Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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. Wanna take a quick second and tell you about my friends over at Operation Christmas Child? This is an amazing opportunity to make a difference this Christmas with your small group, with your guys group, with your Bible study, or with your family operation.
Christmas Child is a project of Samaritan's Purse and is the largest Christmas project of its kind, delivering shoe boxes, packed with gifts, and the message of Jesus' love. To kids all over the world. If you can imagine every one of these shoe boxes are going into a community and they're offering joy and hope and discipleship to these children.
This year, they're aiming to reach another 12 million kids, and that's how you can become a part of it during their national collection. Week, November 18th to 25th. You can drop off a gift filled shoebox at one of over their 4,700 locations nationwide, and these gifts will be sent all over the world, again to 12 million children all around the world, and they will give these kids joy and hope and also set them up to be part of discipleship relationships.
You can also, if it's easier, go to samaritans first.org/occ and you can build a box online. Samaritans purse.org/occ. I highly encourage every dad's hired listener to get involved with this. Again, with your small group, your men's Bible study, your family, whatever it takes, go to samaritans purse.org/occ and get involved today.
Yesterday I was sitting on the couch, um, just relaxing, enjoying a beautiful weekend, afternoon after a long, hard week. And, um, our house is flooded and we've had all kinds of crazy things happen this last week. And so I was just taking, you know, five minutes as you oftentimes as a dad, get very little time to just like sit down and as a mom, very little time to just sit down and try to relax.
So I was just sitting there on the couch, kinda looking out the window and the, the sky was blue and it was. Sun was shining and it was just nice. And I'm just sitting there looking out the window and out of nowhere, my three-year-old little daughter comes running up, um, and all within milliseconds yells out.
I love you, daddy. And as she yells out, I love you, daddy. She jumps as far and as high and as. Wildly as she can, and, um, puts a knee right to my, uh, yeah, all the places you could imagine where you don't want a knee as a man. And so I just, you know, shout out. I just scream in pain. And Layla, my wife, who's in the, uh, kitchen doing something, she's like, what happened?
And I, I, I, I can't even, I'm in so much pain, um, that I can't even describe. Like I'm, I'm just writhing in pain. Um. There's very few things more confusing emotionally than hearing your baby girl say, I love you, and at the exact same time, inflict in incredible amount of pain. Um, just a very odd, awkward experience was not.
Planning to be told I love you and feel like I wanted to, um, punch a hole in the wall at the exact same time. Very odd, but that's what happened outta nowhere. I was just sitting there and out of nowhere, I just kind of got hit by this and that. Um, I was thinking about that as I was taking a shower. Um, that's weird.
That's a weird transition. I apologize. Um, I was thinking about that later and was thinking, I feel like this is how life has hit me the last week. Um, I'm just like. I was enjoying life. I, I recorded a podcast recently called Be Wary of Good Times, and I feel like the Lord put that, that episode on my heart probably as a way just to prepare my own heart for what was coming, because I feel like the last two weeks, you know the phrase, when it rains, it pours.
I feel like it's been pouring death by mil million cuts kind of thing. Like nothing catastrophic, nothing too terribly. Terrible in light of eternity, but just a bunch of little hard things. Some of them feel big, um, but just a bunch of things and they all just kind of came at once. I was trying to get them out of my head.
And onto paper and there was like 12 things that were just causing my soul angst. Um, you know, in the same way that I was just sitting there staring at the window, looking at the blue skies, and out of nowhere got hit in the jewels. Um, I feel like I was just kind of enjoying life two weeks ago. Just like, man, things are going great.
Kind of coming off of the dad's hair retreat and we've got more episodes on this and things are rolling with dad's tired and my marriage is going great and kids are fine. Everything's going great. And then just outta nowhere. Life hits you in the jewels, dude. And, um, that's a little bit where I feel like I'm at right now, and I, I have a feeling, um, some of you feel like that, like you're getting hit and it, it came kind of out of nowhere, like all of a sudden like, what in the world?
And I'm making light of it. Obviously. It's kind of a funny story talking about my three-year-old daughter hitting me and the place that counts most. Um, but to be totally honest. Um, I had to make a conscious effort as I hit record this as I'm, I'm hitting record right now to record this episode. I had to make a conscious effort to like not sound super depressed because honestly, it's actually been very hard and there have been a lot of tears in the loops house over the last two weeks, and I just feel this.
Deep sense of heaviness, weariness. And again, it just came outta nowhere, man. But my soul, I, I, last week, um, I've been traveling a lot and I came home and, um, my soul just like I had that tight, you know how you get that like tight. Tightness in your chest and you just feel, you can tell something's off and you can't really identify it.
And that's where I've been for the last week. I've just, I've had this tightness in my chest and I can't identify it, or I wasn't able to identify it and I feel kind of grumpy. I. And, um, maybe a little bit sad or, you know, if I'm, if I'm quiet too long, I almost feel like there's some emotions trying to bubble up, but I don't really know why I feel these emotions.
Um, I've gotten to the place like my wife. I, I kind of wear my emotions on my sleeve and Layla can tell, I. When something's wrong with me. So she'll say like, what's wrong? And before I didn't know when I was younger and we, when we were early on in marriage, I didn't know how to like articulate, you know, this feeling that I'm feeling.
And so now what I say is like, I'm, I'm not really sure. I'm not mad at you. There's nothing wrong with us or between us. Um, I just feel something and I can't quite pin it down yet, and, uh, and so I, that's been helpful language for me. By the way, that's just kind of a side note that's been helpful language for me because sometimes when you're trying to process your own life and your own soul and your own heart while you're married.
It can very easily get to the, the spot where your, your spouse carries that weight or they feel like there is something with them, or, you know, you're mad at them. And maybe there is, like, there might be some marital stuff that you guys gotta figure out, but if it's not like, just free them up from that.
So that they don't have to carry the weight of your emotions when they're not really the ones involved in that. I hope that makes sense as I'm, as I'm trying to describe that, but my wife, this, what I'm feeling is not the result of her in any way, and I don't want her to carry those emotions, and so I just say like, I don't know what's going on.
There's something, my soul is feeling stuff and I feel. Off and I feel weird. Um, but it, it has nothing to do with you. And so you don't need to carry that, you know, and it just kind of frees her to walk with me in that without wondering if it is about her. Um, so anyway, I, I don't know if that's relatable for you guys or if you felt that where just, you know, you're sitting look, looking out the window and life kind of hits you outta nowhere.
But I've been feeling that this last week I had a mentor tell me. That every negative emotion or situation or sin or kind of negative thought pattern, all of that is if you, if you sat long enough, you could tie it back to a lie, a lie that you're believing specifically. And, um, that language like didn't quite when he said that, I didn't, it didn't quite make sense to me.
But I, I've spent probably the last decade really leaning into that. Advice. And man, it's been very helpful. It's been very hard, but very helpful. It's been a very helpful tool for me to have as I start to feel these kind of weird seasons. Also as a ps um, Caleb's finding Jesus in the wilderness of your soul.
I've been editing these podcasts and putting them on every Wednesday and. Dude, as I'm editing them, I'm just like finding myself in tears because he has been speaking such good truth. Even just this last one, if you, if you're not caught up, was really, really good as I was feeling kind of the heaviness of my soul.
The wilderness of my soul, even this last week. So if you, if you haven't jumped into that, it's every Wednesday you can, I. You make sure you download that and, and, and engage with that really good stuff. Um, so I, I've been feeling all this stuff and, and, um, and I've been asking myself, okay, what is the lie that I'm believing?
What is it that if I, if I sit down and I trace it back to something, um, what would I find? And I'll just say, that's a hard thing to do. Um. If you think about it, I've, I've shared this story in I think books and podcasts before, but I worked with a woman one time and we were doing this kind of, I don't know if it was like a bible study or some like group counseling or whatever you wanna call it at the be as we started our day, this was at a church, and she said that on the way to church that day, um, her car started to break down and, and you could hear all this rattling underneath the hood, and she kind of panicked and she didn't know what to do with that.
The sound that the her car was making. And so instead of pulling over and addressing the sound and clearly something breaking, she just turned up a radio and she was admitting like, I know this isn't the right thing to do, but I didn't know how to address the problem. I didn't know what to do. I didn't, I didn't wanna pull over because if I, if I opened the hood, there was gonna be stuff there and that I didn't know how to deal with.
And that's just such a good analogy for us all humans, where we're like, there's something rattling underneath the hood of our soul as I've been feeling this week. Like, clearly something's off and no part of me wants to pull over. What I wanna do is just turn up the radio and drown it out. So whether that's like, you know what, I'll just kind of bury myself in news or the political atmosphere or maybe some conspiracy theories, or I'll watch some games, or I'll just numb out and watch a movie or tv.
Or just scroll, social media, everything in me wants to do that, um, to turn up the radio so I don't have to really deal with it. But I know as I'm getting more gray hairs on my head, like the, the wisest thing to do right now would be to actually pull over the car. I think too of like the analogy, like if there's one time we, in my garage, I walked out to my garage and it smelled like death, like literal death.
And I'm like, what in the world is that? And there's, what I wanted to do is just run out. You know, go back in the house, shut the door and not deal with that anymore. But I'm like, I gotta figure out something clearly died in here and I gotta figure out, hopefully it's not a human and I gotta figure out like what's going on.
And there was a rat that had died super gross, but uh, I had to find it. And sometimes you gotta like sniff it out. Like you gotta go towards the thing that stinks. Instead of running away from it. And so if there's something that stinks in your life, if there's some rattling underneath the hood of your soul, um, I encourage you to like sniff it out, to run toward it, to turn the radio down, to open up the hood and to ask what's actually going on under there.
And for me, um, taking the advice of my mentor that's really saying, um, okay, what, what is the lie that I'm believing right now? And that is a hard process to do. So, uh, we have this thing where we meet with my buddies on Wednesdays. We call it garage group. Bible study feels kind of like stiff, or I don't know, just didn't hit right.
And so we just call it garage Group and we meet in a garage and we talk about Jesus and study scripture and pray for each other and confess in. It's really cool. And, uh, I was gonna meet with those guys and I wanted to share with them some of these lies I'm believing, but I didn't really know what the lies were.
And so I just tried to write them out. And dude, it took me like, I don't know. Five minutes, like not very long. 'cause I've, I've kind of trained my brain to go down these hard trails, but I, I just like took five minutes to really stop, look internally, ask myself what is it that I'm actually feeling right now?
What, why am I feeling off? Try to identify it and then just get, follow the line, follow the rope back to the lie, and do, within five minutes I'm crying like in my kitchen. Layla comes up to me and she just like puts her arm around me. She knew I was gonna go through this exercise. She, I, 'cause I told her, I'm like, I'm gonna go meet with the guys and I'm, I wanna just confess to them some lies I've been leaving, believing this week.
And so I say that and then like five minutes later I'm at the kitchen counter crying. And, uh, so I just trace the lies back and I won't share all with you. I don't wanna make this like a Jared pity party. Um. But essentially I've just been, I've, I've been like struggling with some insecurities. Um, it's hard, dude, when you put stuff out there publicly, you know, I signed up for this.
I'm not, I'm not making excuses. Um, I, I choose to do this every week, but I. I, there's like a bunch of there. Forgive my rambling here, as I continue to try to process the stuff that's going on in my soul. But, you know, our house floods. I've been dealing with some like, parenting things and, and just feeling like a little bit of a failure and with some of my kids and parenting.
So I'm struggling with these kind of internal insecurities and then you put stuff out there online to try to be helpful. And, uh, it's a weird thing, man, that we live in a world, weird world where you put stuff out and then just to have like. Um, hundreds of people that might be an exaggeration. Dozens of people, you know, kind of rip you apart online.
Again, I, I don't think I have like super thin scan. I can, I can deal with that, but it, it just adds to like, it's a weird thing. Nobody wants to like be told they're an idiot or they're stupid or they're not likable or whatever. I think all of us kind of intrinsically want to be liked in some way. I don't, I don't think that's in incredibly, uh, unhealthy now.
I don't want to. Adjust my opinions or my thoughts or convictions just to be liked for sure. Um, but you know, as I, as I try to be helpful and somebody, people say like, you're an idiot. It's, it starts to chip away at you. And so I think that all started to just kind of culminate in my soul where I was starting to feel like I'm actually not doing very well.
I'm not being very, um, effective. You know, which as a man, that starts to really. Wear on you. I'm like, I don't think I'm very good at the things I'm trying to do. Well, maybe that's a specific lie, um, that I was believing I'm not very good at the things that I'm trying to do. Well, and this, as I started to trace that back, like these lies, and again, I'm trying to spare you like real specifics of my own life, just to not turn this into a Jared pity party.
But I started to trace these things back and essentially the lie that I came back to was, um, if people really knew me. They wouldn't really like me. Um. I think I kind of boiled it down to that one sentence. If people really knew me, they wouldn't really like me. Even to the sense I, I was playing around in my head, kind of the playground of my dark thoughts was, you know, the, you as a dad tired, listener, like, you know, you might like this show.
It's helpful for you. The podcast is helpful for you. Maybe you're part of our online community, or you've read a book and it's been helpful for you on your journey. But something I was playing around in my head this week was, yeah, but if you really knew me, you wouldn't think it's that great. You wouldn't think I'm that great.
This content isn't that great, that tire's not that great. I'm not that great of a guy. Um, I'm not actually very valuable. And the closer you get to me, the more you'll realize like, ah, I actually don't wanna be around this guy. And so that was really at its core. The lie that I've been believing, that been believing this week that has just been messing me up.
Um, that if people really knew me or the closer that the people got to me, they wouldn't really like me. And again, dude, I'm, I'm trying hard to not like, make this about me or, or pity party, but I, I do think that all of what you are experiencing as a guy. Any hardship, any friction in your marriage, any, uh, insecurities or sense of being an imposter or whatever the thing is that you're feeling at work?
My, the reason I'm telling you this is so that you can identify in yourself, like, are you believing a lie? And most likely you are. If so, what is the lie that you're believing? And I think lies that lots of us guys believe we, we believe things like, I'm not good enough. Um, we believe things like what I just said.
If you really knew the real me, you wouldn't accept me or you wouldn't like me. You might be believing something like I'm, I'm defined by my performance. Um, so I better do a good job. Um, because if I don't. Um, I'm not valuable or something like I, you have to be strong all the time. Um, you can show no sign of weakness.
Um, or maybe you think things like, um, God can't use me or He doesn't like me, or he doesn't, you know, he's not super thrilled with me because of my past. These are all lies that I've heard. Dozens of times from guys that I think many of us, and, and maybe you relate to those, maybe you have your own that you're believing.
Um, the thing is, what's crazy is. These aren't like Satan's tactics. I, I've said this before, but Satan's tactics aren't really new. He's super effective, but he's not, his tactics aren't new. Like if you just crack open your Bible and you're, and you thought to yourself, you know what? I wanna read the Bible from start to finish, Genesis to Revelation, you would get three chapters in to the very beginning of the Bible and you would start to see that Satan.
Has already started to tell lies. So Genesis chapter three, now the serpent was more crafty than any of their beast in the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, catch this. Did God actually say you shall not eat from any tree in the garden? Um, it's the first time Satan opens his mouth and the scriptures.
As you're reading the Bible, what you see, Satan open his mouth and the very first thing he says, he's, he's planting seeds of doubt. Oh, you don't really, you can't really believe God. Like there's something else. That you're missing here. And he goes on to say, um, but the sert said to the woman, 'cause she's, she corrects him and says, no, we can eat from any tree, but we'll die.
And he says to her, you're not gonna die. For God knows that you will eat of it and your eyes will be opened and you will be like, God, knowing good from evil. The very first time we ever see Satan talk, he's lying. And this becomes his reputation. He is a liar. Jesus, in John chapter eight, calls him the father of lies.
Like, uh, I was thinking he's, he's the gloat, the greatest liar of all time. Nobody lies like the enemy lies. Nobody lies like Satan lies. He is the father. He's the OG liar. Jesus himself calls him the father of lies. And so for you as a man, just to be thinking like, okay. Um, we know that Jesus is truth. He is the way, the truth and the life.
We know that truth sets us free. Um, then we have to also know that we have an enemy whose primary tactic is lying and he is planting lies into your brain as we speak. You know, he, he will do it today. He will do it to your kids today. Um, man, I've been experiencing that in my own family just this week, trying to combat the lies that the enemy is planting inside my children's heads.
Um, he, he'll do it to our wives, the, the lies that he's going to plant into their heads in the same way that he planted in Eve's head. And so we have to recognize that. Most of what you're feeling, yes. You, you know, it's, um, eat, make sure you're being healthy and sleep well and all this stuff. Like I, you know, if you listen to the Dad Tire podcast, we're all about being holistically healthy, but also recognize that your enemy, the enemy of your soul, the enemy of your children and your marriage is the father of lies.
And so you have to be able to, as a man, develop the muscle, the skill to say, what lie am I believing? What has, what has the enemy planted in my head that I've kind of marinated on? I've sat in, I've meditated on to the point where I'm believing, and then you have to get to a spot where you say, okay, I, I want to actually know the truth.
And I, I did the, the very first, um, chapter. Of the dads tired book, the first dads tired book, dads Tired and Loving. It's that green book with the, the bearded guy on it. Um, the very first chapter of that book's called Colorblind and I, I'm actually colorblind and I share in the, in the first chapter how, um, I don't see the world as it was meant to be.
And you can actually get colorblind corrective glasses now and you can watch some YouTube videos on where people will put on these color colorblind corrective glasses and they can actually see the world as it was meant to be. And, um, I've, I've tried those glasses and they don't work for me, so I must be real color blind.
Um, but so sometimes I wonder like. Has God. When Jesus came and he's like, he's teaching and he's healing, and for everyone else, they're like, this is so weird. This is so crazy. There's no one like you. And that's true. There is no one like Jesus, but sometimes I wonder if Jesus was actually just telling us or showing us, here's, here's how you were meant to live as a human.
Here's how things were supposed to be. The same way that a colorblind corrective glasses show you. This is what the world is supposed to look like. Jesus was showing us, here's what humanity is supposed to look like. You are used to death, but things weren't meant to die. You're used to being broken hearted, but you weren't never meant to be broken hearted.
You are used to lies and deceitfulness and sin. And corruption, but the world was never meant to be that way. And Jesus is almost when he is flipping everything on its head, Jesus is showing us this is what humans, how humans were meant to live. Here's what's best. When I created you and designed you, this is how things were meant to be.
In other words, when Jesus says, I am the truth, and the truth will set you free. Like you are believing lies, and yes, your lies have become commonplace for you. You have let these lies seep into you. Again, God can't use me because of my past. I need to be strong all the time. I'm defined by my performance.
I need to be perfect. If people really knew me, they wouldn't accept me. I'm not good enough. You know, all these lies over and over and they've become so normal, their, their voices that we're so used to hearing over and over and over again. But Jesus says, that's not normal in my kingdom. Let me speak truth to you.
Uh, let me gospel you gospel meaning like you are believing lies. And let the truth of what I've done for you set you free. And so again, for us as men, it gets to the spot where we say, okay, Jesus as your son. Um, I, I don't want to be believe lies. I don't want to let the father of lies speak these lies to me, and I sit and believe them to the point where it actually affects me, because I promise you, bro, the way that you, um, meditate and think on these things, these lies will absolutely, without a doubt 100% impact you, your joy, your hope, your marriage.
Your happiness, the way you father your kids, the way you perform at work, like it will impact everything. And this is why that mentor told me, Jared, what is the lie that you're believing? And let's speak truth to it. You know what's crazy is this week I had friends, um. Some of whom I haven't talked to in months, some of whom I haven't talked to in years.
Um, message me. I mean, I had, this happened so many times this week that I told Layla and I'm like, this is weird. And she's like, really? You think it's weird? Like as long as you've been following Jesus, you think it's weird that these people are reaching out to you? Because every one of these people who reached out there were probably four, what I would say felt random people who messaged me this week on different days, and literally their text said some version of.
Hey man, I just kept thinking about you this week. Wanted to reach out and say how much I appreciate you. You're doing a good job. Love you. I'm in your corner. Like some variation of that kind of text. Uh, and what really struck me most was that thought of, I keep thinking about you almost as if God was nudging these people to say, Hey, you should reach out to Jared.
Now, obviously I can't prove that in court, but man feels weird. Um, feels. Crazy to me that people I haven't even talked to or in a while are reaching out to me and just out of nowhere, what seems kind of random. Speaking truth into the lies that I've been believing all week. And God will do that. God will put people around you, and this is why it's so important for you to have good Godly friends, people who will constantly point you back to the truth.
I had to go to my friends on Wednesday at Garage Group, and I had to just admit the lies that I had been believing so that I could allow them to speak truth into it so that they could say, Jared, yes, that is a lie. Like what you are believing is not true, and let me tell you the truth. So, um, I don't really know exactly where I was going with this one.
I just wanted to like get all this stuff outta my head and off my chest. But two, I wanted to encourage you with kind of two things here. If I land the plane in kind of a clunky way, the first would be. Um, do you have friends in your life that can speak truth to you? Um, and if you don't, you need 'em. And again, not because it's the right Christian thing to do so that you can just have some buddies to talk shop with, but you need dudes in your life who will speak truth to you because if you don't, you will start to believe lies and those lies that you are believing will deeply impact the way that you live out your life as a husband, father, and disciple.
You need people who will speak truth to you. Friends who love Jesus and who love you does. You don't need 10 of them. You don't need 30 of them. You might need two or three of them, but you need those kind of people and you might, it might be something as simple as like, Hey you guys, here's some lies I've been believing, and I just need you to speak truth into me.
What you're doing when you say things like that is you're giving these friends permission to go a level deeper with you. And they then can know like, oh, okay. This is the kind of friendship we have where we can speak truth into each other and we can tell each other when we're believing lies. That leads to my second and final point, which is this.
Um, what lie are you believing today? And I imagine if you're human and you're listening to this and you have blood coursing through your veins, there's some kind of lie at some level that you're believing. Everything in you as a man because we all love comfort. We run towards comfort instinctually. Um, I'm gonna challenge you to run toward the discomfort, to chase the bad smell.
Where's the dead rat? Lift up the hood and figure out what's rattling under there. Pull over the car, turn down the radio, and ask yourself, what is the lie that I'm believing? And just keep digging deeper. You might need, you might need to, uh, ask yourself like. A series of questions, and again, this is a muscle that will have to be developed, but I promise you, if you can develop this muscle, which by the way, building muscle sucks, means you have to lift things hard, you have to break some sweat, like you don't wanna do it.
Nobody wants to do it. Muscles come through hard work and strain and breaking the muscle and building this muscle is going to suck. It's going to hurt, but it will prove to be super helpful for you in your marriage and in your parenting and discipleship journey. And so practice building this muscle. And it might be something like, okay, I'm believing that I'm not very good at work, so maybe that's a lie you're believing.
Then you would ask yourself, why does that matter? Um, who cares? If you're not good at work? Well then maybe people won't like me. Okay. Well, then what would happen if nobody liked you? Just keep at like interrogate yourself. Keep asking a layer deeper. What would happen if nobody liked you? Well, then I, I would feel like I'm lonely.
Okay. Then what happens if you're lonely? You know what I mean? Like, just keep digging and digging and digging and until you find like you'll hit something. And I always know that I like really hit the actual lie, the, the deep lie that I'm believing when my eyes start to get watery eyed or when I start to get watery eyes.
You know what I mean? Like, like, oh geez, I hit the nerve. Um, that's, that's actually the thing that was messing with me most. Let me just, I'm gonna confess to you in the sake of being really honest and vulnerable. Um, so that hopefully you can practice this, but I was playing around in the darkness of my mind and I was thinking like, oh, if, if people really knew me, they wouldn't like me.
Um, I'm not that great. The, the closer you get to me, the more you realize like, I'm not very great and, um. Then I had this thought like, if you all knew that, if you all knew how not great I am, which the, the truth is not that I am great, by the way. The truth is that it doesn't matter if I'm not great. Um, but I, I was playing around with that idea and really.
Meditating on that lie in my subconscious. And then I thought to myself, well, if that's true, if I really am not that great, and you realize as a podcast listener or part of someone who's, or someone who's part of the dad tired, you realize that I'm not that great, then you're gonna stop listening to this podcast and you'll stop buying the books and, uh, you won't be part of Dad tired.
And then you'll go tell your friends that dad tired actually sucks and it's not that great. And if you do that, and if everyone does that. Um, then I won't have a job. And the one thing that I feel like God has called me to, which is to help men lead their family well, and to encourage guys to be the husbands, fathers, disciples that God's called 'em to be.
If I fail at that, then my family's gonna be in danger. Like, how am I gonna pay our bills? How am I going to take care of my family? What will I do? For ministry, what will I do for work? What, how? Like, dude, this is how dark my head goes sometimes, even just in my subconscious, and it's, when I was describing I feel a tightness in my chest.
I wouldn't have been able to articulate all that. Um, but I think my subconscious was just playing with all these ideas, just taking one lie and just keeps going deeper and deeper and deeper until I'm like, I'm in a weird mental state. And again, the truth isn't, I didn't need friends to be like, no, Jared, you are awesome.
I needed friends to be like, dude, who cares if all of that's true? Um, who cares? We know you and we love you, and we're still here. If everything you did for work or ministry or whatever failed, who cares? We're still your friends. We'll help you out. And even greater, Jesus loves you deeply. You are loved by the God of the universe.
And that's really the truth that I need to hear that I've been an adopted son of God and that matters more than anything else. And he's my provider. Have I convinced myself that I'm our, I'm the provider for my family. Yeah. Right. God is our provider. God is the one who sustains us and takes care of us.
And these are the truths that I need to come back to. And, uh, so anyway. Some of you guys have told me before, here's me critiquing myself. Some of, some of you guys have told me before to stop saying that I rambled. Um, but I know I'm rambling, so I am sorry for that. But also thanks for giving me the space to, to talk openly and, and part of the reason is I'm doing that again, is not to have a pity party here, um, but to help encourage you to chase after your own lies to find the dead rat.
Uh, to get rid of it and to find some dudes who will speak some truth into you. If you don't have any friends like that, there's a bunch of dudes on Dad Tired on our free community who would love to be those friends for you, who share some truth in your your life. You know what's crazy, man, is, even as I'm recording this, literally like my thoughts right now, there are lies popping up in, in my head right now.
Um, don't share this episode. You look weak. Um, this is a weak episode. Oh dude. Weird headspace. But even if all that's true, there's a God of the universe who delights in me and um, who loves me deeply. And there's a God of the universe who loves you deeply, bro, if you fail at work today, if you don't measure up, if you're not doing as good as you think you are, you don't need to be told no.
You really are doing great. What you really need to be told is who cares? In light of eternity, you've been saved and forgiven. Forgiven. If you've trusted Jesus with your life, um, you are a delighted and son of God for all of eternity. You are delighted and there's nothing you can accomplish today that would make God love you anymore than he loves you right now.
You are deeply loved and your value comes from the father of truth. The king of the universe loves you. Deeply and he calls you son. And that's all that matters. And so I pray that as men who are trying to lead our families well, that we would not believe the father of lies. That we would be men who are set free by the truth of the gospel.
That we would know our scriptures, not because it's the right Christian thing to do, but because we recognize. It's our only hope. It is the bread of life that sustains us. It's the water that quenches the thirst of our souls. It's the truth that sets our souls free from the father of lies. Study your scripture so that you can rest in truth.
Find some godly des who will speak truth to you when your brain starts to go in really weird places. I love you and I hope this was helpful.