I had the honor of speaking to Dr. Laura today and, naturally, was scolded by her at the end of the conversation! I'll tell you why she did, but we also highlight one of Dr. Laura's best pieces of advice: Stop following your feelings and start THINKING. 

Hey, welcome to Politics by Faith, brought to you by the Patriot Gold Group. Well, I'm coming off of a bit of a high from just a moment ago. Got to talk to the great Dr. Laura Schlesinger. It's an incredible honor. I've been nervous all week. My producer had to tell me right before, he's like, Sleder, it's going to be great.

He's going to give me like a pep talk. I just wanted to make the most of the moment because Dr. Laura, I often credit Glenn Beck with this. Glenn Beck was my first independent radio inspiration but Dr. Laura was the first person I ever listened to. So my mom is on flaming, like flaming on fire Hillary Clinton supporter through and through. I like my mom to joy Behar politically. So growing up we would drive 45 minutes each way to swim practice in high school and so I was in the car with my mom a lot and we'd listen to the radio and if Rush was on I forget like Rush was not allowed at all in the car but we would always listen to Dr. Laura which I think is a really interesting Venn diagram that I don't quite understand exactly. How somebody who loves Hillary can also love Dr. Laura. I don't quite get it, but I love Dr. Laura, and I think she was a part of my moral formation early, relatively early in life. So it was just awesome to talk to her, and it ended perfectly. So we had this great conversation about her life and career and stuff, whatever.

I said, okay, well I got one last question for you. This is Mike in Tennessee calling, question, and it was about our kids. And we homeschooled last year, and this year, I told her, we put our two oldest into school.

And they have, that's all I said, school. And they have these influences now with their peers. And the kids are coming home saying like, what is Minecraft? And what is Fortnite and what is TikTok? So I just asked her about protecting kids from outside influences in an appropriate way and she went on a

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tear about public schools. Just ripped into them. It was awesome. I loved it but I like she was really like she was ripping into me too. She was ripping about public school, but how could I, how could you put your kids into public school? And I didn't have the heart even to tell her,

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oh, it's not, we didn't put them in public school. She went on about how every kid should be in a homeschool co-op. And it's like, oh, our kids, basically that's what it is. But I didn't do it.

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I like melted all of her callers for 50 years who were like, oh, yeah, you're right.

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Thank you.

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Okay, bye. That was the end of it. It was great because I was scolded by Dr. Laura. And that's just perfect. All these years of listening to Dr. Laura and I got scolded. And it wasn't like 100% accurate, but whatever, I still loved it.

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Dr. Laura is about moral clarity, the truth, standing up for what is real, being bold, not getting distracted or led by our feelings, but standing on truth. And it was such a great interview,

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maybe we can put on, I'll talk to the powers that be, maybe we can just move it over here and you can listen to it here as well. But this is a good excuse, now we're gonna get to Nahum in just a second, but this is a good excuse to talk about

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what I believe are the three pseudo-intellectual ideas that are ruining our society. The first is, who are you to say? The second is, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and my truth. These are three lies. So we should believe in the good, the beautiful, and the true.

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We believe in goodness, but the devil says, who are you to say? We believe in objective beauty. Oh no, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And we believe in truth. No, no, no, that's my truth. And all of those rejections come from the ultimate idea, which is not worshiping God,

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denying God, and worshiping the self. There was a survey done recently, 84% of Americans believe that enjoying yourself is the highest goal of life. 84%. 86% say that to enjoy yourself, you must pursue the things you desire the most. That is so, so not it at all.

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91% affirm the statement to find yourself, look within yourself. Oh, the Bible says you need to die to self. Matthew 16 says, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, follow me. Forever, whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life, for my

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sake, will find it. But the modern ethic today says, you need to look within yourself. I don't know these two gentlemen, David Kinnaman or Gabe Lyons, I don't know them, but I want to give them credit for at least this, the modern day six commandments. Number one, your mind is the source and standard of truth.

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So no matter what, no matter what, trust yourself. Commandment number two, your emotions are authoritative. So never question or let anyone else question your feelings. Hashtag follow your heart. Number three, you are sovereign, so flex your omnipotence and bend the universe around your dreams and desires.

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Hashtag live your truth. Number four, you are supreme, so always act according to your chief end to glorify and enjoy yourself forever. Hashtag YOLO. You are the sumum bonum, the standard of goodness, so don't let anyone oppress you with the antiquated notion of being a sinner who needs grace. Hashtag never change.

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And number six, you are the creator. So use that limitless creative power to craft your identity and purpose. Hashtag authenticity. What a wonderful, concise and unfortunately accurate description of where we are today in our culture. These are the exact opposite of what built our society, and the exact opposite, of course,

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of the Bible. Nahum 1.2 says, God is jealous. Well, I thought jealousy was bad. No, it's a different kind of jealousy. Exodus 20 says, You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.

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You shall not bow down to them or worship them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God." God is jealous when we give to another thing something that rightly belongs to Him. Our worship and our love. To be clear, this is not the same jealousy that we might feel when someone has more money than we have. It's different. Jealousy is a sin when you desire something that does not belong to you.

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But the worship and praise and love for God belongs to him and him alone. So him being jealous of it, that's not how we think of jealousy today. So my question for Dr. Laura was really about this. I asked about outside influences. As my kids get older, there's going to be more and more outside influences. But I want them to focus on what is good, beautiful, and true in the world.

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And while they're under our care, we are going to protect our home and make sure that they can direct their focus on exactly that. And not sending them into the snake pit that is the public school is a good start. But the ultimate goal is to make our kids focus their lives on God. Why? God is jealous. Let me end with a little Charles Spurgeon. He's jealous of your trust.

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He will not permit you to trust in the arm of the flesh. 2 Chronicles 32 8. When we lean on him he is glad but when we transfer our dependence to another, when we rely on our own wisdom, or the wisdom of a friend, or worse of all, when we trust in any works of our own, he is displeased, and he will discipline us to bring us back to himself. He is also jealous of our company.

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There should be no one with whom we talk as much as with Jesus. To live in him alone is true love, but to commune with the world, to find satisfaction in our sinful comforts? To prefer even the society of our fellow Christians to secret time spent with Him? This is grievous to our jealous Lord. He wants us to abide in Him and enjoy constant fellowship with Him, and many of the trials

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He sends us are intended to wean our hearts from created things, fixing them more closely on Himself. Let this jealousy that would keep us near Christ be a comfort to you. For if he loves you so much, you may be sure that he will allow nothing to harm you." And this was Dr. Laura's whole point. It's like, all the advice I give, this is what she said today, she said, all the advice I give is to protect people. And it says, he will protect you from all

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your enemies. Oh, that we might have grace today to keep our hearts in sacred purity towards the beloved one. May a sacred jealousy shut our eyes to all the fascinations of the world. So many lies out there. So many lies constantly in our culture and directed towards our kids, but all of us as well. Let's keep our eyes on Jesus, on God. God is jealous, and that is a wonderful thing. Mike Slater dot locals dot com is the website. Transcript commercial free on the website. What do you get when you sign up with a website and you can email from the new

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relics and that there are no no uh... commercials and transcript and this will get the melody day when i post this before it's posted wherever else it was right now it's totally free right now it's totally free myself dot local

To us, nothing should be shocking. We shouldn't be surprised at the depravity of man. Everything is always on the table. How we respond is what matters.

Hey, welcome to Politics by Faith, brought to you by the Patriot Gold Group. I'm doing the show live from Dallas, Texas today, which is why the microphone's unbearable. Sirius XM gave me this microphone to travel with, and it's no good. It's not processed well, and I think it's not awful, and I don't know how to process it right. So it's what we're all stuck with for the next two days. Hopefully this content was so engaging that you can power through a terrible sounding microphone. So Donald Trump survived his second assassination attempt. Oh I forgot to take this call someone was on SiriusXM today and they wanted to make the joke that Trump has seen has had more combat experience than Tim Walz these last couple months. Second assassination attempt in two months. This should not be a surprise.

No one should be shocked. I think the most striking and important difference between a biblical worldview and the progressive utopian worldview, which many conservatives have fallen for, by the way, is the difference between those who think man is born good versus those who understand that everyone is sinful by nature. I love this topic. I could talk about it all day. Barack Obama at the Democratic Convention the other day said, you know, can you believe those conservatives? They believe that the government is inherently corrupt. Yeah, you nailed it.

Maybe the one thing you got right in that entire speech. I'll give you an example. The left, people in academia, they like to talk about and study the root causes of poverty. No. Poverty is the natural state of man. There is no root cause of poverty. That's the norm. I'm way more interested, and it's far more important, to study the root cause of prosperity, because that's the unnatural thing. Left likes to study the root causes of crime. No, I'm more interested in the root cause of morality. The left likes to focus on the root causes of war. No, no, war is the natural state of man. We need to be studying the root causes of peace. See how they have a backwards. But that's what happens when your worldview is backwards.

Everything is backwards. And the same can be applied here. Oh, I'm so shocked that Trump, there was an assassination attempt. What? What are you talking about? We should be shocked that there's not more assassination attempts in America. One of the themes of this podcast is there's nothing new under the sun. Leaders have been assassinated for always. We happen to have lived through a time of relative peace when it comes to assassinating high-profile people. But let us not forget that this is the norm in just our history, our very short history in America. By the way, Constitution Day is tomorrow, 237 years. We've had four US presidents assassinated and killed. Many others have been shot and plots on almost all of them, but four have been killed. That's 9% of the presidents.

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I think that's pretty high. To say that 9% of our presidents have been murdered while in office, that's a lot. But it's been true forever. So I found this paper written by Aytan Birnbaum. The paper is called Political Assassination in Biblical Israel. Let me just read a little bit here. Political assassination escalates after Solomon's death and the division of the kingdom. In Judah, King Jehoram murders his brothers and some officers, 2nd Chronicles 21. King Azariah and his relatives are slain by Jehu while visiting Jezebel in Israel, 2nd Kings 2 27. Azahiah's mother then becomes queen and does away with potential claimants to the throne. 2 Kings 11 1. She's eventually killed by order of Jehoiada, the priest, who crowns Prince Jehoash in her stead. 2 Kings 11 4-16. Later, Jehoshah, Jehoash has Jehoada's righteous son, Zechariah, stoned to death. 2 Chronicles 24 20, and is assassinated by rebels avenging that murder, 2 Kings 12 21. His son, King Amaziah, executes the killers, 2 Kings 14, but he too is slain by other conspirators, 2 Kings 14 18. King Amon is later murdered by courtiers whom the people execute, 2 Kings 21. Finally, Gedaliah, were assassinated. Six in all of 21. That's 29%. Seven Judean monarchs are documented murderers, at least five of them having disposed political opponents. And however bad this may sound, the situation in the northern kingdom of Israel was much worse.

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At the outbreak of Jeroboam's insurrection, the chief tax official stoned to death, and King Rehoboam barely escapes with his life. First Kings 12. King Nadab, son of Jeroboam, is assassinated by Basha, who wipes out Jeroboam's entire family. First Kings 15-27. Basha's son, King Elah, is murdered by Zimri, a high-ranking army officer, who, facing defeat one week later, burns down the palace over himself. 1 Kings 16 King Ahab's Phoenician wife Jezebel has many of the Lord's prophets slaughtered.

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1 Kings 18-13 Ahab's son, King Joram, along with Judah's king Ahaziah, Ahab's family and widow, Queen Jezebel, as well as the prophets of Baal, are all put to death by Jehu. 2 Kings 9 Later, King Zechariah is publicly assassinated by Shalom. 2 Kings 15, who is in turn killed by Menahem, 2 Kings 15. And Menahem's son, Pecahiah, is murdered by Pecah, 2 Kings 15, who is assassinated by Hosea, 2 Kings 1530, during whose reign the ten tribes are exiled. Although it lasted for a much shorter time than the Kingdom of Judah, Israel offers more instances of regicide, killing of a king.

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Four of five consecutive monarchs are assassinated in a mere 15 years. Second Kings 15, 10 through 30, as the kingdom of Israel heads for destruction. In short, no less than eight of 19 kings are assassinated, 42% each murdered by his successor, while 13, that's 68%, either assassinate others, or themselves assassinated, or both. Now, I read through that very quickly on purpose. The point was to overwhelm you. The point was to be like, wait, why, who did what? Everyone's killing everyone, is what I wanted. Now, I gave the scriptures there if you want to go further detail into any of them as well.

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So, you know, it's true, but the point of that was to overwhelm you and to drive home the point that this is the normal state of man. Like, what have we done in America where only 9% of our presidents have been assassinated. We're doing a lot better than the Kingdom of Israel was doing. It's a miracle there's not more assassinations in America, considering how many guns we have and how many nuts we have, and also how much people hate Trump. Put those three things together, well, they've got 49 more days to get the job done. So what do we do in the meantime? Well, we must never stop doing what's right, no matter what, no matter how hard, crazy, insane things get.

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We must never stop doing what's right. This is a sermon from C.S. Lewis. It's entitled, Learning in Wartime. And he's speaking to students at a university. And the question was, how can we sit around here and learn things when there's a war being fought, when there's a war going on and life is so hard for so many people, we're just supposed to sit around here and read books and talk about ideas and study?

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Are we not fiddling when Rome burns? That's what C.S. Lewis was answering to. This is a good part. He says, I think it's important to try to see the present calamity in a true perspective. That would be World War II. The war creates no absolutely new situation. That was the mindset, right? Anytime there's a war or anything, people are like, oh, what do we do? This is so unique and new. No, it's not.

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And neither was World War II. It simply aggravates the permanent human condition so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, then the search would never have begun. We are mistaken when we compare war with normal life. Life has never been normal. Or I would add the war is normal. Even those periods which we think tranquil, like the 19th century, turn out on closer inspection to be full of crises, alarms, difficulties, emergencies. Plausible reasons have never been lacking for putting off all merely cultural activities until some imminent danger has been averted or some crying injustice put right. But humanity long ago chose to neglect those plausible reasons. They wanted knowledge and beauty now and would not wait for the suitable moment that never comes. We must do the same. Now is the time for all good things in life. Now is the time for art and beauty and friends and family and everything else that matters in this world, no matter what. Now is the time to do what's right. Deceived people will say, well, times are so tough, so now it's okay to do the things that normally wouldn't be allowed when times are good.

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It's like, no, no. If anything, the opposite is true. Because times are so tough, now more than ever is the time to do what's right. We'll take care of the election. 49 days. We'll make it too big to rig. We'll win beyond the measure of cheat. But in the meantime, in all times, let's not let anything surprise us. Any depravity catches off guard.

Any chaos cause us to be all flustered. No, no, no, this fallenness is the natural state of man. And it requires us to rise above. Mike Slater.locals.com, that's the transcript and commercial free on the website MikeSlater.Locals.com.

God's laugh should bring us comfort. As crazy as things get, as much as it looks like the wicked are winning, God is laughing. And so should we.

Welcome to Politics by Faith, brought to you by the Patriot Gold Group. Yesterday's episode, we did the first half of Psalm 2. So if you didn't hear yesterday's episode, just hit the back button and listen to that one first. The point is that God is in control of all things. You can plot against him, and it might look like your plots are working, you're scheming and conniving, but they won't work, and it won't end well for you. God laughs. You want to make God laugh? There's a couple ways to do it. First, make plans that are contrary to his will. God will laugh. That's what it says in Psalm 2 verse 4. He who sits in the heavens shall laugh. He also laughs when the wicked think that their plans are working. Psalm 37, 12 says, The wicked plots against the righteous and gnashes his teeth at them.

But the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he sees that his day is coming. So, don't get frustrated when it looks like the wicked are winning. They think they're winning, but we don't need to think that they are, because God's laughing. We should have confidence that God has it. He has so much confidence, He's laughing at them. The wicked have no idea what they're up against.

Psalm 59 says, Deliver me from my enemies, O my God, defend me from those who rise against me, deliver me from the workers of iniquity, and save me from bloodthirsty men. Awake to punish all the nations,

do not be merciful to any wicked transgressors. But you, O Lord, shall laugh at them. So it's not going well for me. A lot of people rising up against me. But you, Lord, you laugh at them. So, what do we do if we're not supposed to be

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anxious about the plots of the wicked and how it looks like they're working. God's laughing at it. What do we do? Let's pick up Psalm 2, verse 10. Now therefore, be wise, O kings, be instructed, you judges of the earth, serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way

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when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all those who put their trust in him. So the first part of the psalm was about kings who plot against God. So now he's saying, kings, knock it off in your effort to defy God. Surrender to God. Serve him and rejoice. Blessed are those who put their trust in him.

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To bring this back to the laughing, a fool can laugh. Proverbs 29 says, If a wise man has an argument with a fool, the fool only rages and laughs. There is no quiet. So fools laugh, but our job is to laugh out of confidence. Psalm 52, six says, "'The righteous shall see and fear and shall laugh at him, "'saying, see the man who would not make God his refuge,

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"'but trusted in the abundance of his riches "'and sought refuge in his own destruction.'" So we have confidence. The righteous shall also laugh.

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So how do we relate this today?

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Things are nuts, things are crazy. What in the world is going on? We told, gosh, we tell so many horrible stories, but like stories that make you like, what? I'm not going to, I mean, well, I guess again, the VMAs, I saw a clip of Katy Perry at the

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VMAs.

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Let's just say you can't watch the clip at work. It's horrific. It's wildly pornographic and gross. It's absolutely disgusting in every way. And you're like, wow, how much worse could it get? Then we told a story of an illegal alien from,

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I believe, El Salvador, who had a rap sheet in El Salvador, came to America, illegally, and strangled, raped, and murdered a 20-year-old girl. And then, and here's, as if that's not bad enough, here's the extra crazy cherry on top of the whole story. This was in July of 2023, police had video of them there, had audio

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recording of them there. But they needed DNA evidence. So they gave him his Miranda rights, but they let him go because they needed the DNA evidence. So they sent the DNA off to be analyzed. How long do you think it takes to analyze DNA? Like an hour? I have no idea. Two hours maybe. Maybe they sent it off on a Friday,

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and like a holiday weekend, so I don't know. Four days, let's say it took four days max. That didn't happen on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then Monday was a holiday, they came back on Tuesday and did it. Took six months.

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In the meantime, this illegal alien enrolled at the local high school, and went to school with 1,400 other kids in the high school. And then he was ultimately arrested. Once the DNA evidence came back, six months later, he was arrested and sentenced to 70 years in prison.

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But in the meantime, he was just hanging around the school. Just outside Baltimore. It's unbelievable. That's just one example of things are crazy. Trump said, the world is laughing at us.

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I had to debate the other day.

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He said, the whole world is laughing at us. It's how stupid we are. It looks like Satan is winning. People lost their minds. If people knew really how bad things were, we'd live in a much more serious country.

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But God laughs, not at our discomfort, never. He laughs at the plans of the wicked. And that laughter should give us comfort. I heard it once, God laughs to dispel our fears. That's the theme of this podcast, is we have so much anxiety about

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politics and I want to alleviate that anxiety and knowing that God is laughing at the people who are trying to cause you harm should give us comfort. God laughs to remind us that no purpose of his can be thwarted and those who oppose God now they don't hear him laugh but one day they'll hear him, and they won't be comforted like we are. They'll be terrified at his fury. That's Psalm 2, verse 5.

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The psalm ends with, kiss the sun. Now this is about kings. So this is about the inferior giving honor to their superiors. So the kings of the earth kiss the sun. realize that you are inferior to God. For us, Jesus is the Son of God.

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John 14, 6, Jesus said, I'm the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Do not be stressed about wicked plans of wicked people. Do not be stressed about wicked plans of wicked people. God laughs and we should be comforted.