What You Do Reveals What You Believe

We challenge how we spend our last 24 hours and connect small daily habits to a faith that shows up in actions. James confronts gossip, speech, and wisdom, while Psalms and Proverbs ground trust and leadership; we close with courage from history and a call to simple steps.

• auditing time and building daily Scripture and prayer habits
• faith expressed through deeds, not deeds earning salvation
• taming the tongue and resisting gossip in homes and marriages
• wisdom from above versus jealousy and ambition
• trust in God amid trouble from Psalm 118
• moral leadership and national stability from Proverbs 28
• Medal of Honor courage as a model for daily boldness
• reassessing Christopher Columbus’s faith and devotion
• practical next steps to align belief and behavior

If you're looking for a family-friendly middle grade read and you get a chance to try out Countryside, I would appreciate it. And if you enjoyed, if you'd leave a review, I would be very grateful. If you can find three or four or five dollars a month to donate to the podcast, if you're enjoying it, get something out of it. I would be very, very grateful for that as well. There's a donation page on the Buzz Sprout website.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome, Gratitude, And Opening Prayer
• 2:42 Audit Your Last 24 Hours
• 4:32 Small Daily Habits Of Faith
• 4:59 James On Faith, Works, And The Tongue
• 9:15 Wisdom From Above Vs Ambition
• 10:00 Psalms And Proverbs On Trust And Leadership
• 12:00 Controlling Gossip And Living Faith
• 14:23 Medal Of Honor: William E. Burkheimer
• 15:35 Reassessing Christopher Columbus’s Faith
• 19:10 Closing, Book Plug, Donations, And Prayer

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, whatever part of the day you're in. Sure do appreciate you joining me, giving me a little bit of your time. 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, very grateful for that. For those of y'all who continue to pray for me and for the podcast. Thank you. Extremely 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 this podcast and share it. Thank you for the time to record it. Please be with them, be with their family. Surround them with your angels, protect them from evil of any kind. Guide our thoughts, Father, our words, our actions. Help us to do your will in all things, to love you with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength. To love our neighbors as ourselves. Be with our leaders, please. Both in the pulpit and in the state. Give them wisdom and courage and a strong faith. Help them to rule in fear of you, Father. Help us all to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly before you. Public school, private school, home school, teachers, coaches, counselors, administrators. Moms at home. Help us to raise our children to know you, Father. Help us to teach them your statutes, your commandments. Help us to turn our nation back to you, Father, and your Son Jesus Christ. Forgive us for rebelling against you, for rejecting you and your son, for turning away from you, Father, please. And please draw near to those of us who are brokenhearted, Father. Help us to feel your presence and guide my words here. Your son's name we pray. Amen. What have you done with your last 24 hours? How have you spent the time? If you looked at a breakdown of your day, you know, on your phone, those of y'all that have smartphones, a lot of them have screen time breakdown, right? By apps. If you broke down your day, what would it look like? How much time did you give to God? Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, how much time did you give to your spouse? To social media, to TV, movies, YouTube, TikTok, sports, workouts, hobbies, friends, parents, children. Are you pleased with the breakdown of your day? And if not, what are you gonna do today, tomorrow, to change that, folks? For example, if it's if it's time with God, read the Bible for three minutes. Pray for three minutes. Just three. Just start with that, folks. And just do it every day until you get the hang of it. Read one proverb, right? I I haven't said this in a long time, but that was Proverbs was a huge book for me as an adult, getting back into scripture. There's 31 Proverbs, there's 31 days in the month. Read a proverb a day. It made a big difference for me. Maybe it will for you. All right. Bible verses, scripture for today, we are going to start with James 218 through 318. Now, someone may argue some people have faith, others have good deeds. But I say, How can you show me your faith if you don't have good deeds? I will show you my faith by my good deeds. You say you have faith, for you believe that there is one God. Good for you. Even the demons believe this, and they tremble in terror. How foolish. Can't you see that faith without good deeds is useless? Don't you remember that our ancestor Abraham was shown to be right with God by his actions when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see, his faith and his actions worked together. His actions made his faith complete. And so it happened just as the scriptures say. Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith. He was even called the friend of God. So you see, we are shown to be right with God by what we do, not by faith alone. Rahab the prostitute is another example. She was shown to be right with God by her actions. When she hid those messengers and sent them safely away by a different road, just as the body is dead without breath, so also faith is dead without good works. Dear brothers and sisters, not many of you should become teachers in the church, for we who teach will be judged more strictly. Indeed, we all make many mistakes. For if we could control our tongues, we would be perfect, and could also control ourselves in every other way. We can make a large horse go wherever we want by means of a small bit in its mouth, and a small rudder makes a huge ship turn wherever the pilot chooses to go, even though the winds are strong. In the same way the tongue is a small thing that makes grand speeches, but a tiny spark can set a great forest on fire, and among all the parts of the body the tongue is a flame of fire. It is a whole world of wickedness corrupting your entire body. It can set your whole life on fire, for it is set on fire by hell itself. People can tame all kinds of animals, birds, reptiles, and fish, but no one can tame the tongue. It is restless and evil, full of deadly poison. Sometimes it praises our Lord and Father, and sometimes it curses those who have been made in the image of God, and so blessing and cursing come pouring out of the same mouth. Surely, my brothers and sisters, this is not right. Does a spring of water bubble out with both fresh water and bitter water? Does a fig tree produce olives or a grapevine produce figs? No, and you can't draw fresh water from a salty spring. If you are wise and understand God's ways, prove it by living an honorable life, doing good works with the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you are bitterly jealous and there is selfish ambition in your heart, don't cover up the truth with boasting and lying, for jealousy and selfishness are not God's wisdom, God's kind of wisdom. Such things are earthly, and spiritual, and demonic. For wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and evil of every kind. But the wisdom from above is first of all pure. It is also peace loving, gentle at all times, and willing to yield to others. It is full of mercy and the fruit of good deeds. It shows no favoritism and is always sincere. And those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of righteousness. Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, His faithful love endures forever. Let all Israel repeat, His faithful love endures forever. Let Aaron's descendants, the priests, repeat, his faithful love endures forever. Let all who fear the Lord repeat, his faithful love endures forever. In my distress I prayed to the Lord and the Lord answered me and set me free. The Lord is for me, so I will have no fear. What can mere people do to me? Yes, the Lord is for me. He will help me. I will look in triumph at those who hate me. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in people. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes. Though hostile nations surround me, I destroyed them all with the authority of the Lord. Yes, they surrounded and attacked me, but I destroyed them all with the authority of the Lord. They swarmed around me like bees. They blazed against me like a crackling fire, but I destroyed them all with the authority of the Lord. My enemies did their best to kill me, but the Lord rescued me. The Lord is my strength and my song. He has given me victory. Songs of joy and victory are sung in the camp of the godly. The strong right arm of the Lord has done glorious things. The strong right arm of the Lord has raised in triumph. The strong right arm of the Lord has done glorious things. I will not die. Instead, I will live to tell what the Lord has done. The Lord has punished me severely, but he did not let me die. Proverbs twenty eight two. When there is moral rot within a nation, its government topples easily. But wise and knowledgeable leaders bring stability. How about that? Is that not us today in America when there is moral rot within a nation? And then verse 18 of Psalm 118, the Lord has punished me severely, but he did not let me die. I need to remember more often, folks, that often the troubles that seem to come my way might very well be the Lord's discipline, and that he disciplines those that he loves. Just like a father, the child, he loves, right? A few things out of James, if I can put them all together, at least two. One of the things that I've been trying to work on lately is controlling my tongue, controlling my mouth, my words, gossip. I don't think we focus on gossip enough. One of the places you see this pretty clearly is marriage, right? We focus on infidelity, as we should, but we focus on that a lot, right? Pornography, sexual immorality, but we don't focus on gossip, which I think often is a different kind of weakness in a marriage. And equally as destructive, right? But the point really is to control our tongues, right? I think one of the important verses here, though, is verse two indeed, we all make mistakes, for if we could control our tongues, we would be perfect and could also control ourselves in every other way. The only person that's ever lived a perfect life, folks, is Jesus Christ. That's it. He's the only one. Nobody else. And anybody else that tells you otherwise, just ask him to prove it in scripture. Ask him to show where it says that any other person even remotely lived a perfect, sinless life. The last thing out of James, you go back to faith, and we have this problem again with faith and deeds, right? Your deeds cannot get you into heaven, folks. If you show up at the gate of heaven and you say, Well, I did all this good stuff, I did all these things in your name, Lord, but you don't have faith. It's not going to help you, folks. But if you have faith, you're going to have good works because that's the proof of your faith, right? Jesus tells us if we really love him, we follow his commands. Well, do we? Then that shows our love for Christ. Right? It's we get this backwards too often. It's not that the actions produce the faith, folks. It's the faith that produces the actions. And it's actions always tell the tell. Do you love your spouse? Well, how do you act? Do you follow your roles and responsibilities as a husband or wife? If you do, then you love your spouse. If you don't, then you don't. Do we love Jesus Christ? Do we follow his commands? To love God with all that we are, to love our neighbors as ourselves. If we do, then we then we do. And if we don't, then we don't. It's kind of like our pastor says so often, and I I, folks, it's not that we're not going to struggle, right? I struggle with this. Everybody struggles with this to some degree, one degree or another. But he says we either trust God or we don't. And sometimes that sounds kind of harsh, but it really is that simple. Medal of Honor for today. See where we're going. William E. Burke William Edward Burkheimer. Captain, highest rank, brigadier general, U.S. Army retired, Philippine Insurrection, third U.S. Artillery, U.S. Army, Medal of Honor Action Date, May 13th, 1899. Place San Miguel de Mayuma, Luzon, Philippine Island. With twelve men charged and routed three hundred of the enemy. Accredited to Iowa, not awarded posthumously, presented july fifteenth, nineteen oh two, born march first, eighteen forty-eight, Somerset, Prairie County, Ohio, died June 10th, 1914, Washington, District of Columbia, buried Arlington National Cemetery, 1TAC 339 Tag WD, Arlington, Virginia, United States. William Edward Berkheimer. So we're going to finish up Columbus today, and I wish that I had remembered actually on Columbus Day, because we could for sure do at least one more day on the podcast. But so often today you hear people condemning Columbus. And there's a lot of problems with that. The fact that they're condemning him from a modern point of view, having never lived at that time period. And far too many people think better of themselves, right? All of us do to a certain degree, but the fact that this man had the courage to go off into the unknown, it's hard to overstate that. What kind of courage and willpower that took and trust in God. But I wanted to read you a comment here from Delas Cassus Casas again, the apostle of the Indies, Bartholomew, in his history of the Indies, he described, talked about Christopher Columbus. In matters of the Christian religion, without doubt, he was a Catholic and of great devotion. For in everything he did or said or sought to begin, he always interposed. In the name of the Holy Trinity, I will do this, or launch this, or this will come to pass. In whatever letter or other thing he wrote, he put at the head, Jesus and Mary be with us on the way. And of these writings of his own in his own hand, I have plenty now in my possession. His oath was sometimes, I swear, by San Fernando, when he sought to affirm something of great importance in his letters, an oath, especially in writings to the sovereigns, he said, I swear this is true. He observed the fasts of the church most faithfully, confessed and made communion often, and read the canonical offices like a church man or member of a religious order, hated blasphemy and profane swearing, seemed very grateful to God for benefits received from the divine hand, wherefore, as in the proverb, he hourly admitted that God had conferred upon him great mercies as upon David. He was extraordinarily zealous for the divine service, he desired and was eager for the conversion of these people Native Americans, and that in every region the faith of Jesus Christ be planted and enhanced. And he was especially affected and devoted to the idea that God should deem him worthy of aiding somewhat in recovering the holy sepulchre. He was a gentleman of great force of spirit, of lofty thoughts, naturally inclined from what we may gather of his life, deeds, writings, and conversation, to undertake worthy deeds and signal enterprises, patient and long suffering, as later shall appear, and a foreigner of injuries, or a forgiver of injuries, sorry, and wish nothing more than that those who offended against him should recognize their errors, and that the delinquents be reconciled with him, most constant and endowed with forbearance in the hardships and adversities which were always occurring, and which were incredible and infinite, ever holding great confidence in divine providence. Sounds like our founding fathers in that, trusting in divine providence. And verily, for what I have heard from him and from my own father who was with him when he returned to colonize Hispaniola in 1493, and from others who accompanied and served him, he held and always kept on terms of intimate fidelity and devotion to the sovereigns. And the last thing I'll read you, folks, is his last words as he died to his son and a few others. I won't try and read you the Latin, but the translation is into your hands, Father, I commend my soul. If you're looking for a family-friendly middle grade read and you get a chance to try out Countryside, I would appreciate it. And if you enjoyed, if you'd leave a review, I would be very grateful. If you can find three or four or five dollars a month to donate to the podcast, if you're enjoying it, get something out of it. I would be very, very grateful for that as well. There's a donation page on the Buzz Sprout website. And I think that's it. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it was in heaven. Give us the stare of 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 evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen. God bless y'all. God bless your families, your marriages if you're married. 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.