. Good stuff, you know, like, Hey, what, what's, uh, what's been something that you've struggled with this week in terms of leading or whatever it might be?
And, and he just kind of followed me around almost to a point where it was uncomfortable, but. The funny thing is the next day as I was watching him navigate the morning, he would walk from boat to boat and he would see some of his buddies. He would dap 'em up and he'd give him a hug and he'd ask him like, Hey, so tell me about how the day's going for you, or, Hey, what, what can I be for you for?
And, and I recognized that he was emulating masculinity 'cause he had never seen it. And there's a vacuum, I believe in our culture that. Forces us as men to kind of emulate the only masculinity or the only manhood that we see. And we rarely take the time to slow down and ask the question like, what, what does real masculinity look like?
I, I, I don't mean the kind of Rocky Maya via Brahma Bowl, the Rock, Dwayne Johnson, um, overly aggressive, overcompensating type of masculinity. I mean. When you go and look at someone that you say, I would push a button and if my character could become like yours, that type of masculinity, the type of men that you see and recognize and you watch the way their kids respond to them and their wives react to them.
If you're able to be, if you're, find yourself in a position where you're married or I know there's a lot of. People listening to this, you might be, might be some of our, uh, women listeners or, um, you might be, I've found a, a great group of, of young men who before even being married or having kids, have been listening to this and in, in all those different situations.
The question has kind of come up that I've been talking to Jared about recently, which is like, what does, what is the true mark of, of biblical masculinity? What does it really mean to be a man? When you open up the scriptures and understand what it is, the, the reason I think this is important is because if you think that you've just coasted by in life without answering this question and that you have a reasonable or biblical worldview on this, I, I think what you'll find is the worldview is, is actually usurped by a lot of these sound bites and extremes of culture.
And if you just look at the men in. Uh, movies and TV shows and how they're presented. You really don't have, the only real biblical guys that you see typically speaking are the annoying dads that are like Bible thumpers, and the other people you have are the overly aggressive. Pierce Bronin oh oh seven.
Sleep with whoever you wanna sleep with. Get your own way. Sneaky, conniving Jason Bourne Characters who, there's something to be said about the power of defending the weak for sure. But, but then the rest of the attributes aren't really there. You know, they're, they're, they're not loyal to a woman. They're not, um, being careful with the way they're using their, their.
Their power or their language or anything else like that. And um, or you have the opposite. You have kind of the duncy stupid, um, remarkably unrefined like the Peter Griffin from family guy who can't help but get drunk and fall on the stairs, and who always has wandering eyes for other females in his life or.
Uh, you might find, um, a character from a, a TV show and, and not, that doesn't represent the other facets of masculinity being like intelligence and protection and those kind of things. Um, these are the, the guys that I. The, the wife is always explaining really simple truths and they're completely checked out of what's going on, and they're just kind of like football and TV and alcohol and that's really all they care about.
And, and both sides of these, kind of like a, a drunk guy trying to get on a horse. You tend to fall off one side or the other. 'cause this makes better television. It's better television to have a dad who is. Overly protective because you get a lot of storylines out of the protective dad chasing down the boyfriend, or you get a lot of storylines out of the Duncy dad that just keeps creating foibles for himself and breaking things down and messing up and, and everyone else in his life has to fix those problems.
And so if we're not careful, I think we'll find ourselves in this kind of vacuum state. Of recognizing what biblical masculinity is. And so I, I guess what I'm asking as we're approaching this topic, first and foremost, is to do your best to kind of erase your mind when it comes to the preconceived notions of masculinity, to, to try to do, to undo anything that isn't godly or isn't biblical in terms of it.
And, and, um, I, I'd like to present to you just kind of these eight attributes. I think when you look at scripture, what you'll find is the Bible isn't mute on. What does it mean to be a man? In fact, um, I, I think to try to. Understand masculinity without the idea of the formation and the inception of masculinity.
The conception of masculinity, I think you're gonna find that you're always kind of grasping at straws because how could we possibly attempt to define masculinity? Just like how could we attempt to define the use or the reason, or the meaning behind anything without recognizing why and who created it.
Uh, that that would be a, an essential part of it. That's why owner's manuals for, um, computers and owner's manuals for anything else that's complex in your life. It's why those things, building in assembly instructions. If, if you went to Ike and got like a 45 piece bookshelf thing and you just winged it, you could potentially get it together, but you'd be an exception to the rule and you could attempt to find out what masculinity is by emulating certain things or by, uh, mimicking behavior of godly people.
But, um, you'd be lucky and sometimes. What, what happened is you'd find yourself in these tense moments of, um, a tension between do I follow what I think should be, or like what's my standard? And I think God gives us a pretty good standard on, on how to measure ourselves as men and as fathers and as, uh, champions and as men of strength and of men of.
Uh, consequ and meaning in life. And so I wanna give you these things. It spells out a necrotic, which is Prime Men, B-R-I-M-E-M-E-N, uh, that as a teacher and as a communicator and speaking at conferences and stuff, I, I always need something to kind of hang my hat on so I can remember if I'm listing off these things.
Uh, if it's helpful for you, you can. Uh, remember it like that. But, um, this, I, I wanna kinda walk through these attributes and, and to look at a few characteristics. The first one is, um, where does the Bible describe this characteristic as essential to masculinity or essential to the Christian life in general?
Then I, I wanna look at a couple of biblical characters who failed in this, uh, who failed in representing this as attribute of masculinity and, and kind of what it cost them. Um, every man. In scripture, besides Jesus himself has a failure in masculinity to some extent. Um, there's almost zero exceptions.
The best ones you could probably make are people who have really short stories in scripture or, you know, almost nothing about them in scripture or only it only, um. Demonstrates or describes one part of their life and not the entirety of it. And for anyone who we have consequential writing on, there's a failure in masculinity.
And then I wanna look at where Jesus succeeded, where that man failed, where Jesus succeeds in these different categories of masculinity. And uh, just, uh, uh, following up each of those with a quote about what it means to. To follow Christ as a man in our modern culture, particularly in these different areas.
So I'm just gonna start with the first one and go down, uh, this list of, of what does it mean to be a man. I think this is helpful if you wanna listen to it with your kids, to, with your sons or um, with your daughters. Um, not that we're trying to teach, uh, women to be more masculine, but to understand two things.
One, this is the type of guy you should be looking for as you're growing and developing. Um, number two, to, uh, show your daughters, this is the man that I wanna become as a dad and I'm not there yet. And these are some of the areas where I falter. Um, if you're willing to, with, um, a, a level of vulnerability even to ask, Hey, which of these do you feel like dad can work on better?
We're asking this of your wife, significant other, whoever it might be. Um, you can make this as vulnerable and as meaningful as possible, or it can be just a fun trivia fact of, Hey, I know the acrostic for Prime Men. You wanna hear it. Or you can go, I'm gonna let this shape something in me and actually refine something on a deeper level.
That's all completely up to you. So I'm gonna do a few of these and then I'll follow up with the rest of them next week because I think this, this deserves its, um, its own weight and its, uh, space to breathe. So if you listen to this with your sons, say, men, this is what guys, uh, sons, listen to this. This is what it means to be a man after God's own heart that scripture talks about.
Um, and for us as dads, this is what we're aiming to become. And if you're listening as a female listener, as a daughter, this is the type of man that you should be. Uh, willing to attach your life to. And, um, these are the ones that are of, of high value and these attributes and marks of masculinity. So we'll start with the first one, which is, um, a man of God, biblically speaking.
And these aren't in an order of importance. These are just all laid out. Um, so these are in no particular order. Number one is peacemaking. A man of God is a peacemaker. Matthew five. Jesus gives a sermon on the Mount where he basically breaks down the kingdom of God. The kingdom of this world is X, he says, but the kingdom of God is different than that.
The kingdom of this world, you might, uh, go far as a man if you start conflict and begin wars and, um, and snuff out any opposition, but. Jesus says, you have heard it said, but I tell you, Matthew five, nine, blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God, Jesus himself as a peacemaker.
Think about how Jesus made peace with us. His people, Romans five tells us this, that we were enemies of God and he made peace with us through the sacrifice of his son, that we could become children of God. Romans 1218 uses this phrase, and this is, there's an important caveat here, and it says this, men, if it is possible.
As far as it depends on, you live at peace with everyone. We find that the, the history of our world is great men who stand up in pivotal moments and are willing to do whatever it takes to defend and or attack injustice. So it, it doesn't mean that a man should be, um, perennially and consummate in a constant state of never ruffling feathers.
Because this caveat's important as far as it depends on you. There will be people in your life that will not permit you to be a peacemaker. What does that mean? That means if someone enters into your home and wants to attack your family, yes, you for sure you see them, but if they're going to harm someone, peacemaking is not the goal there.
You should be making peace through strength and through those things. You can't just go, well, I can't stop the guy. I asked him kindly to cease. As far as it depends on, you live at peace with everyone. Sometimes you'll find people that are just gonna come attack you on, be it social media or in person or through slander or whatever it might be, and you still need to address that.
But your aim should still be peace not to to inflame the conflict, but to bring peace. How do we do this? James one 19 tells us every man should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. So you, you can't get too far in scripture without finding that real men create no drama and they control their anger.
On the two sides that we can quickly turn to, just like we talked about before, is peacemaking isn't an excuse for apathy, but peacemaking also doesn't always need to be done at the end of us screaming at the top of our lungs and shutting up everyone in our life. If that's the only way that you make peace in your life, then we need to grow as men because, uh.
The end result is peace for sure. But also the means to reach that end, except for in the most dire of circumstances, should also be control, not, uh, exhibiting control in ourselves and in our words, and in our language and in our tone. Um, not everything that creates peace is a good thing. I can slam my fist down and break something against the wall, and then everyone shuts up and goes to their room.
And you could say that that's peace, but it's not internal peace. It's just quiet. Quiet from the loneliness that comes with a, a moment of rage. I think a couple of biblical characters who fail in peacemaking. That are exemplified throughout the text is Cain, we find out in, uh, Genesis four eight. Cain kills his brother instead of resolving his anger and jealousy towards him.
And that is exhibited in a moment of rage where he, he, the, the first murder we find about in scripture is Cain killing his brother Abel King Saul, also, also in one Samuel 18, six through nine. Where instead of making peace or figuring out a way to coexist with David, who's receiving all this new praise and all this laude and admiration, king Saul instead attacks David and chases him down all throughout the, this area of the ancient near East.
And David has to run and hide and flee from King Saul. And it ends up being the, the death of Saul, that he's chasing this down and it, it occupies so much of his life and so much of his time and so much of his actual kingship. That he's considered a failed king because he doesn't make peace. He doesn't seek peace.
Jesus is the better cane. Jesus is the better king. Saul, Jesus is the better me. He exhibits this all throughout the New Testament. In the gospels in particular, I think of the moment where the uh, Jesus is standing somewhere where an angry mob has gathered to kill a woman because she was committing adultery.
This is John chapter eight. And Jesus diffuses the situation with wisdom and justice, and certainly he could have walked in and raised his arms and made all of the people who were about to stone this woman and turned them into, uh, specks of dust or killed them all on the spot, and certainly that would've stopped the fight.
He sought peace and instead he was able to diffuse it with wisdom and justice. Uh, or, or just think about the moment where the disciples are freaking out because of the storm on the lake, on Lake Ate, or, uh, the Sea of Galilee. And, um, he brought peace by calming the storm. And, and again, you can't do that.
I can't, I can't walk outside and tell the storm to knock it off. But it's just demonstrating that the character of Jesus who is perfect masculinity, but he also demonstrates, and this is an interesting topic, he also demonstrates perfect femininity. Jesus is the masculinity that we hope for in men, but he's also, he attains the feminine attributes as well.
In everything. Now he is a hundred percent man. He is, he has a strength of character and the masculine attributes a hundred percent. But, um, when mankind is made in his image, male and female, the attributes of Yahweh are given both to men and to women. Not in the same measure and not for the same expectation, but to recognize that Jesus actually embodies both sides of this.
He, he doesn't just. Pick one side or the other. He's able to balance that perfectly. Um, I like how Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it. The followers of Christ have been called to peace, and they must not only have peace, but they must make it. Matthew Henry and his commentary on the gospel of John says, each peace is such a precious jewel that I would give anything for it except for truth.
I love that idea. We should seek peace at all costs, but never ever, but truth on the altar. John MacArthur writes in his commentary, A godly man does not create conflict, but rather brings the light of Christ's peace into every circumstance. A godly man does not create conflict, but brings the light of Christ's peace into every circumstance.
Some good ways, just a litmus test to ask ourselves in my life, wherever I go, do I leave a trail of conflict behind me. Or am I a peace maker? It's not that just that I like peace. We typically like peace. Okay? There's something wrong with us if we actually like the chaos or we like intention, but do we like it or do we make it?
Are we peace makers or do we just peace enjoyers? Do we need our wives to always make peace because we're the angry ones? Do we need our kids to come and make peace or are we the active peacemakers in our households? A real man creates no drama and controls their anger. They are peace makers. Here's a second thing, second attribute, that's for p peacemaking.
The second one is R is repentance. They're repentant. A man of God is gonna be repentant. This is where you can you quickly diverge from A peacemaker could be a secular characteristic of a man. And right now we diverge from the ro from the road, more traveled, which is secular humanity and secular masculinity to biblical masculinity always requires a repentant heart.
Repentant heart is these two attributes. They're quick to turn and committed to change, quick to turn and committed to change. Acts three 19 says, repent then and turn to God so your sins may be wiped out. The time of refreshing may come from the Lord I. Second Corinthians seven says that godly sorrow brings repentance.
That leaves a salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. Proverbs 28, whoever conceals their sins will fail, but the one who confesses and re and renounces them finds mercy. You see that two attribute, not just a confession of sins, but also our renunciation of them. A lot of the times, I think as men, we can, after a while just get really good at apologizing for the same thing we do over and over again.
But biblical repentance does not just require that we apologize and that we feel sorrow for it, but also that we make a plan to not fall back into it again. That we take an active approach to, to rejecting it. Into doing something different. A couple of biblical characters I can think of that failed in the idea of repentance that demonstrates that they lacked true masculinity.
And a true biblical framework of manhood is I think a Pharaoh in Exodus eight through 14, when he's consistently having his heart hardened the first six times as hard as hardened, contrary to a lot of the more reformed view, the first six times that it happens, it says that he hardens his own heart or that passively Pharaoh's heart became hard.
It isn't until later on that we even see God showing up with hardening the heart for his glory that Romans nine tells us. But. Or Judases Sct, he felt remorse but didn't turn to God and didn't create a new path, and didn't, um, actually lean back into the father's arms. But instead, he led, it led him to despair and ultimately to suicide.
So Judases Sct simply felt the remorse, but that's not just what it means to be a man after God's own heart. We don't just feel the remorse, we commit to changing it. So if, if we're finding ourselves in the same pattern of behavior and misbehavior again and again. A biblical man. Uh, true masculinity means not only do I feel that what I did was wrong, but I am active in my volition and my will and my strategy.
We use the strategic minds. God's given us to be soldiers and warriors and captains and people who execute, um, missions. We use that and leverage it to become strategic about how we eliminate this sin from our life. Couple of places where I think Jesus succeeds in this is I think of Zacchaeus, who was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he?
If you grew up in the church, you know that song. If not, that was a really weird thing that I just said. But that's like an old Sunday school song about Zacchaeus, who's this ex collector, who is a short guy who climbs up in a tree to see Jesus. And then Jesus actually leads the corrupt, this corrupted man to true repentance by eating with him and letting him know, hey.
It's not, it's not enough that you just feel bad about it. He goes, and then he pays back everyone who he has stolen from. That story's in Luke 19. If you wanna study a little bit later, or, I love the story of the Prodigal son that we find in Luke 15. The genuine repentance that we see from the son, the father, the Jesus character in the story is able to receive the son back home and reinstate him.
A complete understanding, but also the father doesn't go, here's some more money. Go back and do it again. The father says, now you're gonna come in and I'm gonna reteach you what it means to be a follower of me, to be a member of my household. He says, he puts a signet ring back on his finger and sandals back on his feet and a robe around him saying, I'm glad that you're home, but friend, we're not gonna go do that again.
We're not going back to the de capitalis. So you can go spend all your money on brothels and uh, on artie's and buying. A lot of food for your friends who just want you for whatever you can provide for them. We're not, we're not doing that anymore. So you are so forgiven, and we're not doing that anymore.
But guess what? If you find yourself in a state where you're returning to the father again and again, he's still quick to receive us, even if our strategy and our new way of thinking fails. But I wanna challenge you if there's something that you keep falling into again and again, don't just think next time I need to feel more sorrow for it.
But think to yourself, Lord, what would it mean for me to actively renounce this from my life? C. S Lewis says repentance means unlearning all the selfe, self conceit and self will that we have been training ourselves into. Repentance means unlearning. All of the self conceit and self will that we've been training ourselves into.
So it's relying on the spirit to work through these changes. Spurgeon wrote this, a very little sin, as the world calls. It is a very great sin to a true Christian. I like how MacArthur put this. I, I will never forget this, he said when I was a young man, I send more and hated it less. But now that I've grown into manhood, I probably sin less, but I hate it a lot more.
So my vitriol towards my sin is almost the same as it was when I was a little kid. But when I was a kid, I did did it so much. There was more to hate. And now I do it less, but I hate it more 'cause I recognize the consequence of it in my life. John Piper writes this, real men don't fake repentance. They humble themselves before God and turn from sin, independence on Christ.
So it becomes something where not only do we feel with the emotion that what we have done is wrong, but we also are quick to turn back to Jesus and let him be this efficiency and let him pronounce that forgiveness on us just like we find in the story of the prodigal son. So those are the first couple of those things with a little bit of a setup.
Next week we'll go through the remaining five. Remaining six in more detail, but, uh, I, I just want you to begin to think through those couple of things. What does it mean to be a peacemaker in my life? What does it mean to be repentant and the litmus test to ask yourself, am I just getting better at apologizing or am I truly turning from the things that I was doing?
These have been such, uh, they're just, they're kind of wrecking me even as I've been studying for this and thinking through this, these concepts for our guys here at, at college, AAV Church and teaching about true masculinity. It forces you. This is like the idea of the double-edged sword of Hebrews chapter four is when you're recording a podcast or teaching a sermon and you're opening up God's word, the double-edged sword, I think it, it, it talks about this.
Um, and it helps us understand that when you teach these things, it cuts you too, just like a double-edged sword. I might intend to help anyone else listening to be able to navigate the flesh from the spirit in their life, but it also does the same thing to me. So you guys be praying for me too, as I'm just thinking through what does masculinity truly look like in my own life.
And these are all things that I need to be working on and processing through. And I'll be doing the same thing, uh, with my, uh, kids at home that hopefully you guys are able to do with yours. Some of you guys have little babies and so, you know, you don't need to sit your six month old down and talk about peacemaking, but, but to be praying for them that the Lord would, would already begin to be working true masculinity in their hearts and then bigger than that, that you would be a model for them of it, that when they grow up.
And your six month old becomes a 16-year-old and they hear a sermon that men are peacemakers, they would go, that checks out. 'cause that's exactly what my dad's like. Instead of having to navigate that world of like, well, so my dad wasn't any of these things, but I've gotta try to think of God, who's different than my dad was, and I just, I want, there's already gonna be a lot of tripping over my character that my kids are gonna have to do to understand who God is.
I'd like to minimize that. I'd like there to be a, the least amount of stumbling box as possible. And so if you wanna commit to the same thing with me and lean into this conversation and be as vulnerable as you want with it, and it might just be a self-reflection that you start praying that would soften your heart towards these things, it might be worth engaging someone else who you trust in your life, another man or a mentor figure for you, a father figure in your life, or maybe even asking your spouse or whoever might have say into your life.
But we'll continue with the rest. Uh, next time. But thanks for engaging in this and we'll talk to you guys then.