Embracing Your Role as a Family's Spiritual Leader

And I felt like the prodigal son who runs to the father and has the feast with the father. And then that night I'm sneaking back out.

And I'm just like, man, I just so relate to that. That's Jared Lopes, our guest on today's episode of Focus on the Family, explaining how you don't have to be a perfect dad to be used by God. And you might be a new parent or you have adult kids. Wherever you are on that spectrum, this discussion is going to encourage you to be the dad that God has destined you to be. Welcome to our program. I'm John Fuller and your host is Focus president and author, Jim Daly. John, this one's going to be a little uncomfortable, isn't it?

Well, speak for yourself. Well, as a dad, there are many times when I know I don't have it all together. Yeah.

Yeah. You feel that way sometimes? All the time. And the truth is, we've all felt that way at some point trying to raise our kids. I think as men, it's easy for us to act like we do have it figured out. We kind of fake it. But deep inside, many of us wonder if we actually can measure up to the job. And the great news is Jesus meets us where we're at in our imperfections and in our mistakes.

Thank the Lord for that. So if you're a dad, stay with us for, I think, a fun conversation that should really inspire you to keep going and to be the spiritual leader in your home that you can be. And our guest, as I said, is Jared Lopes. He's the founder of Dad Tired. It's an online community of men who are striving together to lead their families well. He's married to Layla and they have three children. And he's written a book called Dad Tired and Loving It, Stumbling Your Way to Spiritual Leadership. And of course, we'll recommend you stop by our website to get your copy.

The link is in the episode notes. Jared, welcome to Focus on the Family. Oh, man, so good to be here with you guys.

All right. You grew up without a dad and I know that feeling. What was that like for you and what impact did it have on you? I know what it had on me in terms of insecurities and other things, but how did not having a dad in your home and what happened? Well, I mean, it's still having an impact on me. I'm in my early 30s and I can confidently say it still affects me to this day. I'm in my 50s and I would say, yes, it's still there.

Yeah, absolutely. So my dad left when I was three. He was a professional musician.

He is a professional musician. And he, my mom and dad were never married. I think that they kind of had a fling, had me, ended up having my sister as well. And when I think he tried to stick around for as long as he could and then just realized that the whole dad thing wasn't going to be a good fit for him. And so he left when I was three. I remember as a kid, even I would I remember playing basketball in my driveway.

I have very vivid memories of this. I would play basketball in my driveway and I would picture him sitting on the steps coaching me. And but he wasn't.

He wasn't there. And I just remember thinking, man, like, I can't wait to be a dad one day. And I'm just I'm positive that I'm going to be the best dad and I'm going to be the dad that I always wanted, which hasn't played out the way I thought. I don't know if my boys have enjoyed me coaching them.

It's kind of like you can't win, right? You want to be that dad that you didn't have. And then when you try to, sometimes your kids don't really embrace it. Well, I mean, that's honestly that's the heartbeat of dad tired is I in my mind for years thought I was going to be the best dad in the world. And then I became married and I became a husband and I became a father. And I'm like, oh, man, I'm not nearly as good at this as I had pictured that I would be for my whole life. And that's the first time I really realized, like, I'm going to need some help beyond myself here because I don't have what it takes in me to be the kind of dad that I actually want to be or that I feel like God wants me to be.

And let's touch on that. You got married pretty young, really, in today's standard, 22. And Laila, your wife, let's get into a little bit of that insecurity as a guy marrying somebody.

You didn't have a dad telling you what to expect, what's going to happen. What did you trip on early in your marriage? And then when kids came, kids came fast for you, right?

Yeah. So Laila and I met. I was a pastor at a church in Portland. We were hosting a Chris Tomlin concert at the church. Laila came to that concert. This is just the perfect Christian way to meet your spouse.

So we're hosting conference. She, the concert, she walked in and my job as the pastor that night was to welcome everyone. I thought, I'm really going to make sure she feels welcome. Especially welcome to Laila, who I don't know yet.

Yeah, exactly. Really want you to feel welcome here. Let me give you a tour of the whole church. So I introduced myself to her and we ended up talking and haven't stopped talking for the last 11 years. But from that day, the day I met her until the day we said I do was nine months. So we had a very short courtship. I just knew if I don't ask her to marry me, someone else is going to really quickly.

So I better get on this. So I asked her to marry me. And then we had kids nine months. She got pregnant nine months into our marriage. So it was fast.

A lot of a lot of fast things happening. And again, I thought I'm going to be a great husband. I'm going to be a great dad. And I always say nothing exposes your sin better than marriage and having to get through. And I remember the first time.

So just to dive right into kind of the depths here. I remember the first time we were early on in marriage and I actually confessed to Laila that I had looked at pornography. And I was a pastor at the time. I was a young guy and I just felt such heaviness like, man, I am breaking marriage covenant here. And and I need to confess this to my wife.

And I did. And I saw the pain in her eyes. And I thought, man, my sin now carries twice the weight and thinking through.

And I think she was actually pregnant with our first. And I thought when I was a single guy, it was one thing to sin and kind of deal with the consequences of your sin. But now as a married guy and a soon to be father, like my my sin carries twice, three times, eventually four or five, six times the weight. And I'm like, man, I need to figure this thing out because I am not the kind of husband or dad I thought I was going to be. And and I just I mean, you don't realize how much sin you have.

You don't realize how much anger you have, how much impatience you have, how selfish you are until you get married and you have kids. Yeah, I mean, it's so true. And I appreciate that vulnerability. I mean, I never thought about it quite that way in terms of the weight of that sin particularly, but good for you. And, you know, I'm sure some women particularly saying, well, how did Laila respond and did you guys get through it?

And how are you doing in that area? Well, I mean, I think God is so gracious. You know, Genesis talks about how God creates for Adam a helper.

Right. And I think that beyond my wife being a soulmate or best friend or a travel partner, a lot of things I thought she would be in marriage kind of naively going into marriage beyond all that, like Laila is a helper to help me become more like Jesus. Let me ask you this. You know, one of the problems, I think, with transparency, especially in marriage, you've set it up really well, saying marriage is hard for us sometimes to be honest in, et cetera. And so I remember a guest one time said that men are still like little boys. We hide from those bad things we do. And I don't know that our wives understand that, that mechanism in us to go hide when we steal the cookie and then you can go from there.

Why is that vulnerability so hard for us? Why do we fear being honest with our wives? Oh, man, you just hit such a nerve because, you know, as I now spend my all my days working with men, I literally just said this to the dad tired community two days ago. The more I interact with men, the more I'm convinced we're all just boys in adult masks trying to make our way in this world. We're trying to figure out if we're really men. Yeah, that's so true. I was just in Montana speaking recently and they're all real men.

That's what I'm saying. These guys were just like, you know, men's men, right? Men's men. And I watched as their walls came down and some of these guys were trying so hard to fight back tears.

And eventually they just broke down. I thought, man, we're all just boys. And to your point, I've heard a lot of guys say, I feel comfortable confessing to God my sins and my shortcomings, but I don't feel comfortable confessing to my wife. And I think, man, for any wife listening, this is if you can do give your husband one gift, it's to create an environment in your marriage where you can say, husband, I see what God is doing in you.

And this is a safe place because I'm partnering with God to help you become the man that God has created you to be. Well, and in fairness, I get this, too, from the wives. I mean, we're usually hurting them right in their area of vulnerability, especially in that area you talked about with pornography. I mean, that crushes them as women.

I'm not enough for you and all those things. But there's that whole, you know, array of things, emotions that we can wound our wives with. And unintentionally, I think most of the time, Jared, let's go to a story in your book that I thought was really funny because of the title, Satan's cesspool. I mean, you couldn't have made these things up even better. But this was a great little outdoor experience. All of us guys are going to relate to what happened at Satan's cesspool.

What is it? Yeah. So I was it was right as I was getting out of high school. My friends asked me, hey, do you want to go on a float down the American River with us in Sacramento? I said, absolutely. I love being on the water.

Anything that has to do with the water. We had been goofing off just being a bunch of young, dumb, you know, young guys. And so we're floating, having a good time. And at the end of our trip, my buddy said, hey, do you want to get in the inflatable kayak and I'll get in your inner tubal swap?

And so I said, OK. So I got in his inflatable kayak and I'm kind of an introvert, sometimes a little bit of a loner. So I'm like, I'm going to go up ahead of everyone and just kind of enjoy some peace. So I'm paddling very calm, peaceful. I'm just wearing board shorts and flip flops, no T-shirt on.

And I'm just no vest, no helmet, no vest, no helmet. Just very I'm just there to relax and enjoy a nice, calm time on the river. And two guys come up behind me and I can hear them say, as I'm just kind of in my nirvana, they say, hey, man, have you ever done this river before? And I'm like, I turn around and they're in whitewater kayaks with wetsuits on and life jackets and helmets. And I turn around, I'm like, what? And they said, have you ever done this river before? And, you know, I'm kind of a little punk kid. I'm like, what do you mean done this river before?

I've floated plenty of rivers. And they said, well, just be careful because Satan says pulls up ahead. And I thought, oh, my gosh.

And I feel like they should have got your attention. Yeah. Just as they said that the water, the current picked up, you know, and so all of a sudden I find myself in very fast moving water. And I realize I'm in it like this.

There's no way out. And as we get closer to the horizon, I actually see people on shore taking pictures of these kayakers going off of this waterfall. And so I just think, all right, this is it, man.

We're going for it. And I hit that waterfall, man. And immediately my inflatable kayak folds in half. I get tossed out and I just I get sucked to the bottom. And the waterfall is just pushing me under and I'm hitting rocks and I'm just praying for my life.

My life. God, please don't let me die. Please don't let me die.

Please don't let me die. And I just kind of get pushed out and I'm laying there on shore and I'm like, what in the world just happened? But I tell that story in the book because I think so many guys, actually, I think men and women get into marriage thinking it's going to be a relaxing float down the river. Right. This is just going to be a fun, relaxing time. And I say, you don't need to be married longer than six months before you realize this is Satan's cesspool.

The current is picking up. This is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. Well, it's a great analogy. I mean, it really is. One of those things you mentioned in your book is time. And, you know, I think we that that would be my thing.

I don't think it's an ego thing. I think for me, I could just get so busy and I neglect. And I remember a story and I'd like you to react to this and then talk about yourself as a pastor, those 11 years and how you tried to divide your time between people pulling on you and your family, your own family. But I remember this youth pastor told me once he said, you know, I was really busy at this time. I had a four year old daughter. I came home from a youth event. I needed to shower quickly and get back to the church in order to have a teen get together. And my four year old daughter came up to me wanting to hug me. And I said, honey, I'm sorry, I got to go teach people about Jesus. And she said, well, Daddy, when are you going to teach me about Jesus? Isn't that a cutting line?

I mean, out of the mouth of a babe. Right. And so he quit that job and got on an eight to five job at GM in Detroit there.

So he could be home at night to be the father to that little girl. But that's such a great example, especially with ministry and then, you know, a different vocation that allows you to be there. Speak to that.

Well, I mean, I think so many guys struggle with this. I think part of it has to do with we feel better oftentimes at our jobs than we feel than we do at home. I can go to work and get rewarded. I have a paycheck coming in.

A boss might pat me on the back, said you did a good job. It's a pretty calm river. Right. It's a calm most of the time. Exactly.

And and I kind of know what I'm doing and I know it's expected to me. And then when guys get home, they don't quite know their role as husband and dad. And so oftentimes I don't know if it's a time thing.

Honestly, I don't know if it's an you ask guys, you know, they say, well, I don't have enough time to spend my family kids. I'm working so much. But you also have time to play fantasy football and you're also watching some Netflix and you're on your phone.

It's kind of hiding. Yeah. You got time, man. You got time. I think you just feel more comfortable at work. And so you have to have an honest conversation with yourself. Like, why am I?

Why don't I want to be home and want to give the intentionality to my wife and kids that they really want from? Well, and that was your dilemma, right? I mean, when you were pastor these 11 years, you were noticing things at home. Weren't going quite right. Explain your personal story in that regard. Yeah. So for me, I had you know, I had to come to the conclusion like, OK, this isn't a time issue.

This is an intentionality issue. And I had a I had a mentor tell me one time. He said, Jared, you're going to have a million different job titles by the time you die.

I'm confident you'll probably have a million different things on your business cards by the time you retire, he said. But you will die a husband. You will die a father and you will die a disciple. Go crush it at those things. Go go do really well at those. What are those three again? Husband, father, disciple. Those will go with you to the grave. Wow.

And and for him, he was really successful in business. And I thought, man, OK, if this is priority to him, I want to make this priority for me. Yeah. Let's talk about devotions with our children. I mean, that's one of the things, you know, I think every Christian home, this becomes a little bit of the battle between mom and dad, not in front of the kids, hopefully. But, you know, honey, are you going to do something tonight with the kids, some spiritual thing? Have you ever heard that?

Oh, my God. Well, I hear it daily in our in our Facebook group and on our online community. And, you know, I think that prompting is a good thing. I'm not getting on wives for reminding us that it'd be good to teach the kids something spiritual.

But there is, I think generally with men and women, there is a different approach to doing this. I mean, my wife's a great example. She was, you know, chemistry major. So she's really sorted out. I mean, she's got her plan. She's going to go in tonight.

It's going to be 30 minutes. She's smarter than you. She's smarter. Absolutely. There's no doubt about that.

She's much higher on the SAT. But, you know, the point of that is that she wants something a little more formal. And then I'm a guy driving down the road and I see some illustration and I'll talk to the boys. You know, that's just like Proverbs three. Right. And and I use in the moment moments to really talk about scripture and how that applies. I think both are valid.

Neither is invalid. But but we tend to esteem things differently. So how do we manage that as men?

How do we manage, you know, mom's expectation of doing something more formal and then we're not meeting it? Well, I mean, what you just said is such a beautiful example because we'll look at what Jesus did. He did both. He had the times where they were studying the scripture and then they would take the scripture and apply them in real life. Go and love your enemies.

If somebody, how often should you forgive someone? One of his disciples asked. And he basically said, you never stop forgiving.

Right. And so they're hearing this in the scripture and then someone comes to arrest Jesus. And that disciple is now chopping the ear off the guy. And Jesus is saying, put your sword away. So he's doing both. Let me teach you what the scriptures say about how to follow Jesus.

And now let me show you how to put those into practice. And this is what a dad, like a dad that wants to be a spiritual leader, does both. We study God's word.

We have times where we actually break open the Bible and read. But then I'm using every opportunity that I possibly can. Yeah, I was going to ask, just as you're speaking there, I'm thinking about the guy that wants to do what you're saying, but he doesn't have a clue on really how to take that first step. What are you finding out with guys that works well? Well, so that's majority of guys. I mean, every every guy in our dad's entire community, that's what they're saying. It's so interesting right now, if you go to the park, if I go to any park right now, there are going to be dads who are playing with their kids going down the slide. They're going to be dads who are changing diapers, who are doing more things than most of our dads did. Right.

They're swinging the pendulum hard the other way. And so we have a lot of really engaged dads. But if you ask that dad, do you feel like the spiritual leader of your home? Do you feel like you know how to point your family to Jesus?

They would say, no, I don't. I don't know where to begin. And that's what we're trying to do. Like with that tire, we're trying to equip guys, give them actual very practical tools so they can step into that role as the spiritual leader. You know, Jared, you do such a good job in the book explaining to guys how to turn those situations into spiritual moments.

I think this is really funny because I could relate to this. It's something going on with the water again. You love water, you said, and your kids and a cell phone or two cell phones or maybe 20 cell phones. What a painful incident.

Look at his face. Yeah, well, it's a long story, so I'll give you the short version. But we were fishing. I had my family in town. We were fishing at a dock. My sister caught a fish. She was so excited.

She hadn't caught a fish since she was a little girl. She said, take a picture. Pulled out my phone, took a picture, went to put the phone back in my pocket. It fell into the river.

So that was two days later. I take my daughter out and my son fishing. And my daughter says, I'm bored, Daddy, can I play on your phone?

I'm like, no, don't you remember what just happened? She said, Daddy, please. So I give in to her little attitude. Hand her the phone, put her in the middle of this big dock.

She could drop the phone in any direction and it's not going to land in the water. Well, my little girl at that time, I think she was, you know, four or five years old. All her patients had her patient's tank had run empty that day because the Internet wasn't moving fast enough for her little Peppa Pig video or whatever she was watching. And in her frustration, she took that brand new iPhone that I had just bought two days earlier with cash, no insurance. And she threw that thing as far as she could into the middle of the river. And I always say this. That was the most embarrassing moment of my parenting journey thus far as how much I yelled at her. I'm confident people were calling the cops like this. Something's going on down there. But I was so furious.

I bet you were like a thousand dollar furious. Well, again, it just shows how, you know, the imperfections that we have. And I think that's so much of the battle for some of us.

I mean, if you're a type A kind of guy, you're in trouble because God's coming to root that out. And it's not your wife. It's not your kids. It's the Lord working through them, maybe to say, I got a little different approach to life for you, type A dad. And here's how it's going to happen, right?

Well, yeah. So we oftentimes we think that our kids and our wife, you know, we're there to help shape them, especially our kids. Man, God is using every dad knows this.

God is using our kids to help make us more like him. So when you look at the characters in scripture in the book, you speak to your favorite. And I think that's Peter. So I think Peter's a good. Most guys like Peter because he's messing up all the time. And we relate to that. That's why we say we like Peter because we're like Peter.

Right. So how does Peter relate to your daily troubles and why do you identify with him so much? Well, Peter always says, you know, ready, fire, aim.

That's Peter. Yeah, he says something. And then later he's getting rebuked by Jesus. And yet he's Jesus, one of Jesus's closest friends. You know, he says to Jesus, Jesus, he pulls him aside and says, I just want you know, I'm never going to deny you. Right. I'm never going to leave you that night.

He denied him three times. So he just he's a mess. And I look at myself and I'm like, how often I was just praying this morning. God, I'm drawn to you. And I felt like the prodigal son who runs to the father and has the feast with the father. And then that night I'm sneaking back out.

Yeah. And I'm just like, man, I just so relate to that, to what Peter was going through this constantly just fumbling up my journey of trying to fall in love with Jesus. Well, it captures the spirit of a man.

I mean, that really is a man. You know, I want to be this, but quietly, I'm not that. And that's the battle.

That's the struggle. I know what I should be when it comes to all these behaviors and things, but I'm not measuring up. And I, Jared, you're a pastor, so you know this. But I mean, this is where Jesus has to come into your life as a man and repair those breaches that you've had for whatever reason.

The reason you can't measure up your insecurities, your lack of confidence, whatever it might be. And I'd say make a pitch right now to the guy, the father and the husband who isn't measuring up. What do they got to do first thing spiritually to move in the right direction? So there are I think there are a lot of guys who aren't leading their families because they're ignorant. They did not have a leader to show them a dad, somebody to teach them that. But I think there are more guys who know what they should be doing and they're not doing it because they are burdened with shame.

I think there are so many guys who are paralyzed by their shame and they feel like, how could I lead my family to a God that I don't personally feel close to? And going back to Peter, Peter denied that he even knew Jesus. There's a powerful moment where Peter looks at Jesus as he's denying him, right? The two look at each other, they make eye contact and then Jesus dies. That's a bad day for Peter.

That's a real bad day. The next time Peter sees Jesus, Jesus has breakfast ready for him after he's risen up again. He has breakfast ready for him. Peter comes off the boat from fishing and Jesus cooks him breakfast. The reason I tell that story is because there are a lot of guys who think I need to hide from God because I have way too much shame. And the truth is that is not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible on your very worst day has breakfast ready for you. So I would tell that guy, that guy, man, turn away from your shame because there's a God who really, really wants to be near you. Think about Jesus, our God in the Garden of Eden. What was God doing on the worst day of history as all of creation was collapsing?

He was taking a walk. God can handle your worst day. So I would tell that guy, man, if you feel like you're too dark in shame, turn to Jesus. The God of the Bible wants to be near you.

Yeah. And you have so many great illustrations of the book. I want to end on a pretty funny story, how God got your attention about doing ministry in your community. You wanted to sell a bed, but you had it all figured out how you're going to do this because it was heavy.

I mean, you're making all the right guy measurements here. Fill us in on that story. So I had been in the season where I really wanted God to show up and do miraculous things.

I was just praying, God, show up, show off your glory. And during this time, we were moving from an apartment to a home and we had got everything out of this third story apartment, no elevator. So everything on stairs. And so we had this very heavy bed frame as the last thing to move. And I told my wife, I don't want to move this thing. It's a hassle. So I put it online for sale and I put in there, whoever buys this, you need to show up, you know, be ready to haul it yourself.

That's very heavy. So this guy shows up. He said he wants to buy it and he shows up and he's by himself. And I'm like, do what do you do? What are you doing? I said, it's very heavy.

You got to show up. So anyway, I'm frustrated already at the transaction. OK, so we're sitting there and I'm telling him, here's how the bed frames broken down, how you're going to want to put together. And as I'm saying all this to him, I just feel the prompting by the spirit. Give him the bed. Give him the bed frame. And I'm like, insult to injury, right? I'm like, no, I'm like, absolutely not. I'm not giving him the bed. Yeah.

One brought some friends. Yeah, exactly. I don't want to haul this thing down and now I'm not going to get money for it.

So absolutely not. I'm not going to do this. Well, the spirit, you know, over and over and over and just pushing me. And eventually I wasn't even a cheerful giver. I was I was reluctant. I was mad. I'm like, hey, man, you can have the bed frame. I'm mad. I'm like, you can have the bed frame.

He said, oh, my gosh, what? And I try to make it spiritual. I'm like, you know, I'm blessed to be a blessing.

I try to make it all Christian. But we're hauling this heavy bed frame down three flights of stairs and he stops. And he says, hey, man, I just want you to know my wife just served me with divorce papers and I don't have any furniture. And so the fact that you're giving me this is like it's really helpful. And I just felt like I had been praying that God would show off his glory.

And he was using a bed frame, even in my reluctance to bring the kingdom of heaven down here to earth. This guy. Well, you know, again, I appreciate that vulnerability. I think this is a guy's life. This is what we are as husbands and fathers.

And we're, you know, so often we're misfits because we're not perfect in this life. And we're certainly looking forward to the next. But you've done a wonderful job pulling these thoughts together. Jared, I appreciate, again, your honesty. And we're all learning as we go, right?

I mean, that's the bottom line. And I would like for you, our listeners, viewers on YouTube, get a copy of Dad Tired and loving it. I think it has all the right mixes for us of humor, stories like you've heard and, you know, admonitions to get it going and do the right thing.

So I think it's that wonderful blend. If you can make a gift of any amount to focus on the family, we'll say thank you by sending you a copy of the book. And as I often do, I trust that people are partnering with us in ministry. If you can't afford it, get in touch with us. We'll get it into your hands, just like the bed frame, right? We'll send you the book so you can read it. And we'll trust others.

We'll cover the cost of that. But, Jared, thanks again for being with us. Really, really good stuff.

It was great to be here. Thank you. So donate today and get your copy of Dad Tired and Loving It when you call 800, the letter A in the word family or the link is in the episode notes. And by the way, we've got some extra video content with Jared, really encouraging practical tips for dads on managing life and family. That link is in the notes as well. And while you're at the website, be sure to download our mobile app.

The new Focus on the Family mobile app has lots of great content, this broadcast and so much more. And coming up next time on this broadcast, help and hope for the mom who worries that she's messing up her kids. I think there's knee marks beside my daughter's bed in the carpet because I was kneeling beside her bed after she went to sleep crying out to the Lord, you've got to help me. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm making a mess of things. And all he would say is spend time with me. And on behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.