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slash dad tired. Again, that's SamaritanMinistries.org forward
slash dad tired. Have
you ever been on vacation and maybe you're sitting at a hotel or
you're at a resort or at the beach or somewhere just, you know, relaxing. Maybe
you're watching your, I think about my vacation sometimes I'll like be sitting there
and I'll watch my kids swimming and I'm sitting with
my wife next to me. Maybe we're eating some food and you have a drink or, you
know, you're just in a good spot mentally. I don't know if vacation is ever fully
relaxing even as a dad. You're always
kind of stressed. But you know, you're just in a good mental spot. You feel like you're
in a good mental spot and you're sitting there and you're kind of just, you're
numbed out for lack of better words. And you're just enjoying all the moments
and you're fully relaxed. And then out of nowhere, you get some thought
that just completely disrupts your mental, you know, stability,
your mental, like, I'm trying to think of the word Zen. It
just completely removes you out of that moment of feeling complete peace
and relaxation. And maybe the thought is something about,
I don't know, bills or maybe it's the realities of
work or getting back home or friction in your relationship with
your spouse. or sin in your life, or
there's just something that just kind of comes out of nowhere and
completely disrupts your peace in that moment. I've had that happen. I'm
imagining there are many of you who can relate to that. I
want to spend the next few weeks talking about what does it look like for a
man to have healthy traits, to be a
healthy man holistically? Like what are some traits of
a holistically healthy Christian man who's trying to
lead his family well? And so I want to spend the next few weeks kind of
tackling some ones that come to mind. This is not an exhaustive list
by any means. Clearly there are
all kinds of things that would make a man healthy and there are all kinds of nuances.
But when I'm just generally thinking about what does it look like to be a
healthy man? These are some things that have come to mind from experience,
from working with guys, from my own personal life. and just
trying to figure out what does it mean for us practically to be healthy
men. Last week we talked about discipleship and our churches talk
about discipleship. We talk about that in the church world a lot. Like
what does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus? And we use these terms kind of vaguely.
And so I try to put some specifics, language, some
specific language to what does it mean to actually be a disciple? How do
you know where you're at on your discipleship journey? And how
do you grow? Like how do you define it and all that stuff? And so
oftentimes on the Dad Tired podcast, we will talk about being healthy men. I
also want to give some like concrete examples and
terminology to what it looks like to be a healthy man. Like, how do you know you're
a healthy man? What does that actually mean? I want to tackle some
of those qualities that a healthy man has. I'd
love to hear some of your thoughts either in the comments here on YouTube or
in our private community. We have a totally free online community. You can go
to connect.dadtyre.com and just share some
things from your experience and what you've seen. What does it look like to
be a healthy man? Today I want to tackle the qualities of
silence and sleep. These are kind of foundational qualities
that I think I'm convinced you need in order to be
a healthy man. There's this verse in Psalm 62 verse
1 and 2 says, Truly,
He is my rock and my salvation. He is my fortress. I
will never be shaken. The psalmist writes
there that there's this deep sense of peace that even if
things, you get the idea that even if things around him kind
of go away or sideways, that he will
not be shaken because he finds his peace in Christ. I think there's a
lot of dudes, man, I relate to this so deeply. There's a lot of
guys who maybe your job is fine or not
fine. Maybe you think about your marriage, your bills,
finances, your future, your family, your kids. And
when you think about all of that, you kind of zoom out and you kind of look at the whole
context of your life. It doesn't actually bring peace.
And so for many of us, we are scrambling to
find peace in our souls. And maybe you don't even know that's what you're doing.
Yesterday, I was sitting at the kitchen counter with my
son, and I was telling him, he's
really into playing these games with his friends online, which, dude,
as I have a 12-year-old son, it's really hard. I'm trying to navigate this
world and technology and games and all this stuff. But all his friends like
to play these games. We're letting him have some time to play
these games with his friends. Anyway, that's not the point of this podcast, but
he wants like a cool gaming setup. So all his friends like
have, you know, these monitors and keyboards and mouse
pads and all this dumb stuff. I have so many thoughts about it.
I'm not a gamer. I don't like video games. I have so many thoughts on
it. Most of them are not good. Anyway, my
son has kind of an entrepreneurial spirit. He'll go out and
he'll just go hit the neighborhood and knock cold call or
cold knock on everybody's door and just start washing cars to make money or whatever.
And I was telling him, like, son, there's a lot of qualities in your own life that
you got from me. Some of them are really great, I think.
I think God gave me qualities that I've passed down to you that I
think are going to be helpful for you in life. And I said, there are other qualities in
you that I gave you that I think are actually going to really
be hurtful to you. And I'll process those with you and help you try to figure those out.
But I think there are some very real things that I see in you that I
also have. that I'm convinced might cause
you to be tripped up or will hurt you in some ways
in life. So anyway, he's sitting there on the kitchen counter and he's going
through all these things that he wants for his gaming
setup. And so he's telling me, he's showing me on Amazon, look
at this keyboard, look at this keyboard, look at this keyboard. And I told him, I said, dude,
there's nothing wrong with your current setup. Tell me how, if
you got that particular keyboard, it's gonna make your life any
better. And he's like, you know, it won't. I don't think it's going
to make my life better. I just really want it. And I said, son, I know that
feeling. I know that feeling of what it's like to see, like, I
want this and I'm convinced if I got this thing, my
life will feel better or I'll be a little bit more satisfied or
complete. And I said, The reality is you'll get
that and your soul won't feel any more satisfied. It
won't feel any more rested. And I know that feeling because I've done it
a million times in my life. I've convinced myself that there was someone or
something or some number in a bank account or whatever it is, that
if I had it, finally, I would feel rest
in my soul. Now, most of the time, 99% of the time, I
am never articulating that so clearly. It's these
subconscious pools in my spirit that really
lead me to the idea that if I had something, my soul would be satisfied. Again,
I'm not saying those words, but my actions are
living that out, that principle out, that something in my soul is
not at peace and it's longing to find peace. Now, my son is
looking at video gaming. keyboards. As a
12 year old, he's not going to say, my soul doesn't feel rested. And
so let me try to find some gaming keyboard that would make my soul feel
rested. He's certainly not putting that kind of language to it. But
I was trying to help him tie those dots that I'd say, I wonder if
there's something subconsciously in you, something deep within you that is convinced that
if you have something, your soul will feel a little bit more satisfied.
And I think there are a lot of guys, the reason I'm telling you that, I think there are a lot of
guys like that. Like you may be, look at your life kind
of from, like I said, zoom out and look from afar, and
you may not know the reason you're doing the things you're
doing. But I wonder if for many of us, we can't relate
to that psalmist in Psalm 62, my soul, or he
says, listen to what he said, truly my soul finds rest
in God. And I guess for you, what would it look like if you confessed
that and really believed it, that truly your soul
would find rest in God? How would your life be different? How would
it change? How would your behavior change? And I guess
if you look at some of the patterns of your life right now, I
wonder if you could ask yourself the question, how many of these patterns or
these behaviors or the things that I'm doing is a direct result
of my soul not feeling rest? Kind of like sitting on
that resort or that beach or whatever, and there's just something, regardless
of how nice things are or appear to be, there's
something in you that's not truly at rest. I think there
are a lot of men a lot of men whose
souls are not really at rest and
you are striving at work or in a hobby or
in some kind of addiction or I mean it can be healthy
quote-unquote healthy ways or unhealthy ways maybe it's just like
you you're a workaholic and everyone admires you because you're a really hard
worker but something in you you're actually driven by your
soul isn't satisfied it's not finding rest in the Lord And
so I think a healthy man is one who
actually has a deep sense of peace. His
soul is well rested. And like
the psalmist says, he will never be shaken, like regardless of a
political year or a job situation or even
a marriage situation or relational situation, what
your kids do or don't do, how they behave or don't behave, regardless
of all the things happening around you, your soul is anchored
and it truly finds rest. That's the
marker or a key marker of a healthy man. And
we have met these men sometimes, but in the midst of chaos,
whatever the chaos may be, again, whether that's relational or in the world
or whatever, their soul just seems like they have a deep sense
of rest. There's this guy named Blaise Pascal.
He was a 17th century French philosopher and mathematician.
He has this quote that says, all of humanity's problems stem
from man's inability to sit quietly in
a room alone. Let me say that to you again. All
of humanity's problems stem from man's inability
to sit quietly in a room alone. Think
about that for a second. Can I put you in
a room by yourself? And if I did, how
would you respond? Blaise Pascal, the 17th
century French philosopher and mathematician would say, all
of our problems, all of your problems in life are stemming from now.
I don't know if I completely agree with that from a theological perspective, but
I think there is a bunch of truth buried in that statement. That
if I sat you in a room alone, how would you do? What would
come to mind? Would you be able to handle what would come to mind? I guess the question that it begs
itself is why? Why can't a man sit quietly in
a room alone with his own thoughts? And I think the
reason is, maybe, potentially, has to
do with what St. Augustine said, which is, you have made us
for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until
it finds rest in you. And I wonder if we can't
sit in a room alone because our hearts would be restless. It
would bring up for us, it would cause us to be face to
face with our own desires, our own anxieties,
our own longing for something else that is not
satisfying our soul, our own sin and shortcomings. And
I wonder what it would look like to be a man who could actually
sit quietly in a room alone with your own thoughts.
Let whatever wants to come up, come up. I guess I
just am wondering how much more healthy of a man
would we be? How many of the problems that we're currently facing would go away if
we could be a man who regularly did that and wasn't afraid
to sit in silence because we weren't afraid of the things that were
going to pop up. You're already taking the time to listen to this podcast, which
I greatly appreciate, man. I know that there's a million things you could be listening
to and doing right now. So the fact that you're here, I
just really don't take that lightly. I'm really grateful. But because you're
here, you've already allocated some time to think about this kind
of stuff. I figured we would just use our time to practice. So I'm
not going to make things weird. At least that's not my goal. But
I just thought, dude, for one minute, for one minute, what would
it be like for you just to sit quietly? You might be driving
your car right now or listening at work or mowing a lawn. Maybe
you're walking around the house or around your neighborhood. But what would it
look like for you right now just to sit quietly for one minute? And
ask yourself before you do that, and I'll
jump in here with you, but let's just ask God, Lord,
would you reveal in us the things that we've been trying to push down?
Are there things in us? Show me my heart, Lord. And
if there's any wicked ways in me, show it to me, reveal it to me.
If there's something that I've been pushing down, some kind of fear or anxiety
or sin that needs to be confessed, the things that
I'm longing for that are not of you, whatever it is, God, that's outside of
you, that's displeasing to you, would you just bring it
to my mind right now? And then we'll just let the
Spirit do what the Spirit of God wants to do in the midst of that. So let's
just be quiet for one minute. I know that's so awkward, like
on a podcast, but let's just be quiet for one minute after
we ask God to reveal in us what's going on deep in
our souls. Hopefully
something came to mind. If you're like me, even just, I was trying to
practice that with you. The first thing that came to mind was distractions, all
the things that were fighting for the attention of my head space in
that moment. And then some stuff popped up toward
the end of that minute that kind of, I think my soul
had would probably live to be pushed out. I
think it's good for us as men, if we want to be healthy men, I think it's good for
us to practice these deep and long moments of silence, to
face our own junk and wickedness, our own, the
things that we're prone to chase after in our brains. the
fears that we have, the anxieties that we have about our future, about our
relationships, about work, finances, all this stuff, for
the sake of being a healthy man who's at peace. So that we can say, as
the psalmist said, truly my soul finds rest in God. My salvation comes
from Him. He is the rock. and my salvation, my fortress, the
protection, my safe space in the midst of
the chaotic, which dude, we all have chaos. If
you're married, you have chaos. If you have kids, you have chaos. If you have a job, you
have chaos. If you're living in the world, you have chaos all
around you. All of those things individually are chaotic. And
then you add them all up and things are like super chaotic. And so we
need safe spaces. And I don't mean that like in a hippy dippy, I
just need my safe space. I mean like, I need my soul to
be anchored somewhere where it's not gonna get tossed around. And
so God is saying, I think in the scriptures, I will be your resting
place. I will be the one that will give your soul rest. Jesus
said that truly, come to me all you who are weary and
I will give you rest. And so we need this as
men who want to be healthy. We need a space in our
souls that will find rest and peace. Fortress
that cannot be shaken. And so if we want to be healthy men, I think healthy
men are men who are well rested in their
souls. Does your soul have rest?
If there was something that popped up in your mind that is giving your soul unrest, confess
it. Confess it to God. If you've got a group of buddies, confess
it to them. Maybe even, this is hopefully helpful for you
if you have a small group, but maybe just like tell your buddies like,
man, I'm trying to practice quiet and solitude. I
want to be a man who can sit alone in a quiet room with
my own thoughts. And when I do though, this is the thing that
keeps popping up. And so I just want to confess that to you. I want to get it out
of the darkness of my brain and I want to confess it to you. Start by
confessing to God, confess to some brothers, but let's get the things
out of the darkness. Because dude, what would it be like to
be a man who faces all that stuff in your head constantly? To
get it out there, to confess to God, to not suppress it with social
media, with porn, with a drink, more alcohol. TV,
news, Twitter, whatever the thing is, more work, the
football, fantasy football, all the things that you're just trying to suppress. I
just really don't want to deal with that. I don't want to deal with the silence. I don't want to deal with the sense. What
if you took all of that numbing stuff away and
you just sat in the silence constantly, like daily for
10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes a day, and
you just sat there and you dealt with it. Then when the stuff of
the world hits the fan, in your relationships, in
your marriage, in your parenting, in that work, that's
territory you've already been to. You've already been there in your head. You've already
worked that out with the Holy Spirit and with the Lord. You've confessed that to
God. You've worked that out with some buddies. You're like constantly practicing
just being silent and not being afraid of whatever the Spirit of God wants
to bring up, you let him bring up daily and
then now you get into the real world with all the situations and
you can have these hard conversations. You can face the
boss, you can have a hard conversation with your wife and
you're more patient with your kids. This is a guy who has found
fortress, who has found salvation, whose soul found rest
in God because he's able to sit in his own thoughts. He's
not always trying to numb out because a guy who always numbs out when
stuff hits the fan freaks out. And he's a guy that like can't
handle it because he's never, he hasn't been there in his own mind. And now I'm certainly not
able to deal this publicly with you, my wife, with you, my
kids, with you, my friends. Like I'm not able to deal with any of this stuff because I
haven't even worked it out in my own soul versus a healthy man
who has dealt with all this stuff in his own soul. And dude, now when
you talk about it, it's like, yeah, I've been, I've been here before. Hey guys, before we
continue our conversation about what it looks like to be a healthy man who is
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you can get started today. I've been here mentally, spiritually
before. I've had these conversations with myself. I've dealt with
the stuff. I haven't numbed it out. I'm a healthy man who's dealt
with the silence, who sat quietly in my own thoughts. I've
wrestled with the Lord in the quiet places, and here I
am. I'm ready to deal with whatever the world wants to throw at
me. as kind of a PS as we wrap up this part
of our conversation today. This is one of the things, my son is 12. He's
about to turn 13 in four months. As he turns 13, I
will be starting a years-long process of
a rite of passage. He knows this. We've been talking about this for years. As
he enters 13, he is now taking his first steps onto
the bridge of manhood, meaning the rite of passage is the bridge that
he will go over. And by the time he gets to the other end
of that bridge, he will be confident. I am a man. I know what
it takes to be a man. I can clearly define what a man is. And
I am a man. I'm going out into the world. I'm being sent off. from my
family to represent my personal family and the family of God into
the world. And I know what that means. I know who I am. So this
is, he's about to start this rite of passage process. And
one of the things I've already talked to him about this. One of the things that we will practice as
men, as he's starting his journey is sitting in silence. And
I told him, dude, you never sit in silence. You don't know what it's like to, you got screens
and TV and YouTube and games and friends, and you have so much
going on, but we're going to practice just being able to sit as
a man with your own thoughts. Wrestle through some
stuff. Have some thoughts on what you think about your life, about
your sin, about the world, about your friends. You know, be able to
be a man who sits in the quiet places because that's so much
of where the work, the soul work is done in the
quiet places. And if you are not sitting in quiet places,
dude, you're not doing soul work. And so this is
something that I'm going to start in short like 10 minute increments and we will work
up until the point where he crosses over into
manhood where he will go into long, I haven't decided what it is, what
the time period is, but it will be a long stint of silence where
he knows how to sit in his own thoughts. And so that's my encouragement to you. as
a man is to think through how can you
sit in silence as a man, to wrestle with your own stuff, to
wage war against your soul and all
the demons and all the principalities and all the things that are going on,
all the flesh, everything that's going to pull you away from Jesus. How
can you just sit in it, man, not run through it? If
the path to peace is silence, you
have to walk through it. I know I'm going
on a little bit ADD. One of my two-year-olds like favorite song right now
is going on a bear hunt, going on a bear hunt. It's a terribly
annoying song, but one of the lines that you can't, they come up to some
body of water. We can't go over it. We can't go around it. We
can't go under it, we gotta go through it. And the path to
peace is silence. I
truly believe that. It's silence, it's solitude, it's being able to
sit in your own thoughts. I think this is one of the very biggest
lost things in our culture is to be able to sit in silence and
solitude, to deal with what's going on in our soul and
not numb it. And you can't go around it, you
can't go over it. You want peace, there's no shortcuts. If
you want peace, you gotta sit in silence. You gotta learn
to deal with what's going on deep within your soul, so that when you
get into the real world, you come out as a man of
peace, who's not shaken, who stands on the rock in
salvation. He has a fortress for his soul. That's
where I want to start with us as men is to be men who
are able to sit in silence. I want to talk about sleep as
we just wrap up. I just want to spend like, you know, five minutes talking about
sleep real quick. But before we do want to share a really cool opportunity with
you. All
right, let's just wrap up our time together by talking about sleep, like
physical rest for your soul. And you might be thinking like, dude, how
is this helping me as a spiritual leader of my home at all? God
cares about rest. He talks about rest in the very first pages of scripture. On
the seventh day, God rested. God wasn't like tired. And
yet there was this sitting in the work that he had done.
And then he tells us, he tells his people to be
people who rest. to take that commandment seriously, to not,
again, it's not just always that we're tired, it's just sitting in the work that God's
already done. One time we were Sabbathing as a family and
my son asked me, how will we get any money to take care of, if we don't
work, if Daddy, if you don't work today, how will we get any money to make
sure we have food and a place to our house, keep our house? And
I said, we rest to let us remember that God is our provider. We're
physically resting to just remember, Daddy doesn't sustain this
family, God does. And it's a physical, it's a discipline,
it's a spiritual discipline where we remember there is a God who
takes care of us. And so we don't always have to hustle and work, like
we can just rest. And part of that rest is soul rest,
which is why I talked about sitting in peace at the beginning of this episode. And
part of that rest is actual physical rest. God
cares about rest. Now there's this verse in Psalm 127 that says
this, In vain you rise early and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat, for he grants sleep
to those he loves. Now, if
you're listening to this, you are listening to the Dad Tired podcast
and you're like, dude, okay, God must not love me because I
am tired. Listen, I've gone through four babies. I've
got four kids. I know what it's like to go through the newborn stages and
the toddler stages and it is exhausting. absolutely
physically exhausting and this does not
mean that God doesn't love you just means you're in a season right now where
sleep is hard to come by but clearly sleep
is important because God is actually equating sleep to
those he loves like I love you and I'm gonna let you sleep well even
in Mark chapter 6 verse 31, Jesus is talking to his
disciples and he says, then because so many people were
coming and going that they did not have a chance to eat. So the
scripture, Mark is talking about how Jesus is with his disciples. So
many people are essentially coming up to them, bothering them for
lack of better words, that they couldn't even eat. The disciples and Jesus couldn't even eat.
So Jesus said to them, come with me by yourselves to a
quiet place and get some rest. Jesus,
God of the universe, walking around in flesh and blood says, let's get
some rest. And so Jesus cares about rest. Listen, I
remember when I was in the thick of infant season
and we were not sleeping at all. And you just are, dude, you're
like, you're trying to maintain, you're just trying to survive. And
I remember the first night, I can't remember what baby it was, but there
was, you know, we're trying to sleep and it's exhausting. You don't get a single few
hours of sleep at any given time. And I remember the first night the
baby slept, like, I don't remember what it was like five hours in
a row. And I woke up feeling quite literally like
a different man. I got stuff done that day. And that's me, dude. I'm the dad.
You know, like my wife's up breastfeeding. She's doing her thing, which is
way more intense than whatever I'm doing at night. And, but I just
remember we slept for like a good chunk of time and I woke up
and just felt like I am a whole new man I can take on the
world. Sleep is, they've done so many studies on sleep. Did
you know the longest anybody's ever stayed up? It was a 17 year old, the longest
he ever stayed up. He was doing it for like a science fair project or
something. I think this was in the sixties. He stayed up for 11 days
straight, and they studied him, and they've studied other people who
try to stay up. That's crazy, by the way. Like, that's insane. But
they've studied, they've done all kinds of scientific research on this,
and you're not meant to stay up that late. Like, God quite literally wired
our bodies that if we go too long without sleep, first we go
crazy, and then we die. But they've done this research, and
bro, like, you don't sleep, your brain starts going to weird
places. Hallucinating, you can't make good decisions.
There was one study that talked about you start making up false memories.
Like you can't remember what's true, what's not true. Some things your brain starts
feeding you and you just believe are true. I'm telling you all this because some
of you guys are experiencing like very real relational work,
life, hard stuff. And don't dismiss the fact
that you could quite literally just be physically tired. I'm
like chuckling through that because it sounds so simple, but it's also, bro,
like God wired our bodies in such a way that you need
sleep. I've been taking, since the start of the new year, I've been taking
my sleep hygiene super serious. I've been trying to
like, this is a part of me that I want, I want to be a healthy man. I want my soul to
feel rested and I want my body to feel rested. I
personally think this is the number one physical thing that
I can do to make myself feel healthier. I'm gonna talk about
like physical health and stuff in later episodes, but like
where I start when I feel just out of whack is physical sleep.
What am I sleeping like? So let me just give you a couple of things. This is not new
information, you can Google this, but since we're here and we're talking about it, let me just
throw some things at you that should help you start to get
some better sleep. Number one, they say the number one thing to do in
order to start sleeping better is not have kids. I'm kidding,
that's not the... The number one thing to do is
create a regular sleep wake cycle. Meaning
just like you do with your kids, like maybe you have a bedtime routine with your
kids. They take a bath, you read them stories, start to turn off the lights. You
go through this whole routine for my two year old daughter. I hold her. I sing
this song to her. I lay her down. This was when she was back in her crib a
couple of months ago. She's now sleeping in a big girl bed. But
we had this whole routine of like bath story song
while I rock her layer down. They say that like, for some
reason, we just get rid of these sleep routines as adults. Cause we think we
don't need them. Your body loves routines and habits. And
so as much as you can do the same kind of routine for yourself,
again, you don't need to like. Rock yourself to sleep and
sing yourself a song. Although if that helps, that helps go ahead and go for it, but have
some kind of routine. So for us, I actually got these smart light
bulbs. They're cheap. They were cheap on Amazon. I got them for our room and I
set them on a timer so that as the sun is going down,
the lights are actually dimming themselves. And that's releasing melatonin in
our brain is starting to let me know that night is coming. It's
time for sleep. I'm purposely turning down all the lights in
my house. That's one of the routines. I stopped looking at technology
and screens, especially phones. Phones actually give
you a different light. There's a different kind of light, a blue light coming
from computers and phones versus like your TV. It's
not good to watch TV before you sleep, but it's worse to
watch your phone or be on a computer, especially your phone. So
just start eliminating technology about an hour to two hours before
you go to sleep. Start dimming the lights. A hot shower is actually really
good before bed. There's all kinds of like, I'm trying to
speed this up, but there's all kinds of research about that. I open up the
windows, especially when it's cold. Like last night I was freezing.
It was so cold that I opened up the windows. I got the room super cold, took
a hot shower. The lights were going down. You stop looking at technology. Maybe
you read a book. You spend some time in conversation with your spouse. spouse, but
you're winding down your brain and the key here is that you do
that same thing every single night. Rhythm, your body,
the way that God has wired us is that we actually love cycles. We love rhythm.
So try to go to bed at the same time every night and
wake up at the same time every morning. Get yourself on some kind
of rhythm. If you feel like you're not sleeping well, it's probably because the
first step is because you probably are out of rhythm. Make
sure that you go to bed at the same time. Again, I know kids throw all
kinds of loops into this, but try to get yourself in bed at the same time
and awake at the same time. Create a sleep time routine. I
gave you a lot of these things, room temperature, get the lights down and
remove electronics. These are just some ways that
will help you start to get better sleep. Alcohol, you might,
you know, you can have all kinds of, I know you guys denominationally are
probably all over the spectrum on alcohol and sin and all
that stuff. It's not like you might think a glass of wine or a beer helps
you sleep. It actually, research shows that it does not. It might help you
go to sleep faster, but it does not help you get actually good deep sleep.
And so, You don't want to do that. If you have a watch, a smartwatch, a lot of
them will have trackers on it. I've been tracking my sleep every night to help
me know my sleep patterns. Again, I'm just taking sleep hygiene very
seriously because I want to be a healthy man.
I want to be a man who wakes up well rested because I
know when I'm well rested, I love my wife better. I'm more patient. I
am better as a father with my kids. I have more energy and
mental stamina to study the word of God and
to engage in deep conversations. I'm not so short and
irritable and groggy all the time. I want to sleep well so
that I can be the man that God has called me to be. And full
circle here, I think the greatest way to get the
deepest sleep is to know that your soul is at peace. If your soul is
not at peace, what we were talking about at the beginning of this episode, you
will have a hard time sleeping well. You will wake up with anxiety.
You will not get consistent body rest if
your soul is not at rest. And so first to be
a healthy man, you've got to have soul peace, soul
rest, deal with the hard stuff in the quiet places. And
then once you start to do that, develop good sleep hygiene
routines so that your body gets rest. at the end of all of
this we want to be healthy men and healthy men are well rested.