Welcome, Thanks, And Opening Prayer

SPEAKER_00 0:02

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, giving me a little bit of your time and piece of your day. I will try and use it wisely for those of y'all who continue to share the podcast with others and tell others about it. Thank you. Y'all help it to spread. For those of y'all who continue to pray for me and for the podcast, thank you very much. 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 love and your mercy and your grace and your forgiveness of sins. Through the merit of your son, Jesus Christ alone. Thank you for the people that listen to the podcast, Father. Wherever they are, please be with them. Be with their families. Bless the marriages of those who are married. Help us to do your will, Father, in all things. Help us to follow the commands of your Son Jesus Christ, to love you with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength, to love our neighbors as ourselves. Forgive us when we fail, Father. Forgive us our sins, our greed, our pride, our selfishness, judgment of others, rash words and actions. Forgive us when we don't forgive others, as you have forgiven us. Forgive us our cowardice and our unbelief, Father, and help us to overcome them. We do believe. Be with our leaders, both in the pulpit and the state. Be with our military, our law enforcement firefighters. Give them wisdom and courage and a strong faith. Help us to trust you, Father. To lean on you and not on our own understanding. Thank you for your word. Help us to read it each day. And to use it as a guide for our feet to light our path home to you. Those who are hurting, Father, those who are brokenhearted. Those who feel alone and abandoned. And help us to get our priorities in line with your priorities. To do your will above all else. In your son's name we pray. Amen. How have you spent the last 24 hours? How have you if you looked at a chart, we say this each day, but if you looked at your time broken down over the last 24 hours, are you pleased with it? If you are, is it in line with God? If you're not pleased with it, why? How do you fix that? Right? I I saw a comment on X on social media recently talking about if a particular party wanted to win a certain demographic of voters. And it struck me that we have this completely wrong attitude about trying to win voters. God each day. And is your second priority your spouse above everything else? Marriage verses for today come from Colossians chapter, or yeah, chapter 3, verses 18 through 21. Wives, be subject to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be embittered against them. That's really the marriage there, folks. I read 20 and 21 just because it's such good advice for the family in general. Children, be obedient to your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing to the Lord. Fathers, do not exasperate your children so that they will not lose heart. Again, folks, anytime somebody's giving you marriage advice, you need to check it off of scripture. Whatever it is. People aren't real interested in that. And if you push that, if you promote that, if you talk about that, they're not real interested in you. But that's that's where we ought to go consistently in our marriages. Scripture for today. Oh, yeah, we're gonna read this again. This is what we read on the last podcast, but I wanted to read it again, especially out of 1 John 3. I just really thought these were some good excerpts. We do that every once in a while. This is 1 John 3, verses 7 through 24. Dear children, don't let anyone deceive you about this. When people do what is right, it shows that they are righteous, even as Christ is righteous. But when people keep on sinning, it shows that they belong to the devil, who has been sinning since the beginning. But the Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil. Those who have been born into God's family do not make a practice of sinning because God's life is in them. So they can't keep on sinning, because they are children of God. So now we can tell who are children of God and who are children of the devil. Anyone who does not live righteously and does not love other believers does not belong to God. This is the message you have heard from the beginning. We should love one another. We must not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and killed his brother. And why did he kill him? Because Cain had been doing what was evil, and his brother had been doing what was righteous. So don't be surprised, dear brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. If we love our brothers and sisters who are believers, it proves that we have passed from death to life. But a person who has no love is still dead. Anyone who hates another brother or sister is really a murderer at heart. And you know that murderers don't have eternal life within them. We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us. So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters. If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need but shows no compassion, how can God's love be in that person? Dear children, let's not merely say that we love each other, let us show the truth by our actions. Our actions will show that we belong to the truth. So we will be confident when we stand before God. Even if we feel guilty, God is greater than our feelings, and he knows everything. Dear friends, if we don't feel guilty, we can come to God with bold confidence, and we will receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey him and do the things that please him. And this is his commandment. We must believe in the name of his son Jesus Christ, and love one another just as he commanded us. Those who obey God's commandments remain in fellowship with him, and he would them. And we know he lives in us because the Spirit He gave us lives in us. Psalm one twenty two, verses one through nine. I was glad when they said to me, Let us go to the house of the Lord. And now here we are standing inside your gates, O Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a well built city, its seamless walls cannot be breached. All the tribes of Israel, the Lord's people, make their pilgrimage here. They come to give thanks to the name of the Lord, as the law requires of Israel. Here stand the thrones where judgment is given. The thrones of the dynasty of David. Pray for the peace, pray for peace in Jerusalem. May all who love this city prosper. O Jerusalem, may there be peace within your walls and prosperity in your palaces. For the sake of my family and friends I will say, May you have peace. For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek what is best for you, O Jerusalem. Proverbs twenty nine one. Whoever stubbornly stubbornly refuses to accept criticism will suddenly be destroyed beyond recovery. I think there's I guess there's always a little bit we need to hear in Scripture. But for some reason I really felt like there was a little bit that we needed to hear from those particular excerpts again. Medal of Honor for today. Robert M. Blair, Boatswain's mate, U.S. Civil War, USS Pontusick, U.S. Navy, December 24th, 1864 through January 22nd, 1865. Fort Fisher and Wilmington, North Carolina, USA. Served on board the USS Pontusic during the capture of Fort Fisher and Wilmington, 24 December, 1864 to 22 January 1865. Carrying out his duties faithfully throughout this period, Blair was recommended for gallantry and skill and for his cool courage while under fire of the enemy throughout these actions. Accredited to Portland, Cumberland County, Maine, not awarded posthumously, born 1836, Peacham, Caldonia County, Vermont, died april second, eighteen ninety-nine. Enid, Oklahoma, buried Enid Cemetery, MHE TAC 17, Enid, Oklahoma, United States. Robert M. Blair. That citation reminds me of Stonewall Jackson's comments, folks, that we would all be equally brave if we remembered that God already knows when and how and where we're going to die and He's going to take care of us. That's not our concern. Our concern is just, I think this is from Tolkien, actually, is just to do what we can with the time that's given to us, right? The time that God has given to us. I need to work on that. I'm trying to work on that. I had one more, and I don't have the quote in front of me, so forgive me. I've I've used it a lot on the podcast, but I've had a couple people on social media recently or wherever I've been talking a lot about the influence of Rome on the founders. And I don't discount that, but when you go back and look, the Bible, Montesquieu, Blackstone, can't remember the other, but the top major, my vocabulary just went away, folks. I'm sorry, but the influences, there we go, on our founders, they all had a Christian background. And so, regardless of whatever influence Rome had, it's very dangerous because this tactic has been used for decades to try and push the narrative that we're not a Christian republic, we're just a republic like Rome, random deities, a pagan republic. And Judge Nathaniel Freeman, I think in 1802 or 1803, talked about this specifically that that simply wasn't the case. We were not a pagan republic like Rome was. We were a Christian republic. And so he was talking to the Massachusetts grand juries, I believe. Yeah, and he was saying that the Bible should be given high authority in our courts and in our land in general. Anyway, it's it's important to remember that, folks. Uh, we're not a pagan republic at all. We were formed, founded as a Christian republic. So the Thanksgiving proclamation for today is from President Lincoln. This is Washington, D.C., October 3rd, 1863, by the President of the United States of America, a proclamation. The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. For these bounties which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot feel to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, and the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theater of military conflict. While that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship. The axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the most high God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea, and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens, and I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union. In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed, done at the city of Washington this third day of October, in the year of our Lord 1863, and in the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth, by the President Abraham Lincoln, William H. Seward, Secretary of State. You're going to hear some people talk about Lincoln being an atheist or a deist. I think this proclamation is a pretty good example of where he got to toward the end of his life. It certainly is a good example of our need as a nation to turn to God. And it's very applicable today because we seem to be knocking on the doorstep of another civil war. Folks, the idea that we can continue on down some path and have peaceful coexistence alongside evil, which leftism and Islam are both evil, and the followers, whether they know it or not, or acknowledge it or not, or supporting evil, the idea that we can maintain peace and harmony and liberty alongside is it's just it's illogical. It doesn't make sense. It's like running up your credit card and maxing it out and then thinking that you don't have to pay any of the bills. The bills come due. At any rate, it's a great proclamation. I hope you got to listen to it with somebody else. And if you're using it, I hope with kids teaching homeschool, public school, private school. It's a wonderful proclamation that would be very appropriate to read in a number of classes this month of November. If you're looking for a family-friendly middle grade read and you get a chance, I would humbly recommend Countryside. It's kind of along the lines of Narnia, The Hobbit, Percy Jackson, Harry Potter, that kind of stuff. And if you enjoy it, there's two books in the series so far. If you could leave a review somewhere online, I would appreciate that greatly. Those help immensely. And if you're listening to the podcast, you feel like you're getting something out of it. If you have three or four or five dollars a month that you can donate, there's a web page on the Buzz Sprout website for the podcast where you can set up that monthly donation. I would be very grateful for that. 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.

unknown 20:50

Amen.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

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 listening. We'll talk to y'all again real soon, folks. Looking forward to it.