Are you tired of hearing the myth about separation of church and state? Are you tired of being told that America is not and never was a Christian nation? Do you want to have the information to stand up for the truth and fight back against this fundamental lie that’s invading our culture and education? Each week, host Jesse Cope will dive into quotes and excerpts from our great leaders and documents throughout our history showing how in President Woodrow Wilson’s words “America was born a Christian nation.” We have the truth on our side and together we can absolutely turn our nation around. Follow Jesse @jtcope4 on X for daily doses of the truth to help fight back. Subscribe to The American Soul and share the show with someone who needs to hear it. We're on a mission to spread the truth and get our nation back on the right track — and you can help us make this possible.
“Guard me like the apple of Your eye.” That line from Psalm 17 isn’t just beautiful, it’s a lifeline when you’re trying to make sense of danger, betrayal, and the kind of violence that reminds us the world can turn dark fast. We start with Scripture that teaches us how to pray when we feel surrounded, asking God to bend down, listen, and show His unfailing love in practical, protective ways.
Then we move into one of the most argued-over passages on Christian marriage: Ephesians 5:22–33. I read the text plainly and talk about what happens when churches avoid preaching the roles and responsibilities God gives to husbands and wives. I also push hard on the idea of accountability, especially for husbands, because leadership in the home is never a free pass. It’s a call to love, nourish, and cherish the way Christ loves His church, even when culture calls that “outdated.”
To round out the spiritual foundation, we read Romans 7 and sit with its uncomfortable honesty: God’s law is good, but sin twists what is good into condemnation. That helps explain why we can know the right thing and still fight our old nature, in marriage and everywhere else. We finish with Proverbs 19 and a powerful piece of American Christian heritage, a prayer offered to the First Continental Congress that openly names Jesus Christ, followed by a direct challenge: no party and no policy can replace repentance and a real turning back to God.
If this strengthens you, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a five-star review so more people can find the show. What part hit you the hardest: Psalm 17, Ephesians 5, or Romans 7?
Psalm 17 Starting with verse 6. I am praying to you because I know you will answer, O God. Bend down and listen as I pray. Show me your unfailing love and wonderful ways. By your mighty power you rescue those who seek refuge from their enemies. Guard me as you would guard your own eyes. Hide me in the shadow of your wings. Protect me from wicked people who attack me from murderous enemies who surround me.
Azea Zubair. Muslim woman and husband. She was a creator of a Muslim television network. Ironically, which aimed to promote positive portrayals of Muslims. The wife filed for divorce, obtained a restraining order. Husband lured her to the studio, the TV studio. Attacked her with two hunting knives. Stabbed her more than forty times, and then the editor.
Sure do appreciate y'all joining me, giving me a little bit of your time and attention, a little piece of your day. For those of y'all who continue to share the podcast with others, leave reviews. Thank you very much for those of y'all who continue who have found the countryside book series and who have left reviews there. Thank you also. Most of all, though, for those of y'all who continue to pray for me and for the podcast. Thank you very much. Very grateful for your prayers. Need them and want them. So thank you. 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 all your many blessings, Father, the ones we admit and the ones we don't for whatever reason. Help us to love you with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength. To love our neighbors as ourselves. Help us to help those who have less than we do. Help us to help our country turn back to you. Be with those listening to the podcast, Father, wherever they are around the world, across the nation, here in America. Be with their families. Bless their marriages, bless their children. Draw close to those who are brokenhearted, who are anxious, who feel alone and abused, abandoned. Be with those around the world who are suffering for the sake of your son Jesus Christ. Help us to encourage each other, to support each other. Help us to do your will, Father, above all else. God, my words are pleased in your Son's name. We pray. Amen.
Marriage verses for today, Ephesians 5, 22 through 33. 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 own husbands and 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 must also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
And I brought up the fact that I there are a large number of women in the church today that rebel against their roles and responsibilities. That's just blatantly obvious. You just look at the state of marriage. Huge chunk. You don't even hear the sermons preached on the roles and responsibilities of women in the majority of churches. But I acknowledge when we're talking about this, there's definitely men who reject their roles and responsibilities, for sure. My argument has always been that the majority of men, though, when they're called on it or when you talk about it, they don't try and pretend that it's okay. They may not change their behavior, which is not okay either. But they're not going to sit there and try and pretend that not loving their wife as their own body, not nourishing and cherish her, cherishing her, not being faithful, keeping the marriage fit, pure, et cetera, et cetera. Whatever, whichever verses you want to talk about, they're not going to sit there and say, oh, well, it's that's old-fashioned, that's out of date, out of context, et cetera, et cetera. And this friend of mine said, you know, I think there are quite a few men that would say they don't have a responsibility to do that. I have even less sympathy for those men if that's true. If if my friend is right. And there are a any number of men who actually want to go along like feminism does and pretend that their roles and responsibilities as a husband are somehow no longer applicable. There's zero excuse, even less excuse than for the women, because husbands are supposed to lead, the men are supposed to lead. There's absolutely no excuse for pretending as a husband that these roles that are laid out here, there's no excuse for the women either, but at the end of the day, the husband is the leader. And so even less excuse for them. I think it very much, I think, falls into line when God in the New Testament, when he's talking about the fact that a lot of people shouldn't want to become leaders because leaders will be judged to a higher standard. Inside the church, I think you can make that argument very easily inside the marriage, which should concern a lot of us as husbands. And it also should make us even more grateful for the forgiveness, the grace, the mercy through Jesus Christ.
Romans 7. Now, dear brothers and sisters, you who are familiar with the law, don't you know that the law applies only while a person is living? For example, when a woman marries, that law binds her to her husband as long as he is alive. But if he dies, the laws of marriage no longer apply to her. So while her husband is alive, she would be committing adultery if she married another man, but if her husband dies, she is free from that law and does not commit adultery when she remarries. So, my dear brothers and sisters, this is the point. You died to the power of the law when you died with Christ, and now you are united with the one who was raised from the dead. As a result, we can produce a harvest of good deeds for God. When we were controlled by our old nature, sinful desires were at work within us. And the law aroused these evil desires that produced a harvest of sinful deeds, resulting in death. But now we have been released from the law, for we died to it and are no longer captive to its power. Now we can serve God not in the old way of obeying the letter of the law, but in the new way of living in the Spirit. Well then, am I suggesting that the law of God is sinful? Of course not. In fact, it was the law that showed me my sin. I would never have known that coveting is wrong if the law had not said you must not covet. But sin used this command to arouse all kinds of covetous desires within me. If there were no law, sin would not have that power. At one time I lived without understanding the law. But when I learned the command not to covet, for instance, the power of sin came and came to life, and I died. So I discovered that the law's commands, which were supposed to bring life, brought spiritual death instead. Sin took advantage of those commands and deceived me. It used the commands to kill me. But still the law itself is holy, and its commands are holy and right and good. But how can that be? Did the law, which is good, cause my death? Of course not. Sin used what was good to bring about my condemnation to death. So we can see how terrible sin really is. It uses God's good commands for its own evil purposes.
Psalm 17. O Lord, hear my plea for justice, listen to my cry for help. Pay attention to my prayer, for it comes from honest lips. Declare me innocent. For you see those who do right. You have tested my thoughts and examined my heart in the night. You have scrutinized me and found nothing wrong. I am determined not to sin in what I say. I have followed your commands, which keep me from following cool and evil people. My steps have stayed on your path. I have not wavered from following you. I am praying to you because I know you will answer, O God. Bend down and listen as I pray. Show me your unfailing love and wonderful ways. By your mighty power you rescue those who seek refuge from their enemies. Guard me as you would guard your own eyes. Hide me in the shadow of your wings. Protect me from wicked people who attack me, from murderous enemies who surround me. They are without pity. Listen to their boasting. They track me down and surround me, watching for the chance to throw me to the ground. They are like hungry lions eager to tear me apart like young lions hiding in ambush. Arise, O Lord, stand against them and bring them to their knees. Rescue me from the wicked with your sword. By the power of your hand, O Lord, destroy those who look to this world for their reward. But satisfy the hunger of your treasured ones. May their children have plenty, leaving an inheritance for their descendants. Because I am righteous, I will see you. When I awake, I will see you face to face and be satisfied.
Proverbs 19, 22 and 23. Loyalty makes a person attractive. It is better to be poor than dishonest. Fear of the Lord leads to life bringing security and protection from harm.
If you were looking for a family-friendly middle grade read, if you would check out the countryside series, there's two books in the series so far: Tears of Adina, The Book of the Wise. And if you enjoy them, if you'd leave a review online wherever you get them. Same thing for the two podcasts, America and Soul Podcast and America's Christian Heritage. If you feel like you're getting something out of them, if you would leave reviews online wherever you listen to them. Those reviews help people to find the books and the podcast, especially the five-star ones. So thank you. And if you have five or ten dollars a month, you can donate to the podcast. There's a link in the show notes where you can set that up. I would be grateful for that as well.
Medal of Honor for today, George Carter, private Indian Campaigns, Bravo Company, 8th U.S. Cavalry, U.S. Army, August 13th, 1868, Vicinity of the Black Mountains, Arizona. Bravery in Scouts and Actions Against Indians. Credited to Vallejo, Soleno County, California, not awarded posthumously. Presented July 24th, 1869. Born 1839, Dublin, Ireland. Another good indication of the difference between immigrants in the past. As a whole. As a whole, and immigrants, the illegal to mass Muslim immigrants today. Not even in the same ballpark, folks. George Carter.
So we read a little bit of a paragraph out of Benjamin Franklin's June 1787 prayer speech at the Constitutional Convention on the previous podcast. And I would like to read an excerpt today out of the prayer offered by Reverend Jacob Duches to the First Continental Congress in September 74 at Carpenter's Hall in Philadelphia. He also read Psalm 35. But I just want to read the last paragraph at his prayer. We read all of it over on the America's Christian Heritage podcast. So if you want to check out the whole prayer, you can go over there and we go through all of that and the one by Benjamin Franklin. But this is the last paragraph. You've got to remember here, folks, that he's openly addressing the first Continental Congress, a political body, as a political body. This was not in a private, separate meeting. This was the first Continental Congress meeting. And they they wanted this prayer. They were looking for this prayer. And it wasn't any of the false religions like Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, who was the only true God, the Father of Jesus Christ. And just listen to what they're asking. Be thou present, O God of wisdom, and direct the counsels of this honorable assembly. Enable them to settle things on the best and surest foundation. That the scene of blood may be speedily closed, that order, harmony, and peace may be effectually restored, and truth and justice, religion and piety prevail and flourish amongst the people. Preserve the health of their bodies and the vigor of their minds. Shower down on them and the millions they hear represent such temporal blessings as thou seest expedient for them in this world, and crown them with everlasting glory in the world to come. All this we ask in the name and through the merits of Jesus Christ, thy Son, and our Savior. Amen.
The effect on these men was profound. You've got to remember that they thought that Boston was being attacked at this point. This is the way forward, folks. It's not any political party, it's not any one politician. It's not any particular foreign or domestic policy. The only way to save America is to turn back to God and Jesus Christ and truly seek their guidance. The protection of God, the blessings of God, to humbly repent of our sins before God. And to trust in Him as individuals and as a nation.
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 and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen. God bless y'all. God bless your families, your marriages, your nation, wherever you are around the world listening. God bless America. We'll talk to you all again real soon, folks. Looking forward to it.
