153: How to Build Habits That Don’t Break Under Stress | Justin Whitmel Earley

I sat down with author, speaker, and lawyer Justin Whitmel Earley and walked away reminded that discipline isn’t just about doing more—it’s about becoming more grounded. He shared how relentless ambition and life as a driven attorney led to panic attacks and burnout, and how he rebuilt through faith and daily spiritual rhythms. The smallest, most intentional habits shape my mind, my peace, and my purpose. Faith isn’t just what I claim—it’s what I practice every day. CHAPTERS: 00:00 Introduction 02:25 The Impact of Books and Personal Growth 07:42 The Journey to Law and Mental Collapse 12:55 Spiritual Habits and Life Changes 23:40 Identity and Vocation 34:56 The Gospel's Core Message 38:30 Identifying and Overcoming False Idols 43:02 The Role of the Body in Spirituality 48:01 The Call to Serve Others 55:20 The Journey of Intentional Fatherhood 01:06:55 The Dual Nature of Strength 01:13:04 The Role of Sabbath in Modern Life 01:31:26 The Cornerstone of a Good Life 01:36:47 Final Thoughts and Reflections JUSTIN WHITMEL EARLEY Website: https://www.justinwhitmelearley.com/ Socials: @justinwhitmelearley Books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Justin-Whitmel-Earley/author/B07P62QFW5?ref=ap_rdr&shoppingPortalEnabled=true&ccs_id=69ad8248-6298-4780-a33b-c900a2adfa62 https://www.amazon.com/stores/Justin-Whitmel-Earley/author/B07P62QFW5?ref=ap_rdr&shoppingPortalEnabled=true&ccs_id=69ad8248-6298-4780-a33b-c900a2adfa62 ORDER MY BOOK HERE: https://www.amazon.com/Go-One-More-Intentional-Life-Changing/dp/1637746210 FOLLOW: Become a BPN member FOR FREE - Unlock 20% off FOR LIFE https://bpn.team/member IG: instagram.com/nickbarefitness/ YT: youtube.com/@nickbarefitness

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I started waking up with panic attacks, body shaking, mind going crazy. But I had no idea what was wrong with me because I thought I was doing everything right. I was beginning to not be able to sleep at all. I started struggling with suicidal thoughts. I was either having to drink or take sleeping pills just to fall asleep at night. So it was a dark, dark space.

• 0:19Nick Bare?

  And how old were you at this point?

• 0:21Speaker 00

  I'm 30. I've got two kids. I had in my head at the time, this idea that if, if your head is in the right place, like if you're driving towards the thing you're called to, then everything else will fall into place. But what the Lord showed me in that time was that the habits of your life matter. They matter a lot. Like how you do something is as important, if not more than what you're doing.

• 0:51Nick Bare?

  Ladies and gentlemen, today on the podcast, we have my man, Justin Early. What's up?

• 0:58Speaker 00

  Thank you so much for having me, Nick. This has been already an extraordinary morning.

• 1:02Nick Bare?

  Dude, it's been, this has been a great day so far. I was telling you earlier, my ideal day is when it comes to the podcast. Train with someone, have a great conversation, podcast, discussion, sauna, plunge, eat a bunch of food. Like we've trained, we've fueled, we're now sitting down to talk and then we're going to sauna and plunge.

• 1:26Speaker 00

  We've got a lot to look forward to in the sauna and cold plunge.

• 1:28Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was telling you, I got a great group of friends at home who more or less don't care that I write. And that's what's so great about them. But when they heard that I was coming to talk to you, they're like, are you working out with Nick? And they were so pumped also, like you're going to die.

• 1:42Nick Bare?

  There was a lot of pressure put on you.

• 1:43Speaker 00

  There was a lot of pressure put on me, but we did a pump sessions.

• 1:45Nick Bare?

  These shoulders and arms.

• 1:46Speaker 00

  It was great.

• 1:47Nick Bare?

  Everyone's like putting us in group, you know, text threads.

• 1:50Speaker 00

  A bunch of people put us in group threads talking about how you're going to basically kill me. But here we are, you didn't kill me.

• 1:55Nick Bare?

  I honestly, I felt the pressure to like, should I, should I bury Justin in this workout? But I knew that it would affect the conversation. So I was like.

• 2:04Speaker 00

  We would never have gotten here.

• 2:05Nick Bare?

  All right, well, take it easy. And I'm also coming off of Ironman prep. I'm in like this strength building phase. There's nothing better than chasing a pump and we chased a hard pump today.

• 2:13Speaker 00

  I now know you're a generous man because you did not bury me on purpose.

• 2:16Nick Bare?

  No, no, I didn't want to bury you. So I'm, I'm, I've been looking forward to this conversation for quite some time. And as we've talked about, I was first introduced to your work.

• 2:31Nick Bare?

  The first book of yours that I read, Habits of the Household by my wife Steph. Thank you, Steph. And she kept like bringing it to me because I'm always reading or listening to something, especially when I'm in an endurance prep and build. And I was first introduced to your work when I was in my Ironman prep, because I'm on the bike for hours. So I came to you in a weird headspace then? The perfect, you can say weird, but the perfect. Really? The perfect? Yeah. Okay, interesting. When I am in an endurance prep or prep is in general, I'm running a lot, I'm cycling. It's a lot of time of silence and solitude. Yep. And I can do a lot of deep internal work.

• 3:13Nick Bare?

  And I consume content the best when I'm running. Like when I have my daily nine, 10, 11 mile run, I'm listening to a podcast. I consume and absorb it all. Really? That's fascinating. Okay, cool. So Steph, she read, read your book, Habits of the Household. And she also hosts a, a book club at our house. And, and all these women read the book and loved it. And she kept saying, you gotta read this book next. You gotta read this book next. So I read the book and I loved it. I love it. Thank you. And it was perfect timing because it was right before you launched the book that I'm holding right now in my hand. Uh, your most recent book, The Body Teaches the Soul. Yep.

• 3:57Nick Bare?

  And it just, those two books came to me and Steph at the perfect time of our life as we experience, uh, growth and transition and renewal. Right. It was really refreshing. So I just wanted to share that with you. Praise God, man. That is his timing. That is his timing. That's incredible. The best part about this book is that it is now, uh, multiple different colors. Yeah. I love that your kids have tagged this. Charlie has gotten a hold of these books and I have it open right now. There's like green, yellow, gray, orange. I mean, it's like. Strong work, Charlie. I love it. She's annotating this book for you. She obviously loved your work. Yeah.

• 4:42Nick Bare?

  But I, you know. It's so funny because you talk about in your work, how as you were writing these books, you were in that similar season and chapter of life.

• 4:54Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 4:55Nick Bare?

  And these are the only books that Charlie has written in.

• 4:59Speaker 00

  Oh, interesting.

• 5:00Nick Bare?

  Other than my Bible. So it is interesting that as you spoke about it and brought it up, she was gravitated towards the books themselves.

• 5:08Speaker 00

  It's a high honor.

• 5:08Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 5:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm, most of my writing, really all of it right now is two people in the thick of it. So it's like the people who are wrestling with parenting, wrestling with overwork, wrestling with trying to figure out their body.

• 5:22Speaker 00

  Because I am, like, that's where I am. I've got little kids. I'm wrestling with trying to figure out how health fits into my spirituality, how work fits into my whole life of parenting. It's a lot of stuff to integrate. So high honor that, you know, people like you are reading it alongside kids who are writing in it.

• 5:37Nick Bare?

  Yeah. Well, I think that's why this conversation is very meaningful and valuable, is a lot of people that follow my content and half of the years.

• 5:49Nick Bare?

  Majority, not all, have grown with me over the years.

• 5:53Speaker 00

  Sure. Right. Right.

• 5:54Nick Bare?

  So, you know, I've been creating content since 2014. And when a lot of people found me, I was a second lieutenant, single

• 6:05Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 6:05Nick Bare?

  in the army.

• 6:06Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 6:07Nick Bare?

  Living by myself and then stationed in, in South Korea and building a business and very professionally driven and ambitious and hungry.

• 6:17Speaker 00

  Right.

• 6:17Nick Bare?

  For success in a lot of things. And as I've grown over the years and my life has changed, I got married. I'm now a leader in the business, have kids. A lot of people who have followed me through that journey are in a similar season.

• 6:32Speaker 00

  Right, they're in that stage too.

• 6:34Nick Bare?

  And there's every book under the sun that will teach you how to.

• 6:43Nick Bare?

  You know, strive and succeed and accomplish. But your work from like my point of view is very foundational in the way of like, let's take a step back and kind of reflect on like what really matters and how do we put these things in place primarily being habits?

• 7:01Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 7:02Nick Bare?

  That align with our body, our mind.

• 7:05Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 7:05Nick Bare?

  Our spiritual life.

• 7:09Nick Bare?

  Our souls, like, how do we make sure there's alignment to facilitate a life that we're truly proud of?

• 7:15Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 7:16Nick Bare?

  At the end of it.

• 7:17Speaker 00

  Dude, that's the goal. That's the goal. And that's, I mean, this is what I was learning because I fell apart before I got any of this.

• 7:23Nick Bare?

  Let's talk about that.

• 7:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. So my story, um, you know, I, I, I listening to you in the gym this morning as you're talking about, you know, your journey and, and listening to, yeah, I recently listened, recently listened to your testimony episode. Like, oh, this is really interesting because like we have some similar journeys, but from very different vocations, right? So here's my vocational background. I am like all in my head. I'm an English literature major in college, reading and writing. Um, I see now that I, what I didn't know then, which is that I thought life was about the head, was about learning. I went to be a missionary in China. So really driven, like driven and passionate enough about

• 8:05Speaker 00

  Jesus and my faith that I'm willing to move to the other side of the world to teach Chinese students the Bible. So like, you can imagine I'm a driven person.

• 8:15Speaker 00

  Did that for almost five years until I felt called by the Lord to actually move back to the States and start law school, which subject of another podcast because that's a weird statement. I felt called to be a corporate lawyer, like not a lot of people felt, feel called to go into business law, but I really did. Which means, so just continuing this theme, I feel like a missionary on a call to law. So I start at Georgetown Law in DC, you know, really great law school, and I just go hard. Um, I graduate towards the top of my class. I do really well, like really good grades. I get an incredible job in a, what we call big law. So these are like the big law firms serving Fortune 100, 500 companies, doing international mergers and acquisitions.

• 9:01Speaker 00

  I think I am at the top of my game. Just about to turn thirty, married to my wonderful wife Lauren. We have two boys, Whit and Asher. I just got like my big, high-paying job. We moved down to Richmond, you know, super good grades in law school. And snapshot that moment of my life, it's fascinating.

• 9:21Speaker 00

  I'm thinking everything is going super well because I'm achieving all the things that I'm supposed to achieve. And in my, you know, I really did like feel like I was a missionary on a call. Like, I thought the Lord had called me to do this in this way. Key phrase, in this way. I didn't think about what way I was doing it. And I just knew like, you know, I have a theology of excellence. I should be glorifying God in everything that I do. So, so I'm trying to do it all really well. So, the content of calling is like decorating the house of my life. Like, it's, you can imagine the house of my life has pictures everywhere, like calling, I'm called by God to do this. I'm a missionary to law and business. But the architecture of that house, like the habits I'm living by, I did not realize them was exactly like everyone else's.

• 10:05Speaker 00

  I was staying up later, waking up earlier, always trying to pack in more. I was always trying to add more to my resume. I am totally tied to my smartphone. I'm ignoring any semblance of a healthy schedule of sleep, eating, exercise, because everything is about this one goal. And now, like, really quick, people do this in different ways, right? Some people do it in fitness and they go super hard to this one goal. Some people do it in parenting and they go super hard to this one goal. Some people like me do it in white-collar work and law school and lawyering. They go super hard to this one goal. But what a lot of us don't realize, and I didn't, is that everything was so narrowly focused on that, that I had adopted all the habits and practices of that world.

• 10:48Speaker 00

  And as it turns out, those things collapse and they collapse really hard. The lawyering profession has two to three times the mental health collapses, depression, suicide, divorce, drug addictions, everything. And I collapsed into mental unhealth my first year. I started waking up with panic attacks, body shaking, mind going crazy. But I had no idea what was wrong with me because I thought I was doing everything right. And so, that was a huge turning point in my life where... You know, and let me be really clear. This got bad. Um, like when I say mental unhealth, I was beginning to not be able to sleep at all. I started struggling with suicidal thoughts. I was either having to drink or take sleeping pills just to fall asleep at night. So it was a dark, dark space.

• 11:33Speaker 00

  And how old were you at this point? I'm thirty. I've got two kids.

• 11:39Speaker 00

  Let me give you a vignette. I'm sitting in the kitchen with my wife one night. You know, we're just like cleaning the kitchen together. She hands me a pile of dishes to put away. And I take them, I look at them, and I say, I don't know where these go. And I hand them back to her and like run upstairs to my room and lay on the bed and start crying. So you like. I had a vision of myself like I'm providing, like I got a great job. Um, I'm following this call that God has given me. And then suddenly I'm a man who can't put dishes away and is weeping on his bed. You can imagine like I'm really worried about keeping my job. I'm really worried about can I be the father, friend, the lawyer, husband that the Lord has called me to be? Like, everything was suddenly threatened. And here's, here's the main point.

• 12:22Speaker 00

  I realized that the missionary to law and business had gotten converted to the nervous medicating lawyer really fast. And I was so confused, Nick, how that happened. Because I had in my head at the time, this idea that if. If your head is in the right place, like if you're driving towards the thing you're called to. Then everything else will fall into place. But what the Lord showed me in that time was that the habits of your life matter. They matter a lot. Like how you do something is as important, if not more than what you're doing. Yeah. And. I started, I fell into honestly, providentially experimenting with the spiritual disciplines during that time, which were the idea of like.

• 13:06Speaker 00

  Not looking at my phone in the morning until after I spent some time in the Bible. Turning my phone off for an hour in the evening to be present with my family. Um, fasting regularly. Sabbathing, like the idea of like actually not working one day a week. And the crazy thing about this is my life began to totally change because my habits and rhythms started changing. And I got super into why the habits matter so much. And then I started. This is how fitness came to be in my life. I started realizing. All of these things are embodied. Like when, when, when I'm denying my smartphone, my eyes in the morning, and turning them towards scripture, this is actually a physical habit.

• 13:47Speaker 00

  When I pray, I started kneeling to pray because my mind was so scattered with anxiety, I couldn't focus. I started kneeling to pray. It's like, oh, these are, these are embodied habits. And a couple of years into this journey, I started getting really interested in why our bodies matter so much to our spiritual life. And the rest is history. Now I can't stop writing about this stuff.

• 14:07Nick Bare?

  I want to get into these, these spiritual habits.

• 14:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:11Nick Bare?

  Eventually.

• 14:15Nick Bare?

  But a few thoughts before we get there.

• 14:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:18Nick Bare?

  You know, obviously, being in business, I have worked with a lot of lawyers over the years.

• 14:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't have a great reputation.

• 14:27Nick Bare?

  I've, I've, I've worked with some really great.

• 14:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:30Nick Bare?

  And some really painful.

• 14:30Speaker 00

  And you've worked with business lawyers, right? Which is what I am.

• 14:32Nick Bare?

  Yes.

• 14:33Speaker 00

  We help people buy and sell companies, write contracts.

• 14:36Nick Bare?

  I prefer working with lawyers when they're on my side, as opposed to when I'm working with lawyers who are on someone else's side.

• 14:42Speaker 00

  Completely understandable.

• 14:43Nick Bare?

  Yes. But I will tell you, if I email or text message one of the lawyers that I am actively working with, I will get a response within minutes, no matter the time, the day, the place. So I understand.

• 15:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:00Nick Bare?

  How different that type of professional environment and expectations are. As you were setting up these spiritual habits, or even like when you were going through this transition and transformation, how did you set up boundaries to ensure that the work wasn't running your life? As opposed to you guiding the expectations and the outcomes?

• 15:24Speaker 00

  Yes. I'll give you first, the, two of the first boundaries that have continued to be the most impactful boundaries for me, began right there. And I already mentioned them, scripture before phone, and an hour with my phone off in the evening. These are still two of my most significant devotional practices because they're boundaries on work. And so I feel like this is really applicable to most people. I'll run you through both of them. As a young lawyer, I'm working with our London office, which is five or six hours ahead of us in Richmond, Virginia, where I live. And so every morning, I'm waking up to five or six hours worth of email in the morning. And it just became my habit, right? And this is the grand feature of habit. You don't notice it, right?

• 16:07Speaker 00

  You, you, you've, it becomes invisible to you. So I, I didn't really think about, oh, I'm checking my phone first thing in the morning. So one morning, my son, I think he was two at the time, woke up early. He was crying in his crib. I got up to go help him. Five minutes later, I'm actually sitting on the foot of my bed, halfway through an email to the London office, and I realized my son is still crying. And I was disgusted with myself that morning. My son was fine, right? But I realized I had become the guy who was more attentive to the cries of his office than the cries of his son. And by habit, I had become exactly like the lawyer that you described, who was on all the time because he thinks he, he ought to be. But what I started to realize, and I'm so thankful God showed me this in my young 30s,

• 16:51Speaker 00

  is that a life like that will exclude everything else unless you viciously fight for the opposite. Like the current of war, and you know, for people who are driven like you, like me, and I assume like most people listening to this podcast, they want drive in their life. The thing that you gotta realize is that it will take you downstream to a narrow, narrow place unless you fight for a fully integrated life. And one of the main ways I've been fighting for a fully integrated life is to say, I can wake, whether I wake up earlier or start work later, I can wake up and spend some time meditating, praying in scripture. Sometimes, like in the young years with kids, this was like five minutes.

• 17:36Speaker 00

  But I'm telling you, five minutes in the Word is never too small to matter. Five minutes in prayer, some people think, oh, I don't have time to pray, or this is too short. Look, five minutes talking to the God of the universe is not too small to matter. If you can do more, great, no, work your way up. But these micro habits, we call them keystone habits, right? The idea that I'm gonna do this first and then go to work second has utterly changed my life because it became the first guardrail in the day, that I'm gonna look up before I look out. Yeah. And then that second one, turning my phone off in the, for an hour every evening. This was because, again, I thought to be a good lawyer, I needed to be always responding all the time. I had heard that to break technology addictions, a great way to do it was to turn your phone off at

• 18:21Speaker 00

  the hour, same time every day for about an hour. But I was like, I'm too important to do this. Like, I'll get fired. I'm a first year associate. Like, I had a very high view of, of what, like, how people needed me. Turns out, nobody noticed. Like, nobody cared. And this is the, I, I make this point to lawyers a lot, but I think anybody who's driven, you know, it turns out you're a lot less important to the world out there than you think. And you're a lot more important to the world in here than you think. Like, when I started turning off my phone for an hour, nobody in my law firm noticed. I was still a great lawyer. None of my clients had a problem with that. But the way my fathering changed, because I was now present in the house, was ridiculous. I mean, it was just so different.

• 19:05Speaker 00

  And so, I look at these two habits, you know, they're so small. Scripture before phone. Turn your phone off for an hour in the evening. Tons of people like me are like, this, this doesn't matter. Well, as it turns out, ordinary patterns of your days and weeks make extraordinary lives when you pick the right habits. We know this in fitness. It's also true in spiritual life. And these two habits changed my family life by putting guardrails on work. And guess what? You know, 10 years later, I now run my own law firm. It's growing. It's going, like, it's going great. We're, we're building. We're called Avoda Law, which is, Avoda is the Hebrew word for work. And my career is going fantastic with boundaries. Like, you can build with boundaries, and it's actually the only healthy and sustainable way to build.

• 19:51Nick Bare?

  Yeah, there's a big difference in my, my days, between the days where I'm in the Word in the morning. Like you said, whether it's five minutes, or, I got lucky today. The kids slept in.

• 20:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:05Nick Bare?

  Charlie has been on this, like... This pattern of waking up, which feels like as soon as I sit down to read my Bible.

• 20:14Speaker 00

  Doesn't it feel like spiritual warfare sometimes?

• 20:16Nick Bare?

  I literally sit down, it's one second, I hear the stirring, I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.

• 20:21Speaker 00

  Let me tell you something, though. When they walk down and they see you reading the word, that's legacy. Like, your quiet time just got interrupted, but you just created legacy because your kid develops an internal memory of like, oh, this is what my dad does before I wake up. It's honestly incredible. Is that why you're doing it? That's a good interruption.

• 20:41Nick Bare?

  Yeah. She didn't wake up today until 6:45 a.m. Nico didn't wake up till 7:30. So I had 35, 40 minutes in the word.

• 20:54Speaker 00

  Amazing.

• 20:54Nick Bare?

  It was great.

• 20:55Speaker 00

  Amazing.

• 20:56Nick Bare?

  And my day, from that moment on, it was just more peaceful, more at rest, more centered. So that's like the one thing that I try to get in every morning, whether it's five minutes or 35 minutes or whatever I can get.

• 21:12Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 21:13Nick Bare?

  And the evening, as I was telling you earlier, I sauna before going to bed.

• 21:16Speaker 00

  Ah, man, I'm so jealous.

• 21:17Nick Bare?

  15 minutes, and that's where I do all my prayers.

• 21:20Speaker 00

  Is that your prayer time, the evening sauna?

• 21:23Nick Bare?

  And.

• 21:23Speaker 00

  I need to copy that. That sounds incredible.

• 21:25Nick Bare?

  It is so powerful, like incredibly powerful. I have conversations with God that are are so intimate.

• 21:35Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 21:36Nick Bare?

  And it's gotta be like a combination of just like the silence, the solitude, at the end of the day, the kids are asleep, I know there's rest afterwards, the heat is making it a little bit uncomfortable. You have to focus on something to distract yourself from.

• 21:49Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 21:50Nick Bare?

  The discomfort.

• 21:50Speaker 00

  That's right, yeah.

• 21:51Nick Bare?

  And then I'm telling you.

• 21:52Speaker 00

  That's the body teaches this whole stuff right there.

• 21:54Nick Bare?

  It is.

• 21:55Speaker 00

  Go through the body to get into the right mental space. Yep.

• 21:58Nick Bare?

  Absolutely. It sets the conditions. I have such intimate conversations with God in these moments. But if I start my day with that rhythm, and I end my day with that rhythm, it is a completely different. Energy.

• 22:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:13Nick Bare?

  Throughout the day.

• 22:14Speaker 00

  Let me, I just wanted to say for people listening, because I'm assuming there's a lot of driven people listening here. I think one of the most important Christian paradigms for work is that you don't go to work, your race, your law firm, your parenting, whatever you're doing. You don't go there to earn your love. Because in the great Christian flip of the world, you know you're loved by God. So now you can finally go to work to give love, not to earn it. And this, I think, is like the fundamental difference for the way the world works and the way a follower of Jesus works. If you don't know that you're loved, you're going out to your vocation, looking for your identity, your approval, your love. And thus, you hold it so tightly.

• 22:59Speaker 00

  And when you fail, your life has failed. But when you start your morning in the Word, and you remind yourself again that day, I'm loved by the God of the universe. I'm not going out there to earn my love anymore. I'm sent out there to give love, to serve, to help others. That's when vocation becomes what vocation is, like a calling to help the world with something, whether it's law, whether it's fitness, whether it's writing, whether it's parenting. You can't do that just in your head. I always tell people, if this is the great Christian flip of vocation, then put it into habit, like mirror it in your routine, so that you can intuit that, not just know it, but actually feel it in your body and your soul. And a great way to do that is just start your day in the Word.

• 23:40Nick Bare?

  This is where I was trying to get this conversation to, is identity.

• 23:44Speaker 00

  We're here. Because that's the core. They're like, who are you and who, who are you? And how do you know who you are? And how does that change who you are in the world?

• 23:54Nick Bare?

  How big of an issue do you think identity is right now? And what is making it worse, that we continually do day in and day out?

• 24:05Speaker 00

  Okay, where do I begin?

• 24:09Speaker 00

  In the ancient world, which is really not so long ago,

• 24:15Speaker 00

  nay, like, let's say 150, 200 years ago, you would almost certainly take the vocation of your family. And in fact, your family would often be named after the vocation, like, you know, like, Smith, blacksmith. Or your identity was because of who you are from. And you worked out of who you are, right? Now, I'm not trying to idealize the past. There's probably tons of problems with it. It's kind of nice to be able to pick your vocation. But it's sociologically important to notice the modern world is entirely different. Like, what do we ask people when we meet them? What do you do? What do you do? You used to say, "Where are you from?

• 24:57Speaker 00

  What's your fam- what's your dad's name?" What's fascinating, probably you and I, Nick, probably most of our friends, they couldn't tell us. You ask your close friends, "What are my grandparents' names?" They almost certainly don't know. But you ask a distant friend, "What does that guy do?", they know. But, and again, without judgment on which side of history is better. I'm just saying, we're on a side of history where your identity comes from your vocation, what you do in the world, not from who you are before you got to your vocation. That, I think, is dangerous for the modern world. Because we look to what we do to figure out who we are. And Christianity has an answer for this. It says, "Look to what God did to figure out who you are."

• 25:42Speaker 00

  The whole message of Christianity is that you are loved in spite of what you have done, good or bad. And this is, I don't think a lot of people understand this, so I'm just dwelling on it for a second. The message of Christianity is not just, "You're forgiven, you're loved, no matter what bad things you do." It's also that you can't be more loved. Like, no matter what good things you do. I tell this to my kids all the time. "No matter what bad things you do, or no matter what good things you do, I love you the same." Unconditionally. Unconditional love. The central message of Christianity is that, that God loves you and wants to be with you. So repent of your sins and follow Him, believe in Him. But this changes everything about work.

• 26:23Speaker 00

  Because when you embrace that message, not just in your head, but in your habit, which, you know, my claim is, you know, if your head goes one way, but your habit goes the other, your heart tends to follow the habit. And what we're after is like... You can name it a lot of different ways. Heart belief, gut belief, like your soul, soul level understanding. We don't just want to know in our heads that God loves us. We want to intuit it, feel it, and that's a matter of heart and habit. And when you intuit that God loves you, you are finally free from being a slave to your vocation. Where, where every day is a judgment for you. Did I do well today or not? Your identity is judged. You're free from all that. Like it's, I cannot tell you how much better it is being a lawyer, knowing that I'm loved.

• 27:07Speaker 00

  My God, because now like an angry email from a opposing counsel or like a bad negotiation, because that's what I do, I negotiate business deals. My identity is not on trial. I mean, it's just a bad day. You know, that, that's a small thing and, and I can go out to serve my client not. And it's bad client service when everything's about you. We know those lawyers, right? We, and we know those people. It's like everything is about them. So this, this is the flip of life. And it is really hard in the modern world to take your identity from something other than work, which is why Christianity is such good news for people like you and me.

• 27:43Nick Bare?

  How hard do you think it is for people who don't have a faith? Who aren't Christians? To root their identity in something outside of work?

• 27:57Speaker 00

  You know, people smarter than me have said, we all have a God-shaped hole in our heart. And what we mean when we say that is that, one way the Bible puts it is that eternity is in the hearts of men. Um, and everybody listening knows this, whether you believe in God or not, you know, you long for something bigger than the world itself. Like, nothing is ever enough. We were, we were talking about this while we were working out. You grow old enough as a, as a man and you realize every mountain you climb, there's another mountain on the horizon that's higher, every. Wall, you put a ladder up and you climb towards it, you realize that this isn't the wall, there's always a next thing. That's what it means to say eternity is in our hearts, like something about us hungers

• 28:42Speaker 00

  for something that we can't find. And when you don't know that that God-shaped hole is the shape of Jesus, like that he's the one who answers that, you just, you go looking for, I mean, this is unsurprising. And I've been there, I'm sure you've been there, like all of us get there. It's sex, maybe that'll work. It's career, maybe that'll work. And a typical man goes through a progression. First it's hedonism, then it's hedonism through sex, then it's performance, then it's career, and then you just kind of repeat the cycle until you drive yourself in the ground. But, you know, the wise man, the man who Jesus has laid hold of, looks up and is like,

• 29:25Speaker 00

  this ain't it, that none of this is it. And so I say with great conviction, but also with great compassion, if you don't know who God is, you're gonna wreck your life looking for what's supposed to fill that hole in your heart. And most men will do it through career or hedonism, which is why we see so many men fall apart at our age, because it's not working, and then they realize, if this is not working, maybe I should just go leave my family and go do something else and be happy. You know, women generally don't think about that in the same way. Well, actually, this is slightly nuanced, the divorce rate is actually pretty high

• 30:10Speaker 00

  for women leaving right now, because I think we have an identity problem in our culture. But I'm gonna sidestep that problem, stay on target. Men generally think, I'm gonna eject, like, I'm out, because they can't figure it out. And I think the great news of Christianity is that your vocation, your family, your fitness, all this will make sense when the center of gravity is in place, and his name is Jesus.

• 30:33Nick Bare?

  That's why I frequently go and reread the book of Ecclesiastes.

• 30:37Speaker 00

  It's so good, man, I heard you talking about that.

• 30:39Nick Bare?

  It just keeps humbling me.

• 30:40Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 30:41Nick Bare?

  Yeah, it's like... We just keep, as human beings, keep toiling under the sun, striving, expecting different returns.

• 30:51Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 30:52Nick Bare?

  And I got to a point in my life where, where exactly as you're describing, I was driven by performance and achievement and career. And what I was finding over time is that as I kept putting that at the north star of everything I was working towards, I was still achieving, I was still succeeding, but the return started diminishing.

• 31:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:17Nick Bare?

  I started feeling less.

• 31:19Speaker 00

  It functions like a true addiction. You need more and it gives you less.

• 31:22Nick Bare?

  Yes.

• 31:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:23Nick Bare?

  It's like, I keep looking for that dopamine hit, I'm getting less dopamine hit, less dopamine hit. I got to a point where I was thinking, I don't know where to get dopamine. It's like a drug addict. I don't, I'm out, not on my supply.

• 31:34Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 31:35Nick Bare?

  Where am I gonna get this from?

• 31:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:37Nick Bare?

  And until I gave my life to Christ, I experienced the renewal. And that's why I keep going back and rereading Ecclesiastes, and I fall in love with it more and more and more than I read it.

• 31:49Speaker 00

  It's so good.

• 31:50Nick Bare?

  Because it gives us all of the answers.

• 31:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:53Nick Bare?

  My question for you is, you know, before you started practicing law, you were in ministry, right? And you were a committed and devoted Christian. What happened in the process of, you know, you knew what scripture said, you knew what it meant to live a life as a committed Christian, but then as you started your professional career, it's like you forgot all of what the word was telling us to do?

• 32:19Speaker 00

  Yes, yeah.

• 32:20Nick Bare?

  What happened in that process?

• 32:21Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, and I'm so glad you asked this. This kind of speaks directly probably to what a lot of people experience in the world, which is where they're sitting there saying, I mean, I technically agree with these guys. Like, yeah, they might nod their head at Christianity, or like, I grew up in a Christian home. And even though I was super passionate, and by the way, super smart about it, I had half a seminary degree, I read, you know, I'm a professional Christian as a missionary. The great insight for me was that God is not content with you knowing a lot about Him. That's not the goal of the human life.

• 33:01Speaker 00

  God wants you to love Him back. He wants you to feel love. Like, this, this sounds a... Have you read the book Knowing God by Packer? Um, it's been a while, but yeah. I read that right now. Yeah, it's been a while. It's good. It's, it's so good. It's a classic for a reason. Yeah. Um, but, you know, all great, great Christian writers like, like Packer will, will get at this idea that there's more to a relationship with God than head knowledge. Uh huh. And I just think, Nick, I was a lot in that realm of where like knowing and saying the right things was supposed to be enough. That was my version of it. I mean, other guys' version of it might be like, yeah, well, I go to church or like, yeah, I was raised in a Christian home. I'm saved.

• 33:44Speaker 00

  Um, but following Jesus, which is what Jesus often tells people when they ask Him, like, you know, what do I do to gain eternal life? He'll basically end up saying, follow me. And, um, it's, it's, it's interesting because Jesus is calling, he doesn't just say, well, just believe in me. Um, he says, he says a lot of different things, actually, if you read through the Gospels, but the thing he says most often is, follow me. And that's because he understands you have to believe in Him. You have to confess your sins, admit that He is Lord, and then do something about it. And lots of people will say those words, but they don't mean them or really know what they're saying.

• 34:27Speaker 00

  And following Jesus is a matter of your whole life, and Jesus demands your whole life, not just your head life. So for me, it was realizing that the practices of my life were leading me to put my identity in work. And I did not want to do that. I wanted to follow Jesus with my whole life. And this was the great conviction in my early 30s that has changed everything about how I arranged my life. Um, now let me be, for anybody who didn't necessarily follow that, let me just sum it up and be really clear. The, the great message of the Gospel is that Jesus loves you as you are. Like, you don't have to do anything. You can't actually to be saved. He, He saves you. Like, just believe. Just surrender to Him. So that means habits won't change God's love for you. Period.

• 35:15Speaker 00

  But I firmly believe God's love for you should change your habits. So when I say all of what I said, I'm talking about what does it look like to actually follow Jesus? Not how he saves you, like you'll never habit your way to being loved by God. This is the great point here. God loves you. Surrender to that. Accept it. And now change everything in your life. Because he loves you that much.

• 35:36Nick Bare?

  That's what I've experienced.

• 35:39Nick Bare?

  Since committing my life to Christ. Is that it wasn't. I found Jesus. I was saved. I then felt that I had to change some of the habits in my life. To honor. God.

• 35:53Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 35:54Nick Bare?

  It was that I was saved. And because of that love. These habits naturally. Just started changing in my life.

• 36:03Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 36:05Nick Bare?

  It wasn't to get to a certain place. Or for a transaction. But it was a transformation. That I experienced that then transformed the habits of my life.

• 36:13Speaker 00

  There you go. Yeah. There you go. One of my good friends. In Richmond, Matt Smithers, he's a pastor in Richmond. Puts it like this, like habits aren't the way you earn salvation. But they're often the way you enjoy your salvation. And I, I truly think this is a great point to make. Like when I talk about the body teaches the soul, like habits for your body. To sort of bring faith and fitness together. It is not because if you don't do them, you're not a good Christian. It's because God made life so good, so beautiful. He loves you so much. There's so much you can do to enjoy the life he made you for. Like it is a blessing. And I honestly feel like I'm calling people.

• 36:57Speaker 00

  And really Jesus is, not me. To a form of holy hedonism. It's like there is a wonderful way to live life. That's why Jesus is. He calls himself the way. He's the way, the truth and the life. Like following him. Is better than anything else. Like it is the way you enjoy life. But there's a. There's a way that when you seek your enjoyment, it's just that endless cul-de-sac of identity that we talked about and people just. They wither and die.

• 37:24Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 37:25Speaker 00

  But Jesus calls us to life and life to the full. As it turns out, there's like a long history of Christianity with spiritual disciplines and ancient practices that work super well in the modern world for us to live our life fully and following Jesus. And that is just a matter of enjoying salvation.

• 37:40Nick Bare?

  I want to talk about some of these.

• 37:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:42Nick Bare?

  Uh, spiritual disciplines and habits. And we were talking about this during the workout today, but one that was just, I guess, a few that have really spoke to me, uh, that I have personally struggled with in my life. And I think that a lot of people who follow me probably fall victim to this as well and don't even know it. And, and my goal with bringing this up and diving into it is I hope that it makes people

• 38:12Nick Bare?

  not, my, my goal or my hope is that we talk about this and people aren't looking at their community or their peers and like, that guy, that guy, that girl do this, but internally reflecting on themselves saying, am I doing this?

• 38:29Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 38:30Nick Bare?

  And it's the false idols.

• 38:32Speaker 00

  Okay. I've been trying to guess what you're about to say.

• 38:34Nick Bare?

  False idols in terms of, uh, exercise, body image.

• 38:41Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 38:41Nick Bare?

  Uh, food.

• 38:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:43Nick Bare?

  For example, we were talking about like, uh, gluttony.

• 38:46Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 38:46Nick Bare?

  Earlier. You know, like for me, for a long time, I have idolized and worshipped fitness.

• 38:54Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 38:55Nick Bare?

  I've gone into these, these fitness preps.

• 38:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:57Nick Bare?

  I've put races on the calendars and I have idolized them, worshipped them. They have taken over all part of my life.

• 39:05Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 39:05Nick Bare?

  And you know, you can argue, I can justify to myself, but this is a healthy practice.

• 39:11Speaker 00

  Right.

• 39:11Nick Bare?

  This is a healthy habit.

• 39:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:13Nick Bare?

  That at some point can cross the line of becoming unhealthy and unconsumed and.

• 39:19Nick Bare?

  Uh, forcing you to sacrifice other parts of your life. Same with food. You know, like I was just having this conversation with uh Steph a few nights ago. Where I used to worship and idolize food.

• 39:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:36Nick Bare?

  In terms of I would, and I viewed it as like, hey, this is a passion of mine. This is a hobby. Where I would plan our next eight date nights of knowing exactly where we were gonna go to dinner.

• 39:47Speaker 00

  That is pretty lit.

• 39:49Nick Bare?

  I would have, I would have reservations made. I would have looked at the menu. I knew what I was gonna eat. I knew I was going to overconsume at this meal. It's like I'm going hard.

• 39:59Speaker 00

  Oh, interesting.

• 40:01Nick Bare?

  And when I was younger.

• 40:01Speaker 00

  So you're like looking weeks in the future for like that enjoyment.

• 40:07Nick Bare?

  Yes.

• 40:07Speaker 00

  And that you're gonna eat a lot and yeah.

• 40:09Nick Bare?

  Cause I'm so disciplined in my diet all the time.

• 40:11Speaker 00

  Right.

• 40:12Nick Bare?

  So this was a, an idol for me.

• 40:15Speaker 00

  It sounds like, when you describe it like that, it's like.

• 40:18Nick Bare?

  Now, when I was younger, in my, my early teens, I had a severe eating disorder. So for majority of my life, I have struggled with uh eating disorders and unhealthy relationships with food.

• 40:30Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 40:30Nick Bare?

  Which has uh, I guess forced me or resulted in like idolizing and worshiping food and having just an interesting relationship around.

• 40:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:42Nick Bare?

  So I think, I think we create these false idols.

• 40:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 40:45Nick Bare?

  In our life. And initially, when I started learning and researching about false idols or false gods. It was other people. It was other, I know the Bible talks about these, these false gods that exist.

• 40:59Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 41:00Nick Bare?

  And we can think about in society today. Pop culture, artists, athletes. Like these people that we end up worshiping, they are these false idols, but false idols can also be practices and habits within our life.

• 41:15Speaker 00

  Oh, yes.

• 41:16Nick Bare?

  Like fitness or exercise or work.

• 41:19Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 41:19Nick Bare?

  Or food, for example.

• 41:21Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 41:22Nick Bare?

  And this part of your book really spoke to me.

• 41:24Speaker 00

  Oh, good. Okay. Yeah, there's a lot here. Um, let's start with the basics. Yeah, an idol.

• 41:32Speaker 00

  Does not have to be a deity that is fake. It doesn't have to be a religious shrine. Idolatry in the Bible is worshiping the created rather than the creator. So that could be apple pie. That could be coffee. That could be alcohol. That could be drugs. That could be sex. Or that could be a false God. You know, it could be bail. Whatever is not God is an idol when you worship it. And, you know, one of the best definitions of if you're trying to figure out what's an idol in your life. Some of you know it, like some of you are hearing this and you're like, I know what it is.

• 42:14Speaker 00

  It's porn or it's food or it's money, it's career. But some of you are just thinking about other people's idols right now. And to think about your own life, just ask what in your life, if you don't have, will you sin in order to get? Like, what will you say? I'll break the rules in order to get this. What will you not be okay without? What do you, what is? If it is removed from you, then you're not who you are anymore. Like, there's your idol. Because the Bible wants to point us to God as enough, all sufficient. And then through Him, He gives you the rest of the world. So, one, foundation, anything that is created, that is worshipped, like this is what I need,

• 42:58Speaker 00

  can be an idol, which means like fitness can totally be an idol. So this is like right at the beginning of Body Teaches the Soul, as you know. I lay out this paradigm. And this is an interesting conversation, Nick, because we're on the opposite sides of the paradigm. Okay? Yeah. There's, there's three things you can do with your body. You can ignore it. You can idolize it. Or you can image God through it. And you can guess which is the Christian way, right? Yes. We are image bearers of God. And I'll talk about what that means in a second. But mostly in our culture, we see people doing one of two errors. There is a Christian-ish error that I was all about. I ignored the body. It's like, life is all about the spiritual realm.

• 43:42Speaker 00

  And I put up quotes because... That's not how God made the world, which is super interesting. Most people, a lot of people in Christianity, think like this. It's sort of a modern heresy. So hang with me here. Genesis 1, God made the material world and called it good. Like, most people actually know this about the Bible. He creates light and separates day and night and then says it's good. He creates animals, calls it good, and water and land, calls it good. This is extremely theologically significant. God thinks material creation is good. And then guess what? It comes to creating humans and it says he made man and woman in his own image and he calls them very good. We are the pinnacle of creation. So C.S.

• 44:27Speaker 00

  Lewis calls this trying to be more spiritual than God. If you ignore the goodness of the material world, you're trying to out-spiritualize God and it's not gonna work. But a lot of Christians like me do it. They think all of life is in the head. All of life is in this sort of like spiritual world and any engagement with your body is sort of like, oh, that's temporary, that's going away. Vanity? You know, it's, yeah, like it has to be vain to care about it. But that completely ignores the grand storyline of the Bible, which you could sum up like this. God made your body. He saved you by the body of his son, Jesus Christ. And wait for it, this is actually kind of wild. Bible says that he's gonna resurrect us to new bodies in the new heavens and the new earth.

• 45:10Speaker 00

  That heaven is a physical and spiritual place. So the idea that we separate the spiritual and the physical is really a product of the fall. The fall is when sin comes into the world and what happens is death is when our spirit gets separated from our body. That's what we call death. So any theology that sort of embraces just the body or just the spirit, ignore or idolize, it's gonna be a theology of death. It's gonna mess you up somewhere or the other. I was on that end of ignoring the body. Lots of other Christians are. You know, you. And lots of other people are on that other end where this is all I got. Like this is everything.

• 45:50Speaker 00

  And you think about it, if you give the world a materialistic viewpoint, like most people in America have, like this is what you get. It's just atoms, it's just biology, it's just evolution, like this is all there is. Well, yeah, you better hold on, like this is your one shot. This is everything you got, like your body is, your body becomes the idol. Of course, you idolize it. And that breaks you, like, and it'll, if it's going well, it becomes vanity. When it's going not well, it becomes shame and body image issues.

• 46:20Speaker 00

  And this is like most of the world that, you know, you encounter. People are just obsessed with health or fitness and their body is their barometer for how they're doing. But Christianity has a lovely third way, which is like, no, no, no, don't ignore the body. God made it good. Don't idolize it either, it's not all there is. God, God is the end goal here. And so this is, I think, where this conversation both gets really interesting and really practical. Because if you can say something, that I like to say, so the point of your body is not to ignore it, not to idolize it, but to image God through it. But anybody with a head on their shoulders is gonna be like, well, what does that mean? Here's, here's what it means. God is love.

• 47:05Speaker 00

  You are the physical reflection of an invisible God. God is spirit. You are physical. Your job is to image a God of love. We've got a good idea what that looks like in Jesus Christ. He lives an outward life for others. So I would say, your body, your main goal is to figure out, how do I love like God loves using this body? And this can look so different for so many people. But you can apply that to lawyering, you can apply that to fitness, you can apply that to motherhood and pregnancy. You're, you're just looking at wherever you are in life and saying, what is my body for? It's for loving other people. This is a great call of life, right? People ask Jesus, what's the summary of all the Bible's teaching? He says, love God, love neighbor.

• 47:51Speaker 00

  That's what your body's for. Yeah. So any training you do should be of glory to God and of service to your neighbor. And guess what? That's gonna change your training.

• 48:01Nick Bare?

  Yeah, someone put it into a really clear and practical terms for me a few months ago. And they said, you know, God has never asked you to sacrifice your body, but use your body to be obedient to his word and will.

• 48:18Nick Bare?

  And that made me really think about how I've been treating my body over the years.

• 48:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:22Nick Bare?

  You know, sacrificing and running it into the ground.

• 48:26Speaker 00

  Right.

• 48:27Nick Bare?

  Which for a long time was my identity.

• 48:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:30Nick Bare?

  And provided me a lot of, I would say pride.

• 48:34Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 48:34Nick Bare?

  I had a lot of pride behind that. Yeah, I'm the person who's gonna wake up early and grind it out and wear myself down.

• 48:41Speaker 00

  Right.

• 48:41Nick Bare?

  So by the end of the day, when my head hits the pillow, I got nothing left.

• 48:44Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 48:46Nick Bare?

  But it's not that just I have nothing left for myself. I got nothing left for anyone else.

• 48:50Speaker 00

  Right.

• 48:51Nick Bare?

  I got nothing left for my family. I got nothing left for my team. I got nothing left for the person to the left and right of me.

• 48:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:58Nick Bare?

  That's a dangerous spot to be.

• 49:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, let me, um, so can I talk about the exercise chapter in here? Cause it's so.

• 49:07Speaker 00

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna get to that. Like, how do we pour out our lives for other people? Like, this is the question, right? But exercise came in a funny way for me because I'm living this head centric life, you know, having this mental collapse I told you about. Right in my mid thirties, I decide I wanna start my own law firm.

• 49:25Speaker 00

  And so I'm working from a coffee shop, like keeping overhead really low, right? Just like sending emails from a coffee shop. And I hear all this banging next door. And I'm like, what is this? I thought it was a car garage. But I go look and it's the door to this CrossFit gym. And I look inside the window and this dude is, I didn't know at the time, it was clean and jerks. You know, he's just lifting this massive amount of weight above his head, dropping it. It's like banging on the floor. But he's got the chiseled body of a Greek god, so I'm like. I knock on the door, interrupt his workout, not really thinking.

• 49:57Speaker 00

  And I'm basically like, can this happen to me? Like if I go here, I was flirting with the vanity part of it. But I knew at that stage in life that my body was being ignored. And so I wanted to get into exercising. So he tells me about the classes. I start going to the noon classes and turns out wanting to exercise and actually exercising are super different. Like the former is super easy. The latter is really hard. It does hurt, right? Like you're you're grounded into a pulp. Like you are poured out, you're pulled apart. And so in the CrossFit style workouts that I was jumping into, you know, there's these short bursts, these workouts of the day. And I would get exhausted by minute six and I'd take a bathroom break or grab some water. And you know, long enough bathroom break, you come back, the workout's over. So I

• 50:41Speaker 00

  everybody's kind of looking at me weird, but I hadn't been there long enough to know that I was sort of missing the point here. Tapping out. Yeah, I was just tapping out. And so one day, we're doing a workout where it has actually a bunch of clean and jerks over and over. And I think at like minute three or four, I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm exhausted. So I go to get some water and my coach, Ryan, the aforementioned body of a Greek god guy, steps in front of me and he's like, hey, just one more rep. Like, you know, make a furrowed brow, go pick it up, do one more. And then I go to get water. He steps in front of me again. He's like, nah, just pick it up.

• 51:16Speaker 00

  And I do it again. And then I look, I was like, oh, he's not moving. I look at the clock. I got eight minutes left. I'm like, this guy is going to stay here. I didn't know, basically, he was, you know, modeling your go one more. Yeah. But he stays there the whole time. I collapse on the floor at the end of the workout.

• 51:31Speaker 00

  One, exhausted, but two, realizing, probably couldn't even put it into words, but this idea in my head of, oh, the wall wasn't the wall. Interesting. Which is like, interesting, good for a gym poster, but here's where the story for me got really interesting. The next morning. I am getting breakfast for my two-year-old. And he's got a sippy cup of milk on the highchair. And I'm serving him something, can't even remember what it is. And he knocks the sippy cup off. I bend down to pick it up and my legs are so sore. I'm like, ow, ow. Put it back on his highchair, go to get something from the kitchen. And he just backhands the cup off the table again. And I turn around and look at this guy, like as if he is trying to provoke me. I know that feeling. Yeah, and, and look, dads, moms, we do this all the time.

• 52:17Speaker 00

  We think that our toddlers are trying to make our life miserable. We ascribe to them like evil intent when they're just a baby. They're a toddler, like they're a foolish little child. And I looked at this kid and I'm, you know, this is my era as a dad. I'm about to pop off on him. I'm about to yell at a toddler, maybe even spank a toddler for being a toddler. And then I hear this voice in my head, just pick it up. And I almost look around like, Ryan, like my coach, as you hear. It was totally the Holy Spirit. Just pick it up. And I went and picked up the bottle, just like I picked up that cleaning jerk. I put it back on the highchair, winked at my son. And I had a realization that morning, Nick, and this is probably six plus years ago. It's stuck with me ever since.

• 53:02Speaker 00

  That the gym was not just the gym. It was a spiritual gymnasium. Through my body, God wanted to teach me something about where grace begins, which is at the end of yourself. I had lived so long as a parent, thinking, when I'm done, I'm done. And I was like that in the gym too. When I'm done, I'm done. Not realizing that is precisely getting past the point that you think you can do. When you go one more, right? When you pick it up, that's where real growth starts to happen. So in your life of service to family, to work, to friends, when you are, and this is important because you're not doing it for you, right? It's for them. Outward service, when you. Talk about Romans 12, right? Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice. Why is it living?

• 53:45Speaker 00

  Cause you're not killing it, so it can't do anymore. You're stewarding that sacrifice for other people. This is when you get to the point where you think you have no more patience. But grace means you do. You think you can't be kind to your wife again tonight? Yes, you can. God is with you. You think you can't hold off on that addiction one more day? It's just you can't go that far. Yes, you can. God is with you. That for me, this is where fitness and exercise has become a service to spirituality, rather than a distraction from it. And I think this is, paradigm is totally possible. But you've got to put exercise in that place of imaging God through it, not idolizing yourself in it.

• 54:24Nick Bare?

  Right. What were your struggles in terms of? What were you idolizing?

• 54:30Speaker 00

  Work and success.

• 54:32Nick Bare?

  Okay.

• 54:32Speaker 00

  Total, I mean, yeah, I wanted to be the best. I wanted to have the highest GPA. I wanted to be, um, I wanted people to look at me and say, well done. Good job. You know, ignoring the fact that the ultimate well-done, good and faithful servant has to come from God, not man. So yeah, I wanted the approval of men. I've always wanted that. I still want that. I struggle with that right now.

• 54:56Nick Bare?

  Well, society rewards us.

• 54:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:59Nick Bare?

  For that. It makes it challenging. It's like there's so much positive reinforcement for achieving and sacrificing and crushing yourself.

• 55:10Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 55:11Nick Bare?

  It feels good. It does. Everyone's, everyone's like, look at that guy.

• 55:15Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, and this is, I was telling you about our, um, our podcast earlier while we were working out. So me and great friend Brooke Moser have started this podcast called Intentional Fatherhood. And one of our main themes is that for men, you spend the first stage of your life building your life. We call it, we call it getting your life together. It's actually from a great writer, Ronald Rolheiser. He writes about this. Um, but all of us are familiar with this. Like your, your teens, your twenties, sometimes even your early thirties, um, It's this stage if you get your life together. And a lot of it is good. Like, you do want to build. Like, as men, we're called, God made us this way. It's good. You want to provide for your family. You want to get a job, you know, start a family. It's big decision time, like in your twenties.

• 56:00Speaker 00

  Like, what am I gonna do? Who am I? This is great stuff. But then something happens to us. It's happened to you, happened to me. It's no surprise that my collapse was right around the time of young children. Most people have a huge gear shift in their life when they realize, suddenly to look up one morning and like, I have a wife. I have a couple of young kids. And life has radically begun to change because what they're sensing, but they're scared of, is that it's not about them anymore. It's about these kids. It's about this woman. And that is one of the most holy turns that you can make in your life as a man. To realize you have been building your life in order to not give it away for the sake of others. This is the outward turn that we're talking about earlier. Your body's not for you.

• 56:45Speaker 00

  It's for loving God and loving neighbor. So keep it fit for that purpose. Feed it well for that purpose. Run hard in your career, but for that purpose. But many of us have an early life crisis. I did. We fall apart mentally because we are so scared to give our life away. Because we don't know that that's where happiness is actually found. The paradigm of Jesus is that He empties Himself. And the Bible says that He humbled Himself, came down to us, and died for us on the cross. And therefore, God exalted Him. This like down-up motion is the motion of life. Interestingly, it's also the motion of exercise, right? Obviously, you have to break your body down and then rest in order to heal it, feed it in order to heal it. It's built into our biology.

• 57:30Speaker 00

  But it's also built into our life path. And in Intentional Fatherhood, Brooke and I are talking a lot about this because men struggle at this turning point where they realize, oh, I've gotten my life together, not to turn around and get accolades for it, but to give it away. And if you don't make that turn properly, you really, really start to fall apart. But people who make that turn become kings. Because they realize life is about service. Life is about giving. Life is about love. And that's actually what builds you up into an elder statesman, which is what we long to be. Somebody who cares and shepherds and stewards their power for the good of others. Like, that's being like Jesus. But try to hold on to it and say, life is about me.

• 58:14Nick Bare?

  Can't bear it. It's too heavy. Man, I'm just like, you got a lot of thoughts right now? Hit me with them.

• 58:22Nick Bare?

  Lots of thoughts. This is exactly what I have experienced. The last

• 58:29Nick Bare?

  two years of my life. And I've been trying to put it into so many different words in the way that you were just describing it to me. It's like you were speaking to me. And I believe there's a lot of, I speak to a lot of men. Some would say men, but maybe men and women. Who are at a similar season of life that I'm in right now, experiencing just this. Yeah. Cause as I've shared what I'm experiencing in this pivot that I'm, I'm making. There's been so much interest. Like, man, tell me how. Yes. Tell me why. Yes. Help me. Yes. I'm getting that so much.

• 59:11Nick Bare?

  And it's now like, as you're describing this, it's also clear. See, I've experienced a lot these last couple of years. I know. You've had a big year, dude. Yeah, I mean. You've had a big year. It's been a. I'm, I'm grateful for it. I'm grateful for what God's doing in your life. It's been a crazy year for me and my family. And it's committed my life to following Jesus Christ. It's been leveling, leveling up as a husband and a father and a business leader. And just this renewal of my mind. But now the way that you paint this picture. I got to this point where

• 59:52Nick Bare?

  I spent my early twenties, my late twenties, my, my early thirties, like really putting in work. And building a career and, and setting myself up for success. For myself, if I'm being honest. Yeah. Yeah. And I got to a point of. This exact realization that you're making right now of, oh, I got to this point to now give it all away.

• 1:00:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:16Nick Bare?

  And that scared me for a, the, the question I was gonna ask you is like, what, why are people scared of that? And then as I was about to ask you that question, I started asking myself, what was I scared of?

• 1:00:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:27Nick Bare?

  And I can't, can't really tell you what I was scared of. I think I was scared of losing what was so predictable and comfortable.

• 1:00:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:36Nick Bare?

  In, in giving that away, not knowing what this next phase and chapter would look like.

• 1:00:40Speaker 00

  Yes, yes.

• 1:00:41Nick Bare?

  You know, when we were working out, I was telling you about the book that I read about a year ago called Halftime, by Bob Buford.

• 1:00:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:48Nick Bare?

  And it talks about this concept of the, the first half of your life is focused on success.

• 1:00:52Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:00:53Nick Bare?

  Personal success. And the, the second half is significance or this service to others. And I believe now I'm on that other side of the transformation and pivot.

• 1:01:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:07Nick Bare?

  And I don't have that fear anymore. I'm not scared.

• 1:01:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:11Nick Bare?

  But it feels like rest and peace.

• 1:01:15Speaker 00

  That's good.

• 1:01:16Nick Bare?

  And I now understand why that first half of my life.

• 1:01:21Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:01:21Nick Bare?

  Made sense and why the transition and pivot was so hard.

• 1:01:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:25Nick Bare?

  But now being on the other side, I'm like, oh, I feel good.

• 1:01:28Speaker 00

  It's a sign you're making the turn. Yeah. I mean, it's a long turn and there's a lot of life left, but yeah, I mean, open invite to anybody listening and to you. Mid February 2026, we're doing an intentional fatherhood conference to talk about this stuff with, with young dads, about how to make the turn and get your life together in order to give it away. But I'll say, I think you described

• 1:01:52Speaker 00

  that idea of looking at it and both wanting it and being afraid of it is, is perfect. And, and honestly, if you don't feel that, then you're not looking at what we're talking about. Um, anything great in the world, let's talk about a, a wife, a beautiful woman that you want to marry. This totally happened to me with Lauren at the age of 20. I looked at this beautiful woman and I was like, I want to spend the rest of my life with her. Like this looks, this is incredible. This is what I was made for. And at the same time, I realized, This is gonna ask everything of me. I will have to never leave her. I will always, I have to always love her. For better or worse, in sickness and health. That scared me to death.

• 1:02:35Speaker 00

  I wanted it so bad and it scared the heck out of me. Because that's what callings do. That true callings in the world, like give your life away for the sake of others. Like, oh, you sense, I think every guy listening to this right now senses. That's what they were made for. To be a soldier for other people, to be a soldier for the King. His name is Jesus.

• 1:02:56Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:56Speaker 00

  Like, give your life away for the sake of Him and His goodness and His kingdom. When we see children rightly, we see that, I want to give my life for them. But will you live every day for them, right? When we see our wife, we think, I would give my life for her. Will you live for her? When we see Jesus, we think, I would, I would die for being a Christian. But will you live for Him? And that call is daunting. But it's also what we were made for. So if you're a man listening to this, you're going to feel both. But like any workout or any race, just head into it. We don't think, we know we're gonna feel nervous before a good workout, right? Because it's gonna be hard, it's supposed to be. So is the call of Jesus. If you don't feel daunted by it, then you're not looking at that call.

• 1:03:40Speaker 00

  But if you also don't feel like, I think I'm made for this. Then you don't see the goodness of the King yet. And I, I think you're describing what it looks like to make that turn. Because you feel both, but as you start running the race, you realize, God made me to run this race. God made me to give it away. Now, everything that I was doing before, the, the training, the prep, the eating, the work, has a place. It's for something. It's bigger than you. And gosh, that feels good. This is what I mean when I say like the God-shaped hole can only be filled by Jesus. Augustine put it this way, my, my heart is restless until it finds rest in Thee. And I think men know that, like, they're so tired of trying to fulfill their life by their career.

• 1:04:22Speaker 00

  Your heart is always gonna be restless until you find rest in God. And then you're like, I could run forever. I could do this forever. Oh yeah, I can give it all away. You have a superhuman power called the Holy Spirit, which is like run into your career now for the right reasons. And that is what men are made for.

• 1:04:38Nick Bare?

  Yeah, the right reasons.

• 1:04:40Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:04:41Nick Bare?

  And that's why I want to be very careful about, about sharing like this transformation that I've experienced. I don't want people to hear me talk about this and think that I'm saying.

• 1:04:51Nick Bare?

  My twenties and early thirties were spent doing the wrong thing.

• 1:04:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:58Nick Bare?

  Like everything had to do from like a research and work and building. It all had to get me to this point.

• 1:05:05Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:05:06Nick Bare?

  For me to learn what's the true reason.

• 1:05:09Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:05:10Nick Bare?

  Like what is the, the, the purpose in all of this?

• 1:05:12Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:05:13Nick Bare?

  And I would have never learned and realized that if I didn't go through.

• 1:05:17Speaker 00

  Absolutely. Well, first of all, that's a nod to the call of God. He, which is a beautiful thing. He organizes our life, like there is a story for a reason. And yours is a great story.

• 1:05:28Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:29Speaker 00

  Like you, you did, you've done incredible things, Nick. I mean, and you have been following because of this. People look and say, oh, my gosh, this is incredible. God knows that he's using that. But just like we talked about with, with idols. Anybody who takes the incredible things that they've done and says, this is the point. This is for me. Well, they're, they're going to crumple. And the great story that God is writing through you and longs to write through me and every other listener on this is that those things that are good, right? These are idols aren't bad because they exist. Like money, power, sex, exercise, all these things. God made it like it can be used for good. They're not bad by existing. They're parts of creation that God calls good. They can be used for great good or they can be used for great evil.

• 1:06:14Speaker 00

  And the greater the thing, and by the way, the human body is pretty great. Right? This is why we idolize it a lot. The greater the thing, the more beautiful it can become. Or the more evil it can become, depending on how you use it. So absolutely, I would reject wholeheartedly anybody. Even if you said it's like, you know, all this stuff I did before was worthless. No, it's not.

• 1:06:32Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:32Speaker 00

  God wants to use it actually. It's great treasure. He wants you to steward it, not throw it away. It's about using it properly. You use it badly, it becomes an idol, it destroys you and everybody around you. You use it well, you become a king like Jesus stewarding it for the good of others. Use it.

• 1:06:50Nick Bare?

  Yes. I, I fully believe in that. I just wanted to be very like clear, like not saying all like these things are not bad things.

• 1:06:59Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:06:59Nick Bare?

  It's just in like the way they are used and potentially idolized.

• 1:07:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:04Nick Bare?

  It can be destructive to the life.

• 1:07:06Speaker 00

  The strength of a man can be used to serve and protect. Or it can be used to hurt, kill, destroy. It's the same strength. How do you use it?

• 1:07:15Nick Bare?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:07:16Speaker 00

  Right? The, the strength of a man is good. Just use it well.

• 1:07:19Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:21Nick Bare?

  Another habit that I feel like we should talk about, which is like almost the the complete opposite of performance and exercise and training is rest. I was hoping we could talk about this. Yeah. Because man, for the first time, we were again. I was shocked at how little you told me you sleep. We were talking about this in the gym. Yeah. I've now, for the first time in my life, prioritized rest and sleep. I feel so, I will tell you, I feel so much better. I'm not surprised. My energy. God made you for it. My energy feels good. Yeah. But rest is so much more than just sleep. Yes, yes, it is. Yeah. Right? And um, you know, you you you open up

• 1:08:01Nick Bare?

  the chapter of the book on on rest and sleep. Page ninety five, sleeping chapter. And. Wow, you're a lawyer here. Footnote sites ninety five. Come on, man. This is my first rodeo. I got you got John Piper here quoted. Yes, that's right. And I I I love the way this opened up, and this is why I wanted to share it. Once a day, God sends us to bed like patients with a sickness. Yep. The sickness is a chronic tendency to think we are in control and that our work is indispensable. It is like a broken record that comes around with the same message every day.

• 1:08:37Nick Bare?

  And this is what I love. Man is not sovereign. Man is not sovereign. Man is not sovereign.

• 1:08:45Nick Bare?

  Let's talk about rest. Let's talk about sleep. Yeah. And something else you said that I I loved, and I'll summarize.

• 1:08:54Nick Bare?

  Rest is not for exhaustion. Rest is for satisfaction.

• 1:09:00Nick Bare?

  And like what I've built into my life, and this is like a habit that I've built in. Steph and I have built in around rest and and sleep primarily. As you were kind of talking about earlier in this conversation, is our morning and evening rhythms and routines. And these habits we put in place to set our day up for success in the beginning. Right. And then close them in the evening. But it's crazy what happens when you finally prioritize rest in your life and you don't live in the sympathetic.

• 1:09:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:31Nick Bare?

  And your parasympathetic nervous system can actually activate and work.

• 1:09:37Speaker 00

  Yes, yes. So, rest is so important biologically and theologically, and that's what's so cool about sleep and Sabbath, is that you can see reflections of both of these here. The Bible is wildly unique in that it starts with a God who rests. This is not how ancient creation myths go. Like, most ancient creation myths have warring gods, blood and violence of victor, and the world is born out of war and violence and power. Genesis is weirdly different. It is a picture of a God who is very powerful, but also very artistic, and then rests. He creates this incredible creation, and then, on the seventh day, a God who does not need

• 1:10:22Speaker 00

  sleep decides to rest. Which gives us this idea that the world that we're born into, and the image of the God that we are made in, is one of satisfaction and rest, an ability to sit back and say that was enough. It's good. It's really good. And then he creates us, right? As creatures who need sleep, which is also super interesting. We go down the evolutionary path of, you know, it's a strange evolutionary claim to say that lying still and vulnerable for a third of your existence is the way to become an apex predator. Like, it doesn't quite fit the narrative. There are some good arguments for why we might have evolved to become people who sleep, but there's also a lot of flaws in the macro argument. Now, I'm a lawyer and a writer. I'm not trying to make an argument there either way.

• 1:11:07Speaker 00

  I'm just saying, it's interesting to think that humans were made to go completely vulnerable for about eight hours a day, and that God made this as a feature, not a flaw. Like, you're meant for it. So, I think it tells us... Two things. One, we are not like God. We are not sovereign. We need a nap. Like, the Psalms say, "The God of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps." God is not limited, but we are. And part of our biological need for sleep is, this is why the book is called "The Body Teaches the Soul." The more we look at biology, the more we understand theology. When you go through sleep, you realize, "I am a limited creature."

• 1:11:50Speaker 00

  So much of the modern world is telling you, "You don't have limits," or surpass your limits. This is a huge part of the sort of AI, superhuman idea that we will figure out a way to become limitless. Basically, to gain eternal, we're all looking for eternal life. The AI, superhuman search just says that, "Yeah, we can figure it out technologically." Of course, that's destined to fail. Christ has already given us eternal life. We have to embrace our limits, and sleep is one great way to do it. Turns out, it's also the best thing for building strength, for building creativity, for loving others, for being rejuvenated, for being a great worker. All these great things come from sleep. You're a better person. It's how God designed you. Yeah. And this was huge for me, Nick.

• 1:12:32Speaker 00

  I mean, as you write in the book, and I told my story earlier, all my troubles began with the inability to sleep. Because I was living so arrogantly, thinking, "Oh, I can be more and do more. I don't need rest. I'll sort of life hack my way into the bare minimum of it." Which is another form of idolatry, is to say, "I'm just gonna do, do, do." Instead of being able to lay down at the end of the day and say, "All right, I couldn't finish everything today, but I did enough. I did what God called me to do today. Now I'm gonna rest." That's super hard, and that's the theological reflection, too. That's Sabbath, right? So, when I started Sabbath-ing, my whole life changed as a young lawyer. Because, of course, you think about this, as a lawyer, we don't think about taking a day off.

• 1:13:15Speaker 00

  We think about, "Oh, Sunday's the day I can get all the other stuff done, because nobody's gonna bother me." So, I did that, and... I lived that life for a while. Yeah. I mean, I did that, and my mental health collapsed. I imploded, and many do. Because we were made to rest and realize what I just said, but I'm gonna say it again, because it's so important. If you're gonna rest, if you're gonna Sabbath, you're gonna get to a point where you realize, "I could do more emails, but I need to stop. I could do more errands, I could clean the house a little more, I could help whatever." But it's gotta be unfinished. I just gotta stop. This is theologically significant because what we're doing is we're realizing that we are people who cannot finish it all.

• 1:13:59Speaker 00

  Which is why Jesus on the cross said, "It is finished." This is, you ever think about this? We can't finish it all, but the good news about the universe is that in Jesus, everything that needs to be done for the good of all humankind has been done. That was the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

• 1:14:17Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:18Speaker 00

  It is finished. So Sabbath is a rest and rejuvenation in the truth of that, that because of what Jesus has done for you, given up his life and risen again for you. He calls you now to accept his free grace, believe in him, follow him. So rest. Like one of the main calls of Christianity is calm down. It's not about you. It's about what God did for you. And as it turns out, when you understand that, you become like a little baby again. I mean, you see your little kids, they conk out in your arms. Why? Because they know that somebody is bigger than them and stronger than them and loves them. And you can really rest when you know that.

• 1:14:58Speaker 00

  And when you look up, even as a strong man in middle age, caring for your family and realize there's somebody stronger than me and he loves me and his name is Jesus, you can finally start to rest. And Sabbath is teaching you that as a rhythm. Sabbath is a rhythm of salvation. Jesus finished it all. I can rest.

• 1:15:21Nick Bare?

  Yeah, when I think back to years ago, I really struggled with the thought of rest. I think primarily because I had a lot of pride around just working nonstop.

• 1:15:37Nick Bare?

  And I wouldn't be able to, if I finished all my work at say 6:00 PM.

• 1:15:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:15:46Nick Bare?

  We ate dinner before having kids and we had nothing to do the rest of the night. I would find something to do.

• 1:15:51Speaker 00

  You find, yeah.

• 1:15:52Nick Bare?

  I'd get back on my computer. I'd get back to work and

• 1:15:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:15:55Nick Bare?

  I had a lot of pride in that.

• 1:15:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:15:57Nick Bare?

  And

• 1:15:59Nick Bare?

  I think a lot of it was because I thought I was God.

• 1:16:03Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:16:04Nick Bare?

  I thought I was as powerful as God. I can do it all. I can, I can be the Savior.

• 1:16:09Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:16:10Nick Bare?

  I can save my life. I can save this business. I can save my future.

• 1:16:14Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:16:15Nick Bare?

  I can do it all.

• 1:16:16Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:16:18Nick Bare?

  And until I realized I'm not and never will be God and I don't have the wisdom or the power and never will.

• 1:16:24Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:16:26Nick Bare?

  It humbled me.

• 1:16:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:27Nick Bare?

  And then taught me that there is, there's power and need for rest. As you were talking about that, for some reason, this conversation with this individual popped up in my head that I haven't thought about in forever.

• 1:16:38Speaker 00

  Okay, I'm curious.

• 1:16:39Nick Bare?

  And this was surely after I made the decision not to work seven days a week anymore. And I remember having this conversation with someone and they wanted to meet up to, to get some work done. They said, well, we'll meet you at the office Saturday. I said, well, I won't be there Saturday. And they said, what do you mean? I was like, well, we don't, we don't work Saturday and Sunday. We take off. And they looked at me like, your team doesn't work seven days a week? And I was looking at them just as puzzled as they were looking at me.

• 1:17:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:13Nick Bare?

  I said, no, we don't work seven days a week. And for some reason, that conversation just popped in my head.

• 1:17:18Speaker 00

  It's Saturday, dude.

• 1:17:19Nick Bare?

  Of realizing like, I used to have this mentality and a lot of other people do is like, I mean, you, you see it. It's written on people's Instagram photos, rest when you're dead. Like,

• 1:17:31Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:17:32Nick Bare?

  Kill yourself. Sacrifice yourself. Keep like striving. Keep. Man, I've been there before. It doesn't result in the outcomes you'd hope for.

• 1:17:43Speaker 00

  No, it, it's like any idol. It will kill you and others around you because you have to respect your need for sleep and not idolize your productivity. The, the great news though is, and because I talked to lawyers about this and they're not, you know, convinced immediately at least. The, the great news is that again, the, the biological impact is a reflection of the theological impact. When, when you work so hard that you collapse, you're, you're resting from the work. You're like, I, I have to now rest because of the exhaustion of the work. And you were quoting that part earlier that. This, the kind of Sabbath rest we're talking about is not collapsing from the exhaustion of work. It is resting in the goodness of God and what you're called to do. So you don't rest from the work.

• 1:18:28Speaker 00

  This is how Tim Keller, a wonderful pastor, who recently passed away, but he's just a wonderful pastor, put it. We work from the rest. Like, we, we, this is why the Christian calendar actually begins with Sunday as the first day of the week. A lot of people don't know, why, why is it first? Because it's the idea that we begin in the rest of God and then go to work out of it. Biologically, this is true too. Like, if you're going to train hard, you need to sleep well. You need to start with rest and then train hard and then continue to rest. And our, our identities are like that. And when we don't rest, when we don't practice Sabbath, we fall apart mentally and we fall apart physically. And anybody's just a matter of time. If you say you rest when you're dead, and if you say, I'll rest when I'm dead, and

• 1:19:13Speaker 00

  you really mean it, you'll get it. You'll die younger. And you might actually die really young. Because you, you might run your life that hard that you just ruin it all. And it might be a, you know, identity death, or it might be actual death. But the way to live life and live life to the full, as it turns out, again, this is Christian hedonism here, rest in the goodness of God. It actually feels great. And for people like you and me, I would just say, lots of times, we don't know what to do to rest. I call this the work of rest. Rest is not just stopping. For me, and I love this quote, it's from Abraham Heschel, he says, "A man who works with his mind should Sabbath with his hands.

• 1:19:57Speaker 00

  And a man who works with his hands should Sabbath with his mind."

• 1:20:01Nick Bare?

  When I heard you, this is in your book, right?

• 1:20:03Speaker 00

  Yes, it is, yeah.

• 1:20:04Nick Bare?

  When I heard this in the book, I, I sat on that for a while.

• 1:20:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's wonderful ancient wisdom. And actually, you know, it might be an interesting distinction between you and I. Your work is obviously hybrid, but when I think about resting well, I think about a handyman project, a hike, a workout, something to get my body. Moving because dude, I work in my head. I'm writing, I'm at keyboards, I'm negotiating. My work is words. Um, but when somebody, you know, who's out there, you know, fixing utility poles seven days a week, or maybe they're, maybe they're an athlete, you know, with, if your work is with your body and lots of people's are, you probably want to read, meditate.

• 1:20:48Nick Bare?

  That's how rest is for me. I love, I love reading.

• 1:20:50Speaker 00

  You probably want to listen to podcasts. Now, now it goes without saying that I, I think family time and worship should be part of your Sabbath, like spending time with your family. We, we have a big family lunch on Sunday. You know, we, we go to church, but, but I'm going to sleep in on Sunday as late as my kids will let me. We're going to make a huge breakfast. We're going to go to church. Um, we're going to see family and then I'm going to do something with my body. And I think this might be a theme of the conversation, right? Like, it's so good. It's so wonderful. God has invited me not to this

• 1:21:23Speaker 00

  uh, demanding, exhausting life of following him, but this life of, of fullness and abundance where it's actually stop being a slave to the world and start being a slave to Christ. And you realize you are finally free to enjoy life. And I go back to work so ready to work hard. And pour my life out, you know, for the other five, six days a week.

• 1:21:42Nick Bare?

  Yeah, I found that as I've prioritized rest,

• 1:21:46Nick Bare?

  I'm no less productive. I'm, I'm more productive.

• 1:21:49Speaker 00

  Oh, studies will show it's definitive. You're, you're more productive.

• 1:21:52Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:52Speaker 00

  The, the way to less productivity is never stop working. The way to more is have good boundaries.

• 1:21:57Nick Bare?

  Yep. You know, a lot of people with our tagline being going more. And this is what my, my last book that I just wrote was all about. So many people think that it, it is just this, this physical action, discipline of doing more and more and more.

• 1:22:14Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:22:14Nick Bare?

  And that can be part of it, but it's not everything.

• 1:22:17Speaker 00

  It's part of the ethic.

• 1:22:18Nick Bare?

  The, the intent of going more was, was meant to be a mindset that isn't intentional.

• 1:22:27Nick Bare?

  Years ago, and I've, I've shared this quote many times before, but uh, Jordan Utter, who, who used to be our brand director, he had this quote on his computer. It was written on a sticky note. And I saw it, this was probably 2019. And I was over by his computer and I saw the sticky note and it said, "Lack of intentionality leads to a repetition of what is easiest."

• 1:22:51Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:22:52Nick Bare?

  And I read it over again. "Lack of intentionality leads to a repetition of what is easiest."

• 1:22:57Speaker 00

  Hmm, that's good.

• 1:22:58Nick Bare?

  Going more for me has always been this mindset of making intentional decisions.

• 1:23:03Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:23:04Nick Bare?

  It might be to rest and sleep more.

• 1:23:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:23:08Nick Bare?

  So that you can then do more and do better later. You can then go and more. Going more is an outcome. It's not just an action.

• 1:23:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:23:16Nick Bare?

  And I think that's where a lot of people get things wrong. See, I'm not, I'm not asking people, "Just keep grinding away."

• 1:23:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:23:23Nick Bare?

  Don't just keep doing more for the, the lack of intentionality. Because doing more is actually easy.

• 1:23:31Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:23:32Nick Bare?

  It's like, for, for me, if you were to say, "Sleep less, work more."

• 1:23:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:23:38Nick Bare?

  "Run more miles, spend more time in the gym, build the business." Yeah, easy.

• 1:23:43Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:23:44Nick Bare?

  But what's actually harder for me sometimes is slowing down.

• 1:23:48Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:23:48Nick Bare?

  And resting and recovering. And resting because of, and I love this, for satisfaction.

• 1:23:54Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:23:55Nick Bare?

  Not because of exhaustion. That is the, for me, it's a north star.

• 1:24:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:24:01Nick Bare?

  Get, get there. That is the win. That is going more.

• 1:24:05Speaker 00

  Uh, it's, you know, like we talked about with idols, it's not the thing. It's what you're doing with the thing. And I love the motto, "Go one more." Because it's so close to my story of Ryan telling me, "Pick it up." You know, that idea of, "Oh, there's more in me than I thought I had to give." Is a wonderful reflection of following Jesus. There's more love in me. There's more patience in me. There's more service in me. There's more strength in me than I thought because of God's grace with me. Um. But it depends on whether you're doing the right thing. You know, it's a great motto and anything great can be used for great evil or great good like we talked about. And when you're using it in service of health, faith, family, you know, good work, it's so good.

• 1:24:48Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:49Speaker 00

  But if it's something, you know, if it's your addiction, don't go one more, stop, repent, turn around. If it's scrolling, stop. If it's, I'm, I'm continuing to push in work because, you know, going one more is finally going to make me who I am. I just, I want to say again with compassion and conviction, stop, turn around, look at Jesus. Go his direction and then you'll be ready to go one more.

• 1:25:12Nick Bare?

  Right.

• 1:25:12Speaker 00

  Because you can go on the wrong things and you, you need to stop. But the reason this is so great is because when you, when you're going in the right direction, going one more is the ethic of Christ. He gave up his life for the good of us, like he went farther and we want to be like him.

• 1:25:27Nick Bare?

  I think you were sharing this in Habits of the Household.

• 1:25:31Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:25:33Nick Bare?

  But you're talking like these, these micro prayers that you do.

• 1:25:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:25:36Nick Bare?

  Using the example of like.

• 1:25:37Speaker 00

  I'm a big fan of short prayers.

• 1:25:38Nick Bare?

  Yeah. You're using the example of like your kids fighting upstairs and naturally the tendency is to, to sprint upstairs and, and break up the fight.

• 1:25:47Speaker 00

  Yell at them, yeah.

• 1:25:48Nick Bare?

  But it's, it's slowing down and as you make your way up there, have this short like micro prayer.

• 1:25:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:25:54Nick Bare?

  Asking for like the patience and the, the wisdom.

• 1:25:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, I call them pause prayers.

• 1:25:59Nick Bare?

  Pause prayers, that's right, pause prayers. And, and as we're like having this conversation, I'm thinking of, uh, of

• 1:26:09Nick Bare?

  continuing to follow Jesus and push on this pursuit of what is uncomfortable. And this phrase has been coming to me a lot recently and it's tested, not tempted.

• 1:26:23Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 1:26:23Nick Bare?

  And I don't know exactly why it's been like speaking to me a lot recently, but I'm trying to navigate it as, as I'm in prayer. And every time that I find myself in a situation where I'm challenged and I want to react.

• 1:26:40Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:26:42Nick Bare?

  Take a step back and I just, I tell myself, the Lord is testing you right now. How are you going to respond?

• 1:26:49Speaker 00

  Good.

• 1:26:49Nick Bare?

  In a way that's going to produce. Perseverance.

• 1:26:53Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:26:54Nick Bare?

  Perseverance, character.

• 1:26:55Speaker 00

  Character.

• 1:26:56Nick Bare?

  Endurance.

• 1:26:56Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:26:58Nick Bare?

  And I sit with that a lot right now of God doesn't tempt us.

• 1:27:02Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:27:02Nick Bare?

  The enemy tempts us. But God is is testing us frequently.

• 1:27:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:27:07Nick Bare?

  And I I want to keep being, if I if I'm tested by God on a consistent basis, I know I'm close to him.

• 1:27:15Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:27:16Nick Bare?

  So I I want those constant tests.

• 1:27:18Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:27:18Nick Bare?

  I have that fear.

• 1:27:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:27:20Nick Bare?

  Lord, when you stop testing me, what what's going on?

• 1:27:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, if you if you're not doing hard workouts, you're not going to grow, right? I mean, this is so obvious on this podcast that it's almost silly. But it's funny how much we don't apply that to life. That that God wants to grow you through suffering. It's kind of uncomfortable. Like, God, God will say, I want you to be like me. And keep in mind that I'm the the God who became man. We're talking around Christmas time, right? This is the Christmas story. God becomes incarnate human being to suffer and die so that resurrection, life, eternal life can happen. This is the path. And if we're looking at the rest of our life and it's, we're looking for easy at home, like easy in our work, easy in the rest of life, there's sort of simple repetitions of unintentionality. You're not growing in your faith.

• 1:28:07Speaker 00

  Like, God wants to use difficult circumstances in your marriage, with your kids, in business, to grow you. And there's a way of life that we look at it, we just resent it, particularly in the stages we're talking about. Like, we're building all our life. Now we got to our thirties and his kids and his wife and job is harder than we thought. And we're just like, oh, it's so hard now, it's not funny anymore. And we eject. Instead of saying, oh, wait, in giving it away, I'm becoming like Jesus. This is the point. He's sanctifying me. So life is going to be like a workout. It's gonna be hard. And it's also gonna be like the result of the workout. You're stronger, you're better, you're happier, you're healthier. But spiritually, that's true.

• 1:28:52Speaker 00

  And the pause prayers are huge for me in reframing those moments where I'm like, what I want to do is bring the aggression and anger on my kids. I got four boys, so it's very easy to just get in the fraternity of testosterone and like, they're shouting, I'm shouting, they're mad, I'm mad. And I'm bigger, I'm stronger, so I win. Instead of being like, pause, pray. Let me come in here with patience. Let me come in here with love, strong love, authority, you know? Boys will hurt each other and themselves, so will girls. They're children, they need guidance. So I'm a strong authority, but I'm a gentle authority, a loving authority. And I couldn't do that without prayer. And nor can you make that turn in marriage or work. You can't look at it and be like, okay, I'm gonna,

• 1:29:35Speaker 00

  you know, I'm gonna treat this as sanctification as a head project. Like you have to pray, you have to stop and pray. I tell you all the time, pause and pray, pause and pray. Bible says pray without ceasing.

• 1:29:45Speaker 00

  Which means you're basically doing it all the time. Like it's an internal monologue of just talking to God and saying, and this is one of my favorite quotes, Anne Lamott said this, that the most powerful three prayers are help, thanks, and wow. I go to help a lot. But it's prayer. It's just looking up, it's like Ecclesiastes, it's constantly looking up and saying, this is hard. Where is God? Just look up, help, help.

• 1:30:10Nick Bare?

  Yeah. I catch myself sometimes having conversations with Steph, especially on the weekends.

• 1:30:17Nick Bare?

  Where I'm like, you know, if we're in a really tough day, we're just getting beat up.

• 1:30:23Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:30:23Nick Bare?

  I'm like, you know, our friends, you know, have kids, they don't even know. They don't even, they don't even know. Oh, they think, they think they've, oh, they're complaining about their life right now.

• 1:30:33Speaker 00

  You're busy.

• 1:30:33Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:34Speaker 00

  You're tired.

• 1:30:35Nick Bare?

  But then I think back to, yeah, but they're not getting these tests that we're getting right now.

• 1:30:40Speaker 00

  I think this all the time.

• 1:30:41Nick Bare?

  They're not growing like we're growing and just like.

• 1:30:45Nick Bare?

  Think about how blessed we are that we are, we are being tested daily.

• 1:30:51Speaker 00

  This is, oh, it's so glorious. I think about, and this is not to judge. I mean, everybody's in different places, but I think about some of the idol of our culture. Postpone having kids, postpone getting married, get your career together, travel, make money. And I, I look at, and, and they, they look at marriage and family as maybe a capstone to life.

• 1:31:11Nick Bare?

  Or a burden?

• 1:31:12Speaker 00

  Well, they, they think it may be like an achievement they'll get later, but right now it's a burden. Yeah. So, so maybe it's like, oh, the, the last thing I'll do is I'll find a, a wife in my thirties and maybe have a kid at forty, you know?

• 1:31:22Nick Bare?

  I got you. Okay.

• 1:31:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. So it's like, it's the capstone. It's like the last thing, the cherry on top, maybe. Marriage and family in the way that God designed us is the cornerstone. It's the foundation of life. Because of what you said, it makes us real men, men who realize, oh, life is actually hard. Life is about service. Life is about love. Life is about sticking around. Life is about using my strength for others, not to control others, not to beat up others, but to bring them in, to hug them. Like, these are not, you know, for being fists and pounding the table. They're for being hands that pull your wife close and pull your kids close. Um, I think people who postpone marriage and family because they want to travel, they want more money, they want career success early.

• 1:32:08Speaker 00

  I pity it a little bit because it, it, you, you miss the real growth of a human being that comes from a toddler waking you up at 2:00 AM and you don't have a choice. You don't get to decide, do I want to get up or not? You go help that kid. And that service makes you a real human being. Um, it, it's the growth, it's, we call it sanctification. It makes, it makes you more loving.

• 1:32:32Nick Bare?

  Man, that, uh, perspective, the cornerstone, rather than the capstone, is like really, really good.

• 1:32:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. You know, I, I should be quoting sociologist Brad. He's out of UVA. I think it's Brad Wilcox. Um, he's a, he has a book on this. So, um, he's got really good research, but this is a problem in the modern world, particularly modern America, that it's a capstone rather than a cornerstone. And I want to tell any man listening.

• 1:33:02Speaker 00

  Follow Jesus, get married, have children. Like, that order. Um, that, that builds a good life. There's a way you are made. You do not have to reinvent the wheel. You want to worship the God who invented the wheel. And following Jesus, marrying a great woman who also follows Jesus, and having kids and training them to do that, is the cornerstone of a good life. And so much fruit, so much good work, so much wonderful identity will come from those good things. If you mess up that order, you know, have kids first, don't marry a woman, uh, you do it all without Jesus,

• 1:33:40Speaker 00

  that's a real recipe for confusion, and you see it everywhere right now. Like, most of our societal problems are caused from messing up that order. And I don't think, actually, that's a radical thing to say. I just think it's fairly objectively true. Society does better when you have a foundation of who God is. A man commits to a woman and stays with her, and they produce children together. Almost every, every index of human flourishing maps to those things in that order. Is there a country who does that better than others? You know? I'm not smart enough to know that, but I'm sure somebody researching in the comments can go. I'd be very curious. Can go do that. If there's like a...

• 1:34:19Speaker 00

  But, I mean, Brad Wilcox, um, he does, he has good sociology on this. I would go check out the, the, the clear, objective sociological impacts of getting married young and staying married. Um, nobody doubts this. I mean, you, nobody, nobody's confused about the problems of poverty, of prison, of crime, of rape and drug. I mean, almost all of our sociological problems are happening, um, in men who don't have fathers. Yeah. Maybe, this is not hard. It, it's hard to fix. It's not hard to name. You know, strong men change the world when they commit to a woman and stay with their children. Um, this is why the...

• 1:35:04Speaker 00

  This is why this book is so wise. This is why it's the foundation of life because it gives simple recipes like that. This is what God made you for. He made you to get married and have kids and care for them. And so much of the rest of life is built on that foundation. And when we reverse it, when we think, oh, life is all about career. And we start ruining our families. The world becomes what we know the world to be, really, really broken.

• 1:35:26Nick Bare?

  Right.

• 1:35:26Speaker 00

  But men are called to be at the center of that change.

• 1:35:31Nick Bare?

  I recently read this book called Living Life Backwards.

• 1:35:35Speaker 00

  Oh, I haven't, I've heard of that. I haven't read it yet.

• 1:35:37Nick Bare?

  It's all about the book of Ecclesiastes. It's really, really good.

• 1:35:41Speaker 00

  Oh, that sounds great. I know somebody recommended that to me, but I haven't read it yet.

• 1:35:46Nick Bare?

  And in, in one of the sections of that book, one of the chapters, it talks about how we have to embrace repetitiveness. And that we as people in this world pursue change, newness, novelty.

• 1:36:01Speaker 00

  Right, right, right, right.

• 1:36:03Nick Bare?

  And we want different. When, you know, for example, if we apply to what we were just talking about, a man gets married and has kids and he gets bored. He wants to change. So he starts committing sin or spending more of his time at work and traveling, I suppose with his family because they want, and we want change and newness and novelty. When the reality is we have to embrace the repetitive nature of life.

• 1:36:32Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:36:32Nick Bare?

  And that consistency produces the fruit of which life was meant to create.

• 1:36:38Speaker 00

  Yes, it is. Stay on it. Go one more. If you're doing those things, those are the right reps. Go one more. Be consistent. Show up.

• 1:36:47Nick Bare?

  Well, Justin, this was great, man.

• 1:36:49Speaker 00

  This was pretty fun, huh?

• 1:36:50Nick Bare?

  This is a powerful one, dude. Even mid-conversation, you were bringing up some things. I'm thinking internally like, man, like this is making me think. But dude, I really appreciate you making this trip and I have, not just me, but me and Steph and a lot of the people here at BPN have enjoyed the books and the impact they're making in our lives as individuals, but also families as well.

• 1:37:14Speaker 00

  Well, thank you, man. It's such an honor to talk to you and it's an honor to be speaking to all you who are out there listening. Like, your audience is incredible people and to tell them about how much Jesus loves them and how a life built on that is the good life. I mean, this is what I'm trying to say in all my books, Body Teaches the Soul, Happens at the Household, the podcast, Intentional Fatherhood. I mean, it's about following Jesus and I'm so excited to get to talk to you about it. I mean, working out with you this morning and talking about God in between these pump sets is probably gonna be a highlight of 2025.

• 1:37:45Nick Bare?

  That's what gets me jacked up.

• 1:37:46Speaker 00

  Let's go.

• 1:37:47Nick Bare?

  Having strength sessions with like a bro and like having good conversation.

• 1:37:51Speaker 00

  Oh, man.

• 1:37:52Nick Bare?

  I get a huge high in dopamine hit from that.

• 1:37:56Speaker 00

  Amen. Well, maybe, maybe, just maybe one day I can come back and we can go one more.

• 1:38:00Nick Bare?

  Let's do it. All right, brother. I appreciate you. Thank you.

• 1:38:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, man.