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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.
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Again, that's classical conversations.com/dad Tired. The other day I was watching this documentary. I'm sure a lot of you guys have seen it, but I think it was on Netflix, but it's called Free Solo. And it's about this guy who decides he wants to look at the biggest mountains in the world, then he wants to go climb 'em.
And where you and I just drive by and we go, neat El Capitan, that's a big mountain. He goes, you know what, I think I'm gonna climb that thing. But he doesn't do it with a rope and a belay, or he doesn't do it in a charted path where he's gonna be safe if he falls. He doesn't grab anything with him. He takes like a bag of that, you know, powder stuff.
Then he just goes and he climbs it. Just when I watch it, it makes my stomach hurt. Like, I don't know if you guys are big heights people, but, uh, yeah, boy is not, and I just sat there thinking, what does it take for a dude to think that that is something they wanna do with their life? Like there's, and they show in the documentary, there's actually something wrong with his brain.
Like his fear sensor doesn't work very well, but. That's all to say, I was talking about this with Jared the other day about how many people we know in like church circles who have fallen, who have had like moral failure or who've gotten wrapped up in pornography or, and that's not just in the pastoral realm.
You know, I, I mean, I would guess most of us know another dad or we're a dad ourselves. Something just gripped us at some point. It was like a, it was a flirty text with an ex-girlfriend, or it was, you know, clicking on that link late at night. And it used to just be only when you're on a trip out of town and you make these commitments to yourself that I'm, I'm only gonna do this when after this event happens, or only when I'm out of state and other than that I'm gonna, but then it starts to get a hold of you and then.
What you used to control has started to control you. And, uh, I just, something that's really been a burden on my heart as I kinda look at my kids and, you know, my kids right now are 8, 7, 5, 3, and two, and I just don't wanna blow it. You know, like I, when all of a said done, I want my kids to be able to look at me and go, yeah, that guy was, my dad, uh, had a lot of stuff wrong with him.
But when it came to that kind of epic fail, when it came to. Kind of imploding our lives or when it came to, and again, I'm a pastor, so there's a whole different level of responsibility with that. And you can lose your job for that thing, you know? What causes it then, and that's something that I'm, I'm praying about for you guys as dads, and I'm praying about for myself.
But how do we finish this race? Like when, when all my kids are gathered around my death bed? And man, I hope that's the case. I hope that I don't bury any of my babies. I hope they all bury me. But, but one day I'm sitting on that death bed and you know, I've got one eye closed and the other eye kind of peeking open and my kids start telling stories about me or.
They start talking about who I was and who I met and what I meant to them. And you know, I'm excited to see Jesus, so I don't really care what they're saying, but then I hope that the conversation is about faithfulness. I, I hope what I'm remembered for is something that isn't some kind of implosion or life explosion or any of those things.
And. So I was talking to Jared about this idea of, of what does it mean to cut out the things that threaten that, you know, the, the, when it comes to that moment, or you think about like your wedding day and you have these maybe a former, like an ex-girlfriend or you've got some dumb decision that you made long ago and you, you just like, I hope I can get to that altar and that nothing blows it from me or, or nothing comes in and interferes.
'cause I really want that. It's the thing that I want most. It's how I want to be remembered. It's how I want my kids to see me. It's how I want 'em to grow up. It's how I want them to talk about me and, and I don't want anything to threaten that and I don't want anything to challenge that. And so what does it mean for us as dads to be active in getting those things out of our life?
And, and I know that the dad tired audience is big. I know that Dad tired. Influence is great. And as such, I know that there's guys listening to this right now that are knee deep in addictions. They're in over their head in some kind of extramarital activity or gambling or some sort of sexual endeavor or some scheme where they're making money illegally.
Man, I just, I wanna let you know, like you're seen and you're understood, and no guy listens to a story of someone who is engaged in something promiscuous. And there, there's no guy that goes. Yeah. I just, I don't understand that temptation or, or I don't understand that, uh, that lust. I don't every guy gets it.
But the question is the difference between those who do it and those who don't, or those who do it and repeat it, and those who don't are, for those of us who have some sort of addiction in there and those who stop it, it's not what we want. It's what we do. Right? I mean, there's this old phrase that I think rings true.
It's, and it says this, it's, it is our direction, not our intention that determines our destination. Thought that was really important. Like it, you can have all the best intentions in the world, but if your ship is steered towards the iceberg, you're gonna hit it. And, and just like that free solo guy. And one time in the, in the documentary, he started listing off all the people who have fallen.
I. All the people who have died free climbing, that were his friends. And really the, the concession that he made was, if you climb long enough, you will fall. If you keep doing this for long enough, you will fall and you'll know others who do the same thing. And I. I think when you read scripture, there isn't this resignation that says, well, I guess if I'm a human, that means I'm going to sin, and if I sin, I'm gonna have some sort of moral failure that costs me my job or my life, or my wife, or my kids, or my, the Bible seems to call us to something that's pretty radical and.
And this is what I've found is the more that sin has become or these things like pornographic addiction or another kind of addiction or whatever it is in our lives, the more that those things become commonplace, the more difficult it is to talk to someone about it and have them not look at you like you're crazy.
I. I remember leading a group of 17, 18 year olds in small group when I first started out as a youth pastor, like 10 years ago. And I said, how many of you guys struggle with a pornographic addiction? And every single one of them raised their hand. I'm talking about probably a group of 20 18-year-old, 17 and 18-year-old boys, and I said, how many of you struggle with pornographic addiction?
Every hand was up. And then when I said, where do you even get access to it? They all pointed to their cell phones. Their cell phones have ready internet access. They can open a private browser, and they have like ultimate and unlimited anonymity on the internet. I. No one checks their phone. No one does anything.
And but yet, like every week a different kid would come up to me and go, man, I'm really struggling with this addiction. I'm really struggling with lust, I'm really struggling with, and I was like, of course you are. You have it in your pocket, right? Like, let's say that your mom, this might be your story.
Some of, let's say your, your mom has like a, uh. Cocaine addiction or, um, a meth addiction. And the state takes you away from her and then she goes into rehab and the rehab says, in order to start your rehab process, you need to get rid of all of the cocaine and all of the meth on your person. You can't have any with you.
And she insists, no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep some of my drawer and I'm gonna keep some in my pocket. We would never really consider that that woman is trying. I. To break her addiction if she's willing to keep it on her person and just willfully reject it when she really needs to, right? No one would take a rehab center seriously if they permitted that, and no one would take someone in rehab seriously.
If they conceded to do that, we would say, you're not ready to get help. You're not ready to avoid this. You're really not ready to do the steps and the things necessary to get this out of your life. And that's what we find a lot even with ourselves. So I, I asked this group of students, I said. If you are gonna have internet access unfettered and anonymous on your phone, that's fine, but please don't come to me and ask me to help you with your pornographic addiction.
I can't do anything. I love what, um, the book of James says, 'cause I think it really, it tells the story that a lot of us might understand the experience, but, but we don't believe it. And here's what it says. James, chapter one, verse 15, after desire has conceived sin. It gives birth or after we each are led away when our own selfish desires have been conceived and after desire has been conceived, it gives birth to sin and sin when full grown gives birth to death.
Right. It's, it's this chain reaction that happens every single time, but I love the way that it presents it and it, and it makes sense with the way that our brains are wired, that. If you continuously give into sin, right? That's for so many of us. When we find ourselves in addiction, we don't start an addiction, right?
No one is ever like, you wanna know what? I wanna be so drunk that it costs me money and life and household and family and marriage. That's how drunk, no, it starts with someone just going, I gotta take the edge off. And that grows to something bigger. And it's, this is not an anti-alcohol thing, obviously.
There's people all over Jesus drank alcohol. That's, that's not my point. My point is that most addictions start with smaller concessions that lead to bigger ones, that lead to ultimate things. And the Bible says this. It says, we are led away by our self selfish desires. The desires give birth to sin. Sin.
And then it uses this phrase when it's full grown. So I want you to think about like, um, a little child. Let's say look at a Japanese child. Okay? You get a, a child who's Japanese and it's awesome. Well, if you know anything about Japanese culture that one of the most proud things that you could experience is to be involved in, in the Sumo, to be like a high level sumo wrestler.
And that's like one of the coolest things about getting to go to Japan and getting to see that. And. But think about it, uh, trying to defeat a 12-year-old sumo wrestler as like a 30 5-year-old guy. Not that difficult. The problem is if you keep feeding that kid and you keep letting that, that kid grow, that kid grows into a teenage.
Japanese kid and that Japanese teenager is gonna learn the art of sumo and he can grow in stature and he's going to eat more and he's gonna grow until eventually, if you get in the ring with him, you're gonna lose. And when you first started out, right, if you get in the room with a a little wannabe sumo baby, you win every time.
The problem is that that kid grows and that kid grows into something bigger and bigger and bigger until you're gonna go er. Right. You get in the room with a modern day full grown sumo wrestler, you never win. Right? And even if you do, if once every 130 nights with that phone on the side of your bed with your full addiction, you decide you're not gonna give into it.
That's still not success because the other 129 nights you're living in it, you're that you're continuing to feed that sumo wrestler. And the Bible seems to make this indication. That we don't take sin as seriously as God takes sin. Like think about the Old Testament sacrificial system. God says, I want you to understand what sin looks like to me.
And so he presents the sacrificial system where on one day bulls and goats and sheep and doves are slaughtered in droves. And pouring out of the temple is blood. And you imagine just the smell of the innards and the gross and the excretion and the, the flies that are, that are now in investing themselves into the different meat.
And just that, that smell of iron in the blood of an animal and. And as you walk in to make your sacrifice, you have to cover your mouth with your, with your robe. And it's just this most terrible God saying, I want you to understand this is how sin smells to me. And no matter how commonplace it becomes in your small groups in your life, in no matter how many concessions you've made or how much you've justified it, this is what sin looks like.
And sin has one price tag on it, and it's always death. That's what James one says. Desire, conceives gives birth to sin. Sin, you feed it, it grows up, and then it defeats you. The more you feed it, the more it's ready to defeat you. And at some point, sin, which you said at one point you can control now controls you.
And when you get in the ring with a modern day grownup, summa wrestler, there isn't a struggle. Right? It's just you just get totally and completely dominated by that thing. And for those of us who've experienced addiction or. Sin at its highest level. This is what it feels like. There's a moment at which you get shackles on your wrist and shackles on your ankles, and you just do whatever that sin tells you.
And I think we get confused sometimes, like the grace of eternity, the grace of forgiveness that God gives us. Ephesians two, eight and nine for is by grace. You have been saved through faith, not of yourselves, not by works that no man can boast. Salvation is free discipleship, which is the process by which we follow Jesus sanctification.
The process by which we become more like Jesus in our life. That's not free. Salvation is free. Salvation is a free gift from God, not by works. However, once we have been saved by grace through faith in Christ revealed through scripture alone, for God's glory alone. Then what does it mean to finish the race in Christ?
What does it mean to, to move from that first day of saying, God, you are everything to me. I'm gonna follow you. What then is necessary for us to finish our life in Christ, to have that deathbed experience where we can say, I surely messed up along the way, along the way, but I didn't have these epic failure moments.
Or, I only had an epic failure moment once, because I know for some of us, we've already been there, and here's what scripture says. Let me, let me lay before you a few things just to get on the same page. When Paul talks about in the book of Ephesians, what it takes to be saved, it sounds remarkably simple for is by grace.
You have been saved through faith in the book of Romans, what must I do to be saved? Paul says, Romans 10, nine through 10. If you confess that Jesus says Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Man, that bar seems low. Then you say, oh, cool, Paul. So if I accept Christ, then the rest of my life is gonna be easy, breezy, lemon squeezy.
Paul says, no, one Corinthians nine verse 26, he writes this. Therefore, because I want to finish the race in Christ, I do not run like someone running aimlessly. I I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. No. I beat my body and I make it my slave so that after I have concluded, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.
That doesn't sound very simple. That doesn't sound very low bar, and he's separating two things. Salvation is free and discipleship will cost you everything. Romans chapter 10, exactly like I said, believe in your heart, confess through their mouth that Jesus says Lord and was raised from the dead and you will be saved.
So that's what I need to do to live my life in Christ. No, no, no. Keep reading Romans chapter 12, two short chapters later. It says, therefore, because of the gift of grace and salvation, therefore brothers, in view of this mercy. Ephesians 2, 8 9 in view of the free gift. In view of God's Mercy, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice.
That seems like an oxymoron, right? Like plastic glasses, jumbo shrimp, pretty ugly. Two words that we put together, but that are opposites. Jumbo shrimp, plastic glasses, living sacrifice. Paul says, no, no, no, friend. If you want to follow Christ, and if you want to become more like him, you'll become a living sacrifice.
Holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship. Do not be conformed any longer to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will know what the will of God is in your life. Just to belabor the point, when Jesus touches on this subject, he says something radical that we're not really willing to accept.
He says this. If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It's better for you to walk into heaven. He's saying with one arm and one leg, and gouging out your eyes. If it's caused you to to sin. It's better for a man to walk in with one arm, one leg, one eye right, than it is for you to have two legs, two eyes, two arms, but to use those things to pull you away from Christ, to let those sins become full born.
Then you reject the gift of God in your life and you spend the rest of eternity apart from God in hell. It is better for you to limp into the kingdom of God with one arm and one leg because God's gonna give you a new body anyway. So of course, Jesus is using radical language here, but he's trying, he uses radical language for us to understand how radically problematic and detrimental and dangerous sin is.
Right? If you had leprosy growing on your fingertips, or if you had a staph infection that you couldn't get rid of. It makes sense. If you wanna live, you cut off that whole limb. If it means it's gonna protect the rest of your body from that infection, and this is what Jesus is capitalizing on. If your right hand causes you to sin, throw it away.
Cut it off, get rid of it. Some of us though, we're not even willing to change our schedule to avoid sin. We're not willing to have a hard conversation with someone that we've been flirting with, that we shouldn't be flirting with. We're not even willing to block them from our phone. We're not willing to change our phone plan from a smartphone to a dumb phone.
And that is what all the kids in my youth group did. When the group that I was talking about, I said, if you want me to take you seriously, get a flip phone. And within one month, every kid, every 17, 18-year-old. Changed their phones to a flip phone and they got made fun of and they were ridiculed and some of them had to look up their In-N-Out schedule on a laptop computer rather than their phone.
And yet, in one short month, I said, how many of you have looked at porn in the last two weeks? And it went from 20 people to two or three. Two or three had still taken the, the effort they needed to go around those roadblocks or to go find a new computer and put it in their room. And, but then it was much simpler.
Okay, give your parents the password to your laptop computer, and then in a few short months, sure. People were finding different ways to do it, but by and large, instead of. 20 people struggling with addiction. We had one or two whose parents either either weren't involved or they weren't willing to make the sacrifices necessary.
And, and that's what I wanna challenge us. That's what I wanna challenge myself. What are the things that are keeping static on the line in my relationship with Jesus That if I, if I applied the same amount of strategy I do to my job, or I do, to making money, or the same amount of strategy that I do to accomplishing a task or to building a, a doghouse or whatever, whatever.
Niche thing we're into, if I applied the same amount of energy to getting rid of sin and to strategizing the riddance of sin in my life, you better believe I would have it figured out by now. The problem is sin grows and then it becomes bigger, and then it conquers me, and then I don't even wanna challenge it anymore because I know I've lost that fight too many times and I'm just here to tell you as another guy fighting through what temptation looks like.
Let's do it. And let's challenge ourselves. Let's look at what that is. Let's, let's move from a smartphone to a dumb phone. And I get it. You go, well, it's my world. But I promise you, trading in these 75 years of having some digital device on your hip for 75 trillion years in eternity is a very. Wise investment when you look in the face of your kids and you know what it could cost you if you don't stop that addiction or, or you don't turn away from that other relationship, or you don't knock it off with that gambling addiction or with that drug habit that you're starting, I promise you there is no drug that is worth more than having your kids look at you with respect.
Admiration and I just, man, I wanna finish this race in Jesus. But a lot of the times I'm not willing to pay the price. But when you open the scriptures, Jesus never negotiates the price. When he says, if you wanna follow me, you must deny yourself. Take up your cross. Be ready to die, and then you'll ready to follow me.
I love the way that that David puts in the Old Testament. I'll wrap up with this. He says, he goes and he wants to buy a, uh. A threshing floor and some oxen for a sacrifice that he's gonna make in the temple and or to Yahweh. And the guy who's, who's gonna sell it to him says, man, I, I'm not gonna take your money.
You're the king. I'm gonna give it to you for free. Don't worry about it. But King David says, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is a sacrifice I'm making to the Lord. How could I have you give me an oxen for free? If I'm making a sacrifice? The whole point of an oxen sacrifice is that I'm paying for it. So he says this verse 24 of two Samuel 24, second Samuel 24 24 says this, but the king said to Orna, no.
I will pay for it. I dare not lay before the Lord, a sacrifice that costs me nothing. What is the sacrifice? Even an expensive one. And I don't mean expensive in terms of a lot of money, but I do mean what are the expensive sacrifices that we need to make? The hard conversations we need to have, the exorcism, we need to have with something in our life.
The getting rid of something, the, the, the trading of something for something else, the, the group. We need to stop hanging out with the smoke breaks we need to stop taking. What are those things that we can stop today? To prevent that free solo moment where we fall off the cliff and everyone goes, remember what that guy used to be like?
Or remember how his family used to be so great. Remember that guy's marriage? I know that some of us, we we're on the other side of it already. We've already made the mistake and we think, well, what does it matter? Now, I promise you it matters. It matters to your king. It matters to Jesus, and God can make beautiful things out of ashes and, and your story's not done being written.
But it is time for us to get rid of those things in our life that are pulling us away from him. And Jesus seems to say whatever the price it is to get rid of the sin in your life, it is a price worth paying. 'cause even if you got one eye and one arm and you're limping in the kingdom of God, God's gonna give us a new body to spend the next 75 trillion years.
And we certainly. Won't lament 75 years of being a little bit uncomfortable or a little bit awkward, or not having that right smartphone for an eternity with him, for the way that our kids look at us, for the way that our wives respect us. So as someone walking in the middle of their own journey and in our own battle, I wanna challenge you once again.
I think this is what discipleship looks like. It's gonna be hard, it's gonna be difficult, but we gotta starve the sumo wrestler in our life so we can get back in the ring with him someday and defeat him. And if you starve the sumo wrestler, you don't even have to fight him. Just stop feeding him. And he'll become emaciated and then you'll get back control and eventually that sumo wrestler will make its way out of your life.
'cause you're not gonna wrestle with it anymore. You're not gonna give it its satisfaction. And that's when we experience freedom. And freedom is the goal for any Christian. That's what Galatians five says It is for freedom that Christ has come to set us free. And I want that for all of us. And God wants that for us as dads.
Hey guys. I'm confident that that episode resonated with a lot of you. If you wanna dive deeper, I highly recommend that you pick up a copy of our newest dad Tired book called The Dad Tired, q and a Mixtape. We wrote about things that you won't hear on Sunday mornings or you won't hear in your Bible study.
These are hard topics that men are going through and. And sometimes it's just really like, it's hard to find places and resources where you can process this stuff. The the book was also written in a way that you can go through it together in a small group. There's questions at the end of every chapter, but again, it's all on this topic, like the hard stuff of what it looks like to be disciple of Jesus day in and day out, so that we can be the husbands, fathers, and disciples that God is calling us to be.
So if you haven't picked up a copy of it, go to Amazon. You can pick up a copy there. Again, it's called the Dad's Tired q and a Mix tape. We love you guys and we'll see you next week.