Santonio Holmes had two feet in bounds and a football in his hands. Reach high. Touch low. That’s how you win the game. That’s how you win as a man.
Dr. Tony Evans used that image from Super Bowl XLIII to describe something bigger than football. He said God is looking for men who reach heaven while keeping their feet on the ground, men who are so heavenly-minded they do earthly good, not so earthly-minded they miss the eternal call on their lives.
I want to talk to the men of America today. Because we don’t have a father problem in this country. We have a Kingdom Man problem.
The Crisis Nobody Wants to Name
In his teaching “Portrait of a Kingdom Dad,” Dr. Tony Evans traces the collapse of the American family back to one root: absent fathers. He doesn’t soften it. He names the absence of dads as the single greatest crisis of our time, because if the enemy can remove the father, he can remove the pattern a child follows. No father to imitate. No standard to measure against. A generation of kids left to follow themselves, or worse, to follow fools.
That is not a coincidence. That is a strategy. Get rid of the dads, and you get rid of tomorrow.
Chosen, Not Accidental
Genesis 18:19 records God’s own assessment of Abraham: “For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.” Dr. Evans points out what that verse means for every man reading it today. You were not just born. You were chosen. God has work for you to do before you die, not just a ticket to heaven when you do.
That calling comes with a job description: command your household. Not with a fist. Not with fear. With righteousness and justice, and, as Ephesians 5 makes clear, with the kind of love Christ has for the church. Christ leads the church by laying His life down for her. That is the pattern for a Kingdom Man. We lead in love. We do not rule over our wives; we lay our lives down for our families the way Christ laid His life down for us.
A Kingdom Man is virtuous. He bears the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). He knows his spiritual gifts and puts them to work for the good of his family and his church, exactly as Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 12. None of us is given a gift to keep for ourselves. We are given gifts to build up the body, starting with the smallest body we lead, our own household.
Two Lies, One Culture
Culture has written two lies for two groups of men, and neither one is true.
White men, especially white Christian men, get handed a villain’s costume they never earned. Leadership, conviction, fatherhood: things to apologize for instead of steward well.
Black men get handed the opposite lie: that they aren’t needed at all. Dr. Evans names the pattern: too many men have outsourced fathering to the government, and the government has been glad to take the job. A check doesn’t need a man in the house to show up, and when the system doesn’t need him, culture starts telling him he isn’t needed either. That’s not compassion. That’s a trade, a father for a program. Two generations of children have paid for it.
Neither story is true. You were not created to carry a culture’s shame, nor to be replaceable. You were created, like Abraham, for a divine purpose, to be blessed so that you can be a blessing, so that heaven can visit history through your household. Don’t let a label written by people who don’t know your name tell you who you’re allowed to be.
Getting Up From the Gutter
Dr. Evans tells the story from Rocky V: Rocky Balboa, past his prime, beaten down in a street fight by a young fighter he trained himself. Face in the gutter. Outmatched. Then he remembers. Not the wins. He remembers his old coach Mickey, already gone, standing over him, saying, “Get up. Get up, because Mickey loves you.” Then Rocky gets up and finishes the fight.
Men, that’s the picture. Whatever has knocked you down, a failed marriage, a wandering child, years of being told your leadership is the problem instead of the answer, Jesus Christ is standing over you right now saying the same thing Mickey said. Get up. Get up, because I love you. Strength you didn’t know you had is available the moment you decide to rise.
Carrying the Torch Our Founders Lit
I wrote last week in “The Wolf By the Ears” about how our founders planted a seed they could not fully bring to harvest, and how Lincoln, generations later, brought it home. That torch didn’t stop with Lincoln. It was handed to every generation of American men since, including yours.
Last year, I heard Charlie Kirk make a sharp point to a young man who challenged him on faith and politics: Jesus didn’t tell His disciples to build a “church” in the soft, private sense we use that word today. The Greek word is ecclesia, a public, civic word, tied to freedom and self-government, not a word for hiding in a back room. Christ told us to build something that shapes the public square, not retreat from it. Salt seasons. Light exposes. Neither does its job hidden away. Men, our founders understood that a self-governing nation needs self-governed men. That has not changed.
Leading the Home First
None of this starts in Washington. It starts at your kitchen table. The Family Wins Devotional for July 7 makes the point plainly: marriage is not a human invention to be redefined every generation. It’s God’s idea, and it takes three to make two become one: a husband, a wife, and the Lord holding the cord between them. Martin Luther, husband and father of six, called marriage “an excellent thing and a matter of divine seriousness.” A Kingdom Man protects that seriousness. He doesn’t walk away from it because it’s hard. He leads it because it’s worth it.
Which Wolf Will You Feed?
You can feed the evil wolf that tells you you’re the villain of America’s story and aren’t needed. Or you can feed the Good Wolf, the Holy Spirit, who tells you that you were chosen, that you have a household to command in righteousness and justice, and that greatness under God is still available to you today.
Start with fifteen minutes. Open the Word tomorrow morning before the noise of the day gets to you. If you need a place to begin, The Family Wins Devotional was built for exactly this: a daily habit that puts your household back under the right command. It’s my gift to you, no strings attached: The Family Wins Devotional. Request your copy today.
Get up, Kingdom Man. Get up, because He loves you.
Feed the Good Wolf. 🐺