Kingdom Man: Live to a Higher Standard

This excerpt is from the Introduction of Kingdom Man: Every Man's Destiny, Every Woman's Dream by Tony Evans.

My son Jonathan is a big guy. In the NFL, he's taken downs with some of the best players. He can hold his own. But he wasn't always that big. One time I remember him running up to my office at the church asking me to come down to the gym and watch his five foot three frame dunk the basketball. He had been practicing for months.

Once I got there, Jonathan grabbed the ball, dribbled, and dunked. I offered only abbreviated congratulations. Then I turned to the athletic director and pointedly told him to raise the basket back up to where it belonged. Impatient to grow taller, Jonathan had lowered the goal.

"Raise the basket, Jonathan," I said. "And try again."

He did. And he didn't make it. But he kept trying-and, in time, he made it.

Men, God has a standard. He has a goal. His kingdom is that goal. Yet what so many have done is lowered His standard only to then congratulate themselves for being able to dunk the ball. The results of this lowered standard, though, affect so many more than just the man on the court. A lowered standard affects us all. It shows up in our country. In our culture. In the economics of our world. It doesn't take much more than a cursory glance around our homes, churches, communities, and globe to uncover that men-not all, but many-have missed the goal to live as a kingdom man.

The impact of a lowered standard leaves its scars no matter what race, income bracket, or community a person is in. The outcomes may be different depending on the location, but they are just as devastating. Promiscuity, emptiness, depression, chronic irresponsibility, family breakup, misuse of finances, divorce, violence, chemical addiction, overeating, indulgence, bankruptcy, low self-esteem, and general aimlessness plague our society as a direct result of the abuse or neglect of biblical manhood.

The deterioration of societies both nearby and around the world has reached an all-time high, while the clarion call for men to come forth to stand for biblical manhood has never rung louder. Our world is on a disparaging path of self-destructive behavior.

That must change.

Yet that change will not occur unless men will raise the standard to where God had originally placed it. This book is about raising that standard and defining manhood as God intended it to be. It's about discovering what it means to be a kingdom man.