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 and whatever part of the day you're in. I do appreciate you joining me and giving me a little bit of your time and attention, a little piece of your day. I will try and use it wisely. Hopefully it'll give us all a little bit, a little few tools for our toolbox, as we used to say in the Marine Corps. Hopefully it'll draw us all a little bit closer to God and Jesus Christ, both as individuals and as a nation.

Father, thank you for today. Thank you for you, father, and your Son, jesus Christ and your Holy Spirit. For you, father, and your Son, jesus Christ and your Holy Spirit, thank you for your love and your mercy, your grace and your forgiveness of sins through the merit of your Son, jesus Christ. Thank you for all your many blessings, father, the ones we admit and the ones we don't. Thank you for the people that listen to and share the podcast. Please be with them and their families. Bless the marriages of those who are married. Guide those who have children in raising them to know you and your son, jesus Christ. Be with those who protect us who go out in the dark and the cold and the rain. Be with their families, our firefighters, our military law enforcement EMS. Be with those who go out in the cold and the dark and the rain to keep the power going and the water running by them. Be with our leaders. Give them wisdom and courage and a strong faith. Help them to reject bribes and corruption. Help them to rule in fear of you, not in fear of men. Be with those listening to the podcast. Father. Again, thank you so much for them. Be with those who are hurting and alone, scared for whatever reason, and be with those of us, father, who fall into temptation so often. Help us to stay away from those pits. Save us from ourselves, Father, from sin. Help us to flee from iniquity of every kind and help us to follow the commands of your Son, jesus Christ, to love you with our whole heart, mind, soul and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. And God. My word to you as well, please. In your Son's name, we pray Amen. Have you made time for God today? Have you made time to read His Word? Have you made time to pray, to talk to Him, to listen to Him? Have you made time in your schedule, folks, to be bored? Have you made time to just sit there and listen to God? Have you made time to just sit there and listen to God?

We feel, like in this day and age, so many of us, I think, that we have to be constantly going and constantly entertained, and we have so many options to be entertained at our fingertips. Um, but there's a cost that comes with that constant rushing and and it's more than just missing out on our spouse and our kids and our parents, which is a huge deal in and of itself, but it's missing out on God. And I find, for at least for myself maybe some of y'all don't struggle with it, maybe some of you do I find that I have to remind myself that I don't have to constantly be going from one thing to the next. It's okay if I haven't filled my day to the absolute brim. It doesn't mean I'm lazy. It doesn't mean that I'm procrastinating something I ought to be doing. And I'm not talking about when we're not doing work, folks. I'm talking about when we've done our work for the day and we have a moment to just sit and be still and we feel like, well, I need to turn the TV on, I need to turn my phone on, I need to turn the radio on, I need to. You know I need. There's something I need to be doing and I think a lot of times that's not true. I think that's the devil trying to fill us up with stuff so that we don't have time to really spend with God and again with our spouse and, most importantly, in our relationships and then our kids and our parents, our friends and our family.

One little note our pastor last weekend gave a sermon and one of the things he talked about was he used the quote Jesus said you know, if you really love me, you follow my commands. And that's just so true, folks. If we really love God and Jesus Christ, then we're striving, even if imperfectly, to follow their commands. If we really love our spouse, we're striving to show them each day with actions, not just with words. Actions really do tell the entire tale.

Our marriage verse for today comes out of Proverbs 5, verses 18-19. Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice with the wife of your youth as a loving deer and a graceful doe. Let her breast satisfy you at all times and always be enraptured with her love. Just one little comment here, folks, anytime that you're getting marriage advice, you need to make sure that that marriage advice is lining up with Scripture, and if it's not, then you need to trash that marriage advice. It doesn't matter who it's coming from. If it's your parents, if it's the greatest marriage counselors on the face of the earth, if what they're telling you doesn't line up with Scripture, you need to trash it quickly. And if it does, then you need to listen to it, even if you don't really want to listen to it. Scriptures for today we're going to start with 2 Thessalonians 3, verses 1 through 18.

Finally, dear brothers and sisters, we ask you to pray for us. Pray that the Lord's message will spread rapidly and be honored wherever it goes, just as when it came to you. Pray, too, that we will be rescued from wicked and evil people, for not everyone is a believer, but the Lord is faithful. He will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one, and we are confident in the Lord that you are doing and will continue to do things we commanded you. May the Lord lead your hearts into a full understanding and expression of the love of God and the patient endurance that comes from Christ.

And now, dear brothers and sisters, we give you this command in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ Stay away from all believers who live idle lives and don't follow the tradition they received from us, for you know that you ought to imitate us. We were not idle when we were with you. We never accepted food from anyone without paying for it. We worked hard, day and night so that we would not be a burden to any of you. We certainly had the right to ask you to feed us, but we wanted to give you an example to follow, even while we were with you. We gave this command those unwilling to work will not get to eat.

Yet we hear that some of you are living idle lives, refusing to work and meddling in other people's business. We command such people and urge them, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to settle down and work to earn their own living. As for the rest of you, dear brothers and sisters, never get tired of doing good. Take note of those who refuse to obey what we say in this letter. Stay away from them, so they will be ashamed. Don't think of them as enemies, but warn them as you would a brother or a sister. Now may the Lord of peace himself. Give you his peace at all times, in every situation. The Lord be with you all.

Here is my greeting in my own handwriting, paul. I do this in all my letters to prove they are from me. May the grace of our Lord, jesus Christ, be with you all. Psalm 85, verses 1-13. Lord, you poured out blessings on your land. You restored the fortunes of Israel. You forgave the guilt of your people. Yes, you covered all their sins. You held back your fury. You kept back your blazing anger. Put aside your anger against us once more. Will you be angry with us always? Will you prolong your wrath to all generations? Won't you revive us again so your people can rejoice in you? Show us your unfailing love, o Lord, and grant us your salvation.

I listen carefully to what God, the Lord, is saying, for he speaks peace to his faithful people, but let them not return to their foolish ways. Surely, his salvation is near to those who fear him. So our land will be filled with his glory. Unfailing love and truth have met together. Righteousness and peace have kissed. Truth springs up from the earth and righteousness smiles down from heaven. Yes, the Lord pours down his blessings. Our land will yield its bountiful harvest. Righteousness goes as a herald before him preparing the way for his steps.

Proverbs 25, 16. Do you like honey? Don't eat too much or it will make you sick. A lot of things here. A few from 2 Thessalonians 3. Verse 2, pray that we will be rescued from wicked and evil people, for not everyone is a believer, and I think even you can kind of well, just because somebody goes to church folks, just because somebody claims to follow Christ, doesn't mean that they do right. That's why it's so important for us to show the world to live by example. It's not that our works save us they don't. We can't earn our way into heaven, but it's important, especially for those who may never have read the Bible or may never see any other example in their lives of God and the Bible and Jesus Christ other than us.

You know, I've said often on the podcast in the Marine Corps, when I had the privilege of being a battery CO, when the Marines would leave it was a reserve unit, right. So we had quite a few that checked out. I would tell them look, you don't have to go around clean shaven and you know, dress like the Marine Corps required of you, but please realize that you may be the only Marine that some people in your life ever see, and that's going to be their opinion of the Marine Corps. Is you Right or wrong, good or bad? That's going to be it because you're the only one they've seen, and as Christians we ought to realize that the only one they've seen. And as Christians we ought to realize that there's people out there that we may be the only Bible, the only God you know, reflection of God and Jesus Christ that they see. And so it's very important that we exemplify in our actions following Christ Again, not because that saves us, but so that other people can see proof of our salvation, because we have works, because we're striving to follow those commands of Jesus Christ.

Verse 6, stay away from all believers who live idle lives and don't follow the tradition they receive from us. Verse 10, those unwilling to work will not get to eat. There's just no justification from a Christian point of view for the welfare state folks. It's not kind or caring. You don't get to steal money from others to pretend that benevolence. Verse 11, meddling in other people's business how many of us do that? How many of us stick our noses in where it doesn't belong? And I think the last thing and I'll move on, verse 16, may the Lord of peace himself give you his peace at all times and in every situation. I think, for me at least, folks a lot of times the reason I don't have that peace is kind of going back to what we talked about at the beginning of the podcast, because I've made my life so full of stuff, right, so busy, doing things that really aren't that important, instead of really just focusing, being still and just kind of, you know, being bored again, as it were.

Medal of Honor for today Thomas William Bennett, corporal Vietnam War. 2nd Platoon Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 14th Infantry, 4th Infantry Division, us Army, february 9th to the 11th, 1969. Sioux Falls Region, pleiku province, republic of Vietnam, for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life. Above and beyond the call of duty, corporal Bennett distinguished himself while serving as a platoon medical aid man with the 2nd Platoon Bravo Company during a reconnaissance-in-force mission On 9 February. The platoon was moving to assist the 1st Platoon of Delta Company, which had run into a North Vietnamese ambush, when it became heavily engaged by the intense small arms, automatic weapons, mortar and rocket fire from a well-fortified and numerically superior enemy unit In the initial barrage of fire, three of the point members of the platoon fell wounded. Corporal Bennett, with complete disregard for his safety, ran through the heavy fire to his fallen comrades, administering life-saving first aid under fire, and then made repeated trips carrying the wounded men to positions of relative safety from which they would be medically evacuated from the battle position. Corporal Bennett repeatedly braved the intense enemy fire, moving across open areas to give aid and comfort to his wounded comrades. He valiantly exposed himself to the heavy fire in order to retrieve the bodies of several fallen personnel. Throughout the night and following day, corporal Bennett moved from position to position, treating and comforting several personnel who had suffered shrapnel and gunshot wounds. On 11 February, bravo Company again moved in an assault on the well-fortified enemy positions and became heavily engaged with the numerically superior enemy force. Five members of the company fell wounded in the initial assault. Corporal Bennett ran to their aid without regard to the heavy fire. He treated one wounded comrade and began running toward another seriously wounded man. Although the wounded man was located forward of the company position covered by heavy enemy grazing fire, and Corporal Bennett was warned that it was impossible to reach the position. In an attempt to save his fellow soldier. He was mortally wounded.

No-transcript. Accredited to Fairmont, marion County, west Virginia. Awarded posthumously, presented April 7, 1970 at the White House Oval Office by President Richard M Nixon to his family. Born April 7, 1947, morgantown, monagalia County, west Virginia. Died February 11, 1969. Republic of Vietnam. Buried East Oak Grove Cemetery S-TAC-2, tac-167, tac-6. Morgantown, west Virginia. Location of metal West Virginia University, morgantown, West Virginia. Thomas William Bennett. Thomas Bennett, thomas Bennett, he was 22 years old.

What are we willing to sacrifice for God and Jesus Christ, and family and country? I don't have a quote, necessarily. I do have one quote. It's real short, but I've got a story some of y'all may know, and it's the four chaplains from World War II, february 2nd 1943, and there was a transport American transport Dorchester in the North Atlantic that was torpedoed by a German submarine and started to sink. And there were four army chaplains Lieutenant George L Fox, who was a Methodist, lieutenant Alexander D Goode, who was Jewish, lieutenant John P Washington, who was Roman Catholic, and Lieutenant Clark V Poling, who was Dutch Reformed, and these four chaplains stood encouraging others, praying for those who were dying and guided those who were confused, because it was at night, right I think, around 1 am, yeah, for lifeboats. And it was just pandemonium, right? If you've ever seen the movie Titanic, the end of it people jumping in, flipping over life rafts, some life rafts just floating out there and at the end there were no more life jackets right. And so these chaplains, they took their life jackets off and they gave them to those around them and then they linked arms, according to observers' grasp the railing, the railing, and began singing and shouting biblical encouragement from the Bible in English, hebrew and Latin. And there's two quotes, one is from both are survivors, but John Ladd, he said it was the finest thing I have seen or hoped to see this side of heaven. He said it was the finest thing I have seen or hoped to see this side of heaven. And William Bednar said that as he was out there in the ocean floating amongst all his dead fellow sailors and seaman civilians, he said their voices were the only thing that kept me going. There were 672 men who died on the Dorchester, including those four chaplains.

There's a lot of thoughts I have here, folks, but just again, you know, what are we willing to sacrifice today? What are we willing to give so that america survives? The, the gospel of jesus christ is preached most importantly of everything we do. There's a lot of people that are willing to sacrifice a whole lot for self-gain. I'm a pretty big fan of a lot of the motivational talks that some of these really great athletes give, and they're great talks and there's a lot of truth in there. But if I'm competing to make money, if I'm competing for fame and fortune, there's always something in it for me, even if I have really good other motives. Right, and some people do. Just again, you know what are we willing to sacrifice? Just again, you know what are we willing to sacrifice?

Ties in pretty good with our middle of honor reading, I think today, if you get a chance and you're interested, middle grade fantasy, clean, wholesome series, countryside there's two books so far working on the third one. You can get it, amazon, a bunch of other places. And God bless y'all. God bless your families, god bless your marriages, god bless America, god bless your nation, wherever you are around the world. Listen, folks, we'll talk to y'all again real soon, looking forward to it.