Sophie Cunningham plays professional basketball for the Indiana Fever. She’s a Missouri girl, my home state — tough, fearless, and not the least bit shy. She’ll take a charge, throw an elbow, and grin about it afterward.
Recently someone asked her a simple question: What kind of husband do you want?
I expected the usual answer. Tall. Funny. Makes good money. Treats me right. That’s what the culture has taught a generation of young women to want, and it’s what most of them say.
That isn’t what she said.
She Asked for Everything
“My number one thing,” she said, “is I want someone to push me towards Christ.”
Then she went further. She wants a man who will lead their house, lead her, and lead their future kids “to serve and love a good, good God.” And if a young man isn’t about that — if he doesn’t even talk about it — she put it plainly: don’t even talk to me.
Read that twice. A professional athlete, living in the spotlight, told the world the most important quality in a husband is spiritual leadership. Not a paycheck. Not a jawline. A man who walks with God and takes his family with him.
That’s not a small request. That’s everything.
Every One of Us Has a Before
She didn’t pretend to have always been a Sunday school girl. She talked openly about her college years at Missouri — the parties, the guys, the whole scene. No excuses. No spin. Just the truth, and then a turn toward the Lord.
That’s what grace sounds like.
Paul wrote to a church full of people with a past. After listing the sins that once defined them, he said, “And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 6:11).
Every one of us has a before. The only question is whether Jesus has written the after. Hers is being written in public, and I’m grateful for it.
A word of caution to my fellow believers: let’s not turn her into a trophy. Young Christians who get held up as symbols often get crushed the first time they stumble. She doesn’t need our applause nearly as much as she needs our prayers.
She Prays Instead of Worrying
Here’s the part that stopped me. She said she prays for her husband every single night. She prays for her future kids. She doesn’t know their names. She doesn’t know their faces. She prays anyway.
And she was honest about why. If she doesn’t pray, she gets anxious. She worries. “But that does nothing for me,” she said. So she trusts His timing.
That’s about as good a sermon on Philippians 4:6 as I’ve heard in a while: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” A young woman figured out what a lot of us old saints are still learning. Worry is a rocking chair. Prayer actually goes somewhere.
Is Anybody Raising Him?
Now let me turn this toward the people who read my articles — the dads, the granddads, the moms and grandmas, the pastors and youth workers.
Somewhere tonight a young woman is on her knees asking God for a man who will lead her toward Christ. Maybe it’s Sophie. Maybe it’s your granddaughter. Maybe it’s the girl in the third row of your youth group.
So here is my question: Is anybody raising him?
Are we building young men who pray? Who open the Word without being told? Who know that leading a home doesn’t mean bossing it — it means serving it, the way Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her (Ephesians 5:25)?
I spent most of my life around teenagers and young men. I can tell you what I learned. Boys don’t become spiritual leaders by accident. Somebody has to show them. A dad who prays out loud at the table. A grandfather who takes him fishing and talks about the Lord on the way home. A pastor or a coach who looks him in the eye and says, “God has something for you, son.”
That was Ken Mishler for me. Somebody was that for you, too.
Our culture is producing plenty of boys. It is not producing many men. That isn’t Hollywood’s job to fix. It’s ours.
Go Find a Boy
So pray for Sophie Cunningham. Pray she keeps running hard after Jesus. Pray for the man God is preparing for her.
Then do something harder than praying. Go find a boy — your son, your grandson, the kid down the street with no dad at home — and start teaching him how to become that man.
Somewhere a young woman is waiting on him. Let’s not make her wait on our neglect.
Soli Deo gloria. To God alone be the glory.
Books by Mo Hodge
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