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'm sure to appreciate y'all joining me, giving me a little bit of your time, and a little piece of your day. I will try and use it wisely for those of y'all who continue to share the podcast with others, tell others about it. Thank you. Very grateful for that. For those of y'all who continue to pray for me and for the podcast, thank you. Very, very grateful for your prayers. Need them and want them. Father, thank you for today. Thank you for you, Father, and your son, Jesus Christ, and your Holy Spirit. Thank you for your faith in us even when we lose faith and you or feel like it. Help us to overcome our unbelief. We do believe. Draw us close to you, Father. Be near the brokenhearted. Be with those listening today, wherever they are around the world, help them to feel your peace and your comfort. To know your love, to know that they're cared about. How much you love them, how much they mean to you. Guide us towards you, Father. Bring us home to you in your timing. Be with our leaders. In the pulpit and in the state, comfort them. Bless them. Be with their families. Keep them safe. Help them to rule in fear of you. Be with the least of these, Father. The widow and the orphan, the poor and the needy. Be with those who are being persecuted around the world for the sake of the name of your son Jesus Christ. Help us to follow the commands of your Son. To love you with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength. And to love our neighbors as ourselves. Help us to be grateful, Father, for all the blessings you bestowed upon us. Help us to also use the talents that you've given us to the fullest extent to the utmost. Be with our leaders again, Father, here in America and around the world in countries where people are listening to them. Be with our educators, those who are teaching our children, whether they're mothers at home or teachers in public or private school or somewhere else. Give them wisdom and courage and a strong faith. Help us to get our priorities in the right order, Father. Please guide my words here. In your son's name we pray. Amen. Have you made time for God today, folks? And if you're married, have you made time for your spouse? And if you haven't, what's your excuse? If you really looked at your time, how are you spending it? Because that that really tells everybody what your priorities are, folks. It ought to tell you yourself what your priorities are. It doesn't matter either how what kind of good excuse I have, folks. If I sit down and watch a football game for three hours, or scroll social media for an hour and a half, or go run for two hours. Not that I would do that, but but that's one of the possible. You pick your poison, right? And then I have the gall to claim, well, excuse me, I just didn't have time for God today and Jesus Christ. I didn't have time for my spouse, right? One of the ways that I have found that helps me over the years, folks, maybe it'll help you. And if it doesn't, that's fine. It's just a thought. I have to front load the things in my day that are really important. Because if I don't do them at the very beginning of the day, often, as the day goes on, I get better and better at making excuses. And that's that's a good baby step, folks. But really the point that I need to get to is like uh Paul, I think, telling us to pray continuously. Serving God and serving our spouse needs to be something that we do throughout the day. So that the first, you know, like front loading, that front loading ought to occur at multiple points throughout the day. Like when you get some spare time, folks, our spare time belongs to God first. And then our spare time, if we're going to get married, then our spare time belongs to our spouse. And if we don't want to give our spare time to our spouse, then we shouldn't have gotten married in the first place. Right? So the marriage verses for today come out of 1 Timothy 2, starting with verse 11. Well, let's start actually. Start with verse 8. Therefore I want the men everywhere to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or disputing. I also want the women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, adorning themselves not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God. A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man, she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived, it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing if they continue in faith, love, and holiness with propriety. Bible verses today we're going to start with Hebrews chapter four, verses one through sixteen. God's promise of entering his rest still stands, so we ought to tremble with fear that some of you might fail to experience it. For this good news that God has prepared this rest has been announced to us just as it was to them. But it did them no good because they didn't share the faith of those who listened to God. For only we who believe can enter his rest. As for the others, God said, In my anger I took an oath, they will never enter my place of rest. Even though this rest has been ready since he made the world, we know it is ready because of the place in the scriptures where it mentions the seventh day. On the seventh day God rested from all his work. But in the other passage God said, They will never enter my place of rest. So God's rest is there for people to enter. But those who first heard this good news failed to enter because they disobeyed God. So God set another time for entering his rest, and that time is today. God announced this through David much later in the words already quoted. Today when you hear his voice, don't harden your hearts. Now if Joshua had succeeded in giving them the rest, God would not have spoken about another day of rest still to come. So there is a special rest still waiting for the people of God. For all who have entered into God's rest have rested from their labors, just as God did after creating the world. So let us do our best to enter that rest. But if we disobey God, as the people of Israel did, we will fall. For the word of God is alive and powerful, it is sharper than the sharpest two edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God. Everything is naked and exposed before his eyes, and he is the one to whom we are accountable. So then, since we have a great high priest who has entered heaven, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold firmly to what we believe. This high priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin. So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most. O Lord, what a variety of things you have made. In wisdom you have made them all, the earth is full of your creatures. Here is the ocean vast and wide, teeming with life of every kind, both large and small. See the ships sailing along, and Leviathan which you made to play in the sea. They all depend on you to give them food as they need it. When you supply it, they gather it, you open your hand to feed them, and they are richly satisfied. But if you turn away from them they panic. When you take away their breath they die and turn again to dust. When you give them your breath, life is created, and you renew the face of the earth. May the glory of the Lord continue forever. The Lord takes pleasure in all he has made. The earth trembles at his glance, the mountains smoke at his touch. I will sing to the Lord as long as I live, I will praise my God to my last breath. May all my thoughts be pleasing to him, for I rejoice in the Lord. Let all sinners vanish from the face of the earth. Let the wicked disappear forever. Let all that I am praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Proverbs twenty six, verse twenty-seven. If you set a trap for others, you will get caught in it yourself. If you roll a boulder down on others, it will crush you instead. You go back to Hebrews chapter four, verse seven. Today when you hear his voice, don't harden your hearts. I I think often, folks, I have I have in my life hardened my heart in the sense that I hear something from God, from the Holy Spirit, and I'm not real interested in doing it. Maybe, hopefully I'm getting a little better the older I get. So Medal of Honor today. Charles James Biber, maybe. Gunners mate, US Civil War, USS Agawam, U.S. Navy, december twenty third, eighteen sixty-four, Fort Fisher, North Carolina. Biver served on board the USS Agawam as one of a volunteer crew of a powder boat which was exploded near Fort Fisher twenty three, December, eighteen sixty four. The powder boat towed in by the wilderness to prevent detection by the enemy cast off and slowly steamed to within three hundred yards of the beach. After fuses and fires had been lent at a second anchor with a short scope let go to assure the boat's tailing inshore. The crew again boarded the wilderness and proceeded a distance of twelve miles from the shore. Less than two hours later the explosion took place, and the following day fires were observed still burning at the forts. Born March 22nd, 1837, Portland, Cumberland County, Maine, died October 8, 1883, Revere, Massachusetts, very Woodlawn Cemetery, Pilgrim's Rest, 152 Tac 1, Tac SS, Everett, Massachusetts. Charles James Biber. You know there had to be more to that story. Like these older citations don't give us quite as much detail, but the powder boat. And how was the fire lit, the fuses? Was he the one that did it at the end? You know, was that like his hand shaking to keep from blowing the whole boat up with him? Because it had to be a pretty big explosion if it burned the forts, exploded the fires, were still burning the next day. Anyway, just another name, folks, that we need to remember. A couple things here, just a little cleanup. Again, folks, if you don't have copies, I highly recommend copies of America's God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotes by William Federer, the Founder's Bible by the Wall Builder Association, David Barton, and the Patriots Bible edited by Dr. Richard Lee. Great gifts, great books to have in your own house, certainly hard copies if you have the money. And they should be primary textbooks in each classroom across the country. Also, a little something from social media the last couple days. There's been some posts going around. I guess Netanyahu from Israel made the comment about, you know, blessed are those who bless Israel, and cursed are those who curse Israel. And you can have the argument about whether that applies to Israel today or not. But the thing that's interesting to me is the number of people who claim to follow Christ and are a lot more upset about the idea of us having a relationship with Israel, which is our only real ally in the Middle East, folks, because the Muslim countries, just by default, you can't really be an ally with them because at the core they're antichrist. And the only democracy, really, in the Middle East, and a country that has proven in times of war to be our ally against our enemies. And yet we have so many problems at home, folks, with the left, with Islam. I mean, we we have problems that are existential threats to our nation here internally to our country. It's just it's a little telling, I think, to see the number of people that are really concerned, if you throw some air quotes around that, about the Jews in Israel. And it it sounds an awful lot like some things, conversations you would have heard in pro-Nazi circles in the 1920s and 30s in Europe as a whole, including Britain. We have a lot of other things to be far more concerned with, folks, here in the United States, if being allied with Israel is even a concern to you. I want to go back and do a little cleanup with Maryland. In 1851, the Constitution of the State of Maryland, a declaration of belief in the Christian religion, and this is a requirement for any office of trust or prophet, uh, this oath would be required. A declaration in the belief in the Christian religion, and if the party shall profess to be a Jew, the declaration shall be of his belief in a future state of rewards and punishments. 1864 Constitution, State of Maryland, required all state officers a declaration of belief in the Christian religion or of the existence of God and in a future state of rewards and punishments. And you go back earlier, folks, the colony of Maryland, the Toleration Act of 1649, no person professing to believe in Jesus Christ shall from henceforth be troubled or molested on account of religion. What does that show? Well, that they didn't want people who followed Christ to be attacked or troubled or molested like they had been in Europe under the Catholic Anglican churches because they didn't belong to the quote unquote right denomination. Governors of Maryland, Colony of Maryland, took an oath each year by themselves or indirectly to trouble, molest, or discountenance any person professing to believe in Jesus Christ for or in respect of religion, and if any such were so molested to protect the person molested and punish the offender, so that they couldn't, they they took this oath not to trouble or molest or discountenance any person professing to believe in Jesus Christ. And it's important to notice again there, folks, that no other religion was applied here. This didn't apply to Islam or Hinduism or Buddhism or anything else because this is a Christian nation. We were founded as such. All right. If you are looking for a family-friendly, middle grade read, I would humbly recommend Countryside. You can find it at eBAC, Paperback, Hardback, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, pretty much any bookstore year-round ought to be able to order it. And if you enjoy it, if you would leave a review somewhere, I would greatly appreciate that. And if you're getting something out of the podcast, if you're enjoying it, which I hope you are, there's uh a place on the Buzz Sprout website where you can leave a donation. You can even make it a monthly donation for just three bucks, five bucks, whatever you feel like each month. And I would be very grateful for that as well. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not to temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and glory forever and ever.

Amen.

God bless y'all. God bless your families, God bless your marriages if you're married. 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.