In this special For God and Country bonus episode, Jenny Beth Martin is joined by Global Methodist Minister Joel Mooneyhan for a powerful Advent reflection on love, sacrifice, and reconciliation. Centering on the often-overlooked role of Joseph in the Christmas story, Reverend Mooneyhan explores what it truly means to love like Christ—placing others above oneself, protecting the vulnerable, and giving up dignity for the sake of love. As Christmas approaches, this conversation challenges listeners to reflect on Christ’s call to love not only our neighbors, but even our enemies, in a divided and broken world. Drawing from Scripture and the Apostle Paul’s teaching on agape love, this episode offers encouragement, hope, and a reminder that Christ’s love is available to all—especially those who feel unworthy or burdened.
As we enter the final week of Advent, Jenny Beth Martin welcomes Global Methodist Minister Joel Mooneyhan for a special For God and Country devotional focused on the theme of love.
In this episode, Reverend Mooneyhan reflects on the often-overlooked role of Joseph in the Christmas story and what his actions reveal about true, Christ-centered love. Together, Jenny Beth and Joel explore how biblical love goes far beyond emotion or sentiment—it is sacrificial, protective, and willing to give up dignity for the sake of others.
In this episode, you’ll hear:
This conversation reminds us that Christmas is not just a celebration of Christ’s birth, but a call to live out His love in our daily lives—loving others as He first loved us.
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Guest:
Reverend Joel Mooneyhan | Instagram: @southernreverend | www.joelfromatlanta.com
Host:
Jenny Beth Martin, Honorary Chairman, Tea Party Patriots Action | Instagram: @jennybethm X: @jennybethm | www.teapartypatriots.org
Narrator (00:14):
Welcome to the Jenny Beth Show.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:19):
Merry Christmas. Welcome to the Jenny Best Show. I'm Jenny Beth Martin, and this is another one of our special bonus pods, the Four God and Country episodes. We are joined today by my brother and our special guest pastor, Joel Mooneyhan. We are doing our fourth devotional in the season of Advent. And Christmas is going to be here in just a few days. I hope you're feeling peace and joy as we head into the last week of Christmas. And now we're going to get right to our devotional. Joel, thanks for being back with us.
Joel Mooneyhan (00:47):
It's good to be back. It's been a great few weeks. And I'm excited to be here for this last one and hope that it is as meaningful to everybody who's hearing it as it has been to be a part of this. So let's first pray and then we'll get into
(01:06):
The discussion. God, thank you so much that we're here today to reflect on who you are and what you mean to us. And especially as we head into this final week of Advent with our hearts and our minds and our souls focused on what it means that you have come into the world, what it means that you came into the world so long ago and lived among us, set an example for us, and ultimately gave your life and resurrected for us. Help us to be people who live into that, who live that outwardly, and people to whom others can look and know that we belong to Christ. Be in the midst of our conversation as we discuss what it means to love like you. And thank you for the opportunity again to be here and reflect on all the things that it means that you've come into the world for us.
(02:10):
And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.
Jenny Beth Martin (02:12):
Amen.
Joel Mooneyhan (02:14):
So the first few weeks of advent go in the order of hope, peace, joy, and then love. And love, of course, is something that gets thrown around a lot. And so want to spend a few minutes reflecting on a particular person in the story who I think exemplifies love in a way that we tend to overlook and then kind of go into a more famous passage about love that everybody's going to know what it is when I'm talking about it. So to get us into this, as we've been doing, we've been looking at some of the people who are involved in the story as Christ comes into the world. We've looked at Zechariah and Elizabeth. We've looked at the wise men, we've looked at the shepherds, and we're going to look at one more person today. So we're looking at Matthew chapter one, verses 18 through 25.
(03:15):
And Matthew tells us, now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother, Mary, had been betrayed to Joseph before they came together, she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit. And her husband, Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. And all this took place to fulfill what the Lord has spoken by the prophet. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and his name shall be called Emmanuel, which means God with us.
(03:59):
When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded. He took his wife, but knew her not until she had born a son and he called his name Jesus.
(04:12):
In the story of Jesus' birth, I think that Joseph is probably the one person who gets overlooked the most because we obviously focus a lot on Mary. There are songs written about Mary. We focus on the shepherds. We focus on the wise men. There's a lot about Zechariah and Elizabeth, but at least in Maya growing up, I never felt like there was a lot about Joseph, but I think he shows us something if we look closely at what his character is and the kind of man who he is. So Mary is chosen to be the mother of Jesus.
(05:04):
We know what God is looking for in Mary. She's somebody who's found favor with God. What is the kind of man that God is looking for to be the father of Jesus? So Mary becomes pregnant, they're not yet married. And Joseph, like everybody, knows that babies come about one way and that had not happened with him in Mary. And so as far as anybody else were concerned, there were two possibilities. Either they had gone together before they were married or she had stepped out on him. Joseph would've known that at least one of those isn't true. And he had every right. He could have put her to shame because it was a scandal. Because what are people going to think when your fiance is knocked up? And who are you going to tell that you had a dream and it's actually, it's not either the things that seem like it'd be obvious.
(06:24):
Joseph is put into a really tough position, societally, culturally, and personally. And he doesn't do the thing that would've been allowed, which is to cast Mary aside because he knew he hadn't done anything and now he's put to shame by even being associated with her, but he doesn't do it.
(06:53):
Why? Why doesn't he do the thing that he ... Aside from the fact he receives word from the Lord, but before that, it's before that that he decides because he's a just man, that he's going to part ways with Mary quietly because he doesn't want to put her to shame. And it's then that he receives word from God. Everything's going to be fine. And I think he does it because he loves her. He really loves her. And I don't mean he's got romantic feelings for her. And I don't mean that he has fondness for her. I mean that he is willing to put aside his dignity to preserve hers. He's willing to put himself at risk in order to keep her safe because if he divorces her, then she will be vulnerable and she will be outcast. And so he's willing to put all of that aside, all of the pressure, all of the expectations to not put her to shame.
(08:02):
And I think it's because he truly understands what love is and what love means.
(08:11):
That's the kind of person that God wants raising his son. And I think that when it comes to love and the way we talk about it in our world, we forget that love is not just a feeling that you feel about people and not just romance. I mean, there's love between parents and siblings. There's love between friends. There's obviously love between spouses and all of those are different expressions of love, but the love that we're reflecting on when we think about Christ coming into the world is the kind of love that is willing to put aside your dignity, that's willing to protect the vulnerable even at your own expense. And it's the kind of love that God shows by giving up, like we talked about the first week, giving up his dignity to grow up in this world of hardship. It's the kind of love that Joseph shows by taking Mary.
(09:18):
It's the kind of love that Christ will show to others when he goes and heals people, when he associates with sinners, when he associates with the high and the mighty, who are still lost. And it's the kind of love that Christ shows when he carries his cross and lays down his life. Paul writes the most famous discourse on love in one Corinthians chapter 13.
(09:51):
He says," If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but have not loved, that I'm a noisy gong or a clinging symbol. If I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but I don't have love, then I am nothing. If I give away all that I have, if I deliver my body to be burned, but I don't have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It is not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Love never ends.
(10:39):
"My favorite part of that whole passage is right near the end where he says," Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. "When he uses ... I didn't write down the words in Greek and I should have, but the word that he uses for bears all things is a word that has a connotation of covering something from above, like a roof or some sort of shelter. And then the word for enduring all things has this connotation of supporting something from underneath or from behind. And so there's this sense that what love is, is it's something that comes from the top and from the bottom and kind of permeates through everything.
Jenny Beth Martin (11:32):
All encompassing.
Joel Mooneyhan (11:33):
All encompassing from heaven down to earth. And it's a picture of God's love for us in Christ because God indeed loves us from his seed in heaven enough that he would come down and be the lowleast of the low and live among us to save us. And so love is not simply a feeling, it's not simply a fondness for one another. Love is something that gives up its dignity to protect and to preserve and to look out for somebody else. That's what true agape godly love is and means. And that's what we ultimately are coming to anticipate with the arrival of Christ in the world. And so as one light and advent candle, the last candle that gets lit before the candle of Christ is the candle of love. And so it's this culmination of the hope and the peace and the joy all brought together in the love of God who comes down from heaven and lives among us, dies for us, and indeed defeats death so that we can be reconciled to him.
(12:50):
And it's the greatest love story that's ever been told. And then it's that that we're heading into the week anticipating.
Jenny Beth Martin (12:59):
It is the love story that all other love stories try to emulate.
Joel Mooneyhan (13:03):
And there's nothing else like it and it really is the greatest story ever told. And it's the only story like it.
Jenny Beth Martin (13:13):
It's true because all these years later, we're still celebrating what happened in that manger and on the cross.
Joel Mooneyhan (13:20):
Right. Yeah. So whatever else you think about the Christian story, you have to reconcile yourself to the fact that on account of a lowly peasant carpenter who was executed in the most shameful way by the most powerful empire in the world, history turns on that person. It's the year 2025 because it's-
Jenny Beth Martin (13:54):
The year of our Lord.
Joel Mooneyhan (13:55):
... 2025 years since then. And you can call it the year of our Lord or you can call it the common era, you can call it whatever you want, but we're still counting time from the same event. And that event is the love of God entering into the world and the person of Jesus. And that's what we celebrate this week.
Jenny Beth Martin (14:15):
And it is a very exciting week for us because we ... And as we head into Christmas day, we need to be thinking about this is all about love.
Joel Mooneyhan (14:30):
And what does it mean to love your neighbor? What does it mean to love your enemy? And all of those things can be found by looking at the character of Jesus. And it's a challenge and it's something that we all struggle with at one time or another, sometimes more and sometimes less. But to love one another, to be willing to weigh down your life for somebody else, to give up your dignity for somebody else in order to protect them, to forget who you are so that you can be more fully known in Christ. That's our great calling.
Jenny Beth Martin (15:22):
And our calling is to accept his love and to acknowledge it and to accept it. And for some people, it's much more difficult to do that than for others.
Joel Mooneyhan (15:34):
And then to pass it on.
Jenny Beth Martin (15:36):
Yes.
Joel Mooneyhan (15:36):
And I think you raised an interesting point there too, because it is hard for some people to accept love because we know ourselves better than anybody and we have the knowledge of who we are. And if we're honest with ourselves, we've all done things and said things and thought things that should make us undeserving of love.
Jenny Beth Martin (16:06):
We all sin.
Joel Mooneyhan (16:07):
Yeah. And we are undeserving of it, but that is why the love of Christ is so profound because even being undeserving of it while we were yet sinners, Christ died to save us. And so if you're somebody who's struggling with your own worth, and am I worthy of love? Am I deserving of love? The good news is it doesn't matter because Christ loves you anyway, because none of us are. So on one hand, you're in good company because nobody's deserving of a love that Christ gives. But the better news is that Christ loves you anyway. Even when you don't love yourself, even when you don't know him, even when you don't think you want to have anything to do with him, even when you deny he exists, Christ loves you. And so I get my encouragement really as I'm sitting here thinking about it is to anybody who's struggling to love themselves or who's struggling to love somebody else, to be reminded that Christ came for everyone.
(17:32):
So if you're feeling particularly bent and broken, Christ came for you. And if you're feeling particularly hurt and betrayed, Christ came for them too. And so there can be reconciliation to ourselves. There can be reconciliation between people who've been hurt and people who hurt them. There can be forgiveness and it can be hard and it can be tricky, but the fact is that Christ came for all of us and his love is for all of this.
(18:08):
It can be hard to get our heads around that, but it's something that we have to own and recognize and understand that this is a gift that is not bound by circumstance. It's not bound by culture. It's not bound by anything. And it is for everyone who's willing to receive it.
Jenny Beth Martin (18:28):
And I hope that people who are listening today and watching today, if they haven't opened their heart to receive it, that they do so.
Joel Mooneyhan (18:37):
It's the perfect time too. So if you need to pray for it now, if you need to find your way to a church, there's going to be plenty of churches open in the next few days. I would say my prayer for whoever hears this is if you know who Jesus is, then I pray that you would especially feel his love. You would feel hope in him, you would feel peace and you would feel joy in him. But if you're somebody who's questioning that, who's not sure about it, who's in fact sure that you don't believe it, then I pray that in some way, in some small kindness of another, in some kind word or kind deed, or in some mysterious sign, I don't know, but I would pray that anyone hearing this who's struggling, if you don't hear anything else, hear that Christ does love you wherever you are with him or wherever you're not with him, he still loves you and his love is for you and there is hope to be found in him, there is peace to be found in him, there is joy to be found in him and there is love and reconciliation and salvation found in him.
Jenny Beth Martin (20:09):
I think that that is a perfect way to end it.
Joel Mooneyhan (20:11):
All right.
Jenny Beth Martin (20:12):
Do you want to say a prayer?
Joel Mooneyhan (20:13):
I would love to. God, we thank you for this Advent season. We thank you for the time that we've had to reflect on you coming into our midst. We thank you that we've had time to reflect on the hope that you give us, the peace that you bring us, the joy that you fill us with, and the love that you demonstrate by coming down to earth, by living as part of our experience, by dying and resurrecting to save us and redeem us. And so as we head into this week, as we continue to anticipate your arrival, we pray that we would be people who exemplify all of those things to the world around us so that when people look at us, they will know by the things that we say and the things that we do that we belong to you. If there are people who are hearing this, who are not quite sure, who are struggling with their own worth, who are struggling with their knowledge of you, I pray that you would reveal yourself to them, that you would show who you are to them, but most importantly, that you would show them who they are to you as people who are loved and cared for by the most high God and who are saved and redeemed by the king of kings and who can be guided by the light of the Holy Spirit from this day on.
(21:42):
And so our prayer is for believers and non-believers all to know who you are and to know themselves in you. And we thank you that you offer that to us every day and we thank you that you have come to be in our midst. And we lift these things in Christ's name, amen.
Jenny Beth Martin (22:02):
Amen. And I think we should try to do one more of these for Christmas Eve or Christmas Eve.
Joel Mooneyhan (22:08):
Yeah, I think so. That'd be good.
Jenny Beth Martin (22:09):
All right. We'll have to figure that one out after we finish here.
Joel Mooneyhan (22:12):
Yeah, we'll do it.
Jenny Beth Martin (22:14):
Thank you, Joel, for being with us. And thank you so much for joining on this very special bonus pod for God and Country, Jenny Beth Martin and the Jenny Best Show. Thank you.
(22:27):
If you enjoy today's conversation, go ahead and hit like and subscribe. It really helps us reach more people who care about freedom and the Constitution. You can find this and other episodes at Jennybesthshow.com, as well as Facebook, Rumble, YouTube, Instagram, X, and your favorite podcast platform.
Narrator (22:45):
The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin. The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots Action. For more information, visit teapartypatriots.org.