What Holds When Everything Shifts

Start with a simple test: if advice about marriage, money, or time doesn’t match Scripture, drop it. From that plumb line, we trace a path through Peter’s denial and Judas’s remorse, Pilate’s cold process, and the jarring irony of the potter’s field. The thread is not shame—it’s hope—because Peter’s failure becomes a doorway back to courage, and that same door stands open for any of us tangled in fear or habit.

We ground that hope in Psalm 33, where God’s plans stand firm while trends, polls, and timelines shift. Then we lean into Proverbs 8 to recover a daily rhythm: seek wisdom like you seek your phone. The conversation turns practical fast—how to audit your day, guard your marriage with simple rituals, and protect attention from the scroll. We also wrestle with a hard story of violence to ask how ideologies face evil and whether silence reveals a deeper fracture. Along the way, we honor Medal of Honor recipient Lewis Francis Brest, a reminder that duty and courage still matter.

The final stretch is all stewardship. Noah Webster’s timeless guidance cuts through noise: earn before you spend, live below your means, and turn margin into mercy. Generosity isn’t an afterthought; it’s a mission that stabilizes families, lifts the poor, and fuels the spread of the gospel. We share practical steps for time blocking, budgeting with purpose, and choosing one waste to cut this week so you can plant one good habit that lasts.

If this spoke to you, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review. Your support helps more listeners find clarity, courage, and practical tools for a life ordered around faith and wisdom. What’s the first habit you’ll reset today?

#NoahWebster #DailyScripture 

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome, Prayer, And Gratitude
• 2:43 Marriage Teaching From 1 Corinthians
• 4:03 Peter’s Denial And Judas’s Remorse
• 7:16 Pilate, Silence, And The Potter’s Field
• 9:05 Psalm 33 And God’s Unchanging Plans
• 10:45 Proverbs On Seeking Wisdom Daily
• 12:20 Terror Attack Anecdote And Ideologies
• 15:12 Medal Of Honor: Lewis Francis Brest
• 16:44 Noah Webster On Time And Idleness
• 19:20 Wealth, Frugality, And Generational Decay
• 21:02 Earn Before You Spend And Giving

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. Sure do appreciate you joining me, giving me a little bit of your time and attention, 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 and 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. 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. Thank you for the people that listen to the podcast and share it. Please be with them. Be with their families. Bless their marriage.

SPEAKER_01: 0:58

Guide those who have children in raising them to know you. Heal any injuries, illnesses, comfort to any who are heartbroken. Help us to remember eternity.

SPEAKER_00: 1:22

To remember that this this life, this world are not our home.

SPEAKER_01: 1:29

That we're just passing through on our way to you and your son Jesus Christ. Help us to feel your peace, your comfort, your joy.

SPEAKER_00: 1:43

Be with our leaders, in the pulpit, and in the saint. Help them to rule in fear of you, not in fear of man or woman. Be with our military, our law enforcement firefighters, EMS. Keep them safe.

SPEAKER_01: 1:59

Surround them with your angels, protect them from evil of any kind. Guide our nation back to you, Father. And your son Jesus Christ. Help us to care for the widow and the orphan, the poor and the needy. Help us to make sure that our priorities are in line with your priorities, Father.

SPEAKER_00: 2:29

To love you with all that we are, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. And please guide my words here. Your son's name we pray. Amen. Marriage verse for today is out of 1 Corinthians 11 verses 7 through 9. A man ought not to cover his head since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. For man did not come from woman, but woman from man, neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. That's not very politically correct today, is it? That man wasn't created for the sake of woman, but the woman was for the sake of the man. And yet that's clearly what Scripture says. So just again, folks, if you're looking for a spouse or if you're already married, any marriage advice that you get, no matter from who, whom, who, it needs to match up with God. And if it doesn't, then you need to trash it and not even pay attention to it for a second. Doesn't matter if it's from your best friend, your parents, siblings, pastor, priest, celebrities, for sure. If it doesn't match up with scripture, you need to pass on it. Hard pass. All right, scripture for today. We're going to start with Matthew 26, verse 69 through 27, verse 14. Meanwhile, Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard. A servant girl came over and said to him, You were one of those with Jesus, the Galilean. But Peter denied it in front of everyone. I don't know what you're talking about, he said. Later out by the gate, another servant girl noticed him and said to those standing around, This man was with Jesus of Nazareth. Again, Peter denied it this time with an oath. I don't even know the man, he said. A little later, some of the other bystanders came over to Peter and said, You must be one of them. We can tell by your Galilean accent. Peter swore, A curse on me if I'm lying. I don't know the man. And immediately the rooster crowed. Suddenly Jesus' words flashed through Peter's mind. Before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times that you even know me. And he went away weeping bitterly. Whatever sins you've got, folks, let Peter be an encouragement to you. That having walked with Jesus and seen all the miracles and knowing that he was the Son of God, in his human weakness he still denied Christ. Very early in the morning, the leading priests and elders of the people met again to lay plans for putting Jesus to death. Then they bound him, led him away, and took him to Pilate, the Roman governor. When Judas, who had betrayed him, realized that Jesus had been condemned to die, he was filled with remorse. So he took the thirty pieces of silver back to the leading priests and elders. I have sinned, he declared, for I have betrayed an innocent man. What do we care? They retorted. Then Judas threw the silver coins down in the temple and went out and hanged himself. The leading priests picked up the coins. It wouldn't be right to put this money in the temple treasury, they said, since it was payment for murder. After some discussion, they finally decided to buy the potter's field, and they made it into a cemetery for foreigners. That is why the field is still called the field of blood. This fulfilled the prophecy of Jeremiah that says, They took the thirty pieces of silver, the price at which he was valued by the people of Israel, and purchased the potter's field as the Lord directed. Now Jesus was standing before Pilate, the Roman governor. Are you the king of the Jews? The governor asked him. Jesus replied, You have said it. But when the leading priests and the elders made their accusations against him, Jesus remained silent. Don't you hear hear all these charges they are bringing against you, Pilate demanded. But Jesus made no response to any of the charges, much to the governor's surprise. I'm always astounded by the potter's field story because the Pharisees, the religious leaders, they weren't concerned about murdering an innocent man. They were concerned about using money inappropriately. And that just I think if we really sit and ponder on that for a while, it probably makes a lot of us a little uncomfortable. We're more concerned about the letter of the law than the intent, as we used to say in the Marine Corps, the commander's intent. Psalm 33, verse 1 through 11. Let the godly sing for joy to the Lord. It is fitting for the pure to praise him. Praise the Lord with melodies on the lyre, make music for him on the tin stringed harp. Sing a new song of praise to him, play skillfully on the harp, and sing with joy. For the word of the Lord holds true, and we can trust everything he does. He loves whatever is just and good. The unfailing love of the Lord fills the earth. The Lord merely spoke and the heavens were created. He breathed the word and all the stars were born. He assigned the sea its boundaries and look and locked the oceans and vast reservoirs. Let the whole world feel the fear the Lord, and let everyone stand in awe of him. For when he spoke the world began, it appeared at his command. The Lord frustrates the plans of the nations and thwarts all their schemes. But the Lord's plans stand firm forever. His intentions can never be shaken. I think that last one, verse 11, there, the Lord's plans stand firm forever. That kind of reminds you, right, that God is unchanging. Jesus Christ is unchanging. The political whims of men, they change, right? But the Lord's commands, the Lord's opinions, if you will, they're always the same. They're the same today. They were the same 500 years ago. They'll be the same 500 years from now if the world's still going on. Which is why it's so important to go back to God's word constantly. Proverbs 8, verse 33 through 36. Listen to my instruction, wisdom's instruction, and be wise. Don't ignore it. Joyful are those who listen to me, watching for me daily at my gates, waiting for me outside my home. For whoever finds me finds life and receives favor from the Lord. But those who miss me injure themselves. All who hate me love death. Do we really look for wisdom, folks, constantly? Is that a major concern each day, or are we concerned about finding wisdom? So on February the third, twenty fifteen, in the southern French city of Nice, a man named, I'm gonna mispronounce this, Mosa Colbally, uh attacked three French soldiers with a knife. Uh they were patrolling outside of a Jewish community center on the Avenue Jean Medicine Medicine. For those of y'all that speak French, I don't, so I'm I apologize in advance. As part of heightened security measures, this was right after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, uh, if you remember those. And so uh Kobley was a 30-year-old man, Muslim, uh French national, and he attacked them with an eight-inch knife. I think he stabbed one in the face and chin, another on the arm, before the officers finally managed to take him down. This is unsurprisingly, right, this was labeled as terrorism. But I don't folks, the terrorism label indicates extremism, that it's the fringe of a group. And yet again and again, and and we talk about this, that's why we created this little segment in the podcast, you see these attacks consistently from the left, socialism, communism, Nazism, fascism, Islam, and you don't see any rebuttal, you don't see any immediate condemnation from these ideologies from the followers. You just see a complicit going along with it. And it's important to remember that there's just it's there's a fundamental flaw in those ideologies, and it all goes back to rejection of Jesus Christ. In 2019, uh a parish court sentenced Colby to 30 years in prison. But folks, this isn't this is not something that we can retrograde in, right? Medal of Honor for today, Lewis Francis Brest. Private U.S. Civil War Delta Company, 57th Pennsylvania Infantry, U.S. Army, April sixth, eighteen sixty five, Deatonsville, Sailor's Creek, Virginia. Citation just merely reads capture a flag, as so many of these do. Accredited to Pittsburgh County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, not awarded posthumously. Presented May 10th, 1865, born May 15th, 1842, Mercer County, Pennsylvania, died December 2nd, 1915, Mercer, Pennsylvania. Buried Citizens Cemetery 233, Mercer, Pennsylvania. Lewis Francis Brest. Just another name, folks, to add to the list of ones we need to remember. We're going to go back into Noel Webster's advice for the young out of his. This was an appendix to his history of the United States. We're going to read 44. We'll see how much we get. We're going to read 44, 45 at least. In whatever laudable occupation you are destined to labor, be steady in an industrious application of time. Time is given to you for your employment, not for waste. Most men are obliged to labor for substance, and this is a happy arrangement of things by divine appointment, as labor is one of the best preservatives both of health and of moral habits. But if you are not under the necessity of laboring for substance, let your time be occupied in something which shall do good to yourselves and your fellow men. Idleness tends to lead men into vicious pleasures, and to waste time is to abuse the gifts of God. Folks, we've talked about this on the podcast a number of times, but what are you doing with your time each day? If you had an Excel spreadsheet or a pie chart or a graph of some kind and you got to the end of each day and you looked at the different segments of how you spent your time, how much time did you give to social media? How much time did you give to sports? How much time did you give to entertainment, to Netflix, to Hulu, to Prime, Amazon Prime, to whatever it is? How much time did you give to workouts? How much time did you give to reading for entertainment, reading for education, God, praying, reading the Bible, your spouse if you're married? We talk so often today, you hear the excuse, especially with marriages, about, well, I don't have enough time, I don't have enough energy. That's just not true, folks. It's a lie we sell ourselves. Even if those tough times of marriage, for example, like when you have little kids and you're super busy or you feel extremely busy, it's not a matter of not having time for God or not having time for our spouse. It's a matter of we give time to the wrong things. And then we look up and we we can't understand why our faith is weak or our marriage is weak or whatever, right? But we don't have our priorities in the right order. Paragraph 45. With most persons, the gaining of a property is a primary object and one which demands wisdom in planning business and assiduous care, attention, and industry in conducting it. But it is perhaps more difficult to keep property than to gain it, as men, while acquiring property, are more economical and make more careful calculations of profit and loss than when they hold large possessions. Men who inherit large possessions are particularly liable to waste their property and fall into poverty. The greatest hereditary estates in this country are usually dissipated by the second or third generation. The sons and grandsons of the richest men often are often hewers of wood and drawers of water to the sons and grandsons of their fathers and grandfathers' servants. It's a reference to the Old Testament and some of the tribes, clans that the Israelites forced into slavery, right? They were hewers of wood, drawers of water. But there's a lot of truth there. You know, you've heard people say that if you gave everybody huge amounts of money, right, 10 years from now, you would end up with the same people that were rich and the same people that were poor. And that's probably not always true, but it often is. We spend a certain percentage of our income, and it doesn't really matter how much money we have, we're still going to spend that percentage. If we have more, we're just going to spend more of it on frivolous things. And the point, of course, is to learn. That's one of the reasons, right, that Proverbs says it's such a blessing to have a frugal life. I believe it's Proverbs. Yeah, let's read one more. Paragraph 46. As a general rule and the expenditure of money, it is the safest to earn money before you spend it, and to spend every year less than you earn. Somebody needs to tell Congress that. By this means, you will secure a comfortable substance and by and be enabled to establish your children in some honest calling. At the same time, this practice will furnish the means of contributing to the wants of the poor and to the promotion of institutions for civilizing and Christianizing heathen nations. This is a great and indispensable duty. Folks, so so much of our founding goes back to spreading Christianity. That was the goal of the pilgrims. That was the goal of Columbus. When you actually read him, that was the goal of so many of our founders of our nation. You look at Hamilton, I believe, the Christian Constitutional Society, right? The better managers we are of our talents and our money, the more able we are to help the poor and the needy and spread the gospel of Jesus Christ. It has a very real effect on our ability to be functional, productive citizens. Right? All right. So if you are, let me find them. I just had them. Yeah. If you were looking for a family-friendly little grade read, if you would check out the Countryside Series, it's the first book in the series, right? Uh and this is the second book in the series. You can find them on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, a bunch of places. And if you get a chance, it's kind of along the lines of Narnia the Hobbit, Percy Jackson, Harry Potter. If you get a chance to leave a review, if you enjoy them, I would very much appreciate that. Those reviews help immensely. And if you feel like you're getting something out of the podcast, the marriage or scripture, Medal of Honor, Heritage, et cetera, if you can leave a review of that. And if you have five or ten dollars that you can donate to the podcast each month, I would be very grateful for that as well. And there should be a link in the show notes where you can purchase the book and donate money to the podcast either or. So thank you. 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 you will, for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen. God bless y'all. God bless your marriages if you're married. God bless your families. God bless your nation, wherever you are around the world. Listening, and God bless America. We'll talk to y'all again real soon, folks. Looking forward to it.