ChristiTutionalist Politics | Christian Perspectives on Constitutional Issues

CTP (S3EDecSpecial1) Why God’s Truth Must Come First For Real Faith

• Joseph M. Lenard | Christian Activist & Author in Politics • Season 3

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CTP (S3EDecSpecial1) Why God’s Truth Must Come First For Real Faith
Exploring more of the fascinating intersection of Activism, Community Engagement, Faith / Religion, Human Nature, Politics, Social Issues, and beyond  
We welcome TS Wright to trace a path from dorm-room conversion to leading Kingdom Crossroads and building the God Center Concept, linking visions, patience, and a call to plant disciples rather than chase platforms. We press on a hard claim: truth first, then love, mercy, and obedience that produce fruit.
• TS Wright’s journey from Arkansas roots to ministry leadership
• Waiting on God’s timing to publish and launch
• Taking over Kingdom Crossroads and expanding to TV
• The God Center Concept and Victory in Seven
• Embracing the Truth and upcoming discipleship series
• The Gospel Is movement focused on planting disciples
• Truth as foundation, not comfort-driven faith
• Spiritual disciplines: pray, read, pray Scripture
• Starting points in John and Revelation 1–5
• Faith and works, fruit that can be measured
• Practical links, websites, and limited-time book access 
http://TSWrightSpeaks.com  https://tinyurl.com/SubscribeToCTP  

A Short Story: A Lasting Legacy? book Trailer

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Author, Blogger, Podcaster

SPEAKER_00:

Hello, welcome to another episode of Pristitutionalist Podcast. I am your host, Joseph M. Leonard. That's L-E-N-A-R-D at the French. It's not without an O. Thank you for tuning in. As Bram Norton used to say on his show, let's get on with the show. Hello everyone. Welcome to another Christitutionalist podcast. Going to join me today is T.S. Wright. And you, my audience, knows me. If those maybe tuning in for the first time do not, I deal with OCD as one of the myriads, hosts of all kinds of health issues, and also can never pass a lame pun. So I gotta say, before TS right joins, now I will have the song in my head the rest of the day. If Mother, New is wrong, I don't want to be right. Right? Amen. Unintended.

SPEAKER_01:

Amen. And hey, we got Carla Zeus here back with us on World A to Z, baby.

SPEAKER_00:

Right in his case, is spelled with a W in front, W-R-I-G-H-T. So with all that cleared, before we go into some of the reasons why you're here, let's do the proverbial lame pun Christian show intended again. Proverbial first question. Where were you born and raised? Where are you now? Significant places you may have been in between, and that kind of good stuff.

SPEAKER_01:

The journey, as we call it. The journey. So you know what?

SPEAKER_00:

I now I'm gonna have that. Now I'm gonna have one guy with the lights in the sky in the city in my head all damn day. Steve Perry and Journey. Anyway, I'm sorry, go on.

SPEAKER_01:

No, that's all right. So yeah, I was uh I was actually born and raised in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and I uh back when I was oh let's see, probably about seven years old. Uh my parents put me in a Catholic school. And so I went to Catholic school from first through ninth grade and then went to public school 10th through 12th and and graduated at uh Fort Smith Southside and then attended a uh college called the University of Central Arkansas. Uh during my freshman year, I um is when I received Christ in my dorm room. That's when it happened, and so I gave my life to the Lord uh April 9th, 1992, and then transferred schools. And uh when I did so, I got heavily involved with Campus Crusade for Christ, and um the campus minister trained me for three years, and then from there I've been involved in ministry and coaching and teaching ever since. Um had a little hiatus uh doing some business as an executive recruiter in there, mixed in with some ministry and coaching. I've bounced back and forth, living from Minnesota to Arkansas, and I'm now settled in Bentonville, Arkansas, the home of Walmart. If you've never heard of Bentonville, that's that's its famous I'm former Kmart IT headquarter guy. So yeah, he's he know he knows he knows Troy, Michigan very well.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. I I I will after we're done recording, be heading up to Walmart pharmacy to pick up some refills. There you go. Since I don't have Kmart pharmacies to be able to do it anymore.

SPEAKER_01:

So anyway, uh you know it's kind of funny. In 2003-04, the Lord gave me a series of visions and that really set the tone for what would come later in my life. And in 2016, he called me to start writing. And I started writing, wrote a book, didn't end up getting it published. Uh the Lord kind of pulled the reins back on me, told me not yet. And then 2018-2019, the Lord gave me another series of visions, and um Yeah, not yet, not not ever, just that's right, not yet.

SPEAKER_00:

Not yet, you know, you gotta understand that.

SPEAKER_01:

And so, and then uh the Lord kind of He gave me this picture, uh, or kind of this number of of one billion, didn't really understand what that meant, and then started kind of putting my heart that I'd reach a billion people. And I was like, I just started laughing. I'm like, Lord, I'm barely reaching three. So I mean, come on, are you kidding me?

SPEAKER_00:

Um, I I hear you though, like like my terror strikes coming soon to a city near you book. I'm grabbing it to hold it up. Uh was actually written in 2006. Wow, copyrighted 2006, but wasn't published till 2022. So exactly exactly. I was well, no, it's not quite ready, not fully done. Wait, and then the dream that it was based on in 06 came back in 2021. And okay, now's the time for that message, which of course, a a book on terrorism, you wouldn't think a Christian book, but it is, it is right. It's not about death and destruction, it's life and living. Amen. Yeah, and also the other thing is you mentioned ministry, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, what a shame. Mini is in the name. I I I have a largest tree, but I'm pumped. Okay, I I think maybe I'm done with the puns. I don't know. Another one may pop up. So uh but you and I have a mutual friend, Pastor Robert Thibodeau. Yes, Pastor Bob. Yeah, Pastor Bob, uh, Faithcasters, uh one of the things he's involved with. And I'd been on his show, Kingdom Crossroads, a few times, and you reached out and said, You you're part of you're doing Kingdom Crossroads. And I oh, did you just happen to have a similar name? Or indeed you took it over. Yes, tell us about that.

SPEAKER_01:

So that I'll let me finish. I'll finish my story and we'll explain that in the story. So what happened was in 20 oh about 2020, I met married the lady that I'm married to now, and then um I was going through a uh a class with uh with a group of believers, and there's a pastor that was leading this class, and they had a group of people that'd be praying for us, and it was it was about really leaving our legacy for Christ, is really what the class was about. And when I got done, Lord led me into doing a lot of just diving in to a lot of different topics and things that I needed to really solidify just my maybe resolidify my knowledge base and and my theological base, things that I had studied long before. The problem is it'd been a few years.

SPEAKER_00:

So well, yeah, and unless if you've got the uh endemic pornographic, I mean photographic. It's a joke, people. Please relax, right? Wordplay, photographic, the other word. Okay, right. Unless if you've got an endemic memory, we we all forget things over time.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and even people with photographic memories forget things over time. I mean, it's just nobody remembers everything, only God does that. So um, I always say the funniest thing is God has forgotten more than any of the rest of us combined will ever know. Oh, absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So that's that's why people get upset with me when I say the Bible is a Dr. Seuss book. What do I mean? You don't hand war and peace to a six-year-old, you give them Dr. Seuss and Aesop's labels. While we may be advanced 2,000 years after Christ, we're still but children to God and think 2,000 years ago and even before that when the Torah was handed down. Very just animalistic children. We aren't ready, weren't ready then, still aren't now for all the answers we might want. And God, sorry, you people full of the sin of hubris, but God doesn't owe you all the answers to questions you might want answered.

SPEAKER_01:

Go sorry. No, no problem, no problem. So, anyway, uh I dove in for to a lot of details, just repolishing church history, some things that I felt like I needed to repolish on, and then and that the Lord really led me to, and some new stuff that we dove into that have been very instrumental in the show. And then in 2023, uh the Lord called me to start podcasting in January. So I started in April and got that off the ground. And then a month later, I met Pastor Bob. So anyway, he he invited me on his show. We started, we we had a great connection. He wanted me to come back on and and do the seven ages of the church. He realized that I had a had had kind of a revelation about that, and about Revelation chapter two and three, and and talking about that and giving the historical aspects of it. And so I went through the seven ages of the church and we did a 14-part series. I think it was like 14-15 episodes. What's funny is he just kept inviting me back on the show, and then eventually I just went every other week on the show, and we did about 75 episodes approximately, and then he was getting close to wanting to retire, and he talked to me about taking over the show. So all of a sudden now I have two podcasts. I have the God Center Concept, which and then I have the Kingdom Crossroads. So we that's how I got the Kingdom Crossroads is I have now taken that over from uh Pastor Bob, and then of course his evangelism radio station. That's uh uh Thomas Chappelle has that as well, and our show airs on there, and so just so you guys are aware, our show airs on there at 10:30 a.m. Eastern on Sundays. We also have a Monday and a Wednesday time slots, so we've got you can hear the podcast on there. I also post some of my own messaging on there, as well as we have our podcast, so we also have a TV show on the Now Network, and so that's uh that's another piece, the God Center Concept TV show. And then we have the God Center Concept Discipleship series. We've put out our first book, T.S. Wright, Victory in Seven, the God Center Concept Discipleship Series. It is on Amazon.com, and this will stay on shelves for a little bit. And I I say that fig figuratively, it'll stay on the web link until we also have TBN is uh gonna publish one of my books called Embracing the Truth. When TBN publishes that, this one is coming off. I'm pulling this off, so this is a limited time offer. Go and get your victory.

SPEAKER_00:

Now you sound like the sham wow guy.

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly. And I'm actually and I'm actually being serious, it is limited. So we uh our goal is to sell a hundred and fifty thousand copies of these. You can buy them for$9.99 on your Kindle or$14.99 off of Amaz both off Amazon, of course. You want the Kindle version, it's$9.99. You want the paperback, it is$14.99. And it really is the start of the entire process of how we approach the ministry. We also, in our just in our title and total entire discipleship series, there'll be actually three full books coming out. The first one's Embracing the Truth. We already have our uh the we're in post-production now and starting into the distribution phase. So we're getting really close to setting the release date, and we are very excited. So it's going to come out here in early sometime 2026, Embracing the Truth, T.S. Right, the God Center Concept Discipleship Series. Make sure you get your copy when that comes out as well. And we uh as we continue to move on, we are now getting ready to launch our grassroots movement called the Gospel Is. And that grassroots movement is taking our discipleship series. And for us to start going to different locations across the country and start planting disciples, just like organizations plant churches, we're gonna be planting disciples. We're now looking for churches that we're gonna be partnering with here in northwest Arkansas, where I live, and then we're also gonna start going out to other locations as we are uh set to do that. We're not sure if we're gonna start in the spring or in the summer, but we will start in one of those time frames when we start going other to other locations and and working on planting disciples in those areas.

SPEAKER_00:

So yeah, you said a couple things there. Like first, again, chance for a pun.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh-oh, here we go.

SPEAKER_00:

You said now network, not the new, not MS Embeciles, the MS Now, but right? So yeah, please don't go on there.

SPEAKER_01:

No, don't go and be don't go to MBC or MSNBC. We're not a political talk show. Um who I am. Yeah. You you have some political talk, and I can certainly talk some politics with you, but as I do.

SPEAKER_00:

Biblical community versus worldly communism. Exactly. Two totally different things. And the other thing you mentioned was church history, which isn't always Christ history. I have a before it's news.com piece. Did Jesus contradict himself? Well, the answer is no. Like, did Jesus ever contradict himself? No, humans in our frailty sometimes get things wrong. Jesus never said, He said, uh you will be the rock on which the foundation of my church will be no my church, a church, not a billion different denominational sex. No, it's humans that did all that. It's humans that created a billion different versions of the Bible for their own manipulation and power reasons.

SPEAKER_01:

So I want you guys to think about what I'm going to say here. If you read chapters two and three of the book of Revelation, those seven churches, Jesus gives at least some level of admonishment to five of them. And he gives warnings to all of them. I mean, he he has his own way of issuing those warnings. Some are very direct, some are more subtle, but all seven, that means he anticipated that the human element would come into play into the church and would have an impact. But I and I tell you this though, and remember this God has a long history of working with very flawed people. Because if he didn't choose flawed people, he couldn't choose anybody. Who would he choose?

SPEAKER_00:

Amen to that, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Paul calls himself the greatest sinner of all time. Now, let's let's think about this. We've had the hit we've had the uh we've had Hitler, we've had Joseph Stalin, you know, we've had Genghis Khan. We can go right down of these vicious dictators and tyrants, and Paul calls himself the worst of all sinners. Remember that. But here's the thing what Paul is getting to is that anyone can be changed by God, and salvation is available to anyone who will surrender to Christ.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm gonna go back to something you said. I made myself a note for when I edit plant seeds. I have a show about memes, and the meme is planting seeds, right? Amen. Right? It is our job to plant seeds. It is then up to God to water and fertilize and change hearts and minds. We need to remember our role. As you said, anyone can change, and we need to be part of that process. But that's right, like Matthew 7, really condemn that lest ye be condemned. Final judgment is for the Lord. Amen. We can only do so much, the rest is God's realm. And the other thing I made myself a note to insert Matthew 23. Dennis Quaid, I'm kind of a bit jealous. He's he came up with a term before I could, calls it churchianity. Again, it's the human nature thing. And just recently on the next door app, I got into an argument with someone who's leaving a church to found their own church of woke, in my opinion, not a church of Christ, a humanist club, right? Dennis Quaid invented the term churchanity. Just because it's a building with a steeple doesn't make it a church of Christ. It's a humanist club.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

It's a church of woke. It's a church of, ah, let's just do things that feel good, church, and forget the tough love parts of the Bible Jesus spoke to Matthew 23, vipers, snakes, blind guides.

SPEAKER_01:

So Jesus was very clear about truth. All right. And so look, and if you actually get into our discipleship series, the first thing after we get through the foundational process, and the actual first part of the foundational process is truth. Guys, everything starts with truth.

SPEAKER_00:

You honor, integrity.

SPEAKER_01:

Yep. Yeah, but it's not about my truth. It's not even about my honesty, it is about God's truth, only God's truth. That is where everything starts. In Revelation chapter 3, verse 18. Buy from me, I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire. Well, gold is the truth, is what it represents. Being refined by fire is taking the truth and intertwining it into your spirit that turns into your faith. So this is the refining part is the building of your faith. You're taking the truth, and it's being refined inside you like gold, like fire to gold, as it's being purified, and it that is where your faith starts. It starts with God's truth. Look, I know people want to talk about God's love, and God's love is amazing, but it does not, God's love comes from his truth. All right. Mercy comes from truth. Grace comes from truth.

SPEAKER_00:

Loving your child as a parent means discipline. That's right. You have you can't just be their friend, and that goes back to Quaid's church and this guy on next door who wants to create another yet more watered-down church. That's right. Right? Some want what I call the kumbaya Jesus. Only sit around the campfire singing kumbaya, right? All right. No, the tough love parts of the Bible have to be taught, have to be learned, have to be adhered to. It all matters. You don't get to just take the kumbayar part of Jesus and forget the other parts.

SPEAKER_01:

It's so important that we remember that without God's truth, we got nothing. We have no foundation to stand on. And we have to submit to the truth. We have to submit to his truth. If you don't submit to his truth, what are you submitting to? You're submitting to something else. That's idolatry. Yeah. The Bible would call that idolatry. That's what that's what it would be defined as. We don't want to live in idolatry. You know, we talk about a lot the second commandment. Well, we got to love each other. That's true. And I agree with that. First of all, let's define love. Let's define what that is. And we need to define it according to God's perspective, not ours. Love is not comfort, okay? To God, love is equated to faith and trust and obedience. That's where God equates love. And so, and the first commandment is still the most important. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and all your might. You've got to love him first. Without loving him and embracing his truth, going right back to the title of the book, and there's 20 lessons in there that will help you dive in to basic truth that you need to adhere to, to understanding how you're motivated, what drives that, all these different pieces of truth that you really need to have to be able to walk and disciple others. But we have our first needs to be our we ourselves first need to be discipled. And so the book series is really geared towards that. And you can do it individually. It's great as a discipleship group study. Um, you know, I know some people in their they call them small groups or life groups or whatever. We focus it around understanding what true discipleship is, and then after you finish embracing the truth, we'll have two other books. Book two has two different standards that we teach by, and then the last book will be the last standard. So we've got those coming out. Those are all gonna come out in 2026.

SPEAKER_00:

Now you sound like the Sham Wow guy again. But wait, but wait, there's more.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that's right, exactly. So hey, we're we're you guys didn't realize that you were gonna be on what is it, QVN? Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of those.

SPEAKER_00:

What are you? The Church of Scientology where you gotta or Scientology, right? You gotta keep buying revisions of Ron L. Hopefully. Oh my gosh. Whole other problem there.

SPEAKER_01:

But yeah, the Bible is your source.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, you mentioned faith and to tie it back to my kumbaya wanting the whole that the whole reason I coined Christitutionalists as a trademark term and a a community as a thing going forward like you're doing, a ministry, or as I joke, a largest tree. Uh some wanting to think Jesus as a former IT guy is a master password. Uh right, oh, just type in Jesus. I get to go to the pearly gates and just type in Jesus. No, the whole Bible in full context. Yeah, blood, born of the blood, saved, I am saved. But Jesus is not a master password. The book of life. Will you be in it? You shall be known by your fruits. That means you gotta do things. Faith without works is meaningless. Sowing, you must sow to reap. These are actions, not just what hot air spews from your mouth.

SPEAKER_01:

Amen. And so, you know, one of the things I'm gonna I'm gonna add to that too is that, and and you guys need to adhere to what he's saying, is that the spirit will lead you, the Holy Spirit will lead you. But free will, a free will, but you still have to obey. You gotta listen and walk with him. Obedience to the spirit. And how do we what is what is somebody would ask me, what is the first steps of that? And I'm gonna say, Well, you need to understand the spiritual disciplines. What are those? Well, number one, are we are we willing to pray? Are we gonna spend time in prayer with the Lord? Number two, are we gonna get into his word? And then number three, are we going to spend time praying his word? You need to pray his word because that is so important. And and and what I what I will tell you, one of the first things you need to do if you've already received Christ, is is number one, start with the book of John. Just read the book of John. But also go to Revelation chapters one through five. Don't read this like you're trying to study end-time prophecy. What you're gonna do is you're gonna look and look at all the declarations of Jesus, how he declares, how he declares himself, of who he is. You need to learn who Christ is. Everybody says it's about our identity in Christ. Well, that's true, that helps. But if we don't know who Christ is first, then we don't understand what's building our identity. We have to come to the Lord first and understand who he is.

SPEAKER_00:

And again, his truth, not what exactly not a delusional humanist. Oh, but I prefer it be that way. I want it delusion versus reality. I'm gonna make myself a note on that. I also made notes on the Adams quote constitution is wholly inadequate for a non-faith moral people. And also, my only thing necessary for evil prevail, good people do nothing. Again, I demand we act, not just talk. You've got to walk the walk, not just talk the talk. But time has flown by. So, what site is the preeminent site most you would want people draw to go to and then learn about all these other things?

SPEAKER_01:

So I would go right now. We've got a couple of sites, but I would go to tswrightspeaks.com. And of course, my last name is W-R-I-G-H-T, but I'd go to tswritespeaks.com. You can also go to the godcenterconcept.com, but it needs to be updated. It's not updated with all the new stuff yet. Um, so I've got two sites right now that are that are only so much time in a day, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01:

So we're we're gonna work on we've got to work on the God Center Concept site. We're gonna get that updated. Um, and then of course, go to just go to Amazon.com. And of course, on TS Right Speaks, if you scroll down, it has the uh it has the connection you can get on Amazon and buy this book. All right. I'm gonna tell you guys right now, and I'm not trying to be a QVN or HSN uh infomercial here, but guys, seriously, this book is not going to be out that long. As soon as Embracing the Truth hits get they set the release date, I'm pulling this book off like a week before. Uh you know, we're gonna approximately a week before, maybe a couple days before, but we're not gonna keep them up.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, normally I would say I don't know when this will air, it'll be a while, and probably would have been a couple months from now. But since there's time-sensitive information, sure, I'm gonna bump you. Apologies to everybody else, but I'm likely gonna bump you into the rotation here so that it gets out sooner. So thank you, T.S. Wright. Again, if loving you is wrong, I don't want to be right.

SPEAKER_01:

Man, oh my gosh. Hey, when I when I teach, make sometimes I I prefer them to call me coach right because I'm a former coach, but sometimes they'll call me Mr. Wright because I teach civic psychology and sociology at a at a local high school here.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, you you're married, so you're already Mr. Wright for the one woman. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01:

Mr. Wright is just really weird. So I I really prefer when they call me coach right.

SPEAKER_00:

All right, thank you, T.S. Wright.

SPEAKER_01:

Have a good day. Take care, God bless. And hey, go forth in total surrender to the one who owns and reigns over all creation and let the great harvest begin.

SPEAKER_00:

Please be free to make me toist her. Let's you like and subscribe to Christitutionalist politics podcast and share episodes. We need your help. Thank you for having tuned in to another Christitutionalist podcast show. I really appreciate that you stop by. Again, please like, share, subscribe. We need you to help spread the constitutionalist movement. Thank you again. Take care. God bless. Love you all.

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Joseph M Lenard

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