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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.
We are doing dad tired events all over the country. Sometimes we do these around the world, and we would love to come to your area. If you'd like to host a dad tired event at your church or in your community, go to dad tired.com, click the conferences tab and you can see all the conferences that we're currently doing that we have scheduled.
And you can also get more information on how to host one, whether you want. One at your church or again in your community or you've got a your own event and you're looking for speakers, we would love to come partner with. You can go to dad tired.com and you can get more information about that. You know that at the dad tired ministry here we are all about being the men that God has called us to be and specifically being the husbands and fathers that God has called us to be.
And so I'm always trying to, one, as a ministry, give you resources. We either create ourselves or that we find that we think are really helpful to help you accomplish that mission. Proverbs 22 6 says, train up the child in the way that they should go and they will not depart from it. And so I'm looking for resources that allow us to do that, to train up children in the way that they should go and, and one of my favorite resources is Thrive Family Life.
And they are such a huge. A resource to help give very practical tools to you as a parent to help you train up your children in the way they should go. They've got all kinds of resources, card sets where you can like have really intentional, engaging, fun and deep conversations with your spouse. They've got conversations that you can do around certain holidays and Thanksgiving, Valentine's Day, they've got.
Conversation starters around the dinner table, but they also have one, one of their new ones called Pop and Play, where you essentially will watch a movie as a family, which many of us have these family movie nights. But then after the movie night, you can play this game and it will help your kids think through what they just watched.
From a biblical worldview, there's like these prize cards that your kids can try. They make it very gamified and fun so that your kids actually wanna sit down and do this. And you are having deep, intentional gospel centered conversations based on really, and you can watch any movie and the game can be repeated multiple times.
So it's a really great resource for you, along with all their many other resources that they have. But it will get your kids. Asking questions and answering questions that really dig after their heart, a cultural worldview, and more importantly, like based on what culture's saying, what does the gospel teach us about and gives us a gospel worldview.
So again, I could go on and on. They've got so many great products. But if you go to thrive family life.com. You can see all the products that they have and then use the promo code. Dad tired at checkout, I'll give you 10% off. So again, lots of resources. That game's called pop and play, which I highly recommend, but they've got lots of different ones on there.
Thrive family life.com. Use the promo code, dad tired and you'll get 10% off at checkout. That being said, let's dive into today's episode three.
In the spring and in the fall, I, uh, start a season of traveling a lot for speaking. So we do tons of dads tired conferences all over the country. Um, sometimes we do those around the world. And then other churches and ministries will invite me to come speak at their events. And the, a lot of times in spring fall, most churches don't do things in the summertime because they know families are traveling and whatnot.
So once school starts back up is typically when I end up traveling a ton. And so I'm starting that. I. Season of lots of traveling again, in addition to just the normal dad tired stuff and normal speaking stuff that I would do. I also have started a podcast or started, I've joined a podcast with Ben Roethlisberger and co-hosting his podcast, so, um, going up to Pittsburgh quite often to help record that.
And then we're starting a brand new podcast with K Love on their Access more radio. So I've been working on that. There's just a lot going on personally. And then, you know, once kids start going to school, and for us, we're, we're doing this hybrid thing where we're shuffling kids around. We, we've always homeschooled, but we're doing some hybrid stuff where we take the kids to school a couple times a week.
And so I'm shuffling kids around. I'm on airplanes a lot. I was actually just bragging to Layla, telling her I haven't been sick all year, which is for me. Pretty rare. I've been trying to be more healthy this year, taking care of my body more than I probably ever have, eating the best that I can. And I've been really healthy.
My body hasn't got sick. And then I say that, and of course I caught some like weird cold, just being on airplanes and stuff. So anyway, there's just. You know, bro, like once your school starts, there's just a ton. It feels like everything just becomes a blur. You're just like, what day is it? How in the world is it already the end of the week, like I, I feel like we just got to Monday, and so things get really blurry, but in the middle of those seasons, and for me personally, when I, when I get into like a time where I'm, I'm traveling a lot, I was just telling Layla, like, I feel like I need to be overly intentional, even more intentional about.
The things that matter most to me, meaning her, I told her like, I feel like I need to protect our marriage and just pursue you, and we need to make sure that we're consistent on our dates as much as we can be, and all the little times that we can connect, whether it's a cup of coffee or it's a date night or whatever it is, like we're just making sure that we spend the time that we do have together.
As things get a little bit more chaotic and scattered, we do spend that time together really pursuing each other and, um, connecting with each other's hearts. And I also talked about when I need to do the same with the kids, I need to make sure the relationships in my life are good. I need to make sure my relationship with Jesus, basically things are gonna get chaotic.
So I have to pursue what matters most. And because I don't want things to slip through the cracks, primarily when I say slip through the cracks, I mean. My relationships, the things that I feel like God has called me to. And so I just thought I would like we could tackle that together today. I imagine for you as you've started school for the kids, whether you homeschool or you take them to public school or private school, wherever, like once the fall hits and you kind of ease off of summer and back into fall, like ease is the wrong word because it just feels like it's full throttle, like you're just kind of.
Floating down a real lazy river and then all of a sudden you hit some rapids, like things picked up real quick. And so you probably are feeling that as we hit the fall, if you're a parent, if you're a dad. And so I just wanted to like, I'm feel like I'm personally trying to remind myself right now. What matters most?
What do I need to pursue most during these crazy seasons? And anyway, I wanted to share some thoughts I had with you on that. 'cause I have a feeling that you're probably also feeling that as a busy dad. I was thinking about this and, um, thinking about one, I, I just literally wrote down on a piece of paper like, what has God called me to?
This helps me whenever I feel overwhelmed. My goal is to try to write things down, like get all the chaos out of my brain and onto a piece of paper that has always seemed to help me, whether it's the five or 10 things I need to do today, like if, if it see my brain, it feels like 3 million things to do.
But if I write it down on paper, I'm like, okay, it's like 10 things to do, or it's, it's five things to do, or whatever I need to accomplish today. And it feels much less chaotic in my. On paper than it does in my brain. So I try to do that from a very high level, like 30,000 foot perspective. What are the things that I need to do as a man, not just like my to-do list, take out the trash, send out these emails, record this podcast, whatever.
Not those things, but like what has God called me to do on the macro scale? Like what is it that he's called me to do? And so I just try to write those things out. Another little thing I'll, I'll say here is I notice that I'm deeply impacted by my, like my physical space. So this is like not, I don't think it's spiritual, maybe it's spiritual, but one of the things I like to do is I like to like deep clean something.
My, the space that I'm gonna be in, whether that's my actual office, my bedroom, the house, the garage, which by the way, just real frustrate, frustrates Layla. I've seen memes about this. Like, uh, I'm laughing thinking about it. 'cause the, there's memes on this where they'll say it's something like a wife's like, Hey babe, we've got guests coming over in 20 minutes.
Let's make sure the house is clean and then she finds her husband in the attic like reorganizing the attic or he's up, he's out in the garage like reorganizing the garage. I don't know why we do that. I don't know why that resonates so true for us, but I've done that a million times and my wife's like, Hey, we've got company tomorrow, and for whatever reason I'm like, let's get this closet organized.
Let's pull every single thing out of this closet that we haven't touched in 25 years and let's just organize that thing. I literally did that this morning with my kids' toys. Oh man, I'm so dumb. I don't know why we do that, but I think maybe one of the reasons why is because an a cluttered space leads to a cluttered mind.
That's how I feel like if my office is a mess, if I've got stuff scattered all over the, my desk or my living room's a mess, or the beds, like if I look at clutter, my brain feels even more cluttered, or if my brain feels cluttered. Then I look at cluttered space. I'm like, dude, now it's just like you've thrown gasoline on the fire.
It feels so much more chaotic to me. And so me personally, I don't think everybody's like this. Some, I imagine there's some creative geniuses, some of you guys listening, it's like your workspace or your space is just chaos. And bro, you're cranking out all kinds of stuff. You're getting stuff done. I am not that way.
At all. I have to have a tidy space in order for my brain to get clear. So again, I don't know if that's spiritual. I don't know if that's a dude thing. I don't know what that is. But I like to, when I know I'm gonna get into a real crazy season of life, I actually like to clean stuff and just get things organized.
Go through my email, inbox my desktop, just get things as organized as possible. So everywhere I look doesn't feel as chaotic as things feel in my brain. That was a weird tangent. Anyway, so from a 30,000 foot perspective, I'm trying to see what has God called me to, like re-hit the mission statement, what is it that God has called me to?
And then just try to get laser focused on those things. And I was thinking about that. I was doing that personally, and I was thinking about how Jesus did that. I'm always baffled that Jesus was able to flip the world upside down in 33 years. And what's even crazier is what we know is that he did his real ministry.
Like for three and a half years. That's crazy. He flipped the whole world. The reason I'm talking about him right now on this podcast thousands of years later is because what he accomplished in three and a half years, I. Dude, if you think about that, that is crazy. Thousands of years later, this guy, even if you're listening to this and you just, you saw dad's tired and you probably thought this was just like a normal dad podcast.
You didn't know it was like quote unquote religious and you don't know what you think about Jesus. Maybe he's just like this nice hippie guy and you know, spiritual hippie teacher or whatever. Even if you didn't think that he was God like we do, you still have to admit it's pretty insane. It's insane that one man lived his life and that thousands of years later they've tried to burn every Bible.
They've tried to say that he wasn't real. They try to say the resurrection to have like all kinds of stuff. They've for thousands of years of trying to disprove this guy and the fact that our calendar is shaped around him, our work week is shaped around him. Like everything is shaped around Jesus.
That's pretty crazy. And what's even crazier is he did it all in three and a half years. I got so many joke, dude, my adds kicking in real hard right now. Yeah. So anyway, three and a half years, the guy flipped the whole world upside down. And so one thing that surprises me, one thing that I, I'm intrigued by is all the things that he could have said yes to in that time.
And yet he focused on the things that mattered most. He knew his mission. And he was laser focused on the mission, and because he was laser focused on the mission, he was able to accomplish so much. I mean, yes, he's God, but he was also fully man. Fully man fully. God flips the world on its head upside down, and he did that because he knew what he came to do, and that gave him the ability to say no to things.
Even that felt important. If you think about that, there's that passage in Mark. Where it says that Mark withdrew, or Mark says that Jesus withdrew to pray. This is in Mark 1 35 ish, that Jesus withdrew to pray to be alone. Now, this was coming on the heels of him like doing lots of miracles and crowds are falling him 'cause they're like, dang, I want a miracle too.
I wanna see what this guy's all about. And so they, they're pursuing him and he gets away and you think. He's coming to change the world. This is why you would think he came to do miracles, to prove that he's God, to show off his glory, to do all this stuff. And yet Jesus says, I think it's important that I actually get away and spend some quiet time with the Father.
And so he gets away. He moves away in his physical strength and his tiredness. He gets away, spends some time with the father, and then his disciples come, Simon and, and his, the companions come and they, they go looking for him. And when they find him, they say. Everyone's looking for you. Like, what are you doing?
There's really important things for us to get doing. Jesus. Isn't this the whole mission? Aren't you trying to show off to everybody who you are and what you can do, and the fact that you're God, everyone is looking for you? And Jesus said something so fascinating. He said, let us go somewhere else. So I can preach there also.
And if you just take that into context of what, the point I'm trying to make here is, it's so fascinating that Jesus has a crowd who's excited to hear from him. They wanna see more miracles, they're interested in who he is. And Jesus could have said, yeah, let me just sit for a while. Let's stay a little bit longer and talk to them.
Let's do a few more miracles. But instead Jesus says, let's go somewhere else. And you have to like, just question. You have to wonder what made Jesus sometimes say yes to things and sometimes say no to things and you, it just gotta come back to the fact that he knew what he was trying to, he was laser focused on what he knew he was supposed to do and he knew.
That the mission was, let's go preach the gospel. I need to make disciples. I have things that I that need to get done. I'm laser focused on my mission. And so he says, let's go somewhere else to these nearby villages so I can preach there also. And then he actually ends that passage by saying, this is why I have come.
And again, it was his mission. It was that laser focus that allowed him to say no to something that felt like. Many people would've said yes to. And so I guess what I'm trying to get at for us as men is there are lots of things that we are saying yes to, or maybe we don't know what we should be saying no to because we don't actually know our mission.
We don't actually know the things that we should be called to and being laser focused on. And so that would be my challenge to you as a man who's trying to wrestle after the things of God to be the man that God's called you to be in the midst of. Soccer practice and volleyball and baseball and football and fantasy football that your friends want you to play with are your coworkers and that project that your boss wants you to get done and the extra things that you feel like you need to do for work so that you can get the bills pay and oh, your wife really wants you to date her and just pursue her heart, and your kids would just like some extra time with them one-on-one.
They're begging for your attention just to sit down and play a game with them. And dude, you've got so many things that you are juggling and. You haven't even slept, like you don't remember the last time you had a good night's sleep. You have so many things going on that it all just starts to feel like a blur and you're not totally sure.
What am I supposed to be saying yes to right now, and what am I supposed to be saying no to? The only way, in my opinion, the only way that you actually accomplish that, that you're able to get laser focused to say no with confidence is to know what God has called you to. And so my, I, I don't know, challenge to you.
It's, I guess would be to just literally take a few minutes right now, ask yourself, what is God calling me to as a man like right now? And I'm not talking about what are you supposed to do for the next 10, 20, 50 years of your life? What your huge life mission. I'm just asking you to reflect on what has God called you to from September.
To December, you know what I mean? Like what is the next season of life for you look like? If you're listening to this in the fall, what is this next season of life? Look for you. What has God called you to right now? Here's a a few things that we know like just to help add some clarity to what can feel chaotic and confusing.
Dude, if you woke up and you are married, you are for sure called to be a faithful husband to your wife. A man who pursues her and loves her the way Christ has loved the church. That's for sure. Your calling, no questions about it, and so you can just like write that one down. If you woke up today and you have children, you are most definitely called to disciple their hearts, to raise them, to be intentional, to be the best father you can be for them.
Without a doubt, so you know for sure you're called to be a husband. You know, you're for sure you're called to be a father. If you woke up and you said, I believe in Jesus. I trust in Jesus. I want Jesus to take all the messy parts of my life and make me more like him. I want to be used by him and all my brokenness for his glory to see crazy God, God kingdom moments happen here on earth as it is in heaven.
If that's you. If you're a follower of Jesus, then you're a disciple and your role as a disciple is most definitely your biggest calling. And so those are three things you know for sure. The, you start to get down the list a little bit. It gets a little bit more gray area, like where did you wake up and what does it say on your business card?
You could be struggling this like, is this what I'm called to do right now? Is this gonna be my job forever? Is this the career that I'm going, always gonna have? I'm not satisfied in my career. Dude, I don't know the answer to all that. But whatever you woke up, whatever your job is today, that's where God's called you for sure.
Wherever you woke up today, whoever your employer is today, whoever your boss is today, wherever you decide to put in your hours so that you can provide for your family, wherever that is, that is where God has called you to today. And maybe God has long-term plans for you next year, maybe even in a couple months or weeks.
What? I don't know. But wherever you woke up and you decided to clock in, that's where God has called you to clock in and be on mission for him. It's God ordained that you would be there today. And so you know that you've been called to be a husband. You've been called to be a father. You're most definitely called to be a disciple.
And wherever you decided to go to work today, wherever God called you to, to go clock in, that's where he sent you to be a missionary. This is how you get like down into like what has God called me to? And then the next question, as you start to like literally, and I would suggest you do this, literally write them down.
As you do that, I want you to ask yourself, what are the things in your life right now that are distracting you from the mission? What things do you currently have going on? That take you away from the things that you know for sure God has called you to. Dude, that might sound simple. And there are some simple things like God might not have called you to play fantasy football this year.
And you're like, but dude, that's my only dude time. That's my only bro time. That's the only time I get with my guys and we talk and it's like an outlet for me. Maybe cool. If that's what God's called you to right now and you feel like you are called to be a friend and this is how you are going to engage with your friends, cool.
Maybe keep it on the list if that quote unquote calling is taking you away from your duties as a husband, father, disciple and missionary at your work. Maybe God didn't call you to it. I'm challenging myself as I say this, but these are conversations, dude, and I'll, I'll make it even like harder. The sports teams that your kids are playing might not be the thing God's called you and your family to, but my kids love it and they get outside and it's good exercise and they're learning teamwork, bro.
All for those things. Grew up playing sports. My kids played sports, but there have been seasons of life where I say for the next, this next season, again, not forever, this next season. What has God called me to say yes to so that I can say no to the things that even feel like they should be yeses.
Remember the story of Jesus. Everyone's looking for you. That feels like something he should say yes to, but Jesus says No. Sometimes saying no to even what feels like the right thing is okay. And so you have to advocate like in IS sports right now, like is in this season of life for my family, for us to be, for me to be a husband, father, disciple since missionary.
Does this make sense? And so you just have to ask yourself that. Um, there's some easy ones, man, like things that you can think through to trim the fat or, or cut the things out that maybe you're saying yes to that are taken away from the things that you should be saying yes to. Things like tv, maybe there's a hobby, maybe it's mindless.
I. Social media, scrolling, and so just make like a, again, dude, I'm not telling you to make like huge life altering decisions here. I'm just talking about the next week, the next few months, what has God called you to? So try to come up with real practical stuff that you could actually do this week. And so maybe it's not like I'm gonna delete all my social media, I'm never watching TV again, or I'm buying a Nokia phone so that I don't have a smartphone.
Maybe dude, that's all super good. Like I actually have had all those thoughts. That's why I was able to rattle 'em off so easy. But maybe it's something simple. Maybe just say, actually I'm just gonna spend one less hour on social media a day. Set a timer on my phone. Most of our phones now like will have timers on your, let you put some restrictions and just set yourself a timer.
It's like, all right, I'll give myself this much time to kind of mindlessly scroll. And then when I hit that, like I'm done and that's it. And maybe just take one less hour off or maybe. At night, you just turn off the TV before you go to bed. If you before bed, you watch a movie or TV or you scroll on something, just say for the hour before bed, I'm not gonna do that.
You want me to throw some crazy statistics at you? Let me pull that. I was looking up some of this stuff. This is crazy. If you spend. Two hours and 31 minutes a day on social media, which by the way, I think is like the average, or maybe even under the average, which is just crazy. If you spend two hours and 31 minutes a day on social media, you'll spend 5.7 years of your life on social media if you live to 72 years old.
5.7 years of your life. If you watch three hours of TV a day, that's a lot. I feel like most people aren't, like most of us are on our phones, but if you watch three hours a day of tv, nine hours of your life will be spent watching tv. If you play video games for an hour and 22 minutes a day, you would spend three years of your life by the time you're 72 on just gaming.
Check this one out. This one's terrifying. If you spent three hours a day working on emails, you would spend 5.2 years of your life, assuming you work 40 years of your career, 5.2 years of your life. I. Respond, reading and responding to emails. If you played seven hours of fantasy football per week, so you're watching the games, you're doing the research, you're spending seven hours of your week spent on fantasy football.
That's for that four month season. It's 112 hours per season. Just per season. You're shaving off five days of your life every football season. Some of you guys are like, that doesn't sound, I'm worth it. Don't, don't do it, bro. And just, okay. Some of you were like, I've just scroll on my phone. If you're just scrolling on your phone three hours a day, which is by the way, what most people are doing nine years of your life.
Nine years. And so just put that in perspective, Jesus, as he is calling his disciples. Uh, final last words to his disciples, go into all the world and make disciples of all nations. Baptizing the name, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Matthew 28 19. Jesus is saying his final words to his disciples, and now this is your mandate.
If you're listening to this podcast and you're a Christian, Jesus would tell you, listen, whatever your name is, I'm calling you to go make disciples. Part of that is being part of your wife's discipleship journey. I want you to help her become the woman I've called her to be. I picked you to be her husband so that you can partner with me to help that woman become the woman that God that I have called her to be, and you get to partner with me to do that.
Go help her in her discipleship journey. Oh, you have kids? You are now going to spend your life pouring out your life sacrificing to help them become disciples of Jesus. Not just be happy or successful, or find good jobs, or be smarter the best athletes. I want you dad, to pour into these children. Partner with me to pour into them so that they can become the kids that disciples that I've called them to be you on your discipleship journey, your coworkers, the people, every job that you had was intentional.
I'm. Sending you there as a missionary to be on mission, on purpose to go make disciples in my name. And so that's your call. That's your, that is God's placement on your life. This is God's call on your life to go make disciples of all nations. And you say, okay, but I'm actually going to spend nine years of my life out of the 70 something you gave me.
I just need to spend nine of those scrolling on my phone. I need to spend five days a year just playing some fantasy football. I need to spend like. Five years out of the 70 something, you're likely gonna give me best case scenario, just send in some emails. Is that cool? And listen, I get it though. Like some of it you just gotta do.
But when you put it into that kind of perspective, I. You're just shaving off these precious years saying yes to things that God never called you to say yes to. And so it's okay to restate your mission statement to say, what has God called me to? Lemme give you some examples of like things that you could do or, or mission statements that you could have that might help.
So you could say something like, I'm called to lead my family by example, to love my wife as Christ loved the church and disciple my children in the ways of the Lord. Helping them grow daily in my own walk with Jesus or, or while I grow daily in my own walk with Jesus. So again, these mission statements don't need to be like.
15 pages or even a full page, it's just like one long sentence or two sentences, something. I'm committed to being a present and intentional husband, father, man of God, seeking to honor Christ in every area of my life, especially in my family and work. Or maybe say something like my mission. And this season of life, what God's called me to is to put God first, lead my family with integrity, and be a source of encouragement, discipline, and spiritual guidance for my wife and my children.
So that's what I mean by just like one sentence, one long sentence. Just write out what has God called you to in this next season of life. And then just measure everything you're doing right now. Look at your calendar and measure your mission statement up with your calendar and ask yourself, is there anything in there?
That needs to be cut. Where can I trim the fat? Are there things in my life that I actually need to get rid of so that I can better say yes to these things? And so, again, that's my challenge to you. Here's one question as I kind of wrap this up here that I, I want you to think through. When was the last time that you felt fully present with your wife and kids?
Try to think about it for a second. When was the last time. That you felt like you gave your wife and your children, everything you had, when was the last time you felt fully present with your wife and kids? All distractions weren't there. And, and then ask yourself, what, what was missing that allowed me to be fully present with them?
What did I say no to? That allowed me to be fully present. Did was my phone down or did we have no cell service? Was I on vacation? Did I not have work? What was it that allowed you to be fully present? And so maybe you just start to ask yourself, is there anything I can do? Listen, I know you, we gotta pay the bills, we got work, we gotta commute, we gotta do stuff.
But is there anything that you can cut out that would get you more to that fully present towards the things that God has called you to? Many of us are going to say yes this week to things that literally have zero impact for eternity. Willingly, not because somebody made you, somebody forced you, but just willingly you're gonna say yes to things.
I'm gonna say yes to things that have no impact. And so for me personally, as I'm just going into this very, very busy fall season. I had to write out what has God called me to? What's my mission statement? What am I currently doing or spending time on that doesn't help me accomplish the things that God has called me to and what do I need to start cutting out?
And dude, once you have that, you actually have a lot of freedom, like peace about saying no even to good things. Jesus said, let's go somewhere else. And you, and you just, you do that with peace. I, I have to remind my wife of this constantly. She will want to say yes to things because she feels bad. What somebody else is gonna think, they invited us to this, we should go to the, they're gonna think certain things.
I don't mean to throw my wife under the bus, she's amazing. But you know how we all get that way? Like, what are people gonna think if I, if we say no to this? And I just have to remind her, like, if we say yes to that, what are the consequences? If I say yes to that, if we as a family say yes to that X, Y, Z, what are the consequences?
What will we have to say no to in order to make that yes happen? And so just reevaluate, bro, what are the things that you're saying yes to personally and as a family that you need the freedom to say, nah, that's actually not what God's called me or our family to in this season. Maybe next season, maybe next year, but right now, no.
I just wanna end with one really, really practical thing. Uh, kind of goes back to that cluttered space thing. I, I don't know if this is spiritual or not, but there's, um, first. The scriptures say that there's nothing that you can accomplish. When Jesus says, I am the vine and you are the branches. You can accomplish nothing outside of me.
That's from John 15. I'm the van Vine. You are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing. You have to really understand that your call as a husband, your call as a father disciple missionary, sent one. All these things like you, you can't do.
Any of that. If you're not connected with Jesus, you wanna be an awesome dad, a dad who raises disciples. You need to be in Christ close to Jesus to do that. You want to be a good husband, a kind of husband who loves your wife, the way Jesus loved you. Your only chance of accomplishing that goal in that mission is to be close to Jesus.
And so your first priority is to spend time in God's word, whether that's five minutes or 50 minutes, or however you can do it. Get time in God's Word so that you can remain in him and accomplish the things that he's asked you to do. That is the most important. That being said, I would say. A second.
Second to that would be, bro, you need to get good sleep. And again, I don't know if that's spiritual or not. There's some scriptures that talk about, you know, sleep and how important sleep is. Psalm 1 27 says. It is vain that you rise up early and go late to rest. Eating the bread of anxious toil for he gives to his beloved sleep.
Dude, I want to be God's beloved and just rest well, and part of that passage is just knowing like I, I rest because I know God's really my provider, not me. I'm not the one who provides for my family Jesus is. And so I just sleep well. There's some things that are robbing us of sleep, and dude, if you're scrolling and you're watching TV or whatever, you're not eating well, like you're not taking care of your body.
I know it's possible, like you can be a good disciple of Jesus and be exhausted. You can be a good husband and dad and be exhausted for sure. Absolutely. But your chances are a lot lower. That's just from personal experience and every human I've ever met in my life. You have to have good sleep in order to do it well, and so really, really prioritize your sleep.
Anyway, I could go on and on about that, but I've become a, I've become kind of a sleep nerd and just trying to get as much sleep as possible because I wanna be the best man God's called me to be for his glory and sleep allows me to do that really well. I feel like I rambled again. Sorry. I love you guys.
I am about to, speaking of being busy, I'm about to drive up to our dad tired retreat, and I know hundreds of you, we have just about 300 guys coming up, 33 different states. By the way, I'm gonna get a list of everyone who did not every state that did not represent. I'll have that by next week and I'm gonna call you out and shame you.
So hard for those 33 states that are the, the rest of the states that did not make it. 33 states are gonna be there in 2 33 states and Puerto Rico. And Turks and Caicos, which I'm like, how can we just swap? Can we go there for the retreat? Anyway, a lot of guys come in, 300 guys, I'm about to drive up there and go spend some time with those guys.
If you don't come to that next year, man, you're missing out. It's one of the coolest things that we do. We also have dad tire conferences all over the country. Make sure you go to dad tire.com and figure out where those are. If you want to host one in your church, we'd love to come partner with you. Just go online debt tired and um, send us an email.
We'll tell you. Get you all the information on what it looks like to host. I love you guys so much. Truly one of the things I feel most called to. Is this dad tired ministry? I'm not tired of it. I'm not worn out. I don't feel burned out when it comes to this ministry. I just really, really, really love getting to partner with you guys to be the main god's called us to be.
I truly believe it's changing the world and um, so I'm. This is fun for me and I'm, I'm really, really grateful to do it with you guys. I love you. I'll see you next week.