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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. Today's episode of the Dad Tired Podcast is brought to you by Back Gate Prayers. They have been a partner of ours for a long time, and Valentine's Day is coming up and you probably are thinking to yourself that you need to get something for your loved one. And you might be thinking, you're probably getting stuck with just like flowers or candy, the basic stuff that you find in the grocery store last minute.
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'cause they look really good. But it's also very. Obviously you want to use them to pray, but you can put 'em on your desk, you can put them in your guys' room or in the bathroom or whatever, and you can see these pictures of you and your spouse every day. And then you see these prayers and, and it's ways that you can just like you have a tangible way to pray over your marriage consistently and daily.
They make ones for grandparents and for kids and all kinds of stuff. But for Valentine's Day, the marriage. Set can be really, really awesome. And again, those are all personalized with your own photo and name. It just as a huge personal touch, it will feel way more significant than just flowers or candy.
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I think I told you guys a couple weeks ago that I was like deathly sick, and I promise I wasn't like having a man cold. You know? There's nothing worse now. You know, I get when you're sick and you just want to take a couple days off to rest and you don't have energy or whatever, but there's nothing worse.
Honestly, when I'm sick and I have to watch my wife as I'm just laying in a room and she's trying to care for all the kids and I'm just completely useless, I hate that. I don't want to do that. Let alone all the work that I feel like I need to get done and all the things that need to get done around the house and all that stuff.
But I just couldn't. I, dude, I was so sick, man. IWI woke up at like one in the morning and I apologize for the TMI here, but I just woke up. I knew I wasn't feeling what, you know that feeling when you're like, ah, cr like I'm going to this. Here it comes. So I throw up once and I'm like, this is not good. So I went into another, I went downstairs into another room, our guest room, and, uh, slept there.
Well, slept. I, I didn't sleep. I was like. Every hour, dude, less than every hour. I was just up in, in the bathroom. Anyway, I won't go into all the details, but it was terrible. I was really, really sick. Layla came in the next morning, she's like, are you okay? And I'm like, I literally feel like I'm gonna die.
Like I, if I don't wake up, I won't be surprised. And, uh, such a man cold thing for me to say. But dude, I was sick, man. I was like deathly sick. Anyway, I'm laying there for over 24 hours in this bed, genuinely feel like I'm dying. And. I feel so dramatic saying that, you know, but in the moment it felt like that.
Anyway, so I'm laying there, I feel like I'm gonna die. And you go through when you're sick and you're not sleeping and you don't feel well, you, your brain goes to weird places. And my brain was just thinking like, is this it? Like, am I gonna, are these my last moments with my kids? And you start to think to yourself like, what?
If this is it, you know, being so traumatic, but I'm like, if this is it, you know, what do you say? What do you, what am I gonna say to my kids? And felt way more intense in the moment than it does right now as I'm reliving it back. But I'm just was thinking to myself like, what do you say? What do you say in your final moments?
Have you ever thought about that? Like if you are, I guess, blessed with the ability to. Have the last moments. You know, some of us could just go today in a car accident. This, this is turning morbid. I apologize. Uh, you know, some of us could go without thinking about our, knowing that it's our time suddenly, but others of us might, you know, maybe you have an illness or something and you have your final moments and you, you get the opportunity to know these are the final moments.
With your loved ones, your kids and your wife and you, you have the ability to say kind of your final thoughts. Like, have you ever thought, what are you gonna say in that moment? I was trying to think of that when I was laying in bed being dramatic and feeling deathly ill and I didn't know like what I would say.
It's weird to, I. I didn't come up with anything profound and I didn't have any amazing thoughts. I just thought, this is interesting. Like if this is the moments, like what are the final things I wanna say to my wife and to my kids? It's certainly not, Hey, make sure your room's clean. You know, like, uh, there's a lot of dumb stuff that I tell my kids all the time that I feel like are important, but.
In that moment, in that context, you just are like this. What is the most important thing to me? Think about that for a second. I think it might be interesting if you just kinda like rack your brain. What would you say to your wife and kids if this were your final moments, what's the last thing that you want them to hear from you?
And it will likely be what is ever most important to you? Jesus, he. Died and he rose again and he visited his disciples. But then he says the last words, some of you may know this, but I'm sure a lot of you guys aren't familiar, but the last words that Jesus ever says to his disciples, after spending three and a half years with them, really intimately living with them, performing miracles, walking on water, eating, they watched his crucifixion, and you know, there's.
They spent a lot of life together. These weren't like casual acquaintances. These were best friends, his closest friends, and so he's about to leave them physically. And uh, these are the last words that Jesus ever says to him. Matthew 28. 18 through 20 says, and Jesus came to them and said, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Go therefore, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit teaching them to observe. All that I have commanded you and behold I am with you always to the end of the age. When you think about that in the context of like these are the last words that Jesus wants his disciples to hear from him, it's interesting 'cause you could have all the things he could have brought up.
He could have brought up some good memories they had. Like, Hey, let's just sit and kind laugh and reminisce about. Remember that one time. Peter, you were trying to walk on water and then you got scared and you started to sink. Or you remember that one time you guys were in a storm and you thought you were gonna die, and you're like, don't you love us?
And I'm like, okay, I'm God. Like I can calm the storm. Like so many things he could have reminisced on and gone back and they could have laughed about or he could have like told them something you like, Hey, make sure you guys tithe. You know, like make sure you listened to K Love or. Whatever the thing is that he really wanted them to hear.
But the thing that Jesus seems to really wanted them to leave with, like his final stamp, his final, the do not forget this, is go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them, teaching them to observe. All that I've commanded you. Everything I've taught you now go teach them, make disciples. And so we hear that in the church.
Like if you're part of a church or you've been in the Christian world for a long time, you've probably heard the word discipleship. It probably gets thrown around your church, probably often. You know, like I'm, I'm thinking a couple times a week or a couple times a month. I mean, you're hearing this from stage.
We wanna make disciples. It's often part of your church mission statement, all this stuff. But you have to come back to like, what the heck does it actually mean and how do you know you're a disciple? Oftentimes, like when I was growing up, we would just kind of have this idea of you're either not a Christian or you're a Christian, and to be a disciple of Jesus means you believe in Jesus.
You've committed your life to Jesus. You've said a prayer oftentimes, that was what it was when I was a kid. You would say a prayer, and if you said the prayer and you repeat it after a pastor or a speaker, then you are a Christian that thus you are a disciple. But that doesn't seem to be how the scriptures define discipleship.
Like if you look at Hebrews five, this is a famous passage. If you've been around the church world a while, you've probably heard this one, but. The writer of Hebrews says about this, we have much to say and it is hard to explain since you have become dull of hearing. I love the, uh, very direct language for though by this time you ought to be teachers.
You need someone to teach you again, the basic principles of the Oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food. Again, I love the language. It's just so direct. Borderline offensive for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness since he's a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
The writer is essentially, it seems like his frustration is to the audience that he's writing to is like, listen, you've been doing this like God thing, this Christian thing, this following Jesus thing for a while here, you ought to be a teacher. Like you should be teaching other people how to do this, or as Jesus would say.
You ought to be making disciples teaching them everything I've taught you. But instead, somebody still has to be teaching you like you're drinking milk. You're still on your mother's milk. All you can handle is milk when you ought to be having food. Solid food is what you should have at this point in your journey with following God.
And so there. The writer of Hebrews like clues us into this idea that it's not just, you say a prayer and you become a Christian and you are a disciple, but the discipleship journey involves maturing. Like there has to be some kind of point where you say, okay, I used to be a child who has drank milk, a spiritual child, and now I've grown up in my maturity.
I'm growing up in my maturity and I'm eating solid food. And so I guess for us as men, as dads, and. Guys, husbands who are trying to lead our family. Well, I guess the question for us today is, where are we at on that spiritual journey? If it's not just say a prayer and believe in Jesus. Which I think a lot of us are, and a lot of us would claim that if it's not just that, if it's true that there's this idea, and I just gave you one passage of many, but it it's true that the idea that you are not supposed to just become a new believer, as Jesus said.
Be born again. So it's like you're being born, you have this spiritual rebirth, you used to be dead, and now you're alive and you're, you're spiritually born, and so you're quote unquote, a spiritual baby. And that's not good enough. It seems like for the scriptures or in the, in the scriptures, it seems that there's, there's gotta be this maturing.
And so for us as men, we have to ask ourselves like, where am I at on my journey of maturing, becoming more like. Jesus. In my discipleship journey, I've been meeting with some guys every week, by the way. We've tried off and on, like, let's meet weekly, let's try to meet once a month. It's hard, dude. We're all dads, we're all husbands.
We've got young kids, we've got busy schedules and jobs. We're all committed. We want to be the guys, the men that God's calling us to be. So we gotta make this a commitment. So we started to meet. Once a week in the evenings, and my wife said the other day, we were meeting at our house and my wife's like, you know, I'm gonna put the kids to bed by the time that the guys get here.
You guys can just meet in the living room. But we've been meeting in each other's garages, just practically like, because we didn't wanna wake up the kids and the families. So we just meet, been meeting in the garage. It's been super cold. By super cold. I mean, where I'm at, it's like 39 degrees. I know some of you guys are in like negative 30 degree weather right now, but I would die, quite literally die.
Anyway, we are in the, uh, we've been meeting in the garage practically, and we're just like, I don't wanna meet in the living room. Like there's something about, I. Meeting in the garage. Okay, I'm gonna go on a little bit of tangent here. Please gimme some grace. My a d d's gonna kick in real hard here, but lemme go on just a si very small little side tangent.
I was thinking about this 'cause we've been meeting in garages and we've all loved it. I'm like, why do we love this? This is probably overthinking it, but there's something about a garage that feels so accurate. To what it To a man's life and brain. So if you think about most of our garages, and we've met in multiple garages, you think about a garage, like the garage is, you try to clean it up, but you look around and it's still kind of messy.
I cleaned my garage the other day for like four hours and I looked, I stood back and looked at it and you couldn't really tell it difference. I just like shuffle things around. And so you try to keep this thing, this space as clean as you can and as tight as you can, but it's still kind of, if you look around, it's still kind of a mess, but even in the midst of the kind of mess.
And some of you may have like real messy garages. Maybe you got a real messy garage, maybe you got somewhat organized garage. But in the midst of this, you probably have some containers there that you're trying to like. Package some stuff. And so there's, there's a container for electronics and then there's a container for some of your tools and there's a container for us.
We got like a, if we go to the beach container or maybe a camping container, whatever, you got like nice little organized buckets for each of your stuff. And I was thinking to how accurate is that for a dude? Like our lives we're trying, man, like. I'm listening to the Dad's Tired podcast and I'm going to church and I'm trying my best to be the man God's call me to be.
But dude, you step back and you look and it's still kind of messy, like my life. It's still pretty messy. Even after hours of trying to get this thing cleaned up, it still looks pretty messy. I. And then within that, you know, kind of organized chaos, you see these buckets and I've got a bucket for my camping stuff and a bucket for fishing, whatever.
But you look at a man's life and it's like, I've got a bucket for Jesus and I've got a bucket for my wife and I've got a bucket for my kids and a bucket for work. I kinda have like, I'm trying to self-contained all these parts of my life and uh, I just thought, man, that's pretty accurate. Like, it makes sense for when Jesus says like, I'm, I don't wanna like.
Be in one of the buckets. I'm not trying to have, I'm not trying to like fill your spiritual bucket. I want all of it. I want to completely rip out the garage and like start from scratch here. And I want to control everything. But I don't know, ma'am, there's something about a garage and for meeting with dudes, if you haven't tried it, try it.
We got little heaters out there and we're a, you know, we're doing our best to stay warm as we just talk about Jesus and confess in and pray for each other and study God's word. But there's something about a garage. I don't know. I might write some like grace-filled garage Bible study or something. I don't know.
That's, that was cheesy, but yeah. Anyway, okay. All that to say, as we've been meeting with dudes, we've been asking each other as guys at my house. We've been asking each other, what does it look like for us as men to grow in our discipleship journey and not have that be some vague. Statement that oftentimes we feel at church, we're all disciples, we need to grow in discipleship.
What does that actually mean? Like literally when you're Monday to Saturday, when we're not at church doing the churchy stuff, what does it actually mean to grow as a disciple? How do you know if you're drinking milk or you're eating solid food, like. How do you even assess yourself as a man to figure out where you are on the discipleship journey?
So that's what I wanna spend the back half of this podcast, couple minutes talking about and then we'll wrap up. But as we do this, I want you to just think about where are you? On your spiritual discipleship journey as you think about maturing to become more like Jesus. Hey guys. Before we jump into the five stages of spiritual growth, want to quickly pause and tell you about something really, really excited, something I'm super excited about.
I just launched a brand new program for people who are. Thinking about or who are serious about starting their own podcast. So maybe you have considered starting your own podcast maybe as a hobby or part of your business or whatever, and you just don't really know where to go. When I first started podcasting eight years ago, I had no idea what I was doing, and I cringe still at the early episodes, but I've learned a lot over the years.
I just actually spent an hour and a half with Matthew West, recording artist Matthew West. He and I touched base, just one-on-one. We weren't, weren't recording a podcast or anything, but he has his own podcast and he was asking like, Jared, can I just pick your brain on podcasting? And so I spent a bunch of time with him this week.
It's just something I'm, I'm really excited about. I'm passionate about equipping more Christians to get their voice out in the world. We need more. Entertainment and art and voices in the Christian space. And so if that's you, whether you're an accountant or a church or a pastor or a, you just wanna do a hobby on sports or whatever, and you've thought about doing a podcast and you just don't know where to go, I'm personally coaching.
I've set aside time to personally coach 10 students a month. Or I will hold your hand like you'll be able to message me, voice message, we'll do a one-on-one coaching call, all of that stuff. So I can help you get your podcasts out there. If that's something that's of all interesting to you, I'd love for you to learn more.
You can do that by going pod to finish.com. Again, POD pod to TO finish.com, like podcast to finish, pod to finish.com. You can sign up there and jump in. You can jump in at any time. It's totally self-paced, but I would love to walk you through personally starting your own podcast so that you can start to reach people all around the world.
All right. That being said, let's jump back into the episode. Okay, so just right off the bat, I want to fully claim that what I'm about to go over, I stole from a church in Idaho. There's this pastor there named Jim Putman. I used to use a lot of his resources when I was on staff at a church back in Oregon.
This was close to a decade ago, I guess, maybe even over a decade ago. But out of all the discipleship style, I was a, I was a discipleship. Pastor at one point, my goal was to help our church think through how do we grow in discipleship. And of all the stuff, all the books, all the things I've read, there's a lot of great stuff out there.
But this felt for my brain as a dude. I felt, and I'm not that smart of a guy too, so I needed something like really simple. And so I found this by Jim Putman. It's a discipleship that the five stages of spiritual growth. And, uh, this has been very helpful for me. We're going through this with the guys that I meet with every week.
It's been really helpful for them. And so I just wanna share this with you. The five stages of spiritual growth, again, by Jim Putman. And as I describe these five stages. I want you to kind of think to yourself, okay, I might be there. And then the goal is to first self-identify where do you think you are on the spiritual journey of discipleship?
And then ask yourself, what would it look like for me to grow into, to mature into the next area or the next stage of spiritual development? So here are the five stages again, as you hear them kind of self-assess here. The first one would be, everyone's on this somewhere on this spiritual wheel. The first one would be spiritually dead.
This means you have not. Trusted Jesus as your savior. A lot of people who are spiritually dead, which is most of our world, there are more non-Christians than Christians. Most people who are spiritually dead will say things like, ah, I'm a good person. If there is a God. When I get to heaven, I'm just trusting that my good will outweigh my bad.
I'm not that bad of a person. I try to be pretty good. I try to be a pretty good person and uh, my hope is that you know, either one. I don't believe there is a God. I think everything about religion is just corrupt and everybody's jacked up and you guys are all, you use that for money and war and all that stuff.
Stuff, but I'm not into any of that. I think when you die, you just go into nothingness, to blackness, to darkness. Or some people might be more kind of agnostic, meaning they don't really know. I think all religions are the same. I don't really follow any religion and, but I guess if there is a higher power or a God or something.
Out there, some force out in the universe and we die and I stand before this force or this person or this thing or whatever, you know, I just will trust that my, I did my best and uh, my good will outweigh the bad. Hopefully if there is a heaven. I would get into whether that's a. My own planet or another universe or some, you know what the, I come back at karma or, uh, reincarnation as, uh, golden retriever instead of a cockroach.
You know, I don't know what the thing those would be. Some statements that somebody who's spiritually dead would say they have not trusted Jesus as their savior. They have not heard, investigated, been drawn to wooed by the spirit of God and thought, man, okay, that. Historical person of Jesus wasn't just a good teacher.
I think what he was saying was true. And I actually believe him to be God. So much so, and the Spirit has opened my eyes and he's revealing to me that I actually wanna follow that God. Like I'm starting to. I see who he is and the claims that he made about himself. And I want to follow him. I don't know what it means.
I don't have all the answers, but I want to do my best to figure out who is this Jesus. 'cause I actually believe that he is who he says he is. So if you haven't said any of that, you'd be spiritually dead. And I. That's the choice that you're making. And my prayer for you, if you would fall into that category is that God would be gracious to you, man, that he would open your eyes even in this moment, as I am speaking, something supernatural that you would, that it sounds weird and like for you, probably sounds like, dude, what is this?
Voodoo. But somehow there is this God who created all things, who knows you intimately, who planned every day of your life, who knows every hair on your head, has all kinds of thoughts about you. That God, if you have not trusted in Him, actually is also a God of justice and your sin, regardless of how good of a person you think you are, you will stand before not just a really good God, a really kind and loving God, but also a very just God who hates sin and cannot be in the presence of sin.
And so I don't care if you've told one Lie or a million lies. Or you've murdered someone, or as Jesus would say, you've hated somebody. It's all the same whether you've committed adultery or you've just lust after a woman. It is all the same. Every single person the Bible says has fallen short of God's standard of goodness.
There are none that are good. And so if your hope is that you'll just stand in front of this righteous God, not just a good God, not just a kind and loving and gentle like hippie God that you might think he is, he's also a very just God who cannot be in the presence of sin. And so if you've got any of it, you've got no chance.
You have no. Chance of standing before a holy A different, a just God. He's not gonna just overlook it, be like, I get it. I get where you are. I see where you were going there and you probably made some bad decisions, but you had to do what you had to do. God is not like that. God is not like us. He's holy and just and cannot be in the presence of sin.
And you friend are a sinner like all of us, and your hope of being good and moral just will not stand up. And so my prayer for you. Even as you listen to this podcast would be that you would surrender your life to Jesus, that you would recognize that God would actually open your eyes even right now, and you'd recognize like, holy cow, I am actually not a good person, and as much as I try to fool the world and try to convince everybody, I'm a pretty decent person.
I. I know my own thoughts and they're pretty jacked up and they're pretty wicked, and you know all the things that you've done and thought in secret and God would reveal to you how sinful you are and that you actually have no chance of being a quote unquote moral person compared to him, and that you need him to save you.
That would be my prayer for you if you don't. Sense, any of that, any of that conviction by your sin or any of that, you are spiritually dead. And so you just have to wrestle through what that's gonna look like for you and for your life. All sin leads to death, and as you continue to lead in death, a lot of things around you're gonna die.
Your joy, your satisfaction, your relationships, there's gonna be a bunch of death in your life, and Jesus would say, I wanna save you and bring you into life so that you can experience life up. Abundantly, full relationships, the Kingdom of God, glimpses of heaven here on Earth. So anyway, went a little bit on a tangent there, but that would be someone who's spiritually dead.
They do not believe in God, or they're agnostic. They have not surrendered to Jesus. Secondly, on the spiritual journey would be the second person that I described kind of within that, which would be a spiritual infant, somebody who has made the decision to say, I do believe in Jesus. I believe the claims that Jesus is who he says he was.
If that is you, if you've made those claims, uh, which I, I'm guessing a lot of you listening to this podcast, that's probably you, you might be falling into the category of spiritual infants. So this would be somebody who's actually drinking milk and listen, I. We're all dads. I mean, many of you who are listening are dads.
Some of you are moms who are sneaking in here. Hello. Many of us are parents, and even if you're not a parent, many of us can appreciate how beautiful and miraculous an infant is. We have four babies. We've had OBGYNs who have said to us, who aren't even believers, who have used the words like. Every time there's a baby formed, it's a miracle.
It's insane. And they were using it more from a scientific term, like it just doesn't make sense. The amount of things that can go wrong, and yet somehow they still go right. The fact that a baby can be born into this world out of the incredible. Odds that that life would form into a human and be birthed every single time is a miracle.
We at the Dad type podcast, we believe in babies and life, and we love babies. We think that they're a gift from God, and we believe that every life is a miracle. When a baby is born, you just recognize like, holy cow, that is insane. And the same is true as a spiritual infant. Somebody that has made a decision to follow Christ.
Dude, praise God. That was a dead person who God has chosen to not let them live or not let them sit in their. Deadness, but he brought them to life. He unveiled their eyes and said, listen, you are spiritually dead, but I don't want you to be dead. I wanna save you. And God saved them. Maybe God saved you.
That is insane. That's a miracle. And spiritual infants are beautiful. It's worth celebrating. So if you feel like I'm drinking milk, I'm a spiritual infant, dude, that is okay. Praise God. God saved you. The problem is, and we'll, we'll talk about this a little bit more as I go through the other stages here, and I'll start trying to rush through these a little faster.
'cause I know I'm dragging on. But the problem is when somebody got saved. 10, 20, 30, 50 years ago, and they're still drinking milk. Like it's cool. We have babies. We have four kids in our house. I have a 12-year-old who's my oldest son. He is almost 13. Dude, when he was a baby, I, I'll, I'll get emotional. You guys know me if I'm holding him.
When I think back to holding him and his little body man and rocking him to sleep, I know exactly how to rock him when he was just a little infant to get him to sleep. And that was beautiful and precious. But listen, if my 13-year-old is still pooping in his pants, we have a problem. Obviously there might be some medical or mental challenges for certain people, but if he is a normal, healthy, functioning 12-year-old and 13-year-old boy, which he is, and he's still doing things that an infant were doing, if all he was drinking is his mom's milk, things are getting weird.
I. You know what I mean? Like he shouldn't be doing that. And praise God, he's not because he's maturing. He's becoming more like a man. And that's the same for a spiritual pers on your spiritual journey. We should not always be drinking milk. We celebrate new life and it gotta save somebody. It's beautiful.
But if they're still drinking milk as a 12-year-old, as a 20-year-old, as a 50-year-old, things are getting weird. You have not grown up in your spiritual journey, and we wanna see you matured. Get off the milk to start to have some solid foods. So here's some things that I always give this example, my friend Aaron, who I discipled back, like I said, maybe over a decade ago.
I always use this example of him if he's listening. Aaron, I love you and you know I love you, but this is my favorite example of using spiritual infant. Aaron as we had met, he had just given his life to Christ. He knew nothing. He had no context of like church or following Jesus. So he comes to our church.
He gives his life life to Jesus. He and I start to meet more regularly. He's starting to understand our, what it looks like to. To make a decision to follow Jesus. He ends up dating one of the other new Christian gals in our small little community group. And uh, so the Christmas time comes, he's a brand new believer.
He is dating this other brand new believer. We're at Costco. I would just try to bring him with me everywhere I went. This is part of discipleship life, on life as you go make disciples. So I would bring him with me everywhere that I could. So we were at Costco and we're walking around and, uh, he's we're, again, it's about Christmas time and he says to me, he says, Hey man, I'm thinking about, I can't figure out if I should take my girlfriend.
To the coast for a couple nights or if I should take her to the, uh, mountains for a couple nights. I didn't say anything, but I must, my face must have changed. 'cause he looked at me and he is like, is that not good? And I was like, well dude, you're either going to have sex as you are at one of these places, the coast or the mountains, or everyone will think you are.
Um, or it's just gonna be really, really, really tempting to not. And so, as followers of Jesus, we believe that sex is most beautiful and most freeing and most shame free. And it's a beautiful gift. But that gift is best and designed to be enjoyed in the context of marriage where two people have committed their lives to each other, that there would be no nakedness and no shame because two people know each other.
They leave their father and mother, they clinging to each other as one flesh for life. And so then sex is a culmination of all the commitment that we have given to each other. And so it's a beautiful gift. Enjoyed, but enjoyed in the context of marriage, not in a dating relationship. And he was like, oh, okay, maybe I'll just buy her toothbrush.
I knew she wanted a new electric toothbrush, and so he quite literally at Costco picked up a toothbrush and, uh, got that for her as a Christmas gift. But the point of that story is he was an infant. He quite, he didn't know. He didn't know. I can't fault him. I can't be like, dude, you just gave your life to Christ.
He's like, what are you even thinking? He didn't know. And infants don't know if you have an infant in your house. They just don't know. They don't know to not touch the outlets. They don't know to not go to the bathroom in their pants. They don't know not to stick things in their mouth. Like they just don't know.
And you don't get mad at them for not knowing. You teach them, you help them grow up, but a spiritual infant doesn't know. So if you're a spiritual infant, you just might not know the word of God. That's okay. You don't know what the Bible says. You haven't really studied it. You don't. You just, you're quite ignorant to what it means to be a follower of Jesus.
So for you, your goal is to get with other Christians, with people who are more ahead of you. Start to learn these truths. What does it mean to follow Jesus? Make new habits. If you're looking at porn, you gotta get rid of porn. If you're getting drunk, you gotta stop getting drunk. If you're being greedy, you gotta stop being greedy like you create new habits.
And this is what it means to start to mature, to get out of infancy, and to grow in your spiritual journey, to study the word of God. You're going from ignorance to start to learn some new knowledge. Once you pass through infancy, which there's no time, this could take five minutes or five years, hopefully less than five years, but.
The spirit, the Holy Spirit. There is no kind of time restraints on this, but as you move past infancy, you move into a child, your state of childhood as a spiritual, on your spiritual journey, children are selfish. This is what this category would be defined as. Children are selfish. Like my, I have a 5-year-old daughter and a 10-year-old daughter, 3-year-old, and a, like I said, a 12-year-old son.
Children are selfish, man. They don't really, that life is about them. And this is why for you as a parent, you just get, you can't believe their selfishness that I've done the dishes 10 times today, and yet somehow you're still using 58 different cups today. Like, how are you so selfish? How do you not understand that the consequences of your behavior are gonna affect me deeply?
Like, how can you not clean your room or do your laundry? Or why do I have to ask you to do the same thing a million times? Or how do you. Toss or get mad about the food that I just prepared for you. Do you not know? I just worked super hard to make you this food and to cook you a meal and now you just, you don't like it.
You want a chicken nugget again, like they're selfish. All they think about is themselves. And that for spiritual child, that's kind of where you would be at. Uh, you would say some of the same things like, I don't really like that church because they don't do this for me. I don't really like the songs that they play at that church.
I don't like this podcast 'cause. His voice is super annoying. Sorry, I don't wanna really like that person because they just, I don't know, they just annoy me. Like all the statements as a spiritual child are, are me and I statements. It's all about me. It's all about myself. And this is a spiritual child.
You're, the world is focused on you, kind of a good thing for a spiritual child as you're thinking through. Like, I'm just trying to figure out does God love me? What does God think about me? This is actually a beautiful part of childhood. It's learning your identity as a kid. Like I, maybe I wanna be a firefighter one day and an astronaut the next day, and doctor the next day.
This is all you're learning who you are. How have you been wired? And as a spiritual child, you're learning how did God wired me? And there's some parts where it's actually okay and even beautiful to be selfish. Your spiritual journey is really just about you. And you can probably guess where the next stage is, and that would be spiritual.
Young adult. And I often equate this to like if you were moving from a child to young adulthood, a young adult in the real world would often move from high school to college. They'd be sent off out of the house. And this is really the first time if you meet somebody who's just gotten to college or started that phase of their life.
After high school, they start to realize like the world is bigger than their high school. And you probably experienced this in your own life. Like you, everything in high school was the biggest deal. Everything revolved around what happened with your peers and your little small group in high school, you couldn't even see, you couldn't even fathom what was happening around the rest of the world, let alone like the other side of town.
Everything was just revolved around your little bubble and that's childhood. You, your child, you are thinking about yourself and your own little world, but a young adult, they go off to school. They get sent off, they get a job and they start to realize like, oh dang, the world, like, who cares about my high school?
The world's bigger than that. There are bigger issues, there are bigger things going on in the world, and this would be a spiritual young adult. You start to realize like maybe this whole Christian journey isn't just about me. My own spiritual journey and where I'm at with God. Maybe it's about other people.
Maybe I need to serve, like what's going on with my neighbors and my coworkers. And now if you're a parent, you are kind of forced into start to think like this. Like, what's going on in the spiritual journey of my kids? Where are they at with God? Not just where am I at with God, but where are they at with God?
And how do I pray for them and serve them? How do I serve my wife? Marriage and parenting kind of force you into these categories. Whether you are mature enough or not, you just kind of get thrown into asking yourself these kind of questions, but a spiritual, young adult is thinking through, okay? It's not just about.
What kind of worship I like or the teaching I like, but it's really thinking through how can I serve at my church? Why has God brought me to this church and what value do I and my family bring? How can we start to be a blessing to this body of Christ? What part of the body are we here locally? So if you're not a Christian, that that the scripture's talking about, everyone's got.
Part of the body of hand, the foot, and elbow and eye. Everybody plays a role in the body of Christ. Um, that's what Jesus referred to as his church. And so you just start to ask yourself, okay, not just what am I as a child, but how do I contribute to the greater body? How am I helping and serving and giving sacrificing?
You might say something like, instead of the movie tonight, or instead of buying this thing, I'm going to actually give my money away or go serve, use my hours to go serve somewhere or someone. So that'd be a spiritual young adult. And then finally. As we wrap up here, there would be a spiritual parent. The reason Jim Putman doesn't use the word adult, instead he uses parent, is because there is an intentional reproducing.
It's not just that I've grown up into a spiritual adulthood for myself, but I've become a parent, which means I am now looking to fulfill full circle what Jesus talked about in Matthew 28 18, which is go into all the world and make disciples. So Jesus, our, the scripture say at the very beginning, as Jesus creates, Adam and Eve make babies, uh, and fill the earth.
And then Jesus says, make disciples all over the earth. And so for you as a spiritual parent, your role now is to think through. I. How do I make disciples like Jesus told me to make? How do I go into all the world and to help other people go through the journey that I just went through from spiritually dead to a spiritual infant, to child, to young adult, and then help them become a parent?
And this whole process gets reproduced or, or done over and over and over again, and that is how we fill the earth. With disciples and a parent would say, this isn't just about me. I've gone through my journey, but I'm now going to pour my life into somebody else. And for you as a parent, like that starts with your kids.
It might start with your spouse, depending on where they're at with their spiritual journey. I wanna help my spouse become more like Jesus. I want to sacrifice and give my life and serve so that I can see them grow up in the faith. But this is the goal for us when Jesus says, go into all the world and to make disciples.
This is really. The goal for us. I'll put a little PDF that Jim Putman put together. I'll put it in the show notes so you can click on it and you kind of read more about these. Uh, I think it, it'll be helpful for you, but I, I know I went on a lot of tangents there, but I just want you to ask yourself, as you heard all those, where do you see yourself on that spiritual journey?
And wherever you're at, dude, it's okay. If you're a spiritual infant, that's okay, but you just have to ask yourself, okay, how long do I wanna drink milk and when is it time for me to grow up? It's not good enough that I just said I believe in Jesus, but I actually wanna grow up, catch what the writer at Hebrew says at the end.
But solid food is for the mature I. For those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. And so you just start to see, as a man, you start to see all the world is there's, there's something spiritual happening and I wanna grow up. I don't wanna be this baby just kind of out in the middle of this war zone.
I. I wanna be spiritually mature, able to handle God's word and the things of God. I just want to end by saying this. Uh, I am currently an actual parent. I've mentioned that multiple times. On today's podcast episode, I'm a dad and I have four kids, and so I am physically a parent. Sometimes you will come into my house.
And you will catch me acting like a child, being selfish, being ignorant about the world, being self-centered. I just wanna sit on the couch and watch TV and have people serve me. I want the world to be all about me. I want my kids to serve me and my wife to serve me. Sometimes I lose my temper like a little toddler, and I yell and I scream.
I say things out of anger or things that I regret. My point is sometimes even as a parent, we revert back to some of these stages. Parent does not mean perfect. It just means that they have grown in maturity enough that they can start to reproduce. And the same is true for you as a spiritual parent. Yes.
Your goal as a spiritual parent is to reproduce, to help pour your life into somebody else's life. Starting with your kids and maybe your spouse and other people around you, but also, dude, you're gonna mess up. There are gonna be times on your spiritual journey. You look like it. You poop your pants. You know what I mean?
That probably was the wrong analogy, but you get what I'm saying? Like you're gonna do some stuff that makes you look like a child, like a toddler, like a young adult, whatever. And that's all part of the spiritual journey, so don't beat yourself up for that anyway. If you meet with a small group, it'd be really cool for you guys to talk about this and just try to figure out, all right, like, no shame here.
Where are we at, uh, on these five stages? And then what would it look like for us as a group of guys? To start to help each other grow in that. My goal for this year, by the way, I've talked about it at the end of last year, is that we would have dad tired groups all over the country and world. I am still working hard on making that happen, and this would be the goal for the our dad tired local groups, is that you could meet with other dad tired guys in your area and you could just help each other.
Decide. All right, where am I at on the spiritual journey and how do I grow? Anyway, I love you guys. Thank you so much for listening. We'll talk to you later.