The American Soul
The American Soul
Finding Refuge: What Abigail Adams Can Teach Us About Modern Faith
We explore the essential connections between faith, generosity, and America's Christian heritage through scripture readings and historical reflections. Examining generosity in 2 Corinthians, redemption in Psalm 49, and Abigail Adams's revolutionary-era faith reveals timeless lessons for facing today's challenges.
• Reflection on whether we've made time for God as our top priority
• Scripture reading from 2 Corinthians 8:1-15 on the Macedonia churches' generosity despite hardship
• Drawing parallels between marriage relationships and our eagerness to give to God
• Psalm 49's reminder that wealth cannot save us – only God can redeem our lives
• Abigail Adams's letter during the Battle of Bunker Hill demonstrating America's Christian foundations
• Warning against ideologies opposed to America's founding principles
• The importance of defending faith-based institutions that cultivate virtue
God bless you all. God bless your families, God bless your marriages if you're married, God bless America and God bless your nation, wherever you are around the world listening.
The American Soul Podcast
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Hi 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 for those of y'all that continue to share the podcast with others and tell others about it. Thank you so much for those of y'all who continue to pray for me and for the podcast. Thank you Very, very grateful for your prayers and your continued support. 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, your grace and your forgiveness of sins, the ones we admit and the ones we don't. Forgive us, father, our unbelief. Forgive us our cowardice, our doubts, our fears for not trusting you. Help us to trust you more each day. Help us to store up for ourselves treasures in heaven, not here on earth, to treasure what you treasure and to seek what you seek. Help us to save those who are stumbling toward the edge of the cliff. Help us to save those who are lost, father. Show them just a little bit of your Son, jesus Christ. Give us the strength and the courage and the wisdom, the perseverance to run the race all the way to the end, all the way home to you. Thank you for those who are listening to the podcast. Please be with them, be with their families, god bless them, surround them with your angels, protect us from evil, help us to follow the commands of your son, jesus Christ, to love you with our whole heart, mind, soul and Christ. To love you with our whole heart, mind, soul and strength. And to love our neighbors as ourselves. Guide us in all that we do, father. Guide our leaders in the pulpit and in the state. Give them wisdom and courage and a strong faith and help them to rule in fear of you, not in fear of man and God. My words here, please, father. In your son's name, we pray, amen. Have you made time for God today, folks, to pray, to read his word, to listen to him, to talk to him and, if you're married, have you made time for your spouse as your top priority, before phones or TV, social media, workouts, sports, either in person or on TV? Do you have your priorities in the right order? 2 Corinthians 8, verses 1-15.
Speaker 1:Now I want you to know, dear brothers and sisters, what God, in His kindness, has done to the churches in Macedonia. They are being tested by many troubles and they are very poor, but they are also filled with abundant joy, which is overflowed in rich generosity, for I can testify that they gave not only what they could afford but far more, and they did it of their own free will. They begged us again and again for the privilege of sharing in the gift for the believers in Jerusalem. They even did more than we had hoped for. Their first action was to give themselves to the Lord and to us, just as God wanted them to do. So we have urged Titus, who encouraged your giving in the first place, to return to you and encourage you to finish this ministry of giving.
Speaker 1:Since you excel in so many ways in your faith, your gifted speakers, your knowledge and enthusiasm and your love from us, I want you to excel also in this gracious act of giving. I am not commanding you to do this, but I am testing how genuine your love is by comparing it with the eagerness of the other churches. You know the generous grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, though he was rich. You know the generous grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, though he was rich, but for your sakes. He became poor so that by his poverty he could make you rich.
Speaker 1:Here is my advice it would be good for you to finish what you started a year ago. Last year you were the first who wanted to give and you were the first to begin doing it. Now you should finish what you started. Let the eagerness you showed in the beginning be matched now by your giving. Give in proportion to what you have. Whatever you give is acceptable if you give it eagerly and give according to what you have, not what you don't have. Of course, I don't mean your giving should make life easy for others and hard for yourselves. I only mean that there should be some equality. Right now you have plenty and can help those who are in need. Later they will have plenty and can share with you when you need it. In this way, things will be equal.
Speaker 1:As the scripture says, those who gathered a lot had nothing left over, and those who gathered only a little had enough. Psalm 49, 1-20 from a harp. Why should I fear when trouble comes, when enemies surround me? They trust in their wealth and boast of great riches, yet they cannot redeem themselves from death by paying a ransom to God. Redemption does not come so easily, for no one can ever pay enough to live forever and never see the grave.
Speaker 1:Those who are wise must finally die, just like the foolish and senseless. Leaving all their wealth behind the grave is their eternal home, where they will stay forever. They may name their estates after themselves, but their fame will not last. They will die just like animals. This is the fate of fools. Though they are remembered as being wise, like sheep, they are led to the grave, where death will be their shepherd. In the morning, the godly will rule over them. Their bodies will rot in the grave, far from their grand estates. But as for me, god will redeem my life. He will snatch me from the power of the grave. Don't be so dismayed when the wicked grow rich and their homes become ever more splendid, for when they die, they take nothing with them. Their wealth will not follow them into the grave. In this life, they consider themselves fortunate and are applauded for their success, but they will die like all before them and never again see the light of day. People who boast of their wealth don't understand. They will die just like animals. Proverbs 22, verses 20 through 21.
Speaker 1:I have written thirty sayings for you filled with advice and knowledge. In this way, you may know the truth and take an accurate report to those who sent you. Are we really generous, folks? You go back and look at 2 Corinthians, 8, 1 through 15. Are we generous, and do we give with the same eagerness that we start so many different things? You know, often I go back to marriage, so often because it's supposed to replicate or illustrate that relationship between God or between Jesus Christ and the church.
Speaker 1:But you hear people say so often this honeymoon phase. But why? Why does that honeymoon phase Disappear? Is it that we suddenly don't love our spouse as much anymore? But why does that honeymoon phase disappear? Is it that we suddenly don't love our spouse as much anymore? It's not new and the shiny wears off, or however you want to say it. Is that really what happens? Or is it because of laziness and complacency and because we don't continue to eagerly give as we do at the beginning of our marriage? And you can apply that a bunch of different ways, folks.
Speaker 1:And then Psalm 49, 1 through 20, really encouraging when the psalmist talks about. But as for me, verse 15, god will redeem my life, he will snatch me from the power of the grave. You know, wealth can't save anybody. There's no amount of money, there's no amount of good acts that can save you. The only thing that can save you is God and Jesus Christ. And because we put our faith in Christ, he will snatch us from the grave and we will spend eternity with God in heaven, in joy and happiness and love and laughter and hope, with those, our loved ones, who also believe in Jesus Christ, and that's a great comfort and a great hope.
Speaker 1:I wanted to read another quote from Abigail Adams. This is June 18th 1775. She's writing to her husband, john Adams the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but the God of Israel is he that giveth strength and power unto his people. Trust in him at all times. Ye people, pour out your hearts before him. God is a refuge for us. Charlestown is laid in ashes.
Speaker 1:The battle began upon our entrenchments upon Bunker's Hill Saturday morning about three o'clock and has not yet ceased. And it is now three o'clock, sabbath afternoon. It is expected they will come out over the neck tonight and a dreadful battle must ensue. Almighty God, cover the heads of our countrymen and be a shield to our dear friends. Abigail Adams A lot of thoughts there, folks, just how desperate their situation was.
Speaker 1:How much fear there must have been, concern, unknown, you know. And what does she tell her husband? Reminding him that look to God. You know and this is just a little reminder, folks that not only did our founders leave us a mountain of evidence that we were founded as a Christian republic, but it wasn't just, you know, a very small group of men who signed the Declaration or something that did that. It was the whole generation, that whole group of men and women that helped found our nation, turned to God in those times of distress. Right God of Israel is he that giveth strength and power unto his people. Trust in him at all times. Strength and power unto his people. Trust in him at all times. Pour out your hearts before him. God is a refuge for us. Even Charleston is laid in ashes. There's a battle at Bunker's Hill. It's been going for a day already and they had fear. And she's asking God cover the heads of our countrymen and be a shield to our dear friends. The heads of our countrymen and be a shield to our dear friends.
Speaker 1:Do we turn to God in moments of stress, or do we turn to ourselves? Do we put all the pressure on ourselves? I find that I do that too often, folks, in the moment of distress, when I get really anxious or distressed about something, I'm looking to myself far more than I am to God, which is not the way it should be. You go out, you do the best you can and then you have to trust actually trust God instead of yourself, and I think, at least for me, that's part of the problem that I need to work on more and more.
Speaker 1:One of the comments I make regularly on the podcast is that there's peaceful coexistence with citizens that demand on following leftism, socialism, communism, nazism, fascism and Islam. It's just not possible, and one of the ways that you see that is there's never any satisfaction of just live and let live, which I think a lot of us on the conservative Christian side we like that idea, we hope that that idea is going to be applied, but it isn't, and there's a lot of faults on our side with thinking that's going to be the case anyway. God is pretty clear that that doesn't work out too well. But in 1993, there was a court case Welsh versus the Boy Scouts of America, and the people were trying to get the Boy Scouts to take duty to God out of their oath. The Boy Scouts have kind of fallen on hard times despite all this and they took them to court again in 1995 and 1998 and other cases and I'm going to read just a little bit out of that court case. But the point is that I really wanted to make is those people. They're never going to stop folks the idea of peaceful coexistence it's just a fantasy.
Speaker 1:The leadership of many in our government is a testimonial to the success of Boy Scout activities.
Speaker 1:In recent years, single parent families, gang activity, the availability of drugs and other factors have increased the dire need for support structures like the Scouts.
Speaker 1:When the government in this instance through the courts seeks to regulate the membership of an organization like the Boy Scouts in a way that scuttles its founding principles, we run the risk of undermining one of the seedbeds of virtue that cultivate the sort of citizens our nation so desperately needs and that's true of anybody that's trying to get God and Jesus Christ out of our country is they scuttle our founding principles and they help destroy the seedbeds of virtue that we so desperately need. If you haven't had a chance, we've started to read through some of a book Countryside on another podcast that I wrote years ago, if you'd like to join us there. We've got some kind comments from people about that, so I appreciate it. And otherwise, god bless you all. God bless your families, god bless your marriages. If you're married, god bless America and God bless your nation. Folks, wherever you are around the world listening, we'll talk to you all again real soon, looking forward to it.