250 Years In — And It's Time for Men to Decide

 As America celebrates 250 years of freedom, the greatest question isn't what kind of nation we've inherited—it's what kind of men we're becoming. In this special Independence Day episode of the True Man Podcast, Mike Van Pelt challenges Christian men to return to God, lead their families with conviction, and become the generation that preserves liberty by first restoring the home. #truemanpodcast 

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mike@truemanlifecoaching.com 

https://www.truemanlifecoaching.com 

https://www.americanfamilyrenaissance.org/ 

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https://www.truemanlifecoaching.com/truemantrueways 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the True Man Podcast. This is an invitation to radical reconstruction of a man's masculine heart and soul in a place of safe community where we dare to ask questions, deep seated inside a man, and explore ways to help you become a better man, better son, a better dad, and a better spouse. We want to make you the best possible man you can be. So thank you for being here this week. Always great to have you along with the with me on the True Man podcast. Isn't it incredible? We made it. Happy birthday, America. 250 years. And we get to be here to celebrate it. How awesome and powerful is that? You know, a couple of years ago on a family trip to London and Ireland, we were in London and we had a chance to go to Westminster Abbey, which I strongly recommend. And I was just walking around in Wonderment. Of course, that church is basically a burial plot, if you haven't been there. But I was walking around thinking about all the people that were buried inside that church that are actually many, many years older than our actual country here in America. We are relatively young, but doesn't it feel like sometimes sometimes we're doing everything we can to mess it up? Well, the question we're going to ponder today is what can we do to keep this great republic? But before I jump in here, I want to mention if you uh want to get up there speed with everything going on, head on over to my website at true manlifecoaching.com. I'm hoping by next week we are going to have a special announcement on everything that I've been working on with the American Family Renaissance. But for now, head on over to True Man and we're going to connect that anyway. You'll see this. You'll see this when we get to it. Uh next week, uh, my team has done an excellent job of weaving the American Family Renaissance and True Man Life Coaching all together. And I'm excited about what the future holds and the many things that we have planned. But for now, let's uh let's dig into this podcast today and uh uh and your role, your role, and what we can all do to maintain this great republic for another 250 years. So, 250 years ago, a group of men did something that had never been done before in human history. They looked at the most powerful empire on earth, the most formidable military force of the age, and they said, no, not over us, not over our families, not over what God has placed in our hands to steward and protect. And then they signed their names to a document that began with these words. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. Not by government, not by a court, not by a cultural consensus that shifts with mood of the moment, by their creator. You know, 250 years later, on this 4th of July, I want to ask you something that I think every man in this country needs to sit with today, not as a political question, as a spiritual one. Do you believe what our uh founding fathers stood for? Do you still believe that? And are you living like a man who does? Because a nation does not drift from God all at once, it drifts one household at a time, one man at a time, one decision at a time to stay quiet when conviction actually calls for courage. So today is not just a birthday celebration, it's important. That is important. We've established something in the world as a world power that was started because of our faith. But today is a reckoning, and it starts with you. You ready to go? Let's talk about this. What are we actually celebrating here on July 4th? I want to make sure that we're clear on what that actually is because the cookouts and the fireworks and the cold drinks are fine, and I indulge and enjoy every bit of it, as I know you do. But if that's all it is, dog on we have missed something pretty staggering and pretty important. What we are celebrating really is a miracle, and I I don't use that word loosely. What our founders built, what they risk, which is everything to establish this country, including their lives, was not the inevitable outcome of historical forces. It was an act of extraordinary courage, rooted in extraordinary conviction that these were the men who understood that the liberty they were fighting for was not political invention, it was divine gift. And with that gift came a wait. Now, John Adams, the second president of this nation, wrote to his wife Abigail and says this our constitution was made only for moral and religious people, it is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. Let me read that again. Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. The architecture of this republic, right here, as I'm sitting here in the United States of America, was designed for people whose lives were ordered by God. Not a theocracy. The founders were careful about that. But a people who understood that their rights came from above, their accountability ran upward, and their freedom was inseparable from their virtue. That was the design. Right there is the foundation of this country. And here's the honest question that 250 years demands that we ask how far have we drifted from that foundation? And who's responsible for the drift? Not Washington, not the courts, not any institution. Boy, those are easy things to point at. But what if we took a look in the mirror? Men, specifically men who stopped leading, men who traded their conviction for comfort, men who decided that faith was private, that truth was relative, and the culture could raise their children. Well, they chased their career, their recreation, and their distraction. Now, I want you to understand something at this point. I'm not pointing fingers, I'm not casting stones here. And I know I'm being very direct, but we play a role as leaders of our families and leaders of this country. You see, the founders gave us a republic, and as Benjamin Franklin famously said when asked what kind of government they had created, a republic if you can keep it. Imagine the foresight that Benjamin Franklin uh had to have had. And would he even recognize what in the heck is going on right now? You know, that keeping a republic was never the government's job alone. It was always the job of the men in the homes, the churches, the communities, the men who understood that a nation is only ever as strong as the families inside of it. And herein lies the role of the American family renaissance as I began to roll it out, which is to dig back into the basic foundations of our country, the values that made it great, but more on that down the road. And what I want you to ask yourself at this stage is am I help keeping my commitment to this country? Am I the kind of man that the founders assume would exist to sustain what they had built? Or have I quietly handed that responsibility to somebody else? Now, I want to take you somewhere that gets scrubbed out of our national conversation almost entirely. We've done a great job of taking an eraser to things in this country for some crazy reason. But the founding of this nation was not a secular event dressed up in religious language, not at all. It was a profoundly spiritual undertaking by men who, whatever their individual theological position was, shared a bedrock of conviction that there is a God, that he is sovereign, that human dignity flows from him, and that no earthly power has the right to override what he has established. Just look at the declaration itself. In one document, in the span of a few paragraphs, God is referenced four times the Creator, the Supreme Judge of the World, Divine Providence, nature's God. These were not decorative phrases placed in the declaration. They were load-bearing walls. You see, George Washington in his first inaugural address said this: No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. The invisible hand, the God who moves in history. You see, Washington believed and said publicly without apology that the success of the American experiment was inseparable from the blessing and providence of God. That if this nation flourished, it would be because God willed it. And implicit in that conviction was that if this nation walked away from God, it would not stand. Boy, if you watch the news for five minutes, does that sound familiar? It should scare the heck out of you. Now, this isn't a political position. This is a very prophetic one. And here's what strikes me as I study these men and look at the moment that we are living in. The founders were not naive about human nature. I gotta say, they were pretty brilliant. It makes you wonder if they had a crystal ball sitting on their desk. They were students of human behavior, really is what they were. They built checks and balances precisely because they understood that power corrupts. Imagine that. That men drift, that without accountability to something higher than themselves, human institutions would rot from the inside. It just feels like they're rotten to the core, doesn't it? Our founding fathers built a system designed to resist that rot, but but they were clear that the system alone could not save us. Only the character of the people inside it could do that. And character, boy, now that's a whole other podcast right there. Real character, the kind that holds under pressure, has always been formed in one primary place. The home. How about just sitting right down at the dinner table and enjoying your family under the authority of a father grounded in faith? That is the chain. God to man, man to family, family to community, and community to nation. Again, more on that as we begin to roll out the American family renaissance. But when any link in that chain weakens, the whole thing is compromised. Here's the question I want you to sit with. Which link in the chains are you? And are you holding, or are you the place where the tension is giving away? Now that's not an accusation. We all play a role here, is an invitation to be an honest assessment of yourself because a man who knows where he's weak can do something about it. But a man who doesn't, well, they're just drifting. So what moment are we in right now? What moment are we living in? Not inflammatory, not partisan direct. What moment are we living in? We are living in a time when the foundational things are being contested across the map. This isn't uh not just peripheral things, not policy debates uh at the margins. The foundational things that started in this country are being quickly eroded. What a family is, what a man is, what a woman is, what truth is, whether there is a God whose design for human life is real or binding, or whether we are each our own sovereign, free to construct reality according to our preferences. Christianity is under attack. The family is under attack. And these questions I'm giving you, they're not new questions. We've wrestled with them for a long time. Every generation faces some version of them, but the volume and the velocity of these questions in this moment is unlike anything most of us have seen in our lifetime. And the pressure is landing directly on your home, on your children, on your marriage, on the values that you're trying to pass on, especially if you love this country. I assume if you're listening to this, you do. And if you're listening to this for some alternative reason, fine. Just go sit in a corner and be angry. But I want to tell you something I've observed after years of working with men. The men who are most racked by this moment are not the ones who disagree with the direction of the culture. Most Christian men disagree with it deeply. The men who are most caught off guard here are the ones who have no anchor. They feel the pressure, they feel the weight, they sense that something is wrong. But because their own faith is a little thin, their own conviction is untested. Their own relationship with God is at best a Sunday morning transaction rather than daily reality. They have nothing to stand on when the ground shakes. And boy, feels like it shakes quite a bit because the ground is shaking right now. This is not a season for thin faith. This is a season that is going to demand of every Christian man the kind of conviction that our founders had, and the kind that says, I know what I believe, I know who I serve, I know what I'm here to protect and build and pass on, and I will not be moved from it. Not with anger, not with fear, but with steady, immovable certainty of a man who has settled the question of who is Lord of his life. You know, Nehemiah built the wall of Jerusalem with a trowel in one hand and a sword in the other. Sounds like a pretty cool dude, right? His men worked through opposition, through mockery, through genuine threat, and his instructions to them was this don't be afraid. Remember the Lord who was great and awesome and fight for your families. Fight for your families. Not for an ideology, not for a political outcome, for the people in your home who need you to be a man of conviction in a moment that is trying to talk you out of it. Men, if you stand for nothing, you're gonna get it in return. What has this cultural moment tried to talk you out of believing? And have you let it? So, what does conviction look like right now? What does a man of conviction do in this moment? Not in theory, not someday, but right now. I want to give you five concrete anchors. Not a manifesto, not a political platform, five things a man does when he decides he is going to be the link in the chain that holds. One, he settles the question of lordship. Before anything else, before the culture war, before the family strategy, before the civic engagement, a man of conviction settles who is the lord of his life. Not in general, this is not the theoretical practice here. Who is God in his daily practice? God first, everything else ordered underneath that. And when that question is settled, everything else gets clear. When it isn't, well, everything's a little murky, isn't it? Two, he leads his home like it matters to the nation. I have news for you. It does. Just like we were broken one home at a time, we can heal one home at a time. Your home is not a private retreat from the public world, it is a fundamental unit of civilization. And what you build inside your walls, the faith, the character, the conviction, the love will walk out your front door and shape the world and lead accordingly, sir. Three, he knows what he believes and why. A man cannot articulate what he stands for and cannot pass it on and cannot defend it if he doesn't know how to articulate it. Read the founders, read the word, know the arguments, not to win the debates, but to give your children something solid to stand on when the pressure comes. For he engages in his community. You see, the founders were not private men. They were in the arena, in the town halls, the churches, and the public square. A Christian man who retreats entirely from civic life, enhance that space to voices that do not share his convictions, has made a choice. He just hasn't named it as one yet. Finally, he gives thanks. This is not a small thing. Gratitude is a spiritual discipline and not and a and a political act. A man who generally thanks God for a gift of his nation, for the blood that purchased its freedom, for the providence that sustained it, for the extraordinary inheritance that we have received is a man who will fight to preserve it. You don't sacrifice what you take for granted. I don't know about you, but I bleed for the red, white, and blue. Now, of these five, which one is most absent in your life right now? And what would it cost you to change that? So as I begin to close out today, 250 years. Think about what has been poured into this nation across that span. The blood of soldiers have died on foreign soil, believing that freedom was worth the cost of their lives. The prayers of mothers who sent their sons into the unknown trusted God with the outcome. The labor of generations who built something and handed it forward, believing that the people who received it would be worthy of it. That inheritance sits in your hands right now. Not in the hands of politicians. If you don't like them, vote them out. Not in the hands of institutions. If you don't like them, take them down. In yours. In the hands of men who are raising the next generation, who are leading their homes, who are deciding right now by their daily choices, what America looks like in another 50, 100, 250 years. I believe that we are at a pivot point in our culture, a moment where the decisions men make to lead or to drift, to stand or to go quiet, or to build or consume will matter in ways that echo forward into generations we will never meet. And I believe that God is not finished with this nation, but I also believe he's waiting on his men, not perfect men, surrendered men, men who will get on their knees before they get on their feet, men who will lead their families before they try to fix the country. Men who understand that national restoration begins in the home. One father, one household, one generation at a time. You see, that is the true man vision. That is the American Family Renaissance mission of God, family, country in that order. Always in that order. More to come on that. So today, on this 250th birthday of the greatest nation in the history of the world, here's your charge. Give thanks and mean it. And then decide what kind of man this moment is going to make of you. Because the republic is still yours. If you can keep it. Happy Fourth of July, man. Now go be with your family, celebrate this great nation. And then come back next Monday after the holiday. And uh we'll roll out something new for you. But in this moment, men, love this country. Love your wife, love your family, love your God, number one. If this stirred something in you today, share it with a man who needs to hear it. You're probably listening to this on your phone. Why do I know this? Well, I look at the statistics, right? So just take the app that you're listening to right now, forward it on to another man, and um let's really stir up something here important. Just this understanding that as men, we need God first. And we need intimacy with our Christ. We need a relationship with our Christ so that we can go out and be the men that God has called us into to support our families and do what needs to be done right now. Raise families from the dining room table, from the dinner table, so that they can go out and do good in this world. Leave me a great review on your favorite podcast channel. Always love those reviews, and they're very important to helping to grow the show. And again, you know, forward this on to another man. Help grow the true man community. And until next week, thank you for listening. Happy birthday, America. God bless you, and go out and make this your very, very best day ever.