As America celebrates its 250th birthday, Kimberly and her dad John ask a question that cuts right to the heart of this milestone: What does it actually take to keep a nation free? This isn’t a political conversation — it’s a biblical one. Because the kind of freedom that sustains a people doesn’t come from the top down. It never has.
Kimberly and John explore the profound difference between the world’s definition of freedom — doing whatever you want and answering to no one — to the freedom that Jesus actually offers. One leads to bondage. The other leads to rest.
They also get honest about the two traps that are robbing individuals and entire nations blind! From the worship songs enslaved believers sang in the cotton fields, to the Cherokee people’s refusal to be defined by the Trail of Tears, to Paul writing some of Scripture’s most triumphant words from a prison cell — the evidence is overwhelming. True biblical freedom isn’t defined by our circumstances.
If you’ve been feeling discouraged by the state of the world, this episode is for you. You are not helpless. You are not without influence. And the freedom you carry in Christ — the real kind — is exactly what your family, your community, and your country need most.
Jacob Paul: Welcome to the Truth in Love podcast with your hosts Kimberly Faith and John Mac. The Truth in Love podcast seeks to present God’s timeless truth through the lens of his remarkable love.
Kimberly Faith: Well, dad, this is an exciting podcast to be doing because we’re celebrating the 250th birthday of our country.
John McLarty: Happy birthday, United States Of America. 250.
Kimberly Faith: It’s amazing.
John McLarty: I’ll give away my age and yours too. I was here for the 200th anniversary.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. The bicentennial. I was probably, what, 10 or something?
John McLarty: 1776.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. I was nine. Is that right? It was 11.
John McLarty: Yeah. 11.
Kimberly Faith: I don’t know how old I am. But, yeah, I remember that. And who would have ever thought we’d be celebrating this birthday? I mean, you know, you kind of look at the time you live in and you go, oh, we’ll never make it to 2020 or the year 2000, remember that big, the Y2K scare and all that.
John McLarty: Yeah. As a Christian, just studying the prophecy and the coming rapture. Yeah, in 1976, no Christian, you know, thought we would make it to 2000 without, Israel had been birthed as a nation, prophecies. It was like, there’s no way we’ll see even
Kimberly Faith: The rapture’s going to come.
John McLarty: 2000. And you here we are in 2026.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. So, you know, the title of this podcast is, you know, becoming the gatekeepers of freedom. And I think
John McLarty: Amen.
Kimberly Faith: I think this has got national implications, and it’s also got spiritual implications. And it’s so important that we understand that this is not a nationalism, Christian nationalism podcast. This is, I don’t even know what that means anymore. I’ve looked up the definition several times, and I don’t even know what that means. But what this is about
John McLarty: Well, let me just comment on that, Kim.
Kimberly Faith: Okay.
John McLarty: We just did a podcast several ago about the church as a nation.
Kimberly Faith: Yes.
John McLarty: And I just thought that so throws out of the water, blows out of the water, the idea of the Christian nationalism as America. This nation of the church is for all ethnic nations.
Kimberly Faith: That’s such a good point.
John McLarty: The church is just as strong in Syria
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: And Nigeria
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John McLarty: And Britain
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: And Argentina.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John McLarty: And the true idea of Christianity is a worldwide thing.
Kimberly Faith: Yes.
John McLarty: But we as America, we do have a special heritage that is to be a heritage of freedom of conscience. That was in many other nations, but it really got imprinted into our constitution and it’s still here today.
Kimberly Faith: Interestingly enough, you know, this is a little bit of a rabbit, but it’s kind of worth chasing given the political climate right now. Iran, when King Cyrus
John McLarty: Yes.
Kimberly Faith: You know, he had established religious freedom.
John McLarty: A liberty of conscience, yes.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: You choose your religion.
Kimberly Faith: Yes. And you read about King Cyrus in the Bible.
John McLarty: King Cyrus.
Kimberly Faith: He acknowledged God. He acknowledged
John McLarty: And the Iranians, the Persians of today, they still, he’s like a big deal in their culture.
Kimberly Faith: That’s just a little
John McLarty: King Cyrus. Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: That’s a little free, I mean, we don’t think about Iran in those terms today because there’s so much evil that is overtaken, you know, with, just the, you know, we don’t have to go into it but
John McLarty: But let’s give some perspective. Here’s our 250th anniversary, Persia as a culture and a nation has been there 2,500 years.
Kimberly Faith: That’s a good
John McLarty: King Cyrus was 2,500 years ago, five hundred years before Christ.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. That’s a good point, dad.
John McLarty: And there’s Nehemiah and Esther, and we’re all wrapped up in that.
Kimberly Faith: Well, that’s
John McLarty: What a heritage, though.
Kimberly Faith: That’s you know what? That’s really a great, it’s kind of a great introduction to this because we’re talking about a relatively young country 250 years ago. I’ve been up into Rome, and you see the layers of civilization over thousands of years. You’re walking on the streets that are 2,000 years old. You’re just like, wow. You know, this is some history, right? But our country does have a unique heritage and, you know, our constitution, and talking about that all men are created equal, and that equality didn’t come from government. It came
John McLarty: Exactly.
Kimberly Faith: It came, you know, not by government, not from a king, not even by a constitution, but from our creator.
John McLarty: Endowed by their creator.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right. With certain inalienable rights. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now, it’s so interesting that we talk about freedom today and it’s been interpreted over the course of history in lots of different ways. I think that we first need to start by talking about what is real freedom. What does that even mean? And I think, I don’t know, you were living your big life in the sixties. What did freedom mean back then?
John McLarty: Well, it was really an insane thought. Freedom was to do whatever popped into your head, just do it.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: Which is really kind of cultural and personal anarchy, really. Just think about how that, oh, I just feel like whatever.
Kimberly Faith: I think I’ll kill my neighbor’s dog.
John McLarty: Yes. Or steal something.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: You know, and I wasn’t into stealing. But freedom was yeah. Just if it popped into your head, do it.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John McLarty: Just because that meant, I think I’ll drive to Berkeley today, or I’ll just go to Boulder.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: Or I’ll go camping
Kimberly Faith: Without telling your parents.
John McLarty: Without even yeah. Just take off. You’ve got no accountability.
Kimberly Faith: Right. And it’s I think that is
John McLarty: It was yeah. Freedom.
Kimberly Faith: I like the way you, that’s kind of anarchy, really, what you’re describing.
John McLarty: It is like social or personal anarchy. No rules.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John McLarty: No self governing.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. I think, and that’s really not the freedom that the founders had in mind, and it’s certainly not the freedom that Jesus had in mind when he talked about
John McLarty: Well let me just throw out a quote. It’s not from the Bible. It’s from some government, you know, somebody, some political scientists of, I think, the 1800s or something but it was like, those that will not govern themselves will be governed by others.
Kimberly Faith: That’s good.
John McLarty: So a culture that won’t govern themselves, they’ll end up, because there’ll be so much anarchy
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: And murder and mayhem, they’ll end up, they’ll need a strong government to come in just so people quit robbing each other.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Yeah. It’s so, it kind of speaks to this. We have a lot of movements going on in our country right now, the, you know, no dictators, no kings, all these things. But then on the other hand, we see this anarchy erupting in the streets and, you know, college campuses and just, in the library at, you know, some of our oldest institutions of learning. And, again, I’m not trying to be political, but everybody knows what anarchy looks like. Everyone knows what chaos, what violence looks like, and we’re seeing it. And so the question is, nobody wants to live that way, right? Everybody wants to have the maximum amount of personal freedom. But how do we as a country keep that rolling without becoming subject to some kind of dictatorship or having to live that way?
John McLarty: Yeah. So there’s freedom of expression, freedom of press, freedom of assembly, but not freedom to break into your neighbor’s store and steal all their stuff.
Kimberly Faith: Right. Right. How do we and you brought up that quote. You know, it takes a moral people, people who have innate abilities to control themselves in order to have a free country.
John McLarty: A free country. Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: Movement and decision making.
Kimberly Faith: Right. And, you know, so we have the world’s version of freedom that you just mentioned that, it sounds promising, but really delivers nothing other than anarchy. Because we can’t just every person can’t just do exactly what they feel like doing. You can’t, there’s just you know, there’s gotta be some guardrails. And so the world’s version of, quote, freedom, end quote, is the absence of authority or being able to answer to no one, living entirely for yourself, following whatever appetite leads you. But the apostle Paul in Romans kind of blows that definition apart. And, you want to read Romans Chapter Six?
John McLarty: Absolutely. Love to read the word and get into the podcast.
Kimberly Faith: Because we want to contrast this definition of freedom that the world has done with what slavery is. Okay?
John McLarty: Yeah. Biblical definition of
Kimberly Faith: Freedom and slavery.
John McLarty: Yes. So the apostle Paul, Romans 6:16-18. Do you not know that to whom you present yourself slaves to obey, you’re that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness. But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.
Kimberly Faith: That’s so powerful.
John McLarty: That is so true. Being set free from sin, you become slaves of righteousness.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Because sin in its most elementary definition is selfishness.
John McLarty: Selfishness.
Kimberly Faith: Right? Which is the opposite of love. We talk about what is love? Well, the opposite of love isn’t hate. The opposite of love is selfishness. So that makes sin selfishness.
John McLarty: And that’s such an important distinction. That’s a big revelation for me, acknowledging I was a sinner. That sinning wasn’t necessarily hate, robbing, killing. I mean, that is sin. But in its fundamental form, sin is just selfishness.
Kimberly Faith: And it kind of
John McLarty: I’m going to do whatever self decides to do. This idea of freedom I discussed.
Kimberly Faith: I remember your testimony. I think it was our first podcast where you talked about how when you heard the gospel for the first time, you were offended because the guy, you know, was sharing that, hey, you’re a sinner, John. And you didn’t like that, but then the Lord reminded you of how you went off and took these trips without telling your parents as a 16 year old.
John McLarty: Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: And how that was just disrespectful.
John McLarty: Yeah. And I just thought it was nobody’s business what I did.
Kimberly Faith: Right. Right.
John McLarty: It was so uncaring, just selfishness.
Kimberly Faith: But that was what the Lord revealed to you. Well, I am a sinner.
John McLarty: That is sin, selfishness. Not caring how my actions impacted others.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: My quote freedom.
Kimberly Faith: Right. And so what the apostle Paul is making clear to us is every single one of us serves someone or something. And it’s not optional. This isn’t like, oh, well, I don’t have to serve one or the other, I can be neutral. No. There is no Switzerland in this equation. And the question is, which master is worthy of your life? Which master can give you the best life? Which master can keep you from being anxious? Which master can give you peace? Which master can give you joy and complete satisfaction? And really, there’s only two masters. There’s God and anything else. And we talk about master, you know, we talk about what is it that we think about, what controls us, what controls our mind, what controls our actions, what uses our time, where does our money go? All the things that we have to steward. Where are we giving the, what altar are we laying on the side, right? And we have a lot of examples in the history of our country of slavery. It wasn’t just the slavery of African Americans. The Irish, they were indentured. The Italians, I mean, there was so much slavery that was beyond just the color of people’s skin that exists in the history of our world. It’s always existed. We all know what it looks like. And the fact is, I have really good friends. I’ll just use the African American slavery example, who they talk about their great grand, I met a lady on a plane whose great grandmother was raised in South Carolina, was a freed slave, and how she taught her kids the old slave spirituals, the ones that the slaves would
John McLarty: The field, yeah. Field spirituals.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah, they would sing in the fields. And she said, you know, my grandma used to say that we were only slaves in our body. Our souls were free. She was a born again believer. She said, the thing is that and she was telling me this.
John McLarty: That’s interesting. There was a lot of, well, the Israelites
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: Were slaves in Egypt. And so out of, not to mitigate it at all, but those field spirituals are very powerful.
Kimberly Faith: Well, they are. And I think that the point is, I mean, Paul wrote the book of Philippians from jail. He was essentially a prisoner, right? The fact is, none of our circumstances can imprison us. In fact, even the most, quote, free person can be imprisoned in a jail of anxiety and sadness and despair.
John McLarty: Think of today. I’ll just use it to be a slave to a drug, a particular drug that’s so powerful.
Kimberly Faith: Meth.
John McLarty: You will not eat food.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: You will not drink water if it means not having this drug in your body.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: That’s a slave to sin.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. And it’s a good example because you can be a slave to any kind of sin. Food, money, you know, relationships, sex, whatever. There’s all kinds of masters, is my point. It’s the master that we choose that makes all the difference about our freedom.
John McLarty: And what a master of loving kindness is our God.
Kimberly Faith: I know. You know, I want to, I’m glad you brought that up because let’s just read Matthew 11:28-29. This is Jesus. You know? Jesus who became sin for us, who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. That’s how the Bible describes him. And what does he promise us, what does he promise us there?
John McLarty: Come to me all ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
Kimberly Faith: This is the language of the only master that exists in the entire universe that actually has good plans for us.
John McLarty: And it’s interesting. He does say take my yoke upon you. So we are serving.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right.
John McLarty: It’s a privilege.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right.
John McLarty: We’re servants of the most high God.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John McLarty: But my yoke is easy and my burden is light. I am gentle and lowly heart. You will find rest for your souls.
Kimberly Faith: I think about the contrast between let’s say that you were given a chance in let’s say in the 1800’s in London when they had the workhouses that were just horrible, horrible places to be. I mean, people were dying in these workhouses. And you had the chance to either, you had a choice. You could serve under the master in a workhouse, or you could serve in the king’s court. Which one would you prefer? You know, a clean bed, good food, a master that gave you tasks that you probably understood that you could carry out, or this unreasonable hateful person, who just cared about using you until you were dead. You know, that’s probably not the greatest example, but everybody can understand that. And it’s, for our country to maintain, as a country, the freedom, it depends upon us as individuals living in the liberty we’ve been given in Christ. And we’re going to talk about just two of the things that rob us blind and are robbing us blind as a country right now, that each person listening to this podcast and I don’t care where you live. If you live in the UK, you get the same problem, you know? I mean, the rioting in the streets, all that’s happening in the UK. Sin is not something that any country is exempt from. Chaos, the proclivities of human nature to rob each other and steal from each other and do all these things in the name of freedom exists in every country.
John McLarty: And it’s just yeah, it’s such a visual aid that you do see riots in the street and then it kind of brings in tyranny if the masses are just uncontrolled and robbing each other. I mean, I understand peaceful protest.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: We’re not talking about peaceful protest, but we’re just talking about when neighbor turns upon neighbor and everybody’s looting one another, and then you’re just inviting some kind of police state to rise up and control all that.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Absolutely. And again, do you remember who the quote was, It’s a republic if you can keep it?
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: That was Benjamin Franklin. Yeah.
John McLarty: Republic, a nation of freedom and freedom of expression and assembly, but we’re governed by some laws.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right. It’s if you can keep
John McLarty: By reasonable laws.
Kimberly Faith: If you can keep it, it puts the responsibility back on the individuals. That’s where we’re going with this. What we have to understand in order to keep any country free is the people have to make individual decisions to live in freedom that is bigger than themselves. In other words, these are two things we’re going to talk about. The two traps that are robbing us blind. One is living for self, and the other one is our identity. And I think these are so prevalent, these traps that have basically entrapped our country and a large part of our country in such a big way that I was just very, I felt like this was very self applicable for me. If I want to preserve our nation for the next 250 years, then I need to do these things so that my grandchildren, great grandchildren will have the same opportunities I had to live for the glory of God.
John McLarty: Yeah. That’s an interesting thought. So we’ve made it to 250, and, boy, it’s fragile.
Kimberly Faith: It is fragile. Yeah.
John McLarty: I think , are we the only nation with a constitution that’s been the same for the last 250 years?
Kimberly Faith: I don’t know. That’s a good
John McLarty: I think we are.
Kimberly Faith: I’m sure if you’ve say
John McLarty: You think of France
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: They’ve gone through all these constitutions, Latin American countries and Iran.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: I think we have the most stable republic with the same constitution.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. That’s, I don’t know.
John McLarty: It’s amazing. I think I’ve heard that.
Kimberly Faith: It’s, you know, we have to understand that I can be the difference. You can be the difference. Anyone listening to this podcast can be the difference between our country continuing in some semblance of freedom and not. And so this puts the responsibility on us as individuals. I think it’s easy for myself. I listen to the news, and it’s always bad, and you get overwhelmed with despair. Just think, well, how can we ever get out of debt? How can we ever, you know, how can we ever trust anything a politician says? How can we even know if this person’s telling us, is this a true fact? We can’t even trust the fact checkers anymore. Very discouraging. But the Lord was like, no, you don’t have to be discouraged. I’ve got a solution. And it doesn’t really, you can’t look at the circumstances. If you look at your circumstances, Kimberly, you’re going to make me small. But if you look at me, then you’ve already got the victory. And I love that. I love that we can do that, you know. And so, but there’s two traps that keep us from, they minimize God’s power in our life, and I want to talk about the first one.
John McLarty: Endanger our democracy.
Kimberly Faith: Yes. Yes. And the first one is the pursuit of self satisfaction. You know, and this is a trap. And I’ve been in it, sometimes still fall into it. The Bible says, Whatsoever you do, whether you eat, drink, or whatever you do, do all for the glory of God. Those two are not, those are mutually exclusive, right? And in the book of John, First John warns us about this. And you want to read First John 2:16?
John McLarty: Yeah. And just before that, though, this idea of the trap of self satisfaction. That’s the freedom of the 60’s I talked about, self satisfaction.
Kimberly Faith: Right. Self expression, self fulfillment, self promotion.
John McLarty: Fortunately, and I think there are cycles of this, I’ll just chase a little bit of a rabbit. There was a strong pursuit though in the 60’s and early 70’s. There was a searching for some spiritual truth. And then we’ve seen that, I think, as a nation thrown under the bus, spiritual truth, kind of like is old fashioned. But in a sense, you see elements of that coming back.
Kimberly Faith: I agree with that.
John McLarty: I just hear statistics about people searching for God again.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah, young men going back to church.
John McLarty: Instead of just self satisfaction and just the pleasure society, some thought of, what’s the meaning to all this? There’s something bigger. So yeah, but one of the yeah, a trap is just that pure search of self satisfaction. And it’s, you know, First John 2:16, it’s the way of humans. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father but is of the world.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. That’s it.
John McLarty: That’s what gets us.
Kimberly Faith: That’s what gets us.
John McLarty: I’m going to read it again. The lust of the flesh, just my flesh wanting this, lust of the eyes, oh, that looks good.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John McLarty: And the pride of life.
Kimberly Faith: Right. Which is like, you know, the pride of life, you think about self promotion.
John McLarty: Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: Right? I want to be great. I want to be
John McLarty: I won’t be ruled by God.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right. I want to be
John McLarty: Ruled by governments.
Kimberly Faith: Exactly. Exactly. And you know, this is such a great way to understand, I think it’s a great way to understand First John 2:16. But the same lies that Satan told Adam and Eve in the garden, he’s still saying today.
John McLarty: Yes.
Kimberly Faith: And we did a whole podcast on that. And you know, the fact is and you have said this over and over again. I love that you said this because I never thought about it before till you said it, that Satan cannot tell us the truth and make us follow him.
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: He can’t entice us with the truth.
John McLarty: Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: All he can do is entice us with lies, and the lies
John McLarty: And follow me in rebellion against God and end up separated from your loving God forever.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: Oh, gee. That sounds great.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John McLarty: He can’t tell us that.
Kimberly Faith: He can’t tell us that. He has to tell us, oh, did God really say? Oh, God doesn’t really love you. He wouldn’t let this happen to you, right? But the brutal truth is that at the end of all those lies, when we follow the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life, is just unhappiness. It’s dissatisfaction.
John McLarty: Anxiety.
Kimberly Faith: Anxiety.
John McLarty: Loneliness.
Kimberly Faith: We yeah. You brought up
John McLarty: Lack of fulfillment.
Kimberly Faith: Right. Loneliness, anxiety, purposelessness. We have a culture of epic dimensions of these things. I mean, loneliness is now being characterized as an epidemic by our Surgeon General. And yet we’re the most connected, entertained, self expressive generation in human history. According to, I don’t know which statistics this is, but I can tell you that more and more people are sitting in front of screens. There are some people that I drive by every day. Every day I go to work, and they’re on their front porch, two of them, and they never look up. Their phone is in their lap and their head is craned in a position. Every day I drive up, the birds are singing, the squirrels are playing, the dogs are around, and they’re sucked into their screen every day. I’m not saying that to be ugly, I’m saying that to, they don’t even realize what they’re missing. And we get that way. I mean, I think about the times I wake up in the morning and the first thing I look up is my phone, check my social media.
John McLarty: That’s a true phenomenon today. And it is not building relationships. These relationships are with their phones.
Kimberly Faith: Right. Right.
John McLarty: Even the people they interact with, it’s through their phone.
Kimberly Faith: Right. I mean, and I don’t want to just beat up social media, but I’ll tell you that
John McLarty: Yeah, because I’ve got one right here, you know, just holding it up.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: They’re very useful, but yeah, you think of teens today that are so addicted to the screen, are they happy?
Kimberly Faith: Right, Right. Are they finding
John McLarty: Are they having social fulfillment?
Kimberly Faith: Do they have a purpose? You know, I have kids that come to my office that have gotten in trouble, one of the first questions I ask them is, what’s the point of your life? And you know how many have told me what the Bible says about the point of their life? Zero. Not one of them has any idea that they were created for God’s glory. Sometimes I’ll get an answer like, well, I guess you have a family. So what’s the point of that? They don’t know the answer to that.
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: You know?
John McLarty: Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: And I want to, you know, we talked about this scripture in First John 2:16, and I want to just tie that in with Galatians 5:19-21 about what a life lived after the flesh actually produces.
John McLarty: Pursue the flesh and here’s where you’ll end up.
Kimberly Faith: Yes. You want to read that?
John McLarty: Yeah. Sure. Now the works of the flesh are evident: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies. Boy, I want to live there, don’t you?
Kimberly Faith: Yeah, right.
John McLarty: Outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like.
Kimberly Faith: You know, I mean, that describes our culture. I mean, we have like
John McLarty: That’s where I did not want to live.
Kimberly Faith: Exactly.
John McLarty: That’s a city I don’t want to live in.
Kimberly Faith: Exactly. And you think about, you know, even our social media has become one of the most efficient engines producing envy, outbursts of wrath, contentions, selfish ambition, self promotion. We’ve never seen this level of just vileness. Somebody I know had reached out to me and wanted my opinion on something, and this person was in an airport in Florida. And this person was sitting there and a man came up and sat beside her and said, is it okay if I sit here and do my thing, and she didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. Well, he started, she didn’t know what he was doing until she looked over and the man was masturbating.
John McLarty: Oh, disgusting.
Kimberly Faith: Right in the airport, right next to her.
John McLarty: What?
Kimberly Faith: And I guess he thought that was okay. What was sad was, you know, she reported it, and they let him get on the plane. And she’s like, is he sitting next to a child? Is he you know? And I was thinking to myself, I was thinking and they finally, she squawked enough, they got him off the plane. But in what world do we think that’s okay? You know, fifty years ago, sixty years ago, he probably would have been locked up.
John McLarty: Oh, yeah.
Kimberly Faith: You know?
John McLarty: That’s hard to even imagine that happened.
Kimberly Faith: It’s hard to even imagine, but you think about that and you think, how did we get here? And how can we reverse that? That’s not okay anymore. Well, it’s not going to be a top down thing. It’s going to be enough people saying that’s not okay, that the government will finally listen or there will be people who’d say that’s not okay in the government.
John McLarty: That’s a perfect example. It’s not top down.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right.
John McLarty: If you have that level of depravity going on in society, no level of authoritarian government can ultimately resolve that.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right.
John McLarty: That takes, you know, a moral upbuilding from the ground up.
Kimberly Faith: Right. And it’s, and, you know, I’m not again, I’m not promoting, this isn’t Christian nationalism. This is called a moral fiber that we all agree certain behaviors are not okay. And honestly, you know, people get all up in arms about the 10 commandments, but gosh.
I mean, you know, let’s just take the last six. I mean, don’t steal, don’t kill
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: Don’t covet.
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: Those are pretty good rules. And it doesn’t mean you have to be a born again believer to believe as a culture that those are good. But the interesting thing is that we act like somehow that’s a bad idea that we have to also connect those to God. We’re missing out on the best part of the rules, and that is the relationship with God.
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: And so for born again believers, when we commit to, I’m not going to let self centeredness rob me blind. What we’re doing is we’re saying, I want all the riches of God. I want to be so rich in my relationship with God that I’m going to pass this on to the next generation. This is going to be my community. I’m going to build my community based on these principles of selflessness that attract people to God. Not to me, to God.
John McLarty: Yeah. And I’ll bring this up because, I mean, this is a podcast. We’re biblical based. It’s a Christian based podcast. We’re talking about our nation, though. But I’m just thinking of the phrase Christians make good citizens. So somebody that’s born again and loves God and is wanting to just follow the ways of Jesus, they are going to, they work hard and they tell the truth. And I’m saying, you have all this, the Christian hypocrisy going on. But a true born again Christian believer makes a great employee. They’ll show up when they’re supposed to and they’ll do the work they’re supposed to.
Kimberly Faith: Well, we overuse this term Christian. It’s been almost, it’s to the point where it doesn’t have any meaning sometimes, you know? But the word Christian means Christ like.
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: You know?
John McLarty: Exactly.
Kimberly Faith: And if we took the meaning of the word Christian
John McLarty: I say follower of Jesus. And one of the things I’ve said, oh, you have a problem with Christians? So that means you have a problem with Jesus? Well, go find fault in Jesus.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right. That’s right.
John McLarty: What kind of citizen would Jesus have been?
Kimberly Faith: Exactly.
John McLarty: I think he worked, you know, when he was, before his mission to the cross. He was a carpenter.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: And he went around being nice to people.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. I mean
John McLarty: Except the religious leadership.
Kimberly Faith: Except for the people who are intentionally misleading people away from the Lord, you know? I mean, I don’t think the real enemy was in the people that like the lady caught in adultery or the, you know, the people who were like a Nicodemus, you know, that I mean, he really wanted to know, you know, tell me about what it means to be born again.
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: And so you kind of also bring up this idea that, you know, born again followers of Christ make good citizens. I think in an earlier podcast we had, I interviewed a guy, a retired military guy, who was over in Vietnam, and he’s over there. Him and his wife have been over in Vietnam. And he revealed that the Vietnamese government doesn’t endorse Christianity, of course, but they love the Christian principles. You know, they want their citizens to have these Christian principles. That’s been his impression because people who don’t steal make great citizens.
John McLarty: Right. Exactly.
Kimberly Faith: You know, people who don’t murder make great citizens. So the difference is though, what we’re really talking about in how to preserve our country or any country that’s anybody that’s listening to this is a citizen of a different geographical country, is to become a follower of Christ in a way that is a personal relationship.
John McLarty: I think that brings, it starts with us.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right.
John McLarty: It’s not like we need to look out, oh, everybody else needs to be no. It starts with us.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right. Because one person’s light pierces the darkness. And Jesus said, you are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid, right?
John McLarty: And we can devote and strive in our lives to be more like Jesus.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right.
John McLarty: But we can’t make somebody else be more like Jesus.
Kimberly Faith: Exactly. But we can show them what it looks like.
John McLarty: Yes.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John McLarty: That’s a good point.
Kimberly Faith: And they can get, we can give them the experience. You know, one of the reasons I think our country has maintained a level of freedom for so long is because of the foundation of truth it was built on, you know? People enjoy living in a country where people don’t steal. People enjoy living in a, even if you’re not a born again believer, you like it when your neighbors are nice to you. You enjoy someone not being able to just murder you in your bed. You want to live in that country where those principles are at work.
John McLarty: So you don’t like it when the society and people are ruled by hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envies, murders.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: The works of the flesh.
John McLarty: The works of the flesh.
Kimberly Faith: And we’ve talked about the fruit of the spirit being the opposite, love, joy, peace, goodness, kindness, gentleness, meekness. But we can’t manufacture those without the spirit. We don’t have the spirit unless we’re born again. You want to change your country, you want to preserve freedom, then fall in love with Jesus Christ. Let the spirit rule in your life. And this, again, I’m saying this to myself because I want to preserve our nation for another 250 years or however long, you know, till the Lord comes back.
John McLarty: And then in terms of influencing others, I need to say this, Kim. Jesus did take 12, the apostles
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: And he discipled them.
Kimberly Faith: Yes.
John McLarty: So there is that, not by force, not by threat, but by you know, being a part of a group of other Christians.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: And like, yeah, let’s iron sharpen this iron, and let’s encourage each other to be more like Jesus in this discipleship.
Kimberly Faith: And there’s nothing that takes
John McLarty: It spreads.
Kimberly Faith: Nothing takes the place of that.
John McLarty: Yes.
Kimberly Faith: You can’t raise children from a screen. You can’t have your child in their bedroom or in one part of the house, and you’re in another part of the house giving them love from a screen or from on the telephone. You’ve got to personally get dirty and grubby with them and, you know, wipe their bottom when they’re young, clean their scrapes when they fall.
John McLarty: Parenting is an elementary form of discipleship.
Kimberly Faith: It absolutely is.
John McLarty: It’s like, follow me as I follow Jesus.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s, you have to get dirty and down in the ditches with people. That’s just the bottom line. You know, it’s a distance, we’re talking about discipleship for just a minute here. You know, just about every week, I’m teaching at least one Bible study. And one of the things that the Lord, that I’ve struggled with is, I put a lot of work into teaching these studies, you know, and I’m like and then people just say, well, I had to do this or that. And the study is sequential, so it’s you build on the foundation of one concept and you build out towards the end. And so if you miss something, you really miss a big part of it. And I’ll usually have, you know, eight to 10 people that start out. And then by the fifth or sixth lesson, you’re down to three, or one week, you’ll have three. One week, you’ll have five. And it’s very frustrating, you know? The human part of me gets very frustrated. But something the Lord keeps telling me is, you just do what I’ve told you to do and I’ll take care of everything else. And I think when we’re talking about being selfless, it even applies to our discipleship. We can’t make it about us. Like, I’m trying to do this
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: And you’re not doing what you’re supposed to do.
John McLarty: Yes.
Kimberly Faith: Then we lose the fruit, we can become contentious, right? So it even goes down to those that are trying to serve the Lord, that selfishness is a trap that is sometimes a trap we don’t even see we’re in. And I just wanted to bring that up because it’s very, our enemy is sneaky.
John McLarty: It’s interesting. The selfishness focused completely on self, freedom
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: As I described in the sixties and seventies, the result is bondage.
Kimberly Faith: It is bondage. Yeah. Yeah. It is. And
John McLarty: Bondage to something.
Kimberly Faith: Bondage to something.
John McLarty: Some other master besides, you know, having God as our god.
Kimberly Faith: When you think about, like, the dopamine response, you know, you push a button and you get dopamine, right? And you get this euphoria. But with selfishness, you can only push that button so much, and then that response stops happening.
John McLarty: Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: And you’ve got to up the dose until really, you destroy yourself, you know, because your body can only handle so much. Well, your soul I mean, it’s the same principle. So this kind of
John McLarty: Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: This brings us to the second trap. And I want to be careful about how I present this, but this is, again, this is from my experience. This is just my experience with my own life and what I’ve observed around me, but it is the trap of forming our identity around the damage we’ve suffered or the pain we’ve suffered. This cultural climate actively encourages people to build their sense of self and value around their wounds, their struggles, their grievances. And what we have is a culture defined more by what has been done to us than by who God says we are. And our struggles have become central instead of our God given identity and the ability we have to overcome them. Does that make sense to you?
John McLarty: Makes perfect sense. I have an example I have to share. My Cherokee friends, they had a struggle, they had a grievance, the Trail of Tears. They were rounded up in their homeland and forcefully removed to what was then called Indian territory. And they tell that story today. And I’m actually part of an organization, the Trail of Tears Association. But almost every meeting that they host, they say we don’t define ourselves by this struggle, by what happened to us. We want it remembered as part of our history, but we want to be known by our perseverance, our resilience. Today, they’re actually thriving, thank you, in Oklahoma. They send their sports teams to win state championships. That’s just a good example of a people group that refused to be defined by an awful event that happened to them.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah, what I’ve observed about them, and I’m sure you’ve observed this more closely than I have, is they’ve maintained a beautiful culture.
John McLarty: They have.
Kimberly Faith: But a lot of them are born again believers.
John McLarty: They are. A large percent of Cherokee.
Kimberly Faith: And they
John McLarty: As much of the general American population, percentage wise that are probably true believers
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: Is true. Maybe even more so in the Cherokee Nation.
Kimberly Faith: Interesting.
John McLarty: They’re, just an example, when they’re in charge of some event, like hosting maybe at a national park service, they open the event with prayer.
Kimberly Faith: Interesting.
John McLarty: A Christian prayer. And they’ll have some traditional stuff too
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: But they’re not shy about their Christian faith.
Kimberly Faith: Well, the difference between a culture or a race or even like a gender, like females weren’t allowed to vote for a long time, right? Living in that identity, that wounded identity, and letting God use it to make it something beautiful it’s just like, why would you choose to live in your wounds?
John McLarty: That’s a good phrase, choosing to live in that wounded identity.
Kimberly Faith: Right. And you’re like, you think about, I mean, I remember as a young lawyer feeling some of that glass ceiling, you know? I was, I mean, just being treated differently. But I didn’t really, I was kind of oblivious to it. I’m not saying I handled it probably the way I would have done today. From the standpoint, I didn’t look at it, I never looked at it as an obstacle because I just wasn’t smart enough to figure that out, I guess. I just okay. Well, whatever. You know? But
John McLarty: Let’s plow through this.
Kimberly Faith: Oblivious, right? Let’s crawl through the cracks, right, of the glass ceiling. But looking back through, you know, back through history and and and just talking like the lady I mentioned from South Carolina, you know, they’re and you mentioned the Cherokees, resilience. Giving God greater glory because you were able to overcome. And it wasn’t just you, it was the Lord working through you.
John McLarty: Yes.
Kimberly Faith: It’s like Paul said, you know, Paul in Philippians 4:11-13 wrote, I mean, he had, he was probably still bloody. His back was still bloody from the scars of being beaten, you know? And from what I understand, he was chained to the wall, feet spread apart. I mean, they’re chaining, arms up in the air. It wasn’t like he was hanging out relaxing on the couch.
John McLarty: No he was a prisoner. Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: Right. He was a prisoner. And read what he said.
John McLarty: I’ve, yeah Philippians 4:11-13. Amazing. Amazing. I have learned in whatever state I am to be content. I know how to be abased and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things, I’ve learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
Kimberly Faith: This isn’t the voice of a guy who’s living in his damage.
John McLarty: Christ gives us the freedom.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John McLarty: Gives us liberty. Even in chains.
Kimberly Faith: Even in chains. And I don’t know exactly the history of Paul’s life. He had already been stoned and how many times he’s been beaten and shipwrecked. I don’t know where this falls in the history.
John McLarty: I think by Philippians he had been.
Kimberly Faith: All those things
John McLarty: A lot of those things.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. And well, okay. It’s
John McLarty: Definitely dragged out of the city and
Kimberly Faith: There you go.
John McLarty: Left for dead.
Kimberly Faith: But what Paul shows us and what so many of these examples like the Cherokees and some of the African American population, some of the women I mean, just the people who have been, and even if you go back to ancient history, right, shows us that we, we must know the truth about two things. The image that we carry is not our own, right? It is not
John McLarty: Yes, exactly.
Kimberly Faith: That image we carry, we are created in the image of God.
John McLarty: Created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right.
John McLarty: Genesis 1:27.
Kimberly Faith: Yes. And so that’s
John McLarty: That’s beautiful.
Kimberly Faith: It’s so profound and beautiful, like you said.
John McLarty: That should be our self image.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right.
John McLarty: I’m created in the image of God.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. And, you know, again, that’s sometimes hard for us to fathom. What does that look like? But if we understand the nature of God being just, loving, and righteous, well, that gives us a clue, right? And of course, we can look at the life of Jesus. If you want to know what life in the image of God looks like, read the gospels. Jesus showed us what that looks like.
John McLarty: Exactly.
Kimberly Faith: And, you know, and this is so remarkable because nobody can change that. Our constitution says, is it our constitution or the preamble, it says, we were endowed by our creator with life, liberty, the pursuit. I mean, we were endowed by our creator, not our government.
John McLarty: Yeah. I think that’s in the Declaration of Independence.
Kimberly Faith: Oh, well, you know, I’m a lawyer. I should know these things. I meant to look it up, and I’m just ashamed of myself right now for not knowing that. But we’re endowed with our creator. I know this. Okay.
John McLarty: Or they well, I don’t know. That could be in the preamble of the constitution.
Kimberly Faith: Well, I thought it was. But, you know, it’s one of those things that, again, my brain is not, overcoming this brain fog has been something crazy for me. But the bottom line is that, you know, if we can train our brain to remember that being created in the image of God means that no one else can take that from us. None of our background, our history, our ethnicity, our failures, our bank account, our lack of bank account, cruelty by other people.
No oppressor, no cultural oppression can take that, can beat the image of God out of us, you know?
John McLarty: Yeah. I mean, it’s not, you know, our social standing, our, you know we want to be victimized by economic standing. But no, God has created us all in the image of God.
Kimberly Faith: And when we think about, when we think about the toxicity in the world that we live in right now, you’re right. It’s in the declaration of independence. I looked it up while you were talking.
John McLarty: Okay. Well, there. We got our Google or Grok whatever answer.
Kimberly Faith: Right. Yeah. But when we think about the toxicity that we live in and the cycle of hatred, and just destruction. We need this hope. We need this hope to remember who we are and why we were created. You know, Romans 12:21 says, Don’t be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. There’s only one way we can do that. There’s only one way we can do that is if we remember who we are.
John McLarty: Amen.
Kimberly Faith: Because Jesus did that. He died for all the evil in the world, and he was victorious over death. And, you know, we don’t have to descend into the lowlands of the toxic sociopolitical landscape that surrounds us. I mean, we don’t have to go there. It’s so easy to go there. You know, somebody posts something on Facebook. We don’t even know if it’s true or not, right? But maybe it’s slamming our favorite politician or it’s slamming a Christian or maybe it’s slamming a transgender person, whatever it might be. We don’t have to go into that. We don’t have to sink into that.
John McLarty: When you really focus on that one phrase that we’re created in the image of God, that’s our fundamental self identity.
Kimberly Faith: Yes.
John McLarty: There’s all this discussion of how do you identify? Well, that’s the basis right there.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: We’re created in the image of God.
Kimberly Faith: That’s a good point.
John McLarty: That’s where it starts.
Kimberly Faith: Everybody’s so just explosive about their identity. Like, well, I identify as this or I identify as that or whatever. I’m a Christian, you know? Well, okay. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with saying you’re a Christian, but if we can go back to the image of the God we were created in and his nature, then we might slow ourselves down by just, you know, kind of flippantly saying I’m a Christian, because maybe we’re not exactly representing Christ. If you’re a Christian, you should be representing Christ, right? And when we don’t represent that, then we are seeing ourself with a fallen image instead of the image God wants us to have. We’ve got to let God’s image be our highest goal, meaning glorifying him.
John McLarty: You know, where that really shines out, Kim, I’m just thinking about the Cherokee people. And again, I’m not mitigating any hardship or that slavery wasn’t, it’s all a big deal. That image of God and that attitude of Paul really shines, why are we so impressed that Paul said that? Because he said that from prison.
Kimberly Faith: Right. Right. If he’d said that from the living room
John McLarty: Yeah. Or a beach in Hawaii
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: Be like, okay.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John McLarty: Like, you’re happy? That’s great. Pat you on the back.
Kimberly Faith: Right. I’m working at Sonic. You know? And I’m not putting down any type of profession or I’m, you know, slogging through depositions, you know, however you want to look at it. But we look at the solution. We have to know the truth of the image that we carry being God’s image. And what that does is that it gives us a victorious attitude. Because when we know we’re in Christ, like Paul said, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, then our attitude is victory, not defeat. And I’d like to read, let’s read a couple of verses out of James, because I think this shows a great contrast of what it looks like to live with the attitude of victory.
John McLarty: Well, I’ll be the Bible reader today.
Kimberly Faith: Okay. Good.
John McLarty: Okay. So James 3:14-17. But if you have bitter envy and self seeking in your heart, I’ll just have to stop and preach on that a little bit. Just bitter envy and self seeking in your heart. What a characterization of so much of our culture today. Envy and self seeking. What’s advertising all about?
Kimberly Faith: About making
John McLarty: Envy. You need this.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John McLarty: You need self seeking. Anyway, so
Kimberly Faith: That’s a good
John McLarty: Do not boast and lie against the truth. This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthy, sensual, demonic, this idea of self seeking and bitter envy.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: For where envy and self seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there.
Kimberly Faith: Man, you could camp out on that for a minute.
John McLarty: You could camp out on that. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy, good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.
Kimberly Faith: I want to live there.
John McLarty: Wow, what a better place.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Yeah.
John McLarty: Than bitter envy and self seeking. Which culture do you want to live in?
Kimberly Faith: Exactly. I mean, it’s, I mean, if you read that list, both lists, and then you say, okay, let me look at my social media feed. I mean, it’s pretty easy to see, you know, where your feed is at, where the culture is. And but this, again, if we know who we are because we are created in the image of God, and our future is secured by the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ. And like we talked about being in the spirit, you know, the last couple weeks, we talked about that. Then we’re going to produce the pure, peaceable, gentle, you know, the being full of mercy, be without hypocrisy because we don’t that’s the way God is. We know who we are in Jesus Christ, in the created image of God, then we have to produce the fruit of God’s spirit. We will not produce the works of the flesh. And we don’t have to worry about how strong or weak we feel. Because Isaiah Chapter 40 talks about where our strength comes from. I mean, James talked about where our wisdom comes from, right? And the contrast between evil and good, and describing what human wisdom looks like and the evil wisdom versus God’s wisdom. But what about strength? God gives us, if you’re living in a place in life, in circumstances where you just feel completely powerless and helpless. What does God say about who he gives strength to?
John McLarty: I want to read that, but I just have this quote in my mind, Kim. And it’s because we’re talking about America. We’ve made it 250 years. How do we make it another 250 years?
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: Was it the Frenchman, Alex Tocqueville, that came to find out what made America good? They traveled the nation.
Kimberly Faith: Yes.
John McLarty: He said America is good because the people are good.
Kimberly Faith: I remember that quote.
John McLarty: That’s what makes America good, that the people are good.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John McLarty: So here’s Isaiah 40:29-31. He gives power, so this is God, of course. He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might, He increases strength. Even the youth shall faint and be weary and the young men shall utterly fall, but those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John McLarty: So without God, the youth faint and are weary.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: The young men will fall, but those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.
Kimberly Faith: It’s interesting that the Bible talks about the youth because we typically think of youth as where all the strongest men are young. You know, but everybody else who decides to, you know, trust in the Lord and wait on him, whether you’re a 100 or whether you’re 10, you’re going to have the strength so you can run, not be weary. You can run the race that like Paul talked about, he wants to finish the race. He wanted to run the race. And we’ve talked about this a little bit, this is a little bit of rabbit, but I’ll chase it anyway. Running the negative split. If you’re running a marathon or you know, any kind of long race, they talk about running the negative split. That means you plan to run the last part of your race better than the first part. And for those of us who actually started running the race, you know, more than halfway through life, that’s very encouraging that we can actually make that decision. I’m going to run the race better.
John McLarty: Yeah. The latter part of my life will be better than the first.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. And I just want to circle back before we, you know, kind of move on about how this gives us victory. We’ve talked about the contrast between the works of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit. But no political party or, you know, codification of a law or supreme court decision can legislate into people the fruit of the spirit.
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: You
John McLarty: Yes.
Kimberly Faith: You have to, you can’t have love unless it comes from God, not true love. Because even philanthropy, how do you say it? Philanthropy? Yeah. If it’s motivated by making you feel better, it’s not love. It’s selfishness, you know? It has to come from God and no government can legislate that. We can pass laws that make us obey and behave. You can’t steal, that’s because stealing’s unloving, right? But when we talk about love that is pure and peace that comes from something greater than us, we have to empty ourselves of ourselves, like going back to the first point, in order for the spirit to give us what we need. And this verse ends up and it says, against such there is no law. You know, this comes from a relationship, not from legal, the laws.
John McLarty: And that’s a great distinction because most people have heard the phrase, like it’s kind of an anti Christian, you can’t legislate morality. But actually you can because you can legislate against murder, which is immoral. But what their meaning is what you’re saying. You can’t legislate moral character in people. That only comes from God.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Yeah. That
John McLarty: But of course, all the legislation
Kimberly Faith: Is morality.
John McLarty: Has some kind of morality
Kimberly Faith: Exactly.
John McLarty: Or it’s, you know, or it’s not there.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: But I think what can’t be legislated is like you said, is that
Kimberly Faith: Motivation.
John McLarty: That motivation. Yeah. That moral fiber.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John Mclarty: It’s creating good behavior.
Kimberly Faith: Well, so the fruit of the spirit comes from the spirit, and we have a spirit.
John McLarty: Exactly.
Kimberly Faith: And we have a soul. That’s the spiritual part of us. So if the fruit of God’s spirit is coming from the spiritual part of us that’s born again, then we aren’t, that’s not legislating anything. That’s an impulse, and it’s a natural thing that comes from a natural source.
John McLarty: From the ground up.
Kimberly Faith: Right. Right. And so how does this preserve a nation? You know, how does this, you know, learning to live selflessly and identifying, knowing our identity comes from Christ, how does that preserve a nation? Well, you know, first of all, it comes because it’s a grassroots thing, you know? It’s a grassroots
John McLarty: It has to be that. Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: It has to be that. When people see the real deal, they know it’s the real deal. They see the fruit of the spirit. They’re going to say, I want what you have, or they’re going to just run the other way. You know?
John McLarty: It’s so good. I mean, you cannot have a state imposed religion.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: Now the state shouldn’t suppress and outlaw a religion.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John Mclarty: But that freedom of conscience and then that moral fabric that comes up, that’s what preserves the nation.
Kimberly Faith: Well, y know what? Something I just thought about when you said that. I don’t know. The Bible doesn’t say a lot about the millennial reign, but it does say that, I’m kind of going to start with a clean slate, you know? There will be people born who have to receive the gift of salvation. So even in the millennial reign of Christ, there’s going to be a choice.
John McLarty: That’s right.
Kimberly Faith: I mean, we know that because there’s a war at the end, you know?
John McLarty: People choose not to yield to God.
Kimberly Faith: Right. So even in a government where Jesus is king are we going to have these choices? Not us, we’ve already made our choice, right? But it just raises, you know, you think about people who advocate either on one side, oh, we should have some kind of state based religion, or on the other side, religion shouldn’t be in the government. Well, neither of those positions are right.
John McLarty: Yeah. That’s perfect. Because even in the millennial reign where Jesus is ruling
Kimberly Fait: Right.
John McLarty: There’s still freedom of conscience
Kimberly Faith: Yes.
John McLarty: And people choosing not to follow God.
Kimberly Faith: There’s still free will.
John McLarty: Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. And because, again, I think the best argument I ever think of is that God lays on my heart about the question of, you know, how could a good God allow evil is could we ever experience love if we didn’t have a choice? And isn’t the experience of love worth it? You know, to know that we can enter into a volitional relationship with somebody and experience this great thing called love. Anyway, that’s a rabbit. You know, and I mean, think about that though, if every person who claimed to be a Christian in our nation or in any nation started loving others the way that God loves them.
John McLarty: Yes. That would change and preserve our nation.
Kimberly Faith: It totally would. And I mean, I think that’s how the early church turned the Roman empire upside down. I mean, they were so real.
John McLarty: They turned the world
Kimberly Faith: They were willing to die for what they believed in, you know? And they were free. They, you know, even though Rome thought that they were controlling these people, they weren’t.
John McLarty: Their souls were free.
Kimberly Faith: Their souls were free.
John McLarty: Their spirits were free.
Kimberly Faith: When people see that, it’s a
John McLarty: That love.
Kimberly Faith: The freedom.
John McLarty: Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: The freedom that being in a slave to righteousness, as the Bible says, or a, or God is our master. It’s like that example I gave, the workhouse or the palace. Which one do you want to work in?
John McLarty: And that sense of the brethren that they had, that church relationship, I think of Jesus who said, by this shall all men know you’re my disciples,
Kimberly Faith: Yes.
John McLarty: That you love one another. So as the world observed them, not only dying for Christ, but sticking with each other, so that, people of the Roman world were like, yeah, we want what those people have.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah, yeah. It’s and this is how we’re going to preserve freedom or, you know, for our nation. And for anybody who’s listening from a different country, this is how your nation, depending on your political situation, will either find freedom or preserve it. We can change. We can make the difference. You know, we already know the future, and we know that there are certain things that are going to happen, but it’s not going to happen. Freedom is not going to happen through, you know, by arguments, debates
John McLarty: A lot of inflation.
Kimberly Faith: Being angrier You know, having better political weapons, more money, you know? This is not a strategy of man. This is the will of God.
John McLarty: Political intrigue. This is, yeah.
Kimberly Faith: Jesus sets us free. You know, Jesus said, you know, that we could be free indeed. Think about that. Remember that verse. The son will make you free, you will be free indeed.
John McLarty: Free indeed. Right.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. And that’s what happens when we surrender our life to Christ. Nobody can touch us. They can’t take our soul.
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: They can’t take our peace unless we let them. And, you know, I think about our nation and just all the political hate that’s going on and the personal hate. People are disowning their own family because of the political party they choose. I mean, that’s crazy. Your flesh and blood, you’re going to disown them because they voted for a particular person. That’s what’s not going to change.
John McLarty: Yeah. Just, you know, I’ve watched political action and speech for, you know, fifty years. Yeah, the level of hatefulness is just almost
Kimberly Faith: It’s off the scales.
John McLarty: Off the scales, yeah.
Kimberly Faith: And it’s permeating every area
John McLarty: Not just our disagreement.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: Hate.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah, you can’t even talk to somebody without calling them a name or using profane language.
John McLarty: Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: You know? At what point do our politicians decide it’s okay to use profanity? I mean, that is just it, it’s a reflection of us, unfortunately.
John McLarty: The culture in decline.
Kimberly Faith: And we are the ones who can change it, though. We don’t have to have a president or a governor or a senator change that. We can change that. And I just want to encourage people. Look. This is exciting to me. It’s exciting. John Adams wrote, the constitution was designed for only a moral and religious people and was wholly inadequate for a government of any other. He was right. He was right. And he’s still right, you know? And we, you and I, can change that. We can, whether it’s in our family, it’s in our neighborhood, if we’re in a classroom, if we’re a student, if we have a job, you exist in a culture. You exist in some venue, some platform of influence. When the Lord changes you, you can’t keep it to yourself. That’s the bottom line.
John McLarty: Well, that’s encouraging. We don’t have to look at this culture and the hate and the vitriol on both sides and just like, oh, this is hopeless. The nation’s going to collapse, and let’s go move way off into Newton County and buy a log cabin and live by a creek.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: But we can just live where God’s put us
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: And just love Jesus more.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John McLarty: Love each other more.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Because
John McLarty: And spread that.
Kimberly Faith: People who are genuinely, visibly, irresistibly free in Christ, they draw everybody around them to that. People want to be free. And, you know, we have the opportunity. I don’t care who you are. You have the opportunity to be that. And the Bible promises us in Second Corinthians 3:17, now that the spirit of the Lord, sorry, the Lord is the spirit, and where the spirit of the Lord is, there’s liberty. That’s still true today. You know, when the spirit is in control of my life, I’m living free. Freer than, even if I’m in jail, I’m living free. I don’t want to be in jail. But, man, I can think of about 15 things that I’ve imprisoned myself in, just living in apparent freedom, you know. But the spirit of the Lord controls my life, that I’m living in genuine love, genuine joy. The wisdom that comes from above, not earthly wisdom. The strength that lifts me up even if I am weak, even if I’m sick, even if I’m struggling. I can live in God’s strength, his wisdom, his love, all the things that we all want.
John McLarty: I was thinking, you always have the liberty to choose Christ. And we’re talking about The United States Of America, but this podcast goes all over the world. But wherever you are, you have the liberty to choose Christ.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right.
John McLarty: But here in The United States, as we think about our 250th, we should use the liberty we have, not only to choose Christ
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: But to serve him and to love others.
Kimberly Faith: Absolutely. That’s a great, it’s just a great opportunity.
John McLarty: It is.
Kimberly Faith: We did like four or five podcasts on the riches that we’re going to get when we, the rewards and not only do we have salvation, but we have the opportunity to earn rewards that are just so priceless. And I’m not talking about money. I’m talking about the souls of people that we’re going to see for eternity because we live for Christ. We lived in the freedom that is just so irresistible that people are going to like, I want what you have, you know? That’s so encouraging to me. It doesn’t matter where you are listening to this podcast. If you are in East Northeastern Africa living under a regime that is oppressive to the ideas of Christianity, you can be free. You can live in freedom. And, you know, I would just encourage everybody to, you know, that’s listening to this, just just to take a step back and say, okay, does my life represent true freedom? And if it doesn’t, figure out why. What’s chaining you?
John McLarty: There’s liberty in Christ.
Kimberly Faith: There’s liberty in Christ. And, you know, we have the, Jesus made us to live free, not to live in the bondage of the sin that he freed us from. So I hope this is an encouragement to everybody. You know, I love our country, and I know that, I just appreciate so much that we do get to be part of a larger nation, that spiritual nation called the church, and that that is a nation that has a perfect law of liberty that governs it. Christ is the head.
John McLarty: Well, and happy birthday to The United States Of America, and a special thanks to those that serve to protect our liberty, all of the troops.
Kimberly Faith: Absolutely.
John McLarty: And thanks to God for giving us this liberty and preserving it for 250 years.
Kimberly Faith: That’s a good outro, dad.
John McLarty: Alright. Thank you, Lord.
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