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You’re tired.
Not just physically; though yeah, that too.
You’re tired in your bones. In your soul.
Trying to be a steady husband, an intentional dad, a man of God… but deep down, you feel like you’re falling short. Like you’re carrying more than you know how to hold.
Dad Tired is a podcast for men who are ready to stop pretending and start healing.
Not with self-help tips or religious platitudes, but by anchoring their lives in something (and Someone) stronger.
Hosted by Jerrad Lopes, a husband, dad of four, and fellow struggler, this show is a weekly invitation to find rest for your soul, clarity for your calling, and the courage to lead your family well.
Through honest stories, biblical truth, and deep conversations you’ll be reminded:
You’re not alone. You’re not too far gone. And the man you want to be is only found in Jesus.
This isn’t about trying harder.
It’s about coming home.
Hey guys. Welcome back to the Dad Tired podcast. Glad that you're here with us today. If you're looking to step up your game as the spiritual leader of your home, one of the easiest ways to do that is to memorize scripture as a family. And one of the easiest ways to memorize scripture as a family is to use Dwell.
I use Dwell My Family. It has been a huge game changer in the ability to memorize scripture quickly and to have a ton of fun while doing it. If you go to dwell differently.com, you'll find tangible tools to help you as a family. Memorize and meditate on the scriptures together. Dwell differently, equips families with the tools they need to be successful and consistent with their scripture Memorization.
You can pick from temporary tattoos or vinyl stickers. Both are great. My kids love the temporary tattoos. They put them on during the week. We memorize scripture together as a family. You'll see even your little ones. Start to memorize scripture really, really easily. If you go to dwell differently.com and use the promo code Dad Tired, you're gonna get your first month free or 10% discount on a membership for a full year.
Again, go to dwell differently.com. Use the promo code Dad tired. You'll get your first month free or 10% discount on a membership for a full year.
I remember when the, uh, iPod came out for the first time I was in high school, which I guess dates me a little bit, but this. Girl walked in, her name was Stephanie and she had just come from the store and got her hand on an iPod, and so she's like scrolling through all of her music. It was such like a, just a revolutionary concept that we had, you know, big CD cases full of like, you know, I was like one of the like West Coast Warped tour, her kids who had like newfound glory and taking back Sunday and death cab for cutie and dashboard confessional.
Right. I was, I just had way too many emotions I guess, but. She like comes in and she shows me that her whole library of music is on this little iPod, and we were just flabbergasted, right? It, it seemed like sorcery or magic or witchcraft, and we just weren't sure which. And as she's kinda, she's, you know, moving her finger on this wheel, it's scrolling down through hundreds of artists.
And now obviously we have every song ever written at our fingertips with just a stroke of the pen of a, of an iPhone screen. But at the time. I remember thinking to myself, what are we gonna do in the future with all of the time that we save from where technology's bringing us? And something really interesting, I feel like has happened over the past 10, 15, 20 years in kinda the more modern technological boom with simplicity, like, you know, AI and smartphones and cameras and programs that do it for you.
And it's wild. But here's the thing that's really interesting. In the same amount of time that these. Resources. Were supposed to promise us more freedom, more ability to enjoy ourselves. In the past 20 years, the suicide rate among people, among young people has skyrocketed more than 80% and anxiety rates are at an all time high and depression rates are at an all time high in self harm.
Suicidal ideation are at an all time high and it seems like the more that we indulge in the promises of technology and those things, the worse our mental health is getting. I was just reading a a survey earlier this week, that one in four. Pastors or one in four church workers struggle with anxiety on a regular basis that the overwhelming majority, about 80% of all pastors and church workers are confronted by two or more people a year that are struggling with depression or suicidal thoughts.
And it's just kind of booming and it's, there's a danger that we have, and here's kind of what we wanna talk about today, especially as dads. We become the gatekeepers for the things that our family believes. We become the gatekeepers for what our kids are taught, we believe become gatekeepers for what we intake.
We always wanna be looking at what are the things that we believe that have kind of seeped into our belief system from culture. And, and one that I wanna talk about today is the idea of, of like stress and anxiety. And what are things in our culture that we have kind of adopted or that we have said are able to come into our stream of consciousness in terms of, of worry and stress and anxiety.
And it, it's so prevalent in our world that we, in the church and as believers, we've kind of accepted it as just part of our norm. And yet when you open up the text, Jesus has really strong feelings about the topic. And what he says can almost sound, I guess, in a way. Naive or, or maybe even immature, like it, it's a weird position to be in when you're telling the God of the universe that he's naive because he knows everything and stuff, but right, like if you read Philippians four, verse six and seven, do not be anxious about anything, but in everything through prayer and petition with Thanksgiving, your hearts present, your request to God, and then the peace that passes all understanding will be with you will be yours in Christ Jesus.
That first section of the first part right there, right? Do not be anxious about anything. I feel like whenever I read that, I always think of 38 reasons I have to be anxious, right? Like when Jesus says, do not be anxious about anything, I immediately want to go, well, you don't know my life. Well, you don't know what I'm going through.
You don't know this situation, right? Like, and I know you guys know my story, but I lost my wife to suicide a couple years. Back at this point, almost two years ago at this point. And so sometimes I can take those parts of scripture and go, he's talking to somebody else because I need to be anxious. I've got, you know, a family to feed and a life to live, and what do I do with my job and future and career and all these things, and I.
So we're not careful. We take the very clear mandates of scripture or the very clear prohibitions of scripture and we fuzzy 'em up on purpose. We muck 'em up a little bit because it's much easier to do that than it is to follow or to investigate, or to dive into, wait, what? Allen? How am I supposed to do that?
How am I supposed to not be anxious about anything? I've been really interested in this idea lately that I kinda wanna walk with you guys through and. I'll give you an example of one first before I jump into what I actually wanna talk about. But there are progressions it seems in scripture, that, that God gives us, um, that he wants us to follow kind of in like order.
I'll give you one of those right now. The first one that I wanna talk about is the idea of grace, obedience, blessing. Think of God, GOB, that God gives us grace. He wants us to respond with obedience, and then he promises his blessing. Um, so when you think about Exodus chapter 20, when God gives the 10 Commandments, he doesn't start with, y'all better do all this stuff or else, right?
The beginning of that section of Exodus 20 actually starts with grace, that it moves to obedience and then we promised blessing. The grace that begins the 10 Commandments is God's saying, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. So God starts by saying, without me understand and my goodness, and my mercy, and my faithfulness, and my power, and my justice and my wrath on the Egyptians, if it wasn't for my grace poured out for you, we wouldn't be able to have this conversation.
So grace is the beginning. Grace feeds the obedience, and then the obedience is the 10 Commandments, right? Thou shall have no other gods before me. Thou shall what? Whatever. Whatever way you've memorized that and whatever. Denomination you're from, and then there's a blessing. I will be your God and you will be my people, grace, obedience, blessing, and, and so it is with anything in our life, right?
When you give your kids a command, the command actually isn't the beginning of it. The, the command begins with grace. It begins with you loving them enough to give them godly correction. It begins with. The resources to have a kid in the first place. The miracle of life that was given to us when we, when we became dads, that's grace.
Grace begins everything. And then we say obedience is next. And then obedience if followed leads the blessing, right? Even in the 10 Commandments. Honor your father and mother in the Lord for this is right and but then there's also a promise attached to it that it may go well with you and you may live long on the Earth, grace.
Obedience, blessing. Um, and here's one that I wanna talk about today. When it comes to anxiety, stress, and worry, this progression of the will, the mind, the will, and the affection I. The mind, the will and the affection. I think when you ask scripture, I get asked this a lot by people where they'll say, man, you know, I'll, I'll use the idea of like giving or tithing or generosity in the church.
They'll go, man, I just, I don't know. God loves a cheerful giver and I'm just not really cheerful right now. And so what they do then is they neglect. Obedience and they neglect that response because they don't feel like it. Or I'll counsel couples a lot and it's typically the wife who will say, well, I'll start respecting him when he starts earning it, or I'll respect him when he deserves it.
Not recognizing that respect in scripture is a biblical mandate that wives need to give to their husbands, right? Husbands, love your wives as Christ. Love the church and wives. Respect your husbands and honor your husbands for this is right. And we sometimes as ladies, we, meaning not me, but as lady kind, we can look and go, well, yes, you need to give me love unconditionally and without prejudice, but I will give you respect when you've earned it.
And when I feel like. Or when I feel like you've earned it. So we get some things backwards. And then when you challenge someone with scriptures, they might say, well, yeah, I mean, I'll do that, but I just don't really feel good about it, or I don't really have a peace about it. And sometimes we forget the way that that scripture tends to talk to us about our response, about the way that we are in control of our lives through the power of the Holy Spirit.
And that's through this progression. The mind affects the will. The will affects the affections. But everything starts with a mind. So really when it comes to anything, when it comes to stress and worry and anxiety and depression and all these things, it starts by training our brain to think differently.
I. You're not just gonna wake up one day and want to give away your hard earned money to your local church. You're not gonna wake up one day and after feeling disrespected or unloved, respond in kind to your spouse. It's just not gonna happen. You're not gonna wake up one day and anger is gonna be gone because you don't feel like getting angry anymore.
That's not the way that it works. It begins with your mind. This is what scripture says. Romans chapter 12, one and two. Therefore. Therefore brothers and sisters in view of God's mercy. So again, there's grace in view of God's mercy 'cause of what he's done for us. Therefore, brothers, in view of God's mercy, offer yourselves as living sacrifices to the Lord holy and pleasing.
I. This is your spiritual act of worship, and then it says, do not be conformed any longer to the patterns of this world. Think about that idea of patterns. What are the patterns of this world? Well, the patterns of this world are affections will mind, right? I'll do what I feel like doing. I. And if it feels good enough, I'll keep doing it.
And then eventually I might change my mind on whether or not this is a good thing. So I'm led by my affections. I'll start respecting, or I'll start loving my wife properly when I find it to be utilitarian, right when it starts to work for me or when I really feel like it or, or maybe I see her do something worthy of love.
So I'll wait until my affections prompt me. And then I'll do that thing my will, and then I'll do it right then. I'll respect her. I'll love her. I'll give, I'll be charitable. I'll do these things. And if that works, like if it gives value to me, if it's effective, if it pays back, if it's a great investment, then I might change my mind that actually it's good to love your wife.
And the mind becomes the third party in the decisions that we make. And in scripture, just it turns everything backwards. That's why the Galatians five says that the heart wants contrary to the spirit of God, and the spirit of God wants contrary to the heart and the flesh. We're called to do something different.
And that's why this is so stinking difficult. And I can tell you firsthand, I want to do what I want to do. And the Bible seemed to tell me that I need to do what I don't want to do before I'm ever gonna do what I want to do. This is what Paul says in Romans chapter seven. There's stuff that I want to do that I don't do, and then there's stuff that I don't wanna do, and that's what I find myself doing.
And Paul finishes by saying, who can rescue me from this body of death? Well, the answer is we have to break that cycle. That cycle of thinking, I'm gonna wait for myself to want to play with the kids before I play with the kids. I'm gonna wait until I feel really energized to get my butt off the couch.
I'm gonna wait. And these are things I'm telling you. This is my personal experience. This is getting home and having every justification after working a long day. And like right now at my church, I'm the senior pastor or some of the teaching voice and running staff. And then on top of that, I am essentially our high school pastor right now, so I'm going back to church at night and teaching those things.
And so I get home after all that and I feel like I've justified my tap out. You know, I've justified my ability to get home and go, I don't really need to engage. My mentor gave me really good advice one time, and it was when you pull in the driveway, get two hats in your car. And grab your work hat and take it off, and then put on your fun dad hat and then grab your rear view mirror and point it at your own eyeballs and say, Chris, you're a selfish son of a gun.
You do what you want. You think that you can go in this house right now and lounge out and just schmooze for the rest of the night, and guess what? The world says you've earned it, but no one voted on you having kids. You had these kids. They're your responsibility. They're God's children. It is your responsibility to bring them up in the Lord and in faith.
So get your butt in there and have some fun with your kids. You go be the captain of fun. That's what I want you to be. I have to have that conversation with myself. But see, it starts with my mind. It starts by saying, this is not your time to. Check out. Then when I get in the door, I go, well, if it's not my time to check out, then I better engage.
And then I'm wrestling, and then I'm fighting and stuff. And then it almost always happens the same way after getting on the ground and wrestling with the kids or whatever it is, or chasing my daughter around the house on, on all fours, as she runs away yelling and I'm tickling her and. I almost always, it's like the God's faithfulness to bring that blessing or to bring that affection at the end of it, the mind affects the will.
The will affects the affections, and by the end, I'm so glad always that I did it because I'm just enjoying myself and I'm enjoying my kids and it's so fruitful and. It's such a beautiful moment when that happens at Dat Tired. We have lots of resources to help equip you to be the spiritual leader of your home, but by far the most helpful thing that we offer is what's called our Family Leadership program.
Our team will come alongside of you over the next 30 days and beyond to help you really lean into what it looks like to be the spiritual leader of your home. Everything from family devotions to practicing Sabbath. So what it looks like to have the gospel infiltrate your marriage, all kinds of stuff.
And we're gonna do it alongside of you. Go to dad tower.com, click the family leadership tab, and you'll be able to jump right in.
But if you don't start with your mind, if you just wait or. If you just think that you're gonna have the willpower all the time to do that, it's probably gonna fail you sooner or later. So the scripture says, therefore, brothers and sisters in view of God's mercy offer your body's living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God.
This is your spiritual act of worship. And then it, it starts by telling us about the mind. Do not be conformed any longer to the patterns of this world, the patterns being I'll do what I want. If it's effective, I'll repeat that behavior and then I'll change my mind that this is a good thing to do. Don't be conformed to that pattern any longer that a pattern's not gonna serve you.
It's not gonna make your marriage better. It's not gonna make your parenting better. It's not gonna make your friendships better. A desire or affection, followed by behavior, followed by mind shift is going to serve you very poorly in life. Conversely, the Bible says so don't be conformed to that pattern.
It's not gonna work. It doesn't work. It's ineffective, and it will leave you in a place where you never do anything because your affections are fickle. And they are here today and gone tomorrow, and they shift with the temperature of the room. They shift with everything, whether we've got a good meal or whether or not our favorite sports team won.
So your affection should not be the driver of your behavior or attitude. I. But be transformed by the renewing of your mind. That's what the scripture says. The renewing of your mind is where it's predicated on what idea if. If you want to be a living sacrifice for Jesus, renew your mind first. That is the word we get for repent metanoia to change your mind by the renewing of your mind.
Then it says. You don't wanna mold yourself to this world, but you wanna be transformed or renew in your mind, then you'll be able to attest and approve what God's will is His good, perfect and pleasing will. And I love how His will. We change our mind. We then seek his will, we perform his will, and then it says it's gonna be pleasant for us, that we're gonna enjoy it, that we're gonna have a good time following his will.
But it begins with our mind. So when it comes to worry, what I have to do with myself is, is I can't say it's not enough. To say, okay, I'm. I dunno if you've ever had a panic attack before, but it's really this feeling where you just feel like your world is out of control, that everything's against you. And when it happens to me, it's like my blood temperature rises and nothing's going right.
I, I can't get, it's what Corinthians says, take every thought captive for the sake of Christ. It's like I can't captivate my thoughts. And so what I end up doing is I go like, stop wearing, stop wearing, stop wearing, stop wearing. There's a powerful scripture that I wanna share with you today that just to kind of summate this, just 'cause this is something that's been pervasive in my life and, and maybe in your life, maybe this would be great to share with, um, with your spouse or someone else that's going through something similar.
But what do we do with moments where we feel like we're out of control? What does the Bible want us to do in that moment? And. I love this passage from Luke chapter 12, and I think in it is part of the strategy that Jesus is calling us to have when it comes to moments where we feel worried or desperate or deeply anxious.
You see, without Jesus, the call of secular society is noll the pain, dumb the pain, reject the pain, ignore the pain. And I think maybe even as Christians, it's okay. Don't think about worry. Don't worry about worry. But isn't that the weirdest thing about being a Christian, knowing that worrying is wrong?
When you start to worry, what do you start to worry about? You don't just worry about the thing you're worried about, like, where's this paycheck coming from? How am I gonna make ends meet? How am I gonna get through this fight with my spouse? When you're a Christian and you start to worry about your fight with your spouse, something else creeps into, which is you Knowing that worry is wrong, begin to worry about the idea that you are what?
Worried. And then you compound it because you go, oh no, I'm a bad Christian. 'cause now I'm worried about worrying and what am I gonna do? And, and so Jesus says in this powerful phrase, Luke chapter 12, verses 24, he says, when you're worried, I don't want you to think about not worrying. I want you to consider the ravens.
I want you to think about birds. I want you to think about gross, unclean, defiled, plentiful, dime a dozen. Hers. Jesus says, consider the ravens. The word consider there is to the way that a, an army would approach a wall and see where there was any fracture in it. They would consider the wall for where they were gonna penetrate, or the consider the wall where they were gonna throw their rebus or their catapults.
Consider, consider the ravens. Jesus says they do not sow or reap. They don't have a storehouse or bar, and yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable are you than those birds? This is a really powerful rabbinical literary device that Jesus employs here. It's called Call the Homer. Okay? That's a Hebrew phrase, call the Homer.
It's essentially, it's a way of understanding something. Call the homer literally means from simple to complex or from easy to hard. And it's when we, when we help someone understand the depth of our love for them, or the truth of something hard to understand by demonstrating something much simpler and then appealing to something much more complex or something much easier, and then going to something much harder.
So let's say you have. Your wife says, would you really get up and would you really go to the store and get me some chicken soup right now? Are you serious? Or she might say, honey, would you really let me do this girl's day at this spa? Honey, would you really? And then your response isn't just, oh, sure.
That's okay with me. You use call the Homer, which is when your wife says, would you really go across the street and get chicken noodle soup from you when I'm sick? And your response is, baby, I. I'd go to the moon for you. That's called the Homer. It basically says, if you can recognize that I would willingly go into outer space for you, then you need to understand anything else you ask me to do is gonna be a yes, because I just love you so much.
So it's demonstrating a simple truth, which is. I am so prepared, ready, and willing to go to the store and get chicken noodle soup for you. And the way that I'm gonna help you understand that truth is by letting you know that if you asked me to go to the moon, I would go there willingly. So everything else prior to Moon or potentially even after Moon, is an automatic yes from me.
If I'm willing to do that, then how much more willing am I to go 30 feet across the street if I'm willing to go to the depths of the Congo and get this? Write medicine for you to be healed, then you shouldn't worry about me going across the street to Rite Aid. Everything then before that is underneath that, that protection and that banner of my love for you.
Let's say you've got a kid and they get stung by a bee, and you say, man, I wish that bee had stung me instead of you, because bees can only sting one time, and I really wish I would've taken that bee sting instead of you and your son says you would've taken a bee sting for me, and your response is, son, I would take a bullet for you, which basically means I would die for you.
So if I'm willing to die for you, then. You shouldn't really be shocked about me taking a beasting for you 'cause I would take anything up to the point of death for you. So when you think about my love for you as my child, I want you to think through this term. I will do anything to keep you from harm, which means.
A if harm befalls you, it is either outside of my control or it's a harm that I think is necessary, like whether it be a shot or some type of injection. Or it might be discipline from a teacher or a coach that you need to undergo for your own benefit. But if it's up to me in gratuitous pain, I would take a bullet for you willingly.
So don't question my protection and love for you 'cause I would die for you in a heartbeat. That's called the homer. It's a literary device that rabbis would use to understand God's love in simple things so that we can understand them in complex things. It's to say if, and this is what he's using right now.
Jesus says, think about a raven. I. In their culture, they would've understood ravens a lot better than we do probably. But they were ceremonially unclean birds. They were not capable of being eaten. So they served no real purpose. They were a dime a dozen. They all looked almost exactly the same. And Jesus says, next time you're worried, I want you to think about a raven.
And have you ever seen a raven, Raven pushing a lawnmower or tilling some soil or whatever? And he said, no, you haven't because your father in heaven provides for such as these. How much more that's called the Homer. How much more? If I see every Raven and I know their hunger patterns and I know that I need to provide for them and, and they are taken care of and I provide food from heaven and water on the earth, I.
If I see a raven now think about yourself. You are an image bearing child of the most high God. The, the spirit of God was not breathing into ravens. Jesus didn't come and become raven to down the cross for little raven people. He became human. John chapter one, he sneed. He dwelt among us as his children on the sixth day.
The only relationship he considered very good was the relationship between man and woman. It was mankind. We alone bear the image of God. And so Jesus is saying, look, look at the raven. And if that thing, which doesn't bear my image, which is a dime dozen, which is ceremony unclean, which is gross, which is, it's kinda a rat with wings, if I provide for them and I see them know that that bird is seen, and if that bird is seen.
It doesn't bear my image and it is not one of my children. It is not one something that I died for, and it is not something that I want to spend eternity with. If I will do that for a raven, how much more call the Homer will I love and provide for you? And then he points to some tulips in the field, some daisies, some flowers in the field.
Look at these flowers. They do not spin their own clothes. They don't go to Plato's closet and go thrifting. They don't. Go to a high-end clothing store or shop on Etsy for their next. Set of apparel, and yet not even Solomon and all of his splendor was as beautiful as one of these. So do not worry about your life, what you're going to eat, what you're gonna drink, what you're gonna wear.
I see it. I see you and know that I'm totally and remarkably in control of your life. Do you still wake up? Do you still go to work? Do you still work hard? Do you still make good decisions? Yes, but no. Know this one thing. You are seen like the tulip of the field and like the raven in the brook is you are a seen person.
And if I see them like that, how much more will I see you? You see, without Jesus secular thought, when it comes to worry says take grab a just a meditation, or take a Xanax all the time. You know like when, even when you don't feel like it just, right. And again, I, I think there's a place in Christianity for medicine and for.
SSRIs and all those other things, right? Like, and that's something that I walked through with my wife as she was walking through suicidal ideation, depression, and all those things. I'm a firm believer that sometimes the gift that God gives us is modern medicine. So I'm not trying to make any statement on that, but what I am saying is when our minds just start to race out of control, we can just start to think, oh no, I'm worrying.
And Jesus says, the secularist, the non-Christian has to sit there and go, I should stop worrying because I don't like worrying. But for the Christian. I love the way that one of my favorite sermons ever was taught. It's called the explosive power of a New Affection, and essentially says, when, when Christ calls us to himself, he doesn't just say, remember how you used to love sin?
Don't do that anymore. Remember how you used to love lust? Don't do that anymore. Jesus replaces it with himself. He doesn't just say, don't sin anymore. He says, come follow me. It's the explosive. It's the throwing out power of loving something new. It's the ability of our mind to get rid of something by replacing it with something different.
So when we worry, Jesus doesn't say, just stop worrying. He says, I want you to think about something very carefully and very succinctly, and with laser-focused vision. Don't just think to yourself, I better stop worrying. I want you to think about ravens, think about tulips, think about the daisies, think about ravens.
And then I want you to smile with that little grin on your face that says, look at that bird. That bird is a dime a dozen. It doesn't really even have a home, and it only lives for a year. I don't know how long birds live, but not super long. And yet, look at it. Does it look worried to you? Is it stressed about what's gonna, and now think about the way that I love you.
A, an image bearer, a child of the most high God, consider the ravens. Take a deep breath. Next time you're in worry or stress or anxiety. We look at the what Jesus said, and we don't wanna look at him as naive. He's made the human condition, he's made the brain and the mental processes, and he says, if you want a fighting shot.
Against the stress of your life. Consider the ravens. And when our mind is changed, our affections will follow. After our will has a place in the fight. Grace, obedience, blessing. Mind will affection. Consider the ravens. Hey guys, hope you enjoy today's episode. As a reminder, we have our dad tired annual retreat coming up in September.
We're already halfway full on that, so if you wanna secure a spot, go to dad tired.com, click the annual retreat tab and get signed up today. I love you guys. We'll see you next week.