Hey folks, this is Jesse Cope, back with another episode of the American Soul Podcast. Hope y'all are doing well, wherever y'all are, whatever part of the day you're in. I sure do appreciate you joining me and giving me a little bit of your time, a little piece of your day. Hopefully it gives y'all a little information. Hopefully it helps our country, even if just a little bit, turn back to God and Jesus Christ. For those of y'all that continue to share the podcast with others, tell them about it, thank you so much. For those of y'all that continue to give your support and encouragement in person or online, thank you so much. And for those of y'all that pray for me and for the podcast, incredible amount of gratitude for that. Thank you, homestead. I don't really think I have a whole lot. Yeah, no, the family approves of the pear pie. So that's an encouraging note. That's an encouraging note, father. Thank you for today. Thank you for you, father, and your Son, jesus Christ and your Holy Spirit. Thank you for your love, mercy, grace and forgiveness. Thank you for the time to record this podcast and the people that listen to it. Be with them and their families, guide them, bless them, surround them with your angels. Protect us, lord, from evil. Forgive us our cowardice. Forgive us our unbelief. Help us to overcome them. We do believe, Father. Help us to persevere until the end. Give us assurance, strengthen our faith. Help us to help those that have less than we do. Help us to help our country turn back to you, our nations across the world to turn back to you and, no matter what happens here on this earth, help us to trust in you, father, and your Son, jesus Christ. Be with our military, be with our law enforcement. Give them wisdom and courage and strong faith. Bring them home safe to their families. Help us, lord, bring us home to you one day. And God, my word to your father please, in your son's name, we pray Amen.

I thought of something I think y'all will find entertaining. I don't think I passed this on. The chicks that we bought a couple months ago have gotten big enough that they really need to be moved out of the first pen and into the second, which is fine. That's kind of how we rotate them here. But the lid on their current pen is a kind of lid that you have to raise up. It's kind of like, if you can imagine, a dumpster lid. You lift it up, and that's how you get in to put the water in and the food at times. Well, they had run out of water, and so I needed to pull the water canister out and fill it up. But they've gotten bigger and so, and so their particular cage is inside this little shed.

Well, I had walked in, and for those of y'all that grew up on a farm, you know that this is a huge no-no. I had walked in and left the door to the shed open. Anytime you live on a farm or a ranch, if there's a gate open, you leave it open. Farm or a ranch if there's a gate open, you leave it open. If it's closed, you leave it closed. And you never, ever assume that an animal livestock is not going to get out. I'll just be a second. That's like. That's like your death knell. You know as soon as you say that in your head, you're about to have a long day, right. Like you leave a gate open because you're just running in to get something. You're like, oh, none of those calves are going to get out, and like it's like they know, they know.

And so I left the door to the shed open and I go over to the chickens, the little chicks pen and I lift the lid just to grab the water I mean it couldn't take in more than two seconds and just chaos explodes. The guineas, the hens, like they're just scattering right, and of course they think I'm some big bad monster, even though I'm the one that feeds them and waters them most days when Katie or the girls don't do it. And so these birds start flying, of course, straight toward the open door and they can fly now. And so I knocked two of them down I'm still holding the pin up Cause some of them are sitting on the ledge and then another one starts flying, and so, like I gently think, I gently sent, set the lid down and I go over and I'm beaten the other ones out of the way so that they can't fly out of the shed, and I shut the door and I started to hear this like high pitched chirping, and I look back and I have set the lid down, which is not light, on top of one of the Guinea chicks Keats, whatever you want to call it, and so I'm like, okay, well, I killed that one for sure. And so I lift it up and the next few minutes is me trying to shove the birds that are outside the pen back in with the lid up, while not letting any others out, and it was like a physical Abbott and Costello routine, if you remember them, I mean. Or the Three Stooges, that's probably better. It was like a physical Abbott and Costello routine, if you remember them, I mean. Or the Three Stooges, that's probably better. It was ridiculous. At any rate, the one chick did not die. They managed to survive and everyone got back in the pen, so it's definitely time to move them. I thought that might entertain some of y'all.

A little piece of the chaos that happens on this homestead. Have you made time for the Bible today? Have you made time for God? Is that really your first priority? Or, you know, is that really our first priority, or is that something that we just say? Do we plan our day around God or do we just shove him in at the end of the day after we've done all the stuff that we really want to? And I can't tell you how often I find this to be true folks, when I wait and try and shove God in at the very end of the day, as I look back over that day, I realize that I've been more stressed out. It's not unusual for the day to have gone haywire and I just feel like I've constantly been running from one thing to the next and just barely gotten everything done. If that, when I get my priorities in the right order and I plan my day around God and then let whatever else I get done be what I get done unbelievably more peace in my life. Let whatever else I get done be what I get done Unbelievably more peace in my life.

And then the second thing, for those of y'all that are married If you're married, is your spouse your second priority after only God. Are you really making time for them each day? Are you buying into this whole modern lie slash line of I just don't have time. That's a burden, that's unrealistic. You know a lot of people rightly so they say that the Hollywood movies portray romance unrealistically. And they do, but not in the sense that you can't love your spouse each day. They make it seem like it's just a piece of cake, like you meet somebody, you fall in love, bam magic, and you just stay that way. Right the happily ever after part, with the indication that there's no work necessary to keep the relationship there. That's the lie. That's the lie that you can have a phenomenal marriage for both parties, where both feel loved and nourished and cared and respected and the marriage is functioning properly each day. That's not a lie, that's not a fantasy. It's only a fantasy if we don't make time for it, if we line up all our excuses instead of just doing what we're supposed to do in a marriage. So Sam Adams, right, right, had somebody online. So many people.

This isn't a Christian nation. We've never been a Christian nation. It makes you, you. You get so frustrated when you actually have read history and have even a slight clue. You know, we just spent a week or more going through a Supreme court case from the end of the 19th century where one of the justices laid out example after example after example of how we are a Christian nation and then at the end said there's even more examples, we don't have time to get into them. Basically, mountains of evidence. This quote we read yesterday or the day before.

This was written by Sam Adams in 1772 in the Rights of the Colonists. That was the name of the work. The right to freedom being the gift of the Almighty. The rights of colonists as Christians may be best understood by reading and carefully studying the institution of the great lawgiver and the head of the Christian church, which are to be found clearly written and promulgated in the New Testament.

We're a Christian nation.

That's the point. We need to follow Christ. We need to read the Bible in order to do that. Why? Because if you want freedom and liberty, you have to draw close to God and Jesus Christ. That's the point. It's never going to be perfect on this earth, folks. It's never going to be perfect until Jesus Christ comes back. But that doesn't mean you don't strive for perfection. You never see people that are really phenomenal in whatever their career or profession is aiming for mediocrity. You always see them striving for the very, very best there is possible. Not only in themselves, folks. It's not like they're just striving for the best they can be. They're striving for the best anyone can be. That's what you aim for. If you're an author, you aim for the very best author in that genre or whatever you're writing in the world. That's what you aim for. If you're a football player, you aim to be the very best player in that position period. So why we've gotten this idea that as a nation? Simply because we can never, as humans, obtain the perfection of Jesus Christ in this life. Why we should suddenly be satisfied with aiming for closer to the devil is just. It's astounding. It's astounding.

September 7th 1774. This was the second day of the congressional session and Mr Adams proposed opening the meeting with prayer. In spite of the different Christian denominations present, christian men who had come together for solemn deliberation in the hour of their extremity To say there was so wide a difference in their religious belief that they could not, as one man, bow the knee in prayer to the Almighty, whose advice and assistance they hoped to obtain. We need to hear this today in the church. I can't tell you how often I run into somebody online and I'm sure they would say the same in person that tries to tell me or tell someone else that if you don't belong to their particular denomination, you can't be saved. Nowhere will you find that in the Bible. That is a man-made belief. That is nowhere in the Bible.

Our founders understood the dangers of fighting between the different denominations of Christianity. That's why they wrote the First Amendment. It wasn't to lower Christianity to the level of false religions like Islam or Buddhism, or Hinduism, buddhism I don't know why I say it that way every time. It was to keep the different denominations from fighting amongst themselves and trying to position themselves to be favored by the state, as it was in the old world. If you can't come together, it's part of the problem we have today. Folks, this is a huge issue. If we can't come together as different denominations and acknowledge the simple core belief of Christianity that Jesus Christ is the risen Son of God, that he died for our sins on the cross and that God raised him from the dead three days later and that the only way to God and eternal life is through faith in Jesus Christ. Eternal life is through faith in Jesus Christ. If we can't come together around that simple core belief, then we're already lost and we don't really have an understanding of following Christ.

As the Declaration of Independence was being signed, 1776, samuel Adams made the declaration we have this day restored the sovereign to whom all men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven and from the rising to the setting of the sun, let his kingdom come. The Declaration of Independence, I think it's safe to say, meant a lot more to our founders and generations close to them than it does to us today. We take it for granted, we don't really understand it, we don't spend time delving into it. We especially don't teach our kids the importance of it as a nation as a whole. We focus on so many other trivial things in education. Things in education.

The Declaration clearly talks about God and His providence, where our rights come from. God again, and so Samuel Adams is saying here we're putting God back in the right spot. Instead of looking to a state, a government made up of men, telling us where our rights come from, what rights we have and don't have, and the ability to take our rights away, we're turning back to God, the Father of Jesus Christ, right, and he's saying come on, father, thy kingdom, come thy will be done. Folks, if people tell you that we weren't founded as a Christian nation, you know for sure one of two things Either they don't have a clue about history, or they know it and they're purposefully lying. Oh, I wish I had this quote in completion and I don't, but I'm going to read this little part. I'm pulling most of this today, folks, out of America's God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations. It's in other places. You can find some of this in the Patriots Bible, some in the Founders. You can find a lot of it online, but I have found that this America's God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations is a phenomenal resource, along with the Patriots and the Founders Bible, if you have a little bit of spare money which I know is hard today due to inflation, but if you have some, I would highly recommend a hard copy of each of those books.

A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous, they cannot be subdued. But when they lose their virtue they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader, external or internal invader. If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security. I'll see if I can find this quote in total. Maybe we'll come back to it on the next podcast.

But a lot of people today make light of manners principles. We don't really need that. That's old-fashioned. We certainly make light of virtue. We don't need virtue. Whatever you can do to get ahead, get ahead. If that means you're sleeping with somebody great. If that means you're stealing great. Whatever you've do to get ahead, get ahead. If that means you're sleeping with somebody great. If that means you're stealing great, whatever you've got to do.

And Samuel Adams, as was really common among our founding generation, said that if we lose our manners, our principles, if we throw away our virtue, we're going to surrender to the first invader, the first threat, whether it's external or internal. And you see that today we can see the proof in that statement, in action. Today we're giving our liberties up to people who hate our nation, both the ones that are coming into our nation and the ones that are already here, that hate America and really honestly, just the core thing is that they hate Jesus Christ. But he said the opposite is true, folks. This is why the battle for the education of our children is so important. If we diffuse virtue and knowledge, true knowledge, that's our security, that's our hope, and the only way to do that is to draw close to God and Jesus Christ. God bless y'all, god bless America.