What If Patriotism Begins With Prayer?

We ask a blunt question about the last 24 hours and move through Ephesians 5 and Hebrews 11 to show how faith and marriage shape a life and a nation. History and quotes from American voices point to a simple claim: spread the gospel to renew our country.

• time audit as a mirror of belief
• Ephesians 5 framing sacrificial love and respect
• Hebrews 11 defining faith as lived evidence
• science, evidence, and the necessity of belief
• Noah and the hope of unprecedented obedience
• Medal of Honor story of George W. Beigler
• benevolence societies and moral citizenship
• Francis Scott Key on Christian patriotism
• Mercy Otis Warren on impossible revolutionary odds
• practical steps for prayer, family, and service

If you are looking for a fun, family-friendly middle grade read, countryside, if you would check it out, I would appreciate it. And if you're enjoying the podcast, if you're getting something out of it each day, if you can find a way to donate $3 or $5 a month, you can find the donation page on the Buzz Sprout website for the podcast.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome, Thanks, And Opening Prayer
• 2:39 Audit Your Last 24 Hours
• 3:44 Ephesians 5 On Marriage
• 5:34 Hebrews 11: What Faith Looks Like
• 11:05 Science, Evidence, And Belief
• 14:45 Noah, Resurrection, And Hope
• 18:24 Medal Of Honor: George W. Beigler
• 20:53 Benevolence Societies And National Character

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 to 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. Hopefully, it'll give us all some extra tools for our toolbox. For those of y'all who continue to share the podcast and tell others about it, 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 your love and your mercy, your grace and your forgiveness of sins. Thank you for the people that listen to the podcast. Please be with them, be with their families. Bless the marriages of those who are married. Guide those who have children. Help us to raise our children to know you, Father. Help us to get our priorities in the right order, to get our priorities in your order. Be with our leaders, 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. Be with our judges. Help them to be honest. Help all of our leaders to abhor bribes and deceit. Corruption. Be with our educators across the nation, Father. At home, public school, private school, charter schools. Give them wisdom and courage and a strong faith. Help us to turn our nation back to you. Help us to spread the gospel of your son, Jesus Christ. Be with those who are hurting, Father, those who are still alone, who are anxious, fearful, injured. Bill comfort them. Be with those in prison, comfort them. Help us to care for the widow and the orphan, the poor and the needy. Be with our military, our law enforcement, the firefighters, EMS. Keep them safe, Father. Bless them. Bring them home to their families. Be with their families. Amen. What did you spend your last 24 hours on? If you had to tabulate, if you look back, look back at your last 24 hours, what did you give your time to? God? Spouse? Sports? TV? Social media? Workouts? Reading? Is that what you want your life to portray to others? If somebody could look at your life from the outside in, are you giving them the evidence of who you are that you want to be giving? Are you showing the world? Well, you are showing the world who you are. Is it what you want to be showing? Marriage verse for today. I think we finished up Song of Solomon the other day, so uh Ephesians chapter five, verse twenty-two through thirty-three. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In the same way husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body just as Christ does the church, for we are members of his body. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery, but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. Anytime somebody's giving you marriage advice, folks, you need to go back to these verses and make sure that it lines up with that. And if it doesn't, you need to move along to a different source of marriage advice. Whatever it is, it's got to line up with. Whatever practical application somebody's telling you, it's got to line up with scripture. Hebrews chapter 11, verse 1 through 16. Faith shows the reality of what we hope for. It is the evidence of things we cannot see. Through their faith, the people in days of old earned a good reputation. By faith we understand that the entire universe was formed at God's command, that what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen. It was by faith that Abel brought a more acceptable offering to God than Cain did. Abel's offering gave evidence that he was a righteous man, and God showed his approval of his gifts. Although Abel is long dead, he still speaks to us by his example of faith. It was by faith that Enoch was taken up to heaven without dying. He disappeared because God took him. For before he was taken up, he was known as a person who pleased God. And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him. It was by faith that Noah built a large boat to save his family from the flood. He obeyed God who warmed warned him about things that had never happened before. By his faith Noah condemned the rest of the world, and he received the righteousness that comes by faith. It was by faith that Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave home and go to another land that God would give him as an inheritance. He went without knowing where he was going, and even when he reached the land, God promised him he lived there by faith, for he was like a foreigner living in tents, and so did Isaac and Jacob who inherited the same promise. Abraham was confidently looking forward to a city with eternal foundations, a city designed and built by God. It was by faith that even Sarah was able to have a child, though she was barren and was too old. She believed that God would keep his promise. And so a whole nation came from this one man who was as good as dead, a nation with so many people that like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore, there is no way to count them. All these people died still believing what God had promised them. They did not receive what was promised, but they saw it all from a distance and welcomed it. They agreed that they were foreigners and nomads here on earth. Obviously, people who say such things are looking forward to a country they can call their own. If they had longed for the country they came from, they could have gone back, but they were looking for a better place, a heavenly home. That is why God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. Psalm one ten verses one through seven. The Lord said to my Lord, Sit in the place of honor at my right hand until I humble, humble your enemies, making them a footstool under your feet. The Lord will extend your powerful kingdom from Jerusalem. You will rule over your enemies when you go to war. Your people will serve you willingly. You are arrayed in holy garments, and your strength will be renewed each day like the morning dew. The Lord has taken an oath and will not break his vow. You are a priest forever in the order of Mochizedek. The Lord stands at your right hand to protect you, he will strike down many kings when his anger erupts. He will punish the nations and fill their lands with corpses. He will shatter heads over the whole earth, but he himself will be refreshed from brooks along the way. He will be victorious. Proverbs twenty seven fourteen. A loud and cheerful greeting early in the morning will be taken as a curse. It always kind of makes me smile a little bit, folks, Proverbs there, because uh I don't necessarily have the most mourning people in my house. And sometimes they don't really take it too politely when I greet them cheerfully early in the morning. Hebrews chapter 11, man, there's a lot of great stuff here, folks. Uh faith, the reality of what we hope for is evidence of things we cannot see. Folks, anybody that tells you that they don't have faith, especially the people, I I say especially just because they try and make it out like they can prove it. Folks, I've done the work in grad school in science and geology, which is an earth science. And as one of my professors used to love to say, you pay your money, you take your chances. Nobody was alive throughout geologic history. So when they tell you we know for a fact that it was this way, they don't because they weren't there. We're taking evidence. We're making an educated guess. I would argue it's a pretty good guess. But we weren't there. It's like I used to tell kids when I was around them when they were taking tests, you know, you see this little fossil, and somebody, it's a trilobite fossil, and somebody tells you, your professor says, Hey, if you want 100 on this test, that little bitty fossil right there is a horse. That's what you call it. You want to make a good grade on the test, that's what you call it. My point was just that just like we have faith in God, those people that claim that they don't have any faith, that it's science, that it's proved, they have faith in science. Everybody has faith in something, folks. God or something else. And there's a lot of other something else's. Verse 6, it's impossible to please God without faith. Anyone that wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him. On the Christian side, those people that tell you that they know for a fact that God exists or that uh Christ was raised for the dead, unless they've had a vision straight from God, they've seen God face to face, they can't tell you that they know that for a fact. Unless they went back in time and they saw Jesus Christ raised from the dead, they can't tell you that they know Christ was raised from the dead. There's a lot of evidence for it. There's a great book that I'm rereading again, The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. There's a lot of really good evidence out there, but it's by faith. Again, it's a choice. Verse 7, Noah, the flood. God warned him about things that had never happened before. You know, Jesus Christ is going to come back someday. That's never going to have happened before, and it's never going to happen again. You have to have faith that that's going to occur. There's no precedent. There's nowhere where Christ has come back and taken everyone with him and judged the earth. And it won't ever happen again. That's going to be the one time in all of history that that happens. You have to have faith, just like Noah with the flood. Verse 13: all these people died still believing what God had promised them. They didn't receive it, but they saw it, right? They knew that they were foreigners and nomads here on this earth. And they were looking forward to a home because they didn't have it already. I know I spent a lot more time on this than I normally do, folks, but I think that chapter is really encouraging for a lot of us. It should be really encouraging for a lot of us as Christians. Hebrews chapter 11. Get a chance, might go back and read that some more. I think that's, as I said, really encouraging. All right, Medal of Honor for today is George W. Wesley, George Wesley Beagler. Beigler. Rank Captain, highest rank, Lieutenant Colonel, Philippine Insurrection, U.S. Volunteers, twenty eighth Infantry, U.S. Army, october twenty first, nineteen hundred, near Lowak, Luzon, Philippine Islands, with but nineteen men resisted and at close quarters defeated three hundred of the enemy. Accredited to Terrahot, Vigo County, Indiana, not awarded posthumously, presented march eleventh, nineteen oh two, born may thirty first, eighteen sixty eight, Terrehot, Vigo County, Indiana, died april second, nineteen twenty nine, Presidio of San Francisco, California. Buried the Hollywood Cemetery, 6, Tac 170, Tac 3, Hollywood, California, location of the Metal Congressional Medal of Honor Society, Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. George Wesley Beagler. With 19 men resisted and defeated 300 of the enemy. Couple quotes. This is a quote out of the American Patriots Bible, and this quote is in one of the little sections titled The Bible and Benevolence Societies, and it's talking about the impact and the Second Great Awakening and the different organizations that were created. American Education Society, American Bible Society, Sunday School Union, all of these in the period from 1800 to 1830s. And this is the last little paragraph here in this section. Members of the evangelical movement of the 19th century considered themselves as American patriots who subscribed to the views of the founders that religion was a necessary spring for Republican government. In that light, the benevolent societies assumed the role of helping to form the virtuous citizenry of which the founders spoke. The conversion of souls was also seen as helping to save the Republic. For instance, the American Home Missionary Society assured its supporters in 1826 that we are doing the work of patriotism no less than Christianity. Folks, if you really want to save America, right? You got to spread the gospel. That's the only, only way that we can really save our nation is to spread the gospel. Another quote here by Francis Scott Key, who of course is the star-spangled banner author. The patriot who fills himself in the service of God, who acknowledges him in all his ways, has the promise of almighty direction and will find his word in his greatest darkness, a lantern to his feet and a lamp unto his paths. He will therefore seek to establish for his country in the eyes of the world such a character as shall make her not unworthy of the name of a Christian nation. That should be our goal today, folks, as patriots, is to make our country have such a character, right? To not make her unworthy or make her not unworthy of the name of a Christian nation. A couple more here. These are from Mercy Otis Warren out of her book History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution. Really, I think just one that I'm going to read. Thus, this is a paragraph here. Thus, when the hostilities commenced and a war was denounced against the colonies, they had innumerable difficulties to surmount. Several of the most formidable powers of Europe had been invited by Britain to aid the cruel purposes of administration, either by the loan of auxiliaries or by a refusal of supplies to the infant states, now struggling alone against a foe whose power, pride, and success had often made the nations tremble. On a retrospect of the critical situation of America, it is astonishing she did not fall at the threshold. She had new governments to erect in the several states, her legislatures to form, and her civil police to regulate on untrodden ground. She had her armies to establish and funds to provide for their payment. She had her alliances to negotiate, new sources of trade to strike out and a navy to begin, while the thunder of Britain was alarming her coasts, the savages threatening her borders, and the troops of George III with the sword uplifted pushing their excrable purpose to exterminate the last vestige of freedom. Again, folks, one of the things over the years of doing this podcast that has strengthened my faith in God as an individual and also my faith in God's purpose for America is there's just so many times where we should have stumbled and fallen. There's so many times that we made it through and we we just shouldn't have. There's no other, no other way to say it. And one of these times is just the problems that our founders had to overcome so many times during the revolution, but talking about this one in particular at the very beginning, all the things that they had to do politically, militarily, just everything across the board, foreign policy, domestic policy. And they were facing one of the preeminent powers in Europe. It's just mind-boggling. There's just no way that we should have survived that. No way we could have without God's hand guiding us. If you are looking for a fun, family-friendly middle grade read, uh countryside, if you would check it out, I would appreciate it. And if you enjoy it, if you'd leave a review, there's two books in the series working on the third one. And if you're enjoying the podcast, if you're getting something out of it each day, if you can find a way to donate$3 or$5 a month, you can find the donation page on the Buzz Sprout website for the podcast. And I would greatly appreciate that too. 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 evil, for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen. God bless y'all. God bless your families, God bless your marriages if you're married. God bless America. God bless your nation, wherever you are around the world. Listen, folks. We'll talk to y'all again real soon. Looking forward to it.