The American Soul
The American Soul
Speaking Truth in Love: How the Body of Christ Grows United
We explore the importance of regular spiritual self-examination and biblical literacy as foundations for discernment in a world full of deception. Our daily habits reveal our true priorities, challenging us to align our actions with our professed values of faith and family.
• Taking time for a daily spiritual "audit" of how we spend our time and energy
• Reading scripture daily as protection against deception and cultural manipulation
• Understanding Ephesians 4 on unity in the body of Christ and spiritual maturity
• Speaking truth in love, even when it requires difficult conversations
• Recognizing America's historical purpose as "a city on a hill" pointing to Christ
• Medal of Honor recipient James Bell and his service during the Indian Campaigns
• John Adams' vision for America as a light to other nations
If you're looking for clean reading material for children or grandchildren similar to The Hobbit or Narnia, check out my Countryside series available on Amazon. The Kindle version is currently available for 99 cents, with paperback and hardback options also available. I'd be grateful if you'd leave a review if you enjoy it.
The American Soul Podcast
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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 y'all joining me, giving me a little bit of your time and attention, a little piece of your day. Hopefully it will give us all some extra tools for our toolbox, as we used to say in the Marine Corps, and hopefully it'll bring our nation and ourselves a little closer to God and Jesus Christ. For those of y'all who continue to share the podcast, thank you For those of y'all who continue to pray for me and for the podcast, thank you very much, 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 all the many blessings that you bestow upon us. Help us to see what you want us to do each day, father. Give us the wisdom to see that and the courage to act on it. Give us the wisdom to see that and the courage to act on it. Help us to remember that, because of your son, we can come boldly and confidently into your presence, not because of anything we've done, but because of the merit of his life. Thank you again, father, for all of the blessings, most of all the promise of eternal life with you in heaven because of your son Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1:Be with those who are hurting around the world, father, because they serve your son. Help us to offer whatever aid and comfort we can to them. Be with the poor and the needy, the widow and the orphan. Help us to offer whatever we can to them, and to do so not with just words, but with actions. Be with those listening to the podcast. Be with their families. Be with those who are married. Bless their marriages. Be with those listening to the podcast. Be with their families. Be with those who are married. Bless their marriages. Be with those who have children. Guide them, raising them to know you, father, and your Son Jesus Christ. Guide our teachers and our educators as they go back to school around the nation, whether it's homeschool or public school or private school. Be with the students and the teachers and staff. Fill our schools with your Holy Spirit, father. Help us to turn back to you at every level and please guide my words here. In your Son's name, we pray Amen.
Speaker 1:Have you made time for God today? Have you made time to read his word. Have you made time to pray, to talk to him, to listen to him? Is he at the top of your priority list or the bottom, or somewhere in the middle, or is he not even on it? You know how we spend our time and energy, folks. That's what shows what our priorities truly are. If we spend hours each day on our phone and scrolling social media and watching sports and working out, watching TV, then that's what's important to us. It doesn't really matter what we say. The truth is in our actions. The same is true if we spend time with God each day, praying, reading the Bible, seeking His will, if we spend time loving our spouse each day, if we spend time interacting with our kids, then those are our priorities and we ought to look at that each day. We ought to reflect on that and ask ourselves you know, okay, what did I spend time on today?
Speaker 1:You know you do audits in business. I mean across the board. You do audits to see how you're spending your money, how you're spending your time, how you're spending your resources, if you're doing the job you're supposed to be doing right. We need to kind of do a daily audit of ourselves, particularly in our faith and our marriage, because those ought to be our top two priorities before anything else even remotely comes close. And so, you know, do a little daily audit. Ask yourself, at the end of the day, how you spent those resources that God gave you, because when you give your time and energy away, folks, it's gone. You can't get it back.
Speaker 1:Ephesians 4, verses 1-16 be humble and gentle, be patient with each other, making allowance for each other's faults because of your love. Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace, for there is one body and one Spirit. Just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all in all and living through all. However, he has given each one of us a special gift through the generosity of Christ. That is why the scriptures say when he ascended to the heights, he led a crowd of captives and gave gifts to his people. Notice that it says he ascended. This clearly means that Christ also descended to our lowly world, and the same one who descended is the one who ascended higher than all the heavens so that he might fill the entire universe with himself. Now, these are the gifts Christ gave to the church the apostles, the prophets, evangelists, and the pastors and teachers.
Speaker 1:Their responsibility is to equip God's people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to set such unity in our faith and knowledge of God's Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ. Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won't be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.
Speaker 1:Psalm 68, verses 19-35 Praise the Lord, praise God, our Savior, for each day he carries us in His arms. Our God is a God who saves. The Sovereign Lord rescues us from death. But God will smash the heads of his enemy, crushing the skulls of those who love their guilty ways. The Lord says I will bring my enemies down from Bashan. I will bring them up from the depths of the sea. You, my people, will wash your feet in their blood and even your dogs will get their share.
Speaker 1:Your procession has come into view, o God, the procession of my God and King as he goes into the sanctuary. Singers are in front, musicians behind. Between them are young women playing tambourines. Praise God, all you people of Israel. Praise the Lord, the source of Israel's life. Look, the little tribe of Benjamin leads the way. Then comes the great throng of rulers from Judah and all the rulers of Zebulun and Naphtali. Summon your might, o God. Display your power, o God, as you have in the past.
Speaker 1:The kings of the earth are bringing tribute to your temple in Jerusalem. Rebuke these enemy nations, these wild animals lurking in the reeds, this herd of bulls among the weaker calves. Make them bring bars of silver and humble tribute. Scatter the nations that delight in war. Let Egypt come with gifts of precious metals. Let Ethiopia bring tribute to God. Sing to God, you, kingdoms of the earth, sing praises to the Lord. Sing to the one who rides across the ancient heavens. His mighty voice thundering from the sky, tell everyone about God's power. His majesty shines down on Israel. His strength is mighty in the heavens. God is awesome in his sanctuary. The God of Israel gives power and strength to his people. Praise be to God.
Speaker 1:Proverbs 24, 3-4. A house is built by wisdom and becomes strong through good sense, through knowledge. Its rooms are filled with all sorts of precious riches and valuables. If you go back to Ephesians 4, verses 11 and 12. Now these are the gifts God gave to the church apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God's people to do His work and build up the church, the body of Christ. Folks, it doesn't say Roman Catholic. It doesn't say Baptist or Methodist or Church of Christ or Greek Orthodox. It doesn't say any denomination to belong to your denomination. They're putting words that aren't in Scripture, they're dividing the body of Christ and they're doing the devil's work.
Speaker 1:You go down here and you look at verse 14. One sentence here we will not be influenced when people try and trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. And then the first part of verse 15,. Instead we will speak the truth and love, growing in every way more and more like Christ. There's two things here. One, we need to read the Bible every day, folks, because that's what makes us discerning. That's Boris Greeley's old quote that we've read so many times on the podcast. It's impossible to mentally or socially enslave a Bible-reading people, and we've become Bible illiterate in America, and that's why it's so easy for us to be tricked and deceived, whether you're talking about a denomination that's obviously going against the Bible or you're talking about people that openly reject God and the Bible. What makes us susceptible to the lies is not knowing the Bible, not reading the Bible, being Bible illiterate.
Speaker 1:And then the second part of this is speak the truth in love. It's never loving to tell somebody a lie, to encourage somebody in a lie or in sin. That's never going to be part of the equation of love. And it doesn't matter whether you're talking about abortion or feminism or no-fault divorce or LGBTQ lifestyles or any other sin gluttony, alcoholism you're never going to be on God's side. Loving, kind, caring, by encouraging people in those sins. We need to speak the truth, lovingly as much as possible, but sometimes lovingly is harsh, folks. Jesus chased people out of the temple with a whip that he had made himself. Sometimes loving is pretty harsh. If you really love the person, you think about parents that really love their kids. They discipline them, and not just with words, folks, they discipline, like Proverbs said, they spank them with the rod. You discipline your children because you love them, because you care about them.
Speaker 1:Medal of Honor for today James Bell, private, highest rank, was sergeant Indian Campaigns, echo Company, 7th US Infantry, us Army. Date 9 July 1876, place Bighorn, montana, usa. Carried dispatches to General Crook at the imminent risk of his life, rensler County, new York. Not awarded. Posthumously Presented December 2, 1876. Born 1845 County, antrim, ireland. Died 1 July 1901, chicago Illinois. Buried Mount Olivet Cemetery 14-S1-2-117, chicago Illinois. James Bell, indian Campaigns Another immigrant folks. Another very good example of the difference between the overwhelming majority of immigrants that we seem to be getting today via illegal and mass immigration versus the immigrants that we have had in the history of our nation that truly loved and suffered for and served this nation.
Speaker 1:John Adams, february 1765, out of his notes for a dissertation on the canon and feudal law no-transcript. Sunday, february the 9th 1772, john Adams in his diary If I would go to hell for an eternal moment or so, I might be knighted Shakespeare. I never have been understood. That particular quote too much folks, I'm not much help there. The one before it, though, is great. That particular quote too much folks, I'm not much help there.
Speaker 1:The one before it, though, is great, and I think it's something that so many want to try and ignore on the left and even, sadly, on the conservative Christian side, is that it seems more than likely that the reason that America has been so successful over her lifetime is because God wanted us to be a light to others, a city shining on a hill, a beacon to him and to Jesus Christ, and if we're not going to do that job, then he's going to find somebody else that will, and it's going to go really poorly for us, and the only way to avoid that is to turn back to him and his son, jesus Christ, and be that blessing to other nations, as John Adams said here, to provide for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind. If you get a chance, also if you're looking for kids or grandkids, some clean reading that you don't have to worry about them reading along the lines of the Hobbit from Tolkien Not that I'm comparing myself to their quality folks, just I'm giving you an idea of what it's like. Or Narnia.
Speaker 1:I wrote a series. I've written a couple books so far. It's called Countryside. You can get it on Amazon, on Kindle, for like 99 cents right now, or you can buy the paperback or hardback. They're both there, too, other places as well, and if you enjoy it and you would leave a review, I would be very grateful for that. 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. Listen, we'll talk to y'all again real soon. Folks Looking forward to it.