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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 Tire Podcast. Just wanna say thank you guys for tuning in so consistently. You know, you could listen to podcasts about, I don't know, cars or finance or news or whatever, and that would be cool, but the fact that you let me be part of your spiritual journey and, uh, hopefully pointing you closer to Jesus and that shaping the way that you love your wife and your kids and all that, I just don't take it lightly, man.
I'm really, really grateful to partner with you on this journey as we stumble our way forward together. Did wanna let you know that we have the dad tired store. We're trying to like, redo all of it. With some good, awesome gear. Lots of hats in there. Sweatshirts, dad, tire tees. It's a great way to support the ministry.
It helps us out. We're a nonprofit, so it's a really helpful way. But I also want to have like stuff in there that you actually like wearing and it's really cool and it's a cool conversation starter. A lot of people around will be like, what's dad tired? And it's just a. It's a easy way to tell people about the ministry.
So anyway, if you jump over there, you can grab some new gear. Would love to have you do that. Also, though, one of the most important things that you can get in the store right now is a ticket to our dad Tired annual retreat in September. I. We are just about 75% full for it now, so we don't have a ton of spots left.
But man, I really, really want you to be there not for any other reason than I just know it's gonna be so helpful for you on your journey of becoming more like Jesus. And I think you're just gonna find a lot of soul rest, which I think a lot of dads are just really, really weary. Their souls are weary.
Their bodies are weary for sure, but their souls are weary. And so I just wanna, I want you there because I, I'm convinced that your soul will be filled, your tank will be filled. So anyway, jump over to the DA Tired store, grab some gear, get a registration for the Da Tired Retreat. Yeah, excited you're here, man.
We'll jump right into the episode.
I dunno about you, but I think. The, the scariest part of being a dad is this idea. It, it's not really, is my kid never gonna make a team, right? Like I, I feel like personally I grew up as an athlete and I always wanted to participate in like sports and everything. And I really feel like right now I'm raising five babies who couldn't care less.
Maybe my son Brady will do something, but like the rest of 'em just aren't really interested in it. And. I would've thought I was like even a younger dad or as a high school kid thinking about having kids someday, that was gonna be so important to me. And I, I feel like a new fear is crept in one that's probably infinitely more terrifying for me.
And that's the idea that I thought about the other day. I. I was teaching to this group of students, and the statistics say that about 75% ish of high school students that are in church after they graduate will be unchurched, which means if you're just doing basic math, like if you've got four kids and they're left to their own devices, and again, we can obviously change a lot of those.
Statistics by the way that we're trying to raise them and do those things, but, but just on a base setting, if you have four kids, you're looking at three of 'em and thinking three of the four of you are gonna walk away from Jesus at some point in your life is just think about how scary that is. And I think something that's been helpful for me as a youth pastor for so many years.
Before now being a senior pastor down in San Diego is, I would watch students that, I would just think, man, these guys are solid. You know, these guys, they really get it. They're involved in a small group. They're reading their Bible, they're praying, they've got a, a leader that's invested in them. They've got great parents in a lot of these situations, and yet.
Here comes the world and, but what I found after a while is that there's very similar pattern that took place in most of the situations that I saw that I could probably guess either one of like five things happened, and some of them more, some of them more prevalent than the other ones. But I was sharing this with someone not too long ago and they said like, dude, you need to talk about this.
You know, as, I mean, I got to work at a, a fairly significant church, about 12,000 people per weekend at a church here in San Diego before. 2020 before COVID happened. And so the youth group that I was leading was one of the bigger ones in the nation for this age group that we were dealing with. And I dealt with almost my whole age group was 11th and 12th graders.
So I really just lived in the world of kids going off to college, trying to keep their faith. And so I did a lot with apologetics. I did a lot with defending your faith in college. And so I would hope, I would think that we beat the curve on a lot of this stuff, but. Still, even kids inside the ministry that you would watch fall away and serve your dad like I'm a dad.
And you really care that your kids are walking with Jesus. And that's important for you and your life. And I think this, the conversation today works on two levels. I. One to say, how do we easily and quickly identify the areas in our kids' life where something might be creeping in that could take them away from Jesus?
What are those top six things, those top five or six things that do that? And secondly, is there an area in our own life that we kind of find this pattern of going back to old things or we just don't think that our faith is as solid as we want it to be? And it's probably because one of these areas is still kinda left unanswered and.
So I wanna address those today just as another dad talking to you about how do we navigate this life with kids where sin is everywhere and culture is seeping in. And I've talked about this before, but. They recognized in kind of the Middle Ages as they went from town to town, these people would travel and they would recognize that whoever was in charge of making hats in each town was kind of a crazy person.
The reason was, is because Hatters used to use Mercury to seal. Hats and to make them waterproof. And it wasn't until much later in culture did we realize through science, that mercury seeps through your skin and actually makes you crazy. So it wasn't that crazy. People like to make hats. It's that making hats made people crazy.
And the more they just. Played with and dealt with mercury on their fingers. They weren't eating it, but it was just soaking in. And so the, the crazy was kind of coming in through their pores and I feel like that's where we are. Even being in California, like if you're just in this culture crazy, just kinda seeps into your life.
You know, the idea of, of what is truth and what is not truth and sexual identity and gender confusion and dysphoria and every, right. It's like we don't really know what's going on anymore, so. In the midst of all that, what are the most common ways that our kids that we're raising are probably going to be, if they are taken out?
What are the most common ways? And secondly, are there things that we're actually susceptible to in our own lives, in our own hearts that we wanna shore up to make sure that we finish this race in Christ? And that's what Paul says again and again in the New Testament. He talks about spiritual discipline, and I love how Jesus addressed it.
He says. How many of you would start building a house and not first figure out how much it's gonna cost? How many of you would send your army off to war, but would you not think about how many soldiers you're gonna lose and to defend your own hometown after the war is over? He said, I want you to count the cost of discipleship.
Think about what it means to follow Jesus, and are we properly paying that cost in ourselves? Denying ourselves taking up our cross and following him. Or have we kind of, Dietrich Bonoff talks about the idea of, have we accepted this idea of cheap grace, that I'm gonna make some nod to God once or twice a year at Christmas and Easter, but then I'm gonna live however I want.
I'm gonna parent however I want. Or is this really central to what we think? And secondly, how do we properly help our kids understand the cost of following Jesus and the pitfalls that. Contend to consume us. As scripture talks about, it says that Satan prowl is like a roaring line, and I think here are his favorite tactics.
Here are the most common ways that I watch students fall away, and even adults fall away from faith. The first one is, I would use the word atrophy. The number one, not, not number one. The first one, though, this probably isn't an order. I'll tell you the order of them. This might be number five or six. So this is maybe one of the least common ways, but it absolutely plays into the rest of them, and that's the idea of atrophy.
One of the most common reasons that I watch a student fall away or watch even adult fall away is atrophy. This notion that I can say a prayer at one point and raise my hand to follow Jesus, and that is somehow going to carry me on to the point of completion in scripture to the end of my life, and then it's gonna be all fine.
The problem is much like not working out. My spiritual muscles begin to atrophy. They shrink, they become deluded. And I've become mentally deluded. If I think that with spending 167 hours a week in the world and then one hour a week in church, the hundred 68th hour that I'm somehow going to keep out of the ways of the world, it's just never gonna happen.
This is what Jesus had. This is what God figured out when he was bringing Israelites out of Egypt. He got the Israelites out of Egypt, but he did not get Egypt outta the Israelites. Right. He needed 40 years of wandering to take the idea of pagan gods and slavery out of their conscience, to teach them the theocracy of this new covenant he was making with them.
First Timothy four verse eight says, bodily training is very valuable, right? But godliness is a value in every way. And yet we tend to reject Godly training and we participate in bodily training. Now, not all of us do, right? But some of us try to. But how much more important is it then to participate in Godly training?
And if we refuse to, we can just recognize that that person's probably on a fast track to not following Jesus. So we wanna make sure that we're both encouraging that in our kids and in ourselves. How do we daily practice? Just like we would if you wanna stay in shape. If you wanna stay in physical shape, you're going to Romans 13 starve.
Things of that are gonna make you fat and you're gonna eat things that are gonna keep you healthy. You're gonna starve behavior that makes you overweight or lackadaisical or lazy, and you're gonna participate in pickleball and things that make you run around a lot and lifting weights in the same way.
We can't expect to maintain spiritual health if we aren't participating in the very things that we need. So that's atrophy. The second one, and I would say this is probably the most important one, the the most common one. I put the tagline of it being the deception of new affections, meaning that our kids are gonna grow up and they're gonna be walking with Jesus, but then something new and shiny comes along, most likely a significant other.
It is. It is why I pray every day that my kids' future spouses, not just the spouses though, but the girlfriends and the boyfriends that they find, the relationships that they have are founded on Christ. I. You'll never find someone turn high tail and run faster from the cross than someone who finds a new girl that they just can't get off their mind.
And a lot of the times they find them and they cultivate relationships and they do so behind our back. And then those things are fully grown before we're able to even speak into them. And then it seems like it's too late. The hooks are set. So I think the more we can be teaching our kids just the notion that.
There are good people culturally and moralistically speaking, and there are quote unquote bad people, right? You're gonna meet, I'm gonna talk as a my oldest as a boy, so I'll talk from that perspective. I'm gonna teach in Peyton. There are good girls and there are bad girls. And when I say good girls, I might mean they're kind, they're generous, they're fun, they are appropriately fun, and there are the bad girls.
You know, like the ones that they, they might. You know, they might have some sort of a, and, you know, understand what I'm saying bad. I, I'm, I don't mean this ubiquitous, like you're a less value, but you just look at 'em and you go, man, that girl is trouble. But there's actually another level that I wanna teach my kid, which is there are those that follow the ways that our family follows.
There's those that follow Jesus, and there's a, there's, there are those that don't. And the Bible makes it very, very, very clear. Do not be unequally yoked with a nonbeliever or. One Corinthians 1533, do not be deceived. Bad company corrupts the good character. Come back to your senses as you ought and stop sinning for.
There are some who are ignorant of God. This is for your shame. That's what one Corinthians 15 says, right? So when we say, well, I would rather my kid just be with some, I don't really care about her spiritual status, as long as she's a good person. I think Paul's trying to tell us here really specifically, that's why Paul Tarts starts with do not be deceived.
You wouldn't start with do not be deceived if deception wasn't very fervent in this area. Do not be deceived. And then it says it in this phrase, bad company. Corrupts good character. And when it says bad company, good character doesn't just mean bad people, it means because the next verse identifies it, those who are not of God, those who are ignorant of God, it says That's bad company.
Because at the end of the day, just imagine if your son, if my son Peyton, is dating a girl, and that girl's whole family and herself are not founded in the things of Christ and they have some kind of a disagreement and it gets bad, let's say they're married. And they get a really bad disagreement and he goes back to his home of origin.
And that family is like, well, you know, well, I, I think it's probably better that you just walk away. You know, it, uh, we want you to be happy. We wanna make sure that you feel comfortable, so we're gonna encourage you to get a divorce, you know, don't return his phone calls. That's, well, the Bible says something very specifically different as parents.
They should be pushing that daughter back towards my son and saying, listen. You guys committed on that day, you made covenant with God to be together. So you need to go home and you need to solve this with your husband. We are not gonna be your stronghold here. Christ is your stronghold. Go back to your husband and figure this out.
This is a commitment that you made in front of God and family to be with him. Come hell or high water, you need to go home. Divorce is not an option for those of us who are in Christ, at least not in this situation. Irreconcilable differences. Is exactly what we had with God when he, Roman Shepherd five came and died for us.
So we can't quote, we just really don't get along, or we don't see life the same way. If she is in Christ, that's gonna be the res, that should be the response. But if she's not, do you understand? It's just, it's two different rule books and we tend to marry people that we date. That's a really oversimplified way of seeing it, but I know a very few, I might say zero people who've married someone that they haven't dated in 21st Century culture.
So we can't just say, well, I hope they marry a a believer, but they can date whoever they want in the meantime. 'cause you never know when something is gonna turn to something more significant. So the deception of new affections, I would say is probably the most. Prominent one, kids are gonna fall in love with someone who doesn't know Christ, and then they're pulled away and they're deceived by it.
'cause they'll think, well, eventually they'll come to church, or eventually I'll convert them. But the Bible says the opposite's more likely bad company will corrupt the good character, not the other way around. So that's atrophies number one, deception of new affections. The third one is old affections return.
I love the way that the ancient church fathers put it, the mortification of the flesh. This comes from Romans eight 13, Colossians three verse five, Galatians 5 24, or even back in the book of Proverbs, chapter 20. When it talks about turning from sin, it doesn't mean put it in a closet and lock the door tight.
It doesn't say, put it in your back pocket and try to avoid it. When the Bible talks about our sinful past. Who we used to be. I think of me when I was like a, like a college student. It's just like embarrassing. Like I'll get back with my roommates from college and we'll tell stories about what we did when we were in college.
I know it's me because I see pictures and I see myself and I go, that is technically Chris Hiin. But I just feel so different. It, it doesn't presume a lack of responsibility. I'm not saying that I'm not guilty of anything that I've done or hurt that I've caused. But it really feels like I'm watching and telling stories of a guy who didn't exist anymore.
And that's because I think the book of Romans makes it really clear. If you live, this is Romans eight 13. If you live according to the flesh, you're gonna die. But if you live by the Spirit, then through the spirit you'll put to death the deeds of the body, and then you'll lip. Okay? And, and this is what it says in questions three, verse five, put to death what is earthly in you.
Fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, which is idolatry. Or Galatians 5 24, though if you belong to Christ, you've been crucified with him. Therefore, you put to death the flesh and its passion and desires. Sometimes when we teach our kids to follow Jesus, we simply say, here's the bad way of living, and here's a better decision.
Just make the better decision, but we need to teach them to hate sin. How do we teach 'em to hate sin? I think they need to see it in us. They don't need to see us just lying and then saying, I probably shouldn't have done that. They need to watch us hate it. There's a pastor who I heard recently who said, when I was a kid I sinned a lot more and I hated it a lot less.
And now that I've grown into a man of faith and sanctified, I feel like I sin a lot less, but I also hate it a lot more. And that's what we wanna teach our kids to do. This is what Jesus says, hate. Sin hate this world. Hate the desires of the flesh. If we treat sin like a headache, we are gonna treat it as we would a headache.
Take some ibuprofen, go to sleep. Hopefully it goes away. If we treat sin like cancer, we will actively try to eradicate it because we know that it's going to to get worse. We'll talk about that here in a second too. Atrophy, deception of new affection, old affections, return. 'cause we didn't put 'em to death.
Number four. I think a really common one I see as a pastor is people pray and the prayers go unanswered. So atrophied by deceptions of new affection, old affections return, and then prayers go unanswered. And I feel like way too often we get caught in this idea that God thinks like I do that, that here's what I truly think, which is wild.
I have a reasonable expectation that God would answer prayers the way that I would if I was God. For whatever reason in my head, if the request is humble and contrite and reasonable and not self-serving, that God is gonna answer the prayer the way that I would want him to. If you don't know my story, I lost my wife to suicide two years ago after a long battle with mental illness, onset by a catastrophic medical diagnosis.
But I remember thinking to myself. God, I'm not asking you for anything wild here. This is a very simple prayer. Just make my wife healthy again. Like give us back our old life again. I'm not asking for a Lamborghini. I'm not asking for a two time raise on my job. I just want my wife healthy. And that prayer went unanswered.
And that's where the difficult things of scripture, like Isaiah 55 verses eight and nine. It is the most, one of the most commonly quoted verses and one of the most least believed verses, which is God is speaking to us and says, my ways are not your ways, man, nor my thoughts. Your thoughts declares the Lord, as the heavens are higher than the earth.
So my ways are higher than yours declares God himself so often I think. God thinks how I thinks. He reasons how I reason he perceives. How I perceive he wants what I want, he does doing what I'm doing and he's missionally on the same page as me. Therefore, he would do this. He would give me that. He would stop this, but.
We have to teach both ourselves and our kids. Do you recognize that God has a plan that if we even tried to comprehend it would blow our minds? So fervently we, and here's the truth, Tim Keller says this. He said, the day that you'll stop asking the question about God's prayer answering is the day that you recognize this, God answers prayers as we would if we knew what he knows.
That's a wild thought. It takes a lot for me to trust this, but I do trust it. I think now in my life, if I knew and loved and had the wisdom that God has, I would answer every prayer exactly how he does. Once we submit to that truth, I feel like prayer gets a lot different. For me, it has become a lot different for me, but prayers go unanswered.
That's one of the most common reasons people turn away from Jesus. Next one is things get hard. Things get hard, and that's because again, with what we talked about previously, we have this underlying assumption that God is gonna make my life easy if I follow him, and if I tithe, then if I go to church.
And if I pray to him, then there's some transaction where he takes care of me. And yet the Bible says the opposite, and here's what it says. Therefore, we do not lose heart though outwardly, we are wasting away yet inwardly, we are being renewed day by day. Here's what Paul says, for our light and momentary troubles.
Which is kinda wild that, that Paul says light and momentary troubles. 'cause you have to remember, this is the book of second Corinthians and Paul is gonna experience being shipwrecked. Paul is going to be bitten by a snake, right? Like if you're following God and a snake bites you don't, you throw up your hands and go, okay.
Right. Like it doesn't seem too much to ask that a. Natural thing, like a snake wouldn't bite me. Okay. This is ridiculous. So, but this is what we think sometimes he, this is what Paul writes. So he's someone who for sure can talk when he says, light momentary afflictions. This guy's gonna get beheaded in neuro circus.
He's gonna get. He undergoes every possible pain. He even has a thorn in his flesh, which is probably some kind of physical ailment or deformity that God never takes away from him. He says, though outwardly, we're wasting away inwardly. We're being renewed day by day for our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us in eternal glory that far outweighs them all.
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen for what is seen as temporary. But what is? What is unseen is eternal. How do we teach our kids? How do we prepare them for how difficult life's gonna be? How do we not. Finish days in prayer where we're praying with our kids and we go, God, thank you for all the good things you gave us today, all the blessings that you showered on us, like this new job and all of this, this new money we came into and this new car and this new home.
Guys, let's thank God for being so good to us. We need to equally teach our kids to thank God for the moments in life when we don't understand what's going on. When we surrender to him and, and we have to show our kids what it means to trust when things get hard and to expect, not that life's gonna be simple, but that faith really comes out when it's darkest.
Lastly, and this is one of the more common ones, so we've got atrophy, deception of new affections, old affections return, prayer goes unanswered, things get hard. And lastly, sin tampering takes root. Now, this is James chapter one, verse 13 through 15. It says, listen, first of all, don't ever say God is tempting me.
For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone. And then it says, th this is how we sin. It's not that Ev, there's a demon in every sugar jar that's coming to get us, or the devil is constantly personally tempting you. James seems to put that to bed when he says, look, each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and then enticed by it.
Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin grows up. And gives birth to death. It's like standing on the edge of a pool, dipping our toe in sin thinking that we are just going to tamper with it and that it's not gonna consume us. That's not what sin does. Think about angling. Think about fishing.
When you go fishing, no one just throws a hook in the water and goes, hope a fish bites this, right? No fishing is all about deception. You take that. Fishes, they take that fish's favorite food, right? You go to your local bake shop and you say, what's catching around here? Right? I live in the ocean, so if I wanna go catch like Bluefin or Yellow Tail or Mahi Mahi or Tora, you catch Dorado by trolling, right?
And you troll with their favorite snack. You might use a bit of squid, tentacle or something else like that. And so, but what you do is you take this big old treble hook. Or whatever it is, and you wrap its favorite food around. So you hide the hook, then you throw the hook in the water, then the fish goes, Ooh, this is delicious.
It's nurturing, it's good for me. It's pleasing to the eye. I'm gonna take a bite, and then the hook is set. And once that hook is set, there's nothing you can really do about it. That fish is now at the mercy of the angler and just hopes it gets thrown back. And that's what it seems to, to indicate in the book of James.
What happens when we are tempted? We're not tempted by hooks. We're not tempted by the fallout of the, at the end of our sin. We're tempted by the moment of satisfaction. We're tempted by the moment of pleasure. We're tempted by that. And then Satan is interesting because sin does something funny. Satan moves from being a cheerleader to our sin, to an accuser of our sin, to being a guilt thrower towards our sin.
He says, do it. Do it. You're gonna love it. Then we do it, and he goes, how dare you do that? That's just as tactic. And so we have to recognize that if there's an area of our life that we need to surrender to God, we can't think to ourselves, I'm gonna be the first person in history who can tamper with sin my whole life and not fall headlong into it.
What we need to recognize about the ledge that we stand on to dip our toe in the pool of sin, that ledge we stand on is both sloped and oiled up. And we are likely to fall in. And that's something that's nuts is once we've fallen in like. This is where I watch students all the time. They fall in and the first time they go, oh no, look what I've done.
And if they don't learn to stay away from that ledge, after a while they're gonna fall in and they're gonna go, you know, it's pretty nice in here. The water is sweet. They get a little floaty and a little umbrella. And what they used to be absolutely offended by that they've participated in, they now sit and soak and wade and swim through it all the time.
And we want to make sure that we are not hiding or holding any of that in our lives. 'cause our kids are gonna pick up on that. They're gonna think, well dad, dad tampers with sin Dad on a regular basis is lying about this. Dad likes to go here. Dad, I've seen the magazines that dad reads. I know where dad goes on the internet.
I know I. And you might think to yourself, well, I'll teach my kids differently. But again, so much of discipleship is caught not taught. You can't tell your kid, don't play with sin while you yourself are doing it. 'cause your kids are gonna accept not just your. Principles, but also your boundaries. So they don't know about you thinking that you've got freedom in this department or whatever it is.
So we have to make sure that we're demonstrating that for them. I would say those are the six most common ways that people fall in to temptation and into the devil's schemes. And I just, I wonder, as my kids are getting older, I'm, I'm, I'm just gonna start looking for those things. Where am I seeing a level of atrophy where church is just becoming a Sunday thing for my kids, and how do I.
Change normal conversations of spiritual ones. Where are they experiencing deception of some new relationship or, or new friendship that's corrupting their, their character? Is there something they haven't put to death? They've just put on the back burner, but it's gonna come back to bite them. Is there, are they praying through something?
And I keep tying God's goodness to his answer in prayer. Are things gonna get hard in their life? Where they think if God is really there and really with me, he would prevent these things. And then is there a place where sin tampering can take root, where what they think they can control will eventually control them?
And I've gotta do my due diligence to call them out of that. These are some of the things that I was, I've been thinking about and praying through, and I just hope as dads we can look at that both in ourselves and then in our kids and say, if there's a place I gotta shore up, let's do it today. That's kinda my conviction, something that I'm walking through.
Hopefully you guys can take away something helpful from this. As always, we love you guys and we're daddying right alongside you, and we're always here for you. Here at Dad Tired.
Hey guys, as always. Hope that that episode was helpful for you on your journey of falling more in love with Jesus and helping your family do the same. Again, if you haven't jumped over to the New Dad Tired shop, you can do that by going to dad tire.com or shop.dad tire.com and grab a bunch of gear. And most importantly, for right now, grabbing yourself a registration for the Dad Tired annual retreat in September.
I love you guys. We'll see you next week.