We remember who we are when we put God first at home and in the public square

We press pause on daily noise to ask hard questions about time with God, marriage as a daily priority, and the quiet power of integrity at home. Along the way we read Titus 2, Philemon, and Psalm 101, warn against gossip, honor Albert Beyer’s courage, and revisit providence in the Constitution.

• gratitude for Scripture and freedom to read it
• marriage as daily priority over distractions
• Titus 2 roles, self‑control, and mentorship
• Philemon’s model of restoration and brotherhood
• Psalm 101’s call to integrity at home
• Proverbs on gossip as fuel for conflict
• Medal of Honor remembrance: Albert Beyer
• founders’ quotes on providence and the Constitution
• critique of Everson and church‑state confusion
• practical steps to reorder time, habits, and home

If you enjoy a family‑friendly middle grade fantasy, please check out Countryside and, if you enjoy it, leave a review online somewhere, parents or grandparents or kids 

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome, Prayer, and Intent
• 2:49 Make Time for God and Gratitude
• 4:46 Priorities: Marriage vs. Distractions
• 6:02 Stats, Songs, and Knowing Scripture
• 9:59 Titus 2: Order, Self‑Control, Home
• 13:35 Philemon: Brotherhood and Restoration
• 17:04 Psalm 101: Integrity at Home
• 18:41 Gossip, Fire, and Peace
• 20:43 Mean Girls and The Sin of Gossip
• 22:39 Medal of Honor: Albert Beyer

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

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 sure do appreciate y'all joining me, giving me a little bit of your day, a little bit of your time. I know y'all have other things pulling on your uh attention. So thank you. I'm glad you're spending it here. I hope that you get to listen to it with somebody else. I hope it gives y'all something to think about, something to talk about, to mull over, and hopefully it draws us all a little closer to God and Jesus Christ. 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. Through the merit of your son Jesus Christ alone. Thank you for the time to record this podcast. Thank you for the people that listen to it and share it. Be with them, be with their families. Guide and bless them, surround them with your angels, protect them from evil of any kind. Help us, Father, to help those that have less than we do. Help us to help our country turn back to you here in America and in the nations around the world where people are listening. Guide our steps. Give us patience, perseverance. Help us to remember that the way we see things is not the way that you see or think about things often. You are looking from an eternal point of view outside of time. Help us to remember that, to trust in you, even when things seem dark, dangerous, when we feel scared and anxious and alone. And in those times that are good, Father, when we feel like we have everything figured out, help us to be humble and not to be vain. Not to imagine that we are doing this all on our own. Remember how desperately we need your blessings and how much you have blessed us. And be with our leaders, Father. Help them to rule in fear of you both in the state and in the pulpit. And God, my words here, Father, please. Your son's name we pray. Have you made time for God today? Have you made time to read his word, to pray, to talk to him, to listen? Do you do do we remember or we really grateful for the ability to read his word without fear of persecution? It's not and it's not just a matter of the fact that there's people around the world today that can't do it, folks. It's it's a matter of the fact that so many people in the past suffered so much torture, imprisonment, death, rape, pillage, plunder, so that we could read God's word today without fear of persecution from the state or the church, sadly. Do we remember that? And if you're married, do you act like it? Is your spouse your top priority each day? Or do you give more time to are you more excited about your favorite sports team? I I always pick on this because that's my weakness, folks. You need to make sure that that when I'm talking about sports, that you're thinking about whatever your weakness is, right? Whatever you're susceptible to. Uh books just for fun, TV shows, Netflix, Prime, Hulu, right? Whatever it is for you, hunting, um, whatever it is that you've put in priority over God and over people. But for those of y'all that are like me that like sports, statistics is always a big deal, right? I hated statistics in college. Uh, I managed to somehow, uh, even with a degree in physics, I managed to skate around statistics because it was such a nightmare, all my friends that had to take it. But in sports, we love our stats, right? Every single sport loves stats. How much time do we how how well do we know the statistics of our favorite team, our favorite player in any sport? And then compare that to our knowledge, the amount of time we spend learning about God, learning about our spouse, focused on pleasing our spouse each day. Right? And and maybe it's not sports for you, maybe it's songs. Maybe you know every single lyric to every song written by a particular singer? How many Bible verses do you know? How many psalms can you recite? Right? How many memories have you made with your spouse that you can go through line by line those memories? That love. Just a thought. Marriage verse for today. Comes out of Titus two, starting with verse one. You, however much must teach what is appropriate to sound doctrine. Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled and sound in faith and love and in endurance. Likewise teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God. Similarly, similarly, encourage the young men to be self-controlled, and everything set them an example by doing what is good, and your teachings show integrity, seriousness, and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned, so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us. How much just these two things, how much would it change our nation today if we really encouraged our young men to be self-controlled, and if we encouraged our young women to love their husbands and be busy at home? I I think that you would have to be dishonest to say that that those two things alone would not show significant improvements in our nation. Bible verses for today? Philimon one, verses one through twenty five. This letter is from Paul, a prisoner, for preaching the good news about Jesus Christ, and from our brother Timothy. I am writing to Philimon, our beloved co-worker, and to our sister, Athea, and to our fellow soldier Acrippus, and to the church that meets in your house. May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace. I always thank my God when I pray for you, Philimon, because I keep hearing about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all of God's people. And I am praying that you will put into action the generosity that comes from your faith as you understand and experience all the good things we have in Christ. Your love has given me much joy and comfort, my brother, for your kindness has often refreshed the hearts of God's people. That is why I am boldly asking a favor of you. I could demand it in the name of Christ because it is the right thing for you to do, but because of our love, I prefer simply to ask you. Consider this as a request from me, Paul, an old man, and now also a prisoner for the sake of Christ Jesus. I appeal to you to show kindness to my child, Anisimus. I became his father in faith while here in prison. Anisimus hasn't been of much use to you in the past, but now he is very useful to both of us. I am sending him back to you, and with him comes my own heart. I wanted to keep him here with me while I am in these chains for preaching the good news, and he would have helped me on your behalf. But I didn't want to do anything without your consent. I wanted you to help because you were willing, not because you were forced. It seems you lost Anisimus for a little while so that you could have him back forever. He is no longer like a slave to you, he is more than a slave, for he is a beloved brother, especially to me. Now he will mean much more to you both as a man and as a brother in the Lord. So if you consider me your partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. If he has wronged you in any way or owes you anything, charge it to me. I, Paul, write this with my own hand, I will repay it. And I won't mention that you owe me your very soul. Yes, my brother, please do this me do me this favor for the Lord's sake. Give me this encouragement in Christ. I am confident as I write this letter that you will do what I ask and even more. One more thing, please prepare a guest room for me, for I am hoping that God will answer your prayers and let me return to you soon. Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends you his greetings, so do Mark, Aristocus, Demus, and Luke, my co workers. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. I know I murdered some of those names, folks, I apologize, as always. Psalm one o one verses one through eight. I will sing of your love and justice, Lord, I will praise you with songs. I will be careful to live a blameless life. When will you come to help me? I will lead a life of integrity in my own home. I will refuse to look at anything vile and vulgar. I hate all who deal crookedly. I will have nothing to do with them. I will reject perverse ideas and stay away from every evil. I will not tolerate people who slander their neighbors. I will not endure conceit and pride. I will search for faithful people to be my companions. Only those who are above reproach will be allowed to serve me. I will not allow deceivers to serve in my house, and liars will not stay in my presence. My daily task will be to ferret out the wicked and free the city of the Lord from their grip. Proverbs twenty six twenty. Fire goes out without wood, and quarrels disappear when gossip stops. We talk a lot in the church, and and rightly so about sexual immorality. God mentions it a whole bunch of times. So there's nothing wrong with talking about that. But I think often that we don't address gossip enough. There's quite a few proverbs that talk about gossip. And I think a lot of times we don't acknowledge the damage that it does. And I and I think honestly, we don't with women often. You know, I think I think for most people, sexual immorality probably is a bigger concern for men than for women. Not always, folks, by any means. But I think you can probably say the reverse about gossip, too, I think, typically. You know, the the movie, my wife talks about this often. The movie Mean Girls has been a success over the years in large part because it strikes a chord with people. There's a lot of, and she's told me this before on multiple occasions, there's a lot of girls that really that movie resonates with because they had to deal with mean girls growing up, junior high, high school, college, and even into adulthood. And what is the center of that movie, really? The sin at the center of that movie is often gossip. At any rate, that's that's my two cents from that Bible reading today. Medal of Honor for today. Albert Bayer Bayer, Coxwain, highest ranked Chief Master of Arms, Spanish-American War, USS Nashville, U.S. Navy, May 11, 1898, Centuegos, Cuba. On board the USS Nashville during the cutting of the cable leading from Centuegas, Cuba, 11 May 1898, facing the heavy fire of the enemy, Bayer set an example of extraordinary bravery and coolness throughout this action. Accredited to Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts, not awarded posthumously presented august sixteenth, eighteen ninety nine by Commander Raymond P. Rogers of the USS Nashville at the Charleston, Massachusetts Navy Yard. Born june thirteenth, eighteen fifty nine, Hanover, Germany, died october twenty ninth, nineteen twenty nine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Buried Mount Moriah Cemetery, VA Plot one dash nine dash two, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Albert Bayer Bayer. That gentleman saw quite a bit, didn't he? Born just before the Civil War and then survived through World War One right up until the Depression. Another name to remember, folks, Albert Bayer. History quotes for today. So one of the things that has strengthened my faith quite a bit over the years of doing this podcast has been the realization of how many times throughout our history God's hand had to be involved. And I hope that strengthens your faith too as we go through that. And one of the things, one of those moments, I often talk about Pearl Harbor, Midway, because both of those are just, to me, prime examples of where God had to be involved. There were just a couple of very miraculous events. There were probably a lot of little miraculous events, but there were a couple major things that happened there that just shouldn't have happened. The Constitution is another one. And the sad part is that we don't teach history enough, so we don't know the sentiments of our great leaders. But that was the sentiment of a lot of our founding fathers was that the only reason that the Constitution passed was because of God. And not some random deist God, folks. Not any God from Islam or Buddhism or Hinduism or Mother Naturism or anywhere else, but God the Father of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. And so I just want to read through a few quotes about the passing, the ratification of the Constitution. Right, it's a double whammy too, because people today that claim that we are founded as a secular nation, that's really hard to square with founders saying the only way our constitution passed was with God, right? If that's really the way they felt, do you really think that they would set up a secular society, a pagan society? September 17, 1787. This was George Washington watching the signing of the U.S. Constitution, declaring it little short of a miracle. Benjamin Franklin, to conclude, I beg I may not be understood to infer that our general convention was divinely inspired when it formed the new Federal Constitution. Yet I must own I have so much faith in the general government of the world by providence, capitalized, that I can hardly conceive a transaction of such momentous importance to the welfare of millions now existing, and to exist in the posterity of a great nation, should be suffered to pass without being in some degree influenced, guided, and governed by that omnipotent, omnipresent, and beneficent ruler in whom all inferior spirits live and move and have their being. So a real quick thing here about this quote by Benjamin Franklin, and I had to look this Bible verse up, but this is part of the problem with us not doing a thorough job of teaching history, is a lot of people say that Franklin was a deist. And there's quotes that you can go back and look at, some of his own quotes to support this at different times in his life. But when you look at his writing as a whole, uh, even if he was a deist, his worldview was grounded in the Bible. But when you really start to look at his quotes, what you find is that he he wasn't a big fan of religion, of the dogma, the doctoral, like the doctrine of specific denominations. But but like this quote, this comes straight out of Acts. It's uh out of chapter 17, verse 28. I'm gonna start with verse 27. That they should seek the Lord as happily as they might feel after him and find him, though he be not far from every one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being, as certain also of you own your own poets have said, for we are also his offspring. Right? And so you look at Franklin's comments here in this quote that the passing of the Constitution had to be in some degree influenced, guided, and governed by that omnipotent, omnipresent, and beneficent ruler in whom all inferior spirits live and move and have their being. New Testament, Bible, Jesus Christ. Charles Pickney, another one of the framers, nothing less than that superintending hand of Providence that so miraculously carried us through the war, in my humble opinion, could have brought it, the Constitution, about so complete upon the whole. That's another part, and we've talked about this with uh Styles, who was a president of Yale, I think. So many of our founding generation, they were absolutely convinced, rightly so, that it was God that carried us through that the Revolutionary War quite miraculously. And so just another of those points. And then the last one for today is Alexander Hamilton. Uh he was he represented New York at the Constitutional Convention. For my own part, I sincerely esteem it a system which, without the finger of God, never could have been suggested and agreed upon by such a diversity of interests. Another little point here just at the end, and I'll wrap up, folks, is in 1947, the Supreme Court decision that used a line from Jefferson, separation of church and state, which doesn't even mean what they twisted it to mean in that particular court case, Everson versus Board of Education. But even if it did, it doesn't, but even if it did, Jefferson was removed by 13 years from this convention, and Jefferson wasn't even part of the constitutional convention, right? But it it doesn't. That's I'm just playing along with the left right now. Jefferson didn't at all mean separation of God and state, and that's really what that ruling, Everson versus Board of Education, that's what they really meant. That's what they managed to get the camel's nose under the tent, which has caused so much destruction over the last 80 years and why it has to be overturned if we have any hope of recovering our republic. But you see these quotes again: Charles Pickney, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington talking about God's hand being part of the ratification of the Constitution, and there are others, but those are just a few real quick. Don't let anybody tell you that America was not born a Christian republic, folks. They don't know what they're talking about, either gross ignorance or purposeful malevolence. If you are looking for a fun, family-friendly middle grade fantasy, uh, I would humbly recommend Countryside if you get a chance and check it out, read it, enjoy it together as a family. And if you do enjoy it, if you would leave a review online somewhere, parents or grandparents or kids. It would be great. 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 listening. I know we have some new uh listeners out there, and I will try and read through some of those. We'll talk to y'all again real soon. Thank you. Looking forward to it.