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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.
Jerrad Lopes (00:00)
All right, brothers. I was reading recently ⁓ John Ortberg on the idea of stewarding or shepherding or caring for your soul. And I know Jared has talked so much about wanting us to be ⁓ healed men, leading our families out of wholeness, focusing on our own health, and then leading from that position of health. And the tricky thing that Ortberg is pointing out is that the soul is super fickle. We say things like, I don't even know why.
Feel so angry or I feel anxious and I'm not even sure what I'm anxious about. I feel depressed. I don't know why I'm depressed. Like I'm not even sure what's taking place in the depths of me. Sometimes I think what we're trying to articulate is my soul is acting out and I have no clue what it's doing. you actually see the like, for instance, in Psalm 425, right where the psalmist says, talking to his own soul, why are you downcast? Or ⁓
And then we s we see this psalmist like diagnosing the soul. My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord. Psalm 88.3. My soul is full of trouble. I'm deeply troubled. ⁓ and then obviously in the Psalms you get this idea of like instructing the soul. So so now I feel anxious, and I don't know why I feel anxious. And so the psalmist is telling the soul what to do when he says, Bless the Lord, all my soul, forget not all his benefits.
Psalm 103, 2. I really pray this often. ⁓ Psalm 116, verse 7. The psalmist says, Return, O my soul, to your rest, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you. What is he saying? Like, soul, you're disturbed. Come back to rest. Come back to peace. The Lord has been good to us. The Lord is faithful. The Lord is a constant, steadfast love forever towards us. Return to rest. He's dealt bountifully with us. and I like that. I pray that because sometimes I feel so.
You know, just flustered. And I start saying to myself, return to your rest, my soul, for the Lord has been bountiful. The Lord has dealt bountifully with us. and so Orberg in his in his work, he's describing this kind of this reality that I don't know that we've thought too deeply about. That the soul is fickle and the soul is needy, and the soul has all of this wanting, like it needs affirmation, it needs rest, it needs security.
Why is it anxious? Because it feels insecure about something. I don't even know where I'm insecure. sor our souls are really, really fickle. And with that in view, when we go like, okay, when my body is weak, maybe I'm taking medicine or like I'm out of shape and so I need to do some cardio, or my marriage is not healthy and so I need to make sure we're dating, or maybe we need some counseling. Well, the soul is tricky, is like my soul is not healthy. What
What then do I do? I think that's the question that so many of us find ourselves in. And ⁓ God has given us some tools, like, right? God's given us some ways to maintain healthy souls. So when Jared says he wants you to lead out of the position of health, then the kind of the logical thing is like, well, what does that mean? Like, how do I maintain a position of health? And we could talk about counseling and community and confession of sin. Like those things are helpful. Like one of the kind of
frequent talking places right now is learning to Sabbath, like honoring the Sabbath, pushing off work for a day, super helpful to maintaining a healthy soul. But I want to just bring you guys to a kind of like obvious on the nose means or tool that God has given us to deal with the soul that we've forgotten largely in our day. And it's the stinking Psalms. The the book of Psalms is quite literally God's remedy
To the fact that your soul is gonna have ups and downs, and you're gonna have to fight with it, you're gonna have to wrestle with it, it's gonna act out. The psalms are God's God breathed prayers and songs to help us process and work through ⁓ the the many movements of the soul, the way the soul's up and down and frustrated and anxious, and sometimes glad. The psalms gives us verbiage to articulate our thankfulness and
So we really have in the scriptures a God-breathed book of prayers to help us process the ups and downs, highs and lows, mountains and valleys of life in the scriptures. Okay, and so
Think one of the problems is that we know that we need the word every day. We know we need the word. we know that when we're desperate, we need the word. ⁓ but there's some nuance to the idea of like, if all we do is the blind open the Bible thing, like if you're if you're processing a miscarriage, like blind opening to
genealogical records found in the book of numbers is probably not the most helpful position. Like all scripture is God breathed. All scripture is beneficial, but not all scripture is necessarily beneficial in the same way. Like if your marriage is falling apart and you're super frustrated, like opening to the book of Daniel and going on like these beast and nations like journey. Like I don't know that that's gonna be the the best place to run to
When you're wrestling through ⁓ your marriage. It's a good place to run through when you're thinking about Babylon and the fact that you're raising kids in the middle of confusion and a world that's anti-God, anti-Christ. Yeah, great place to go. Is it the place to go to process your depression? ⁓ right. And so th this altar has a particular purpose. And that's what I'm trying to draw your attention to. The Psalms have a purpose. And so let me build a case just quickly. I'm gonna like do a couple logical things here. Let me quickly build a case for you.
That the Psalms have always been prayed or were deeply a part of the life of believers. It'll just start with with Jesus. of course, on the cross, on the on as he's experiencing this bruising, this battering, this torment, he begins to cry out from Psalm 22, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And and yes, I think there's absolutely prophetic fulfillment taking place. I think he wants his listeners, those hearing him.
Cry this out to be pondering Psalm 22. But I think it's equally relevant that he is processing his own like moment of terror and agony. In the worst moment of Jesus' life, he prays psalms, not spontaneously. He's praying psalms. And of course, spontaneous prayer is beautiful and we should continue to lean into it. But let's not neglect the fact that God's given us the words to grab to. So Jesus pinned to the tree, starts to.
roll through Psalm twenty two. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It's often pointed out that I don't know if you ever notice this, and Matthew 26, 30, so they're they're leaving the the upper room after the Lord's Supper has been instituted. So they've done communion and they're moving towards the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus is going to sweat great drops of blood and agony as he prays. And and Matthew tells us in in Matthew twenty six thirty
He says this, and when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. ⁓ virtually every scholar acknowledges that they would have been singing particular psalms connected to Passover. So in between ⁓ establishing the sacrament of communion and moving towards Gethsemane, there's a singing of psalms that takes place in the life of Christ. Okay, this is a fun one. So sorry if you're like if you're not super familiar with the scripture, I know I'm like moving kind of quickly.
But can you remember in the early chapters of Acts where Peter and John heal the slame beggar? And then they're preaching the gospel, they're making quite a ruckus, and they're arrested and they're brought before religious leadership and they're threatened. You remember they say you can never speak again in the name of Jesus. And Peter responds, if it's right for us to be you or God, you tell. But as for us, we're going to keep preaching the gospel. ⁓ and then they tell Peter and John that if they preach any more in the name of Jesus, they're, they're going to suffer for it.
At Acts four, after all of that, after Peter and John have just been threatened with their lives if they continue to preach the gospel, the scriptures record for us the prayer that they pray together. So there's a corporate prayer meeting, the prayer that they pray together in the face of this suffering, in the face of this threat, in the face of enemies saying, We'll take your life if you keep preaching the gospel.
This is what Acts four twenty four through thirty one says. It says they lifted their voice together, so the corporate body of saints gathered, they start to pray, and they pray, Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth, and the sea and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said, By the Holy Spirit, why do the Gentiles rage and the people pot in vain? The kings of earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his anointed. They are praying Psalm two together.
So trial. We are going to they're they're telling us, God, that we are going to die if we keep preaching the gospel. There there obviously there's there's the emotions that you feel of anxiety and fear and and terror. And what do they do? They say, Let's pray the Psalms. Why do the nations rage and the people plot in vain against the Lord and against his anointed? And and then the scripture says,
This is how they pray in verse 29. Now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed to the name of your holy servant Jesus. So, what we have is God, we need boldness. God, we are we are abused, we are threatened. There's an enemy that's risen up against us. Our souls are feeling some lack of security, some insecurity.
And what do they do? They go to the scriptures and they pray the Psalms. Why would these people rage and plot against the Lord's anointed? Surely God's going to be victorious. As they're praying the Psalms, they're using the words of scripture to lift up their souls and an hour of temptation to cower. And dude, you were going to have hours where anxiety floods your veins. And sometimes you're not going to know what to pray.
And what we find when we look at scripture carefully is that Jesus, the apostles, you can find this all in the early church, they're reading the psalms, praying the psalms regularly. And then as their souls are pressed, they're reaching out and grabbing hold of a psalm and applying it in the place of prayer in their hour of trial. So when Jesus suffers, Psalm 22, when the disciples are feeling anxious about the threats of the religious elite elite, Psalm two, they grab hold of.
What we actually see is that the psalms are the most quoted Old Testament scriptures in the New Testament. The New Testament writers appealed to the Psalms more than any other Old Testament book. What does that tell us? That tells us that the New Testament writers meditated often on the Psalms. They viewed life through a lens that the Psalms gave them. When they thought about thought about prophecy or the coming of Jesus or
The end of all things or suffering, whatever they were thinking about, they were processing it through the lens of the Psalms. And you see the Psalms spilling out all over the New Testament. We can deduce, like logically deduce, that the Psalms are so prevalent in the New Testament because the New Testament authors thought deeply about them. Okay, church history. Let's there's some a couple of really fun places in church history that that help unveil this idea.
St. Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius was the one who helped argue for the doctrine of the Trinity at Nicaea, who argued against Arianism. Athanasius had a friend who wrote to him and asked him to help him learn to pray the Psalms. Help me with this idea. And Athanasius gives this long response in a letter to Marcellinus that we still have.
And ⁓ there's a couple quotes that are famous, like a couple lines that are quite famous from the letter. he said this, and and many people point to this. several commentaries, later theologians will appeal to this idea. He said, Most of Scripture speaks to us, while the Psalms speak for us. Think about that delineation that Athanasius is making. The scriptures preach to me, they teach me, they instruct me, they correct me, they discipline me, they rebuke me. The scriptures talk.
to me but the psalms talk for me so when i'm stressed out and i have no idea why i can turn to the psalms and say the lord is my shepherd he makes me lie down in green pastures i i i'm taking the words written there david and i'm a i'm expressing them i'm you i'm allowing them to speak for me in my position of stress anxiety fear torment
Temptation. The Psalms speak for us. That's a delineation that you would be so blessed by if you would grab hold of. He wrote this ⁓ further in his letter. He said, I think that in the words of this book, all human life is covered. Athanasius says all of human life is covered in the Psalms, with all of its states and thoughts, and that nothing further can be found in man. In other words, Athanasius is saying,
There is nothing that you will go through in your life that is not covered here in the Psalter. For no matter what you seek, whether it be repentance, maybe you need to repent, if you need to confess or help in trouble and temptation under persecution, whether you have been set free from plots or snares, or on the contrary, are sad for any reason, or whether seeing yourself progressing and your enemy cast down, you want to praise and
And thank and bless the Lord. Each of these things, the divine psalms show you how to do. In every case, the words you want are written down for you, and you can say them as your own. Notice what he says. If if you're celebrating victory, the words that you need, the words to celebrate, are found for you in the Psalms. If if you've just escaped a snare or a trap or someone tried to
entangle you or lie about you and God vindicated you. The the Psalms express express for you what it what it means to be vindicated with Christ. How we celebrate God's divine care for us in that way. When you're tempted, when you are angry, you need help because you're in trouble. The Psalms give us the prayers to pray. And notice again Athanasius's language, nothing you're going to go through in life is not covered in the Psalter.
They teach you how to pray when you're suffering, persecute. John Calvin, in his preface to the Psalms, his commentary on the Psalms, he said this I have been accustomed to call this book, and I think not inappropriately, an anatomy of all parts of the soul. For there's not an emotion of which anyone can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror. Notice Calvin, like with all of his legal training and all of his logic.
quite a sharp mind, he says the psalms are an anatomy for every part of the soul. Okay, so so we go, look, dude, I don't even know why I'm so anxious. I don't know what I'm afraid of. I don't know why I'm so angry. And Calvin says, if you want to understand the soul, if you need to diagnose what's taking place in the soul, the anatomy covers every part.
The Psalms cover every part of the anatomy of the soul. So, friends, brothers, your soul is gonna have movements. Again, ⁓ and and life storms are going to disturb it, right? And so you're gonna face fear, you're gonna be persecuted at some point in your life. You're gonna have affliction, distress, you're gonna be tempted with sin. We know that, right? You're gonna suffer injustice at some point.
You will be slandered. I think every single believer at some point in your life is betrayed. Like you are going to experience betrayal. David was betrayed. In the Psalter, he talks about being betrayed. And then the scriptures, as Jesus is betrayed by Judas, the scriptures appeal to the Psalter, appeal to David's betrayal, the one who shared my bread, lifted his heel against me. So you will be betrayed at some point in your life. You're going to feel the sting.
Of someone you love deeply, you shared your home with, who knows your kids and has been to their birthday parties, you're gonna feel the sting of that person stabbing you in the back at some point in your life. You will be betrayed. That you're gonna be abandoned. You you're also gonna have moments of great victory. And you'll have hours where you wanna celebrate God's goodness or where you're super, super thankful for all God's doing. You'll have hours of
Wonder that God created the heaven. Who am I, God? What is man but dust? Like there are these hours where you acknowledge that God is the divine creator of all things, yet in some crazy narrative has placed his attention on me, his love and compassion on me. This the Psalter is going to give you the language to articulate your awe and your wonder. And again, when your world comes crashing down.
It's not the genealogies of numbers that are necessarily going to take you to the deep places of the soul. The numbers genealogy are not give you all the anatomy of this all. Daniel's beasts are are not necessarily the healing balm for the soul that's that's grieving death. When you're crushed, you need Psalm 91. That you would make God your shelter and your hiding place.
When you failed, like go to Psalm 51, dude. Remember David's response to Nathan's rebuke and him David saying, Against you and you alone, God, have I sinned. Like learn to pray those words as you if you're struggling with like cycles of sin. Get in Psalm 51 and live in Psalm 51 and and and and figure out what contrition is. Like what does it mean to be broken before God? When you're mourning, I'm Psalm 23 is
obviously familiar to us, but sometimes sometimes we have this tendency to to to to not want to go to the psalms or the places of scripture that we've heard a million times. It's like a like a song on the radio. Like I'm I'm tired of that one. I just want to encourage you, man. Psalm 23 is prominent in the life and history of the church for a reason. It is nourishing to the soul that's mourning. So you lose a loved one, don't dismiss Psalm 23.
Don't dismiss the idea that he's a shepherd, a good shepherd that leads us beside still waters. ⁓ and so the the Bible is gonna talk to you, it's gonna instruct you, it's going to correct you and encourage you and edify you. ⁓ but the Psalms have a particular function within the biblical canon, and it's to give you words to pray when you don't know how to pray. It's to provide for you speech.
When when all you're going is like, dude, I don't know. I don't know what's going on in me. I don't know what's wrong with me. ⁓ the the Psalter is gonna help you to express and express appropriately to our source, right? I'm praying to God about my frustrations. And this and the Psalter's actually like quite shocking. Like there's some lines in there that that that are way more honest than we're ready to be with God.
I'm Psalm 8814. Why do you cast my soul away, God? That's an appropriate prayer to pray. God, you are not near. Why do you cast my soul away? I don't sense you. I'm not I'm not like skipping on dandelions, confident that God is with me and for me. I don't I don't sense you right now, God. Why do you cast my soul away? That's appropriate. Psalm 88 18. My companions have become darkness. Darkness is my closest friend. Psalm 42.
three. My tears have become my food day and night. Dude, like walk through some serious hardship in life, and those words, those words matter. They're they're raw and they're honest, but they also help me to to articulate the things in here that I need God to hear. Psalm six six I like, I'm weary with my moanings, God. Every night I flood my bed with tears. I drench couch with weeping. And the the psalmist
Are going to help us to express all of those emotions to lament and to lament fully. And then the psalmists teach us to hope. Like they they leave us continually with a resolve of hope. I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God. The psalms teach me to worship. Again, I like to.
Whom have I in heaven but you? There's none on earth that I desire besides you. I like Psalm 63, 3. Your steadfast love is better than life. My lips will praise you. Often we say, like, I don't know to pray. You what the things we say to each other are like, be in the word and pray. ⁓ but if so many brothers go like, I don't really know how to do that. And that's that's that's okay. Open your Psalter, read those words to
Towards heaven, with your heart laid bare.
Okay, so practice. Like, okay, do I just pray them when I'm frustrated? Do I just turn into the Psalter when I'm anxious? for sure. I mean, you could definitely do that. but there have been some like patterns throughout history. you know it's super common for ⁓ for people to say, like, read a proverb a day, if it's I don't know what today is, but let's say it's July fifth, then you should read Proverbs five. Like one of the ways that people have approached the Psalms over the years is they will
Pray five a day. I know that might be a little much, so don't hear me saying you have to do that. I do five a day. I tr I really try to hit five a day. And a lot of times what people will do is if it's the first, you would pray Psalm one, Psalm 31, Psalm sixty-one. Math, this dude's hard. You skip 30, skip by 30. So if it's the fifth, then you would do Psalm five, Psalm 35, Psalm 65. And ⁓ if you follow the calendar in that way.
The psalms actually kind of line up in an interesting way, like the themes kind of mesh. and oftentimes people will save Psalm 119, which is the longest. They'll save that for the last day of the month. ⁓ and so you can do that. A lot of people have done that throughout church history. my wife and I both do the psalms every day. I do five a day just in order. So like one through five, six through ten. probably because I'm bad at math.
⁓ but but but also for me, it's like ⁓ if for some reason I got tangled up or I got rushed or whatever, it's not the end of the world. I can just pick up where I left off. So my wife does ⁓ a couple a day and she does them just straight in order too. So she'll do like one and two. Like she was telling me, ⁓ she was telling me at breakfast maybe yesterday that she she was at Psalm 119 and she was like Psalm 119 is like gonna be my whole devotional today because it it is long.
⁓ so when she gets to 119, she's just doing 119. and so I it isn't I don't really have a super strong opinion about how many a day you do, or even that you do them every day. but I would be in the Psalms often. I would make it a goal to be in the Psalms often. Again, Jared always says that my ⁓ whenever I give devotional stuff, it's always too much, too much. ⁓ and then that's probably true. I like five a day. It is so
I don't know how else to say, but it is a it's a fountain. The psalms are a fountain to me. They spring up within me. I I've I should have grabbed it so I could show you guys. But I have the like the ESV journal ⁓ psalms. So it's like a psalm on one page and then a journal page on the other. And they're super cheap, dude. I think it's like six bucks. ⁓ and I use that sucker every day. And the the last thing I'll say to you guys is ⁓ and again, may maybe you want to commit to one psalm a day or three psalms a week. I don't
I don't care, but I think you should be in them regularly. and one of the things I like to do is as I am reading for the day, I like to try to capture one phrase. So for instance, ⁓ as I'm reading, maybe the phrase, ⁓ God, why do you hide your face from me sticks out or hide not your face from me.
What I'll do is I'll remember that phrase, I'll jot it down, I'll remember that phrase, and I'll carry it in my soul all day. So when I'm driving or I'm feeling anxious, I might say, God, why do you hide your face from me? Or or recently I did the my soul longs just faints for the courts of my God. So I read the whole psalm. I read several psalms that day, but that one phrase I kept tucked in my mind. And as I have a minute or I'm on a walk or I'm in between meetings, I like to mumble it to myself. My soul longs just faints.
of God. And in that way I am I'm meditating, I'm stirring, but I'm also giving myself language for what I'm feeling. so I'll I'm I'm a big on that man. I think ⁓ even even if you don't do the Psalms for the day, if you're maybe you're in John one, I don't know. I would capture a phrase from John one and ⁓ enroll it throughout the day. ⁓ and that that has always helped me to commune with God.
I'll leave you with this, okay? Basil of Caesarea, he was a contemporary of Athanasius. he said this while preaching on Psalm 1. A Psalm is a city of refuge from the demons. The Psalms are a city of refuge from the demonic. What is he saying? He's saying that, like, there's torment and there's violence and there's oppression and there's frustration out in this world in which we live.
And the psalms are a city where I can run and hide myself from the crazy hectic dark things that swirl around us. It's a strong, the psalms are a strong tower in life's raging storms. I think baseline Caesarea would say to us: like, learn to love the psalms. Use them, if not daily, weekly, when you're anxious, afraid, tormented, glad, thankful, joyous, confused, betrayed.
Like this the Psalms are gonna give you language to grab hold of the movements of the soul. One hand I'm going, this is this actually, this is what I'm feeling. And with the other hand, I'm grabbing hold of God and saying, Help me, Jesus. ⁓ Lord, help me. ⁓ the Lord bless you.
Lord, keep you, cause his face to shine upon you, be gracious to you, would he lift his countenance towards you and give you peace in the mighty name of Jesus? I pray. Hope you guys have a super blessed week. I love you. I'm here for you. never hesitate to reach out if there's anything I can do for you.