The World and Everything in It: June 12, 2026

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

JOHM STONESTREET: Hi, John Stonestreet here. 

Culture Friday is not just about the stories of the week. At the end of the day, it’s really about ideas. Because ideas matter.

And ideas don't just stay ideas. They take shape—into laws, institutions, families, and cultures.

That's also why a biblical worldview matters—to all of life, including journalism.

Good reporting helps us see not only what’s happening, but why it’s happening.

And you can support the incredible work of WORLD during its June Giving Drive. Go to WNG.org/donate. That’s WNG.org/donate.

And I’ll be back in less than 10 minutes.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Culture Friday: A Pentagon paperwork dispute raises a bigger question: What makes a religion Christian?

NICK EICHER, HOST: John Stonestreet is standing by, we’ll talk about that and much more.

Also today: A sci-fi mystery explores whether some truths are too dangerous to reveal.

AUDIO: That truth will upend all established order across the entire world.

And author Stephen Mansfield on Quest with George Grant.

MAST: It’s Friday, June 12th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. 

I’m Lindsay Mast.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

MAST: Up next, Mark Mellinger with today’s news.

MARK MELLINGER, NEWS ANCHOR: Trump says Iran deal is close, cuts off strikes » President Trump called off a third round of airstrikes against Iran, saying a deal to end the war in Iran -in Trump’s words, “a great settlement”- is almost finalized.

TRUMP: They will not have a nuclear weapon. They’ve agreed to that… They will not only not have, they will not purchase, develop in any way, any shape, in any way, shape or form a nuclear weapon. They will not have a nuclear weapon.

Trump also says the Strait of Hormuz will open as soon as the agreement is signed. He says that could happen as soon as this weekend in Europe, with Vice President Vance handling the signing for the U.S. on the president’s behalf.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, however, says the country has not reached a final decision on any agreement.

Earlier in the day, before he announced the potential breakthrough, Trump had promised more bombing, saying the U.S. was ready to take over Iran’s oil and gas markets.

Stocks have best day in over two months, oil prices fall » On Wall Street:

SOUND: Closing bell

Reaction to the president’s announcement was extremely positive.

Stocks rallied to their best day in more than two months, with all three major indices jumping between 1.8 percent and 2.5 percent.

Oil prices also dropped sharply amid the news that a deal to end the conflict with Iran could be close at hand.

Jay Clayton is new DNI nominee » President Trump has announced his long-term pick for director of national intelligence. He’s turning to Jay Clayton, the current U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and former chairman of the Securities & Exchange Commission.

This comes after intense pushback to Trump’s pick of Bill Pulte as acting DNI. Democrats have held up passage of an important foreign surveillance measure in opposition to Pulte, who they see as a Trump loyalist with no national security experience.

Democratic Congressman Adam Smith of Washington says he doesn’t trust either of Trump’s DNI picks.

SMITH: I don’t trust this guy any more than anyone else, cause at the end of the day it’s Trump. Trump is the one that I do not trust… I do not trust Trump with the sensitive information. He’s made it very clear he is going to use it to pursue his own personal, political, vindictive agenda, not to protect the national security interest of the United States.

Reaction from other Democrats has been less severe, with Virginia Senator Mark Warner saying he respects Clayton.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune says the Senate will move quickly on Clayton’s nomination, with one source telling the Associated Press the Senate Intelligence Committee is planning a confirmation hearing for Wednesday.

Trump says Pulte will still serve as acting DNI briefly while Clayton awaits confirmation.

FISA Section 702 reauthorization fails » Meantime, lawmakers failed Thursday to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, FISA, which allows warrantless surveillance of foreign targets outside the U.S.

That’s the section Democrats refused to extend, because of President Trump’s choice of Bill Pulte as Acting DNI. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries:

JEFFRIES: To get back to good faith negotiations about surveillance authority, the proposed elevation of Bill Pulte needs to be reversed.

Thursday was lawmakers’ last chance to extend the FISA provision before it expired at midnight. House Speaker Mike Johnson:

JOHNSON: We did everything within our power to try to ensure that this statute does not expire, and the Democrats are using it as a political hostage.

Johnson, however, also lost more than a dozen Republicans on the vote. It failed 218 to 198 in the House, where it needed a two-thirds majority to pass.

Late Thursday, President Trump said he’s considering an executive order to extend FISA Section 702, though some lawmakers question his legal authority to draft such an order.

Man accused of shooting MN lawmakers & spouses pleads guilty » The man accused of gunning down two Minnesota state lawmakers and their spouses last summer, killing House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, switched his plea to guilty Thursday.

Vance Boelter agreed to serve two consecutive life sentences plus 40 years.

U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota Daniel Rosen explains why prosecutors took the death penalty off the table in exchange for a plea deal.

ROSEN: When you have a defendant that is prepared to plead guilty, take consecutive life terms plus, to ensure that he never sees freedom again in his entire life… that was an opportunity that we just could not pass up.

Boelter impersonated a police officer to gain access to his victims inside their homes. He also faces several more state charges, including murder and impersonating a police officer.

Trump threatens D.C. takeover » President Trump is threatening a federal takeover of Washington, D.C.

The mayoral primary is Tuesday, and because the city leans heavily Democrat, whoever wins then is likely to also win the general election. D.C. Council Member Janeese Lewis George, a self-described democratic socialist, is one of the prime contenders, and the prospect of her winning concerns Trump.

TRUMP: Well, I wouldn't like it, and maybe we'll take back Washington, run it on a federal basis. We won't put up with it.

Last year, Trump started a series of National Guard surges to cut down on crime in the nation’s capital, and he’s often touted lower crime rates as a result.

But one recent criminal has managed to elude the U.S. Park Police so far: Someone marked the numbers “86-47” on the lawn of the National Mall near the Washington Monument this week. “86” can serve as slang in the restaurant industry for “get rid of”, and that combination of numbers is widely considered a threat against Donald Trump, the 47th president.

I’m Mark Mellinger.

Straight ahead: John Stonestreet is here for Culture Friday. And later, Collin Garbarino sizes up the latest Steven Spielberg movie to hit the big screen.

This is The World and Everything in It.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Friday the 12th of June.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

A week ago this might’ve sounded like an obscure Pentagon paperwork dispute.

The Defense Department, the War Department, consolidated more than 200 religious designations down to 31. And, in the process, listed 21 groups under a Christian heading. But it left out the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, LDS, the Mormons.

That triggered a protest from Utah Senators Mike Lee and John Curtis, direct appeals to the White House and Defense Secretary/War Secretary Pete Hegseth, and by Monday the Pentagon had revised the list again.

Joining us now is John Stonestreet. He’s president of the Colson Center and host of The Breakpoint Podcast. Morning, John.

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

EICHER: The Pentagon decided it wasn’t qualified to answer this question. But Christians still have to. Why has it become so controversial to say Mormonism and Biblical Christianity are two different things?

STONESTREET: Look, the problem they were trying to solve is an obvious one, which is in the military, people claim all kinds of religion in order to get the religious exemption.

I have it on good authority, having some chaplains within my congregation, that there is a large contingent of people who worship the god Thor in the U.S. military, but it’s only because they want to have facial hair.

Look, this was a reduction of significant proportions of the number of recognized religious groups. Interestingly enough, of all the groups that were identified as Christian, the Church of Latter-day Saints was not, and that was the source of the consternation from Senator Lee and by others.

Interestingly enough, there were groups that were included as Christian groups, including, for example, Christian Scientists, which, of course, is nothing like a Christian religion, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, who themselves don’t like to hold on to that term. Kind of like the Mormon Church, when it was founded, it was seen as a correction of Christendom from the great apostasy, and so on.

So it is interesting that in the application of this within the Latter-day Saints, they used to not want the term Christian and now they do. They used to like the term Mormon and now they don’t. It’s really hard to keep up with it, but that’s what the Latter-day Saints have been doing.

Senator Lee immediately posted on X, "Can anyone tell me why the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was not included with the designation Christian?"

And the answer to that question was quick and robust. A lot of people did. A lot of people could answer why, and a lot of people did answer why.

You could sum it all up with: Mormonism is not a Christian religion. It is a different religion altogether.

It has a different understanding of Jesus. Even though both Christians and Mormons claim Jesus, they’re talking about different guys from any objective measurement.

In a Christian understanding of Jesus, Jesus is the second person of the Trinity. Mormons deny the Trinity. Mormons believe that Jesus was created. Christians understand, as was clarified throughout several church councils, that Jesus is not created. Jesus is the second person of the Godhead, eternally existent, who comes, who is begotten, not made, as the phrase goes.

In other words, Mormons disagree with Christians about the Bible, about God, about the character and nature of God, about Jesus, about the nature of sin, about the nature of salvation, and about what constitutes holy scripture.

So it was correct not to identify the Mormon Church as being a Christian denomination, because it is not.

The way that the Pentagon fixed this is instructive as well, because, as the Department of War quickly posted out, it’s not our job to distinguish between these things. That I agree with. It’s not the Pentagon’s job to do this.

And when they tried to do it, they dropped the ball.

So what they ended up doing is removing the Christian designation from all groups, and that served the purposes of identifying who could be recognized as a chaplain and who could not. That served the purpose, made everyone happy, and moving on.

MAST: I want to talk about another set of terms that got reclassified recently. Both chambers of the New York legislature have approved a bill that would replace words like mother and father in parts of state law with terms like “gestating parent” and “non-gestating parent.”

With Father’s Day coming up, I’m trying to imagine my kids handing their dad a card that says, “Happy Non-Gestating Parent Day.”

John, this is what happens downstream of Obergefell, isn’t it?

STONESTREET: It happens downstream of the sexual revolution, and the Obergefell decision was an example of one of the fundamental ideas of the sexual revolution, and that is that men and women are interchangeable.

Now, that’s always been a part of the feminist movement initially, that men and women should be interchangeable in rights, which, of course, is true, since both bear the image of God and both should be recognized as such. Basic human rights belong as much to women as they do to men.

But when the sexual revolution got a hold of second-wave feminism, then this evolved a bit to men and women being interchangeable not just in rights, but in roles. And when you’re talking about roles, you’re talking about the cultural application of these biological distinctives.

And there are biological distinctives.

In the working out of second-wave feminism, those distinctives got muddied. Then that has kind of brought into this brave new world the third chapter, which is that men and women are interchangeable in reality.

Now, to your point, how is this connected with Obergefell?

Well, look, if men and women are interchangeable in marriage, then men and women are interchangeable in parenting. That’s why we have various forms of this in cultural speak, right?

We say things like, "Kids just need a loving family," and "Love makes a family," as if just the act of love makes a family.

All of that is nonsense, because homosexual love is non-procreative, even if it’s sincere and committed and faithful and monogamous. Heterosexual love can make a family if it’s none of those things. We’re just talking about objectively different things here.

So please do not send me a happy non-gestating parent day card.

MAST: John, maybe this is just a different way of asking the same question, but I keep thinking about something my grandfather used to say. He told my mom that the most beautiful word in the English language was “mother,” because he'd lost his when he was very young.

And it strikes me that words like mother and father aren't just labels. They’re deeply human words.

So when a culture starts replacing them with terms like “gestating parent” and “non-gestating parent,” very clinical is that more than a vocabulary change? Does it eventually change how we understand those relationships?

STONESTREET: Well, words absolutely make a difference.

Not just in the fact that how you define words matters and that words are the fabric of the universe, but when words are used to intentionally obscure clarity, that’s what’s happening here.

You have to make up these words in order to bolster these claims that are counter to what is observably real and true.

So I think it does matter.

We have perfectly good words for this.

Mother and father are perfectly good words, and they reflect the reality.

EICHER: John, I know you saw this story. A social media influencer and his wife announced they were expecting a baby. They later they had ended the pregnancy after a Down syndrome diagnosis, had an abortion. What struck me wasn’t the decision itself. By most estimates, that’s what happens in roughly three-quarters of these cases in the United States. I mean, we’re no Iceland, which is almost 100% of Down Syndrome cases, but 75% is still shameful.

What struck me was the reaction. People who would normally insist abortion is a private choice seemed suddenly willing to say this choice was wrong. And they did. He got clobbered online. What do you make of that?

STONESTREET: Well, I think it reveals again the worldview ground in which all this stuff happens.

First of all, we have talked about these incredibly significant moral choices, including the choice to actually end a human life, as if it’s personal and private and should not be public.

Second, it was interesting to hear how many people just responded with, “Have some sensitivity. They just lost their baby.”

As if they didn’t actually just kill their baby.

Again, it has to do with words and the use of language as a way to obscure what has actually taken place.

But in a sense it’s interesting, too, to your point, 75 percent of couples make that decision here, and that’s a low number compared to the rest of the Western world.

We can condemn the Ridgeways, and we should. They deserve every bit of condemnation that they’re receiving right now, even if they don’t understand it and other people don’t understand it because they’re so morally blind from what is obviously true.

But we should also reserve some condemnation for the doctors.

Think of the number of reports we have from couples who find out some sort of diagnosis like this prenatally, and they are pressured by the doctor.

So theoretically, whether the Ridgeways were predisposed to that sort of decision or not, even if they weren’t, they would have received an enormous amount of pressure, most likely from the medical community around them.

The expectation is to abort.

The thing we should be exercised about, on top of all that, is the fact that they chose to post this on social media as some attention grab.

MAST: John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of The Breakpoint Podcast.

John, thanks. We’ll see you next time.

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, June 12th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a legendary director returns to one of his earliest preoccupations.

Steven Spielberg has already made a trio of movies about first contact between humans and intelligent creatures from outer space. Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1977, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in 1982, and War of the Worlds in 2005. Disclosure Day is his new movie exploring the theme. It opens this weekend.

Here’s WORLD’s arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino.

COLLIN GARBARINO: Once upon a time, seeing the name Steven Spielberg attached to a movie was enough to make people sit up and take notice. This is the guy who invented the summer blockbuster with Jaws in 1975 and then reinvented it with E.T. seven years later. Name brand directors might not carry the same weight as they used to, but it’s worth checking out what this wizard of light and sound is up to.

DANIEL: People have a right to know the truth. It belongs to seven billion people.

JANE: What is it?

DANIEL: You won’t believe me if I told you. So I’ll show you.

Disclosure Day imagines what it would be like for our world on the day we discover we’re not alone in the universe. The movie drops the audience in the middle of the action. Daniel and his girlfriend Jane, played by Josh O’Connor and Eve Hewson, are on the run from shadowy government operatives. Josh has stolen some valuable information, and his pursuers want it back.

JANE: What did you steal?

DANIEL: Secrets. The data they paid me to protect.

Those secrets provide indisputable evidence that aliens have been visiting earth for the last 79 years and that the American government has been involved in a conspiracy to cover it up.

At the same time, hundreds of miles away, Kansas City weather anchor Margaret, played by Emily Blunt, starts to have a very strange day.

MARGARET: Good morning, Kansas City. Let’s take a look at… Let’s… Let’s…

Of course, Daniel and Margaret’s lives will eventually intersect. It’s as if they’re chess pieces in a bigger game. Colin Firth and Colman Domingo play the bureaucrats wrestling with each other over who gets to control the volatile information in Daniel’s possession.

HUGO: People are starved for the truth.

Disclosure Day is rated PG-13 for infrequent strong language and a mildly bloody scene. There’s only one true action sequence, because this movie is more about ideas than thrills. How would people react when faced with evidence of life from outer space?

JANE: If you found out we weren’t alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you… Would that frighten you?

Disclosure Day has philosophical aspirations, so expect a lot of talking. Spielberg uses his characters to pose a broader question about the nature of truth. O’Connor and Blunt really carry the movie. Their characters are likable, and their performances are strong. But at times, the dialogue veers into too much exposition as it explores its big idea about whether we’re obligated to disclose the truth or whether truth can be the property of a privileged few.

NOAH: That truth will upend all established order across the entire world.

One of the movie’s subplots that feels especially awkward involves a digression into theology. The movie attempts to make the case that there’s no inherent contradiction between believing in aliens and believing in God, and it acts as if this is some startling revelation. As if Christianity were founded on the notion that we’re alone in the universe, rather than the fact that Jesus rose from the dead. The script doesn’t give any hint that Spielberg is aware of the fact that Christians have been debating the idea about how aliens might fit into God’s design for generations. I mean, just to be clear, I don’t believe aliens exist, but if they showed up, I certainly wouldn’t have a crisis of faith.

Even though Hollywood struggles to talk about faith in a way that feels authentic, I think it’s noteworthy that themes of faith are creeping into mainstream movies. At the end of last year, Rian Johnson released his Knives Out movie Wake Up Dead Man, which also dealt with faith and also starred Josh O’Connor. Both of these movies from unbelieving filmmakers attempt to explore Christianity, and though neither quite understands the faith, it’s interesting that both take religion seriously rather than dismissing it. I wonder if we’re seeing the beginnings of a trend.

NOAH: If you do this, there’s no undoing it.

Despite its faults, Disclosure Day is a pretty good movie. It has drama, mystery, and humor and a coherent story. The cinematography is excellent, and the practical effects give the film a grounded feel. But is it good enough to warrant a trip to the theater?

JANE: What are you going to do?

DANIEL: Full disclosure… to the whole world. All at once.

I’m not sure Americans still care about the idea that little gray men crash-landed in Roswell. But more importantly, Hollywood blockbusters have evolved since the days Spielberg pioneered the genre 50 years ago. This isn’t the kind of event-sized movie you need to see on the big screen. It’s nearly two and a half hours long, which might sound event sized, but all the exposition makes it feel overly long. The fact is Spielberg’s E.T. is half an hour shorter, but twice as entertaining.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s time now for our occasional feature we call Quest: conversations with thoughtful leaders about three books that have shaped their thinking. Not necessarily their favorite books, but the ones that have most influenced their lives and their calling.

MAST: The segment is built off of a concept we publish each month in WORLD Magazine. And we’ve invited our resident logophile here at The World and Everything in It George Grant to lead this discussion. George is an author in his own right, and he felt like a natural choice for this. And as you’ll hear, this segment took a bit of an unexpected turn.

GEORGE GRANT: Today, I'm speaking with the New York Times bestselling author and my dear friend for almost four decades now, Stephen Mansfield. Stephen, when did you first realize that reading could shape your life?

STEPHEN MANSFIELD: Well, George, as you know, I spent my teen years behind the Iron Curtain. My father was an army officer. We were in Berlin. And so reading Time, Newsweek, Look, National Geographic, any of those publications, I wasn't so much into books then, made me … it was immediate. If something was going on in Washington, it had implications for where I was living. We found out what the Russians were thinking by reading New York Times and other publications. So in my teen years, reading periodicals made me realize how vital reading was for understanding the world in which we live, because literally it was telling me about the geography where I lived at that time, and I was there for six or seven years.

GRANT: Okay, well, let's just get straight to the books then. I want to hear about your list. What's the first book on your list, and what was going on in your life when you first encountered it?

MANSFIELD: Well, the first book that ever really deeply impacted me because I became a Christian late in my life was Plain Speaking, An Oral Biography of Harry Truman by Merle Miller. Now, it's an unusual one because it was controversial later on. I was a college student. I was fishing around as to what I was going to major in. I had a sense of history because my parents were both deep history readers. But when I read Plain Speaking, which was, again, an oral biography, lots of interviews put together in an actual transcript form, I began to understand how a life came together and how a life could be written about and how a life could be reported. And given that I've spent a lot of my life writing biography, I look back and realize that book really profoundly impacted me. It was controversial later because Harry Truman protested a little bit and some things that he had said probably in his older age. But the way it looked at a life in 3D deeply impacted me.

GRANT: So now what's the second book that influenced you and how did it deepen you or widen you, shape you?

MANSFIELD: Well, George, I'm not doing this because you and I are on this program together. But in all truth and before God, the next book that impacted me was a book called Bringing in the Sheaves, Transforming Poverty into Productivity, which released in about 1985. I was the pastor of a small activist church in Abilene, Texas. Remember now, I was raised in Europe. And we were trying to make an impact in our community. And I read this book. And it was the first book I read that really articulated biblical compassion for the poor, the downtrodden, the hurting, but it was what you did in bringing biblical theology and beefy, exciting Christian history to that subject that transformed this young pastor. We did everything you suggested. We had bags, grocery bags filled with peanut butter and all the stuff you recommended. We called it Isaiah 58. We put a mobile building in our yard. So I'm not just saying this because we're talking, you know that. Bringing in the Sheaves, Transforming Poverty into Productivity, 1985, changed my life. And by the way, thousands of others, because we started a lot of Isaiah 58s around the country.

GRANT: And we got to know each other not too terribly long after that, after you moved to the Nashville area, and you started another ministry called Isaiah 58 here.

MANSFIELD: Yeah, I found my church in downtown Nashville. And I got to tell you, that's impacted thousands and thousands of people. So my point is not to brag about me. My point is to brag about your book. It is still having an impact on the streets of America.

GRANT: Okay, let's go on to your third book. Enough about me.

MANSFIELD: My third book was What I Saw at the Revolution, A Political Life in the Reagan Era by Peggy Noonan. And it was about the Reagan era. It was about the Reagan revolution with Bush following. But it was the way that she wrote and the techniques that she used. She drew some techniques from John Dos Passos. She had ways of reflecting, writing about her own thoughts in a given experience, etc. It taught me some things about writing that I have used to this day. It freed me as a young writer. And as you say, we met not long after and you gave me my first opportunity to write a book. And that book was very much in my head as I launched into my meager little literary career. So I'm very grateful for it in combination with all that you taught me earlier on.

GRANT: You know, she is such a wonderful writer to this day, editorials in the Wall Street Journal are just must-reading every single week. She's a remarkable writer. Even when I disagree with her, I love her writing.

Three books. Let's tie them together. What links them, and how have they shaped the way you think, the way you work, the way you live?

MANSFIELD: Well, your book deepened an understanding of a biblical worldview. And then I brought that to the other two books in thinking about great lives and thinking about biography and thinking about the impact that even someone like me could have by obeying biblical truth. I'd have to say that what they did was they formed an understanding of leadership and impact on society that great leadership can have under the hand of God. And that's been with me ever since, of course.

GRANT: Stephen Mansfield is the best-selling author and internationally sought-after speaker, leadership coach, and my friend. His books, articles, and podcasts are all available on his website, and that address is stephenmansfield.tv.

Stephen, thank you so much.

MANSFIELD: Great to be with you.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Alright, time now to name the crew who helped with this week’s programs:

Mary Reichard, David Bahnsen, Mary Muncy, Lauren Canterberry, Addie Offereins, Cal Thomas, Myrna Brown, Hunter Baker, Kim Henderson, Tyler O’Neil, Grace Snell, Daniel Suhr, Collin Garbarino, George Grant, John Stonestreet, and Josh Goniea.

Thanks also to our breaking news crew: Kent Covington, Steve Kloosterman, Travis Kircher, Daniel Devine, and Christina Grube.

And thanks to the guys who are up late so your program is ready early: Tech producers Benj Eicher and Carl Peetz.

Harrison Watters is Washington producer, Kristen Flavin is features editor, Emma Eicher is assistant producer. I’m Executive Producer, Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m producer Lindsay Mast.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” —Romans 5:1-6

Have a wonderful weekend. Be sure to worship with a Bible-believing church on Sunday. And Lord willing, we’ll meet you back here on Monday.

Go now, in grace and peace.

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