Charlie Kirk's Message for High School Students
The Firestone Files: Letters to My Grandchildren — Dr. Chris L. Firestone
September 14, 2026 · Episode 55 · 46:45
https://drchrisfirestone.com/episode/charlie-kirks-message-for-high-school-students/

Transcript is auto-generated from YouTube captions and lightly formatted; it may contain errors.

Hey everybody, welcome to the Firestone Files. I am Dr. Chris Firestone. Today on the files, we are going to have my speech to high school students at Gospel Light Christian School [snorts] on Charlie Kirk. That's coming at you today on the Firestone Files. Well, on September 10th, 2026, I took this off. I've had it on my wrist since September of 2025. It's a artifact that I wore throughout prep year. I wore it to the memorial. I've worn it to no kings protest. I've worn it in my return to Champion Christian College in the uh teaching throughout the honors program. You've probably seen it on some of my previous episode, maybe most of my previous episodes.

On the morning of September 10th, 2026, I took it off and I took it off for a bunch of high school students and um it was probably the highlight of the entire presentation. So, you can look at that uh when I show you that speech here coming up shortly. Ecclesiastes 3:4 says, you know, there's a there's a time for everything under the sun. There's a time for mourning and there is a time for dancing. And I think our time for mourning, Charlie Kirk, is over. Um, at least it is for me. Um, I'm still sad when I think about it.

I could still sort of [snorts] put myself in that position and and and work myself up if I think about the immense loss [snorts] that was the uh the uh murder, the assassination of Charlie Kirk. But I know that Charlie wouldn't want me to stay there. He'd want me to press forward. And that's precisely what I did here with these high school students. I've been to almost every turning point event I could get to in the last couple of years.

And um this year I decided I'm just going to stay here. There was a memorial that very night. I believe it was in Utah. And I [snorts] watched some of it both live streaming at uh at the church nearby here. [sighs and gasps] [snorts] And also about 3/4 of the way through I went home and watched the end of it as well. And I've been to many of those events in the past. I was a little surprised myself that I didn't go out there for this one. [sighs and gasps] But there were a couple of reasons why I didn't. Number one, I wanted to speak to high school students because Charlie saw them as the future.

Charlie saw them as the very group that we have to be convincing with. We have to help mentor. we have to lead into the 21st century because well we can't take our inheritance for granted anymore. [snorts] Those days are over. And so I wanted to talk to high school students about Charlie Kirk and his legacy. Um the other reason that uh that I wanted to stay is that I'm in the middle of a campaign for mayor. Now I'm not running for mayor. I'm on the team that's wanting to elect Erica Pacy for mayor of Hot Springs. And this is my little corner of the world. [snorts] Um, I would recommend that you guys follow Charlie's lead. It's one thing to know his methodology, which I've tried to share in the last couple of uh episodes.

It's another thing to get out and do stuff. And so I wanted to demonstrate to young people that even guys my age can make a difference, can get out and do stuff. and uh I wanted to implore them to be uh that very same way. And so speaking to high school students, carrying on a civics campaign, a campaign for mayor of [snorts] my little corridor in the world here, that that was uh that was enough for me to stay and I think it was the best way to honor Charlie's legacy. So let me tell you a little bit about what you're about to see. Um, it's my speech to high school students at Gospel Light School.

As I've said, I left Emanuel Kant at the door. In fact, I left most of my philosophical musings at the door. And I really just tried to pass the torch, pass the paton. I don't know what the right metaphor is, but u I tried to pass along the three things I learned from Charlie. [snorts] The Bible is the point of orientation for the soul. I try to pass that along to them. Know your Bible. The Old Testament, the New Testament, the story of God's saving acts in history. [snorts] Know that thing. The Western intellectual tradition, which is really the ongoing conversation, the great conversation of Christianity with philosophy.

And uh that's from the Greco Roman period all the way through the dark ages, the middle ages, the the scholastics, the renaissance, the enlightenment. You need to know something about those things and you need to know the original sources, the great books. And then of course the west the uh the uh founding documents those things which emerged out of the tilling of that soil the great synthesis of [snorts] the Christian faith with philosophy. And so I tried to pass that along as well. That's the inheritance. Sometimes we talk about America as an experiment and I it it has it has those characteristics. I've used the term myself.

Um for the first time in human history, we we we we developed you know the founding fathers developed a um a divi you know a division of power where ambition faces ambition and it creates a kind of equilibrium and that and that creates you know that's the sort of very basis of the US constitution and there's certain rights granted to us by God not from below but from above and government's job is just to create the conditions for those to be optimized. And um that's the sort of great experiment that we're all living now.

It's 250 years. I think we've gone beyond experiment at this point. [snorts and sighs] America is an argument. It's an argument that when faith and reason come together in genuine dialogue with truth, beauty, and goodness as our goal, you get America. And that great synthesis, I believe, is probably the strongest argument that we could give for Charlie's methodology. And so that's what I tried to do in my own way. Now, Charlie gave us more than just that sort of intellectual mooring. He gave us a a kind of um I don't know, methodology. He had a tent and a folding table and some artifacts, hats that he used to throw into the audience.

Some of them were signed even and some really funny clips out there about, you know, people wanting a hat from Charlie. Um and uh yeah, I mean that in itself I think is but but the fact that he went into our universities that warmed my heart. That's one of the things that kept me very interested in what Charlie was up to because he knew the young were the future. That was the place that if you invested, you would see results 10 years, 20 years, 30 years down the road.

[sighs and gasps] He used Socratic uh questions to sort of upset the balance in their minds because of what they've been treated to in their university environments. It used to be the case that the Bible, the founding documents, the love of the Western great books. I mean, that was standard fair. That was part of what made our universities great. It was the foundation on on which our universities stand. They've kind of gotten lost over the years in the minutia, in the complexities, in the insights that we've arrived at. Some of them are very good insights, very helpful things, but you can't forget the foundations on which all of that rests.

And I think Charlie understood that he had to use Socratic questioning to get to the students. Um the great respect that he showed them by showing up and opening a microphone and then listening to them, putting to his own words what they were saying and then engaging with them courageously in front of a camera. You know the camera is kind of the love language of this generation. We're now beyond you know it used to be that you know the young people you know only they understood the power of the camera. Well, now the internet's been around and Facebook and social media, they've been around for a while. Now, most of culture understands this and it's a little bit daunting, right? That you're going to be archived forever.

Have courage to, you know, step out and make mistakes. I mean, that's what made Charlie's arguments land so well is that he occasionally lost. you know, he occasionally met people who, man, that was pretty good. And then he would maybe create an equilibrium at best, [snorts] but that's what made his arguments so genuine and so impactful. So, um, as we pass the torch, I mean, there's I guess there's those two things I'd like to pass to these young people. Number one was this love of the tradition in which we find ourselves. Liberty depends upon that tradition.

This great experiment has given way to a great argument that if the biblical worldview in conversation with the great minds of the western intellectual tradition could give us the founding documents and 250 years of of of resilience of of of greatness of excellence of power and potency of of all the things that make America great. Well, that's an argument and that's another I think inheritance here. And he showed us [snorts] and this was the kind of interesting irony in Charlie. He writes the book the great the the the you know the college scam [sighs] and he was doing that to point out the value proposition wasn't what it once was. But guess what? He showed up regularly at colleges and universities around the country because he understood that that culture sphere was the future and he couldn't let her go that easily.

He couldn't let the the the inheritance that we'd been given be stewarded by a bunch of knuckleheads who forgot the very basis of our great universities. And so he went there and he put himself on the line and eventually it cost him his life. [sighs] So uh I've tried to model that by helping Turning Point develop its, you know, its programs. I've done it in my own little corner of the universe here at Champion Christian College where we've created the Great Writings Honors Program based upon these three insights. Know your Bible. Know the great conversation in the West. Know your civics and the founding documents of your great country.

You can't go wrong with that kind of education. And if that's all that you learn and you step out and you become a plumber or you step out and become a politician or you step out and become, you know, uh um [snorts] a housewife, I mean any of those things, you can't go wrong if you know those things well. And so our honors program here is attempting to uh embody those things and to know the great books that gave rise to this great country. [snorts] I have a simple slogan for the honors program. I call it Bibles, books and bikes.

Obviously Bibles related to the Bible, books related to the great books of the Western intellectual tradition and bikes having to do with motion. I mean, if I could have thought of a word with a letter B starting, you know, that represented civics, I might have said that instead, but I'm dealing with college students and we have great mountain biking right here near Hot Springs. And so, I thought, let's use bikes and use that as a metaphor for getting out and getting the job done. And so, uh, without further ado, [snorts] you know, I'm going to let you peek into my world teaching and speaking to high school students.

And, uh, well, you never know what you're going to get. Toward the end of that presentation, I interview Sophia Lraange on stage who was one of my students at Turning Point who has joined us in the honors program and is interning in the uh in the campaign and uh ask her some questions toward the end and then I wrap it all up. All right. Well, that's enough for now. That's enough of an introduction. And I hope you enjoy my presentation on the person and work of Charlie Kirk to a group of young high school students.

Enjoy. Thank you guys for coming. Let me pray for us as we get started. Father God, thank you so much that you are with us. Thank you that your word speaks to us. Thank you Lord for your saints who press forward. carry your name, Lord, to the ends of the earth as it says in the song. And I can think of no better person today than Charlie Kirk at doing that great commission. So LV, I want to thank you for his witness, the witness to our Lord Jesus Christ that Charlie represented, his courage, his legacy. As we talk briefly about that this morning, Lord, just be with us.

May your spirit be upon this room in Jesus name. Amen. [snorts] All right. Well, one year ago this morning, you guys were somewhere. Many of you probably were right here on campus, I would think. I don't know if you heard that. Maybe your cell phone went off. Maybe a parent called. Maybe you found out in the evening. Some of you may have found out right away. Others may have weeded and found my way. Wherever you were, you're never going to forget that. My dad and I now pass mom told me about JFK. He was assassinated. Everybody knows exactly where they were.

And in your generation is Trevor Kirk. I know where I was. I was at Prepier, which is Charlie's last initiative. It's a year 13 program for high school graduates. I hope you guys will look that up and consider going there when you're graduating here from Gospel Life School. I was there. I had shown up on around September 1st when the year kicked off right after Labor Day last year and I had 34 high quality students who were there to learn about three things that Charlie held dear. The Bible, the western intellectual tradition and the founding documents. It was a program that he believed it and he was planning to come and visit us in early October and we're all looking forward to that.

Unfortunately, that didn't wrap. I'm not here to make you guys sad, but I'm hoping that you'll reflect on a life well-lived and I'm hoping that I can share with you Charlie Kirk's inheritance that he is giving to you so that one or two or three of you might carry out. You realize that when you graduate here, you'll have the exact same educational credential that Charlie Kro had. He didn't have anything more than that.

And he went out and changed the world for Christ. And so, as a university professor 25 plus years now, it's a little bit strange for me to talk about a guy who's not a university guy. If you've read any Charlie Kirk books or you've seen any of his clips, which is probably more likely, you'll know that he didn't have much time for the university these days in terms of what it was delivering his value proposition. [snorts] But he loved the university. He made it a habit to go there regularly and often to try to see in the name of Christ.

And so what I'd like to do here is I guess I'm going to make an argument with this woman that that's that he has a legacy of three things and the three things that I've mentioned to you. How do I know Charlie Kirk? Well, I have talked with him on numerous occasions in the past, but one stands out to me. It was nearly three years ago now that Charlie Kirk called me on the phone and he said, "Dr. Firestone, impressive CD. I hear you're interested in working for Turning Point. What would bring a guy like you with 25 years of experience and numerous publications more than the president of Harvard University? What would make you be interested at Turning Point? Just a high school graduate.

I said, "Well, I think you're right about our universities. They're in trouble. They can deliver instrumental truths. They can teach you how to be a nurse. They can teach you how to be an engineer. But they are failing us miserably in how to be a biblical American citizen. They forgot where they come from. And Charlie made it his mission to step into that environment and speak to students not much different than yourselves to say, "Wake up. You have been given a great inheritance. You guys can come to this building freely. You guys can feel safe. You don't have your enemies bombarding you. You have your trash picked up.

You have the possibility to change the world with your own free will. That's extraordinary gift. We should not give it away. And Charlie Kurt was bent. I'm not giving that away. And so I love that about him. And when he called, I shared those things with him. I said, "I'm excited to join you in this quest as an academic out of the universities to try to save the universities because I love it too. My school's truly the international university was failing. It is now defunct. And one of the reasons it was failed is because it had no spy.

It was not taking biblical truth and sharing it with the world. It was infection. It was irrelevant. The big issues of our time, you guys know them more than more than me probably. What the big issues of our time are because you're seeing them on reels all the time. I don't know if I get addicted to them, too. I see them all the time. So, I know what we're facing.

We are facing a very very dark time in our we don't feel it we don't see it because it's not manifest but in the world of ideas the world of our universities are pretty sick and it's manifesting itself in public spokespeople probably some of whom you're watching they call them influencers or I don't know who you guys watch these days but they're sick fundamentally sick And it's important that Christians stand up within the universities and fight for her because she needs biblical truth. It wasn't this is not a genius. Harvard and Yale and Princeton were all founded as Bible colleges. It's not an accident. They're no longer that.

They've fallen way far away. They've lost their moorings. They're still smart, smart people. Some of my kids have attended these schools, but they have forgotten the most important things, this inheritance that I want to share with you here this morning. So, if I'm right about the times we're living in being dark, then we need to have what I call points of orientation for mapping our environment in the dark.

When if you're like me, you get confused when you have two spokespeople going in different directions on an issue. I get confused, too. I mean, there's a lot of stuff going on in the world today, and the issues are very complicated. I feel a darkness overcoming my purview, my my way of thinking. If you you're not alone if that's the way you feel. That's the way I feel a lot of times. But what we need thought Charlie were points of orientation in the dark. You know if you were to wake up in a dark room you feel out where the table is and from that point of orientation you can find other things in the room.

What are the points of orientation that bring light and understanding to our thinking? There are three and these are three things I distilled in conversation with Charlie and his work. Number one, you need to know your Bible. Charlie called it the owner's manual. If you got a car, you probably have an owner's manual in the glove box. If you don't know what's going on with your vehicle or going on with the situation you're in, you get out the owner's manual, look it up, and you figure out what's going on. Hopefully, you can fix it.

The Bible is the point of orientation for your soul. If you feel like life is draining, if you feel like your family is crumbling, if you feel like your life has no direction, go to the Bible, you're part of that great story, that ongoing story that the Bible is just the start in. All scripture is God breathed and useful for correction. This is of course 2 Timothy 3:16. Be ready to give a defense in first Peter. Charlie understood these things and he was ready. This is the place where you stand. You stand in the stream of biblical history. Secondly, that's the first sort of point of orientation for your soul.

You also have a point of orientation for your mind. And I would argue because I'm a philosophy professor at Champion. I'm the director of the great writings honors program. You have a point of orientation for your mind. And that is the great western conversation where great Christian persons and thinkers were asking the big questions and answering them. So I think of Augustine in the city of god or his confessions. I think of Anelm in prog. I think of you know uh um John Lockach who was one of the uh uh enlightenment thinkers that gave helped us to give rise to the US constitution.

We have a vast array of resources that what I call the great books where Christians have already thought through the answers to this. You guys are living in a world and you have a thought pattern and your thought pattern is dependent upon them. But you have no idea what they write in those books. Everything you think about the world has been shaped by the great western intellectual tradition in interaction with the Bible. And if you're not familiar with these texts, well, you don't have a point of orientation for the times. You can have great feelings about wanting to help, but you don't have understanding. So the Bible is the point of orientation for your soul.

The great books of the Western intellectual tradition are the orientation for your mind. And I would argue and I believe Charlie argued that the great orientation, the point of orientation for your body is the Declaration of Independence. the Constitution along with the Bill of Rights and the Federalist Papers. Those things manifest this great nation and make liberty possible for us. We don't have to go to our death for the faith because we have a great country where freedom reigns. And it's precisely because of the ongoing work of our previous ancestors that we have this inheritance. And it's important that you guys know these things well. We're not teaching them in our universities anymore. At least not with any great degree. Charlie was like, "What's going on here?" The value propositions of the universities are in danger.

This is why when I started the honors program, it was based on these three pillars. The Bible, the Western Intellectual Tradition, and the founding documents. Notice that those things we we have another acronym that we use, not an acronym, but a phrase we use. Bibles, books, and bikes. Bibles, books, and bikes. Bibles as the point of orientation for your soul. books for the ongoing conversation of the Bible with the western intellectual tradition and bikes because we have to live in this world. We have to get rhythms in this world that makes make a difference. And so we also enjoy riding mountain bikes here in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

So we do a lot of that. But it is the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution that orients what I call the body politic. It makes it possible for us to live in freedom together. And so Charlie, he was a doer. He went into a tent in universities around the country and he put his faith and his understanding into action. And that's kind of what we try to do in the honors program is get an understanding of the Bible, both old and new testaments, the great conversation and the great books of the Western intellectual tradition and how they gave rise to the founding documents of this great nation. You know, it's 250 years that we've had this country of ours.

That's like a Guinness book of world's records for democracy. It's not even close. And uh the other countries like Liberia or um Brazil, they have similar constitutions. They don't have the longevity. They've had dozens of constitutions while we have had just one. There's no other country in the world like that. [sighs] So here's my charge for you. America is not just an experiment. I I hear that language all the time online, the great experiment. There's some truth to that. There is some truth to it. An experiment is when you posit something and then you test to see whether or not it works out. You guys are in laboratories.

Is that anybody in laboratories around here? Do you take chemistry or anything like that? No. Okay. Uh well, this is what the great experiment. Well, we're past great experiment. I'm going to argue that America is not merely a country. It itself is an argument. It is an argument for what happens when you bring the Bible in conversation with the big ideas. What kind of country do you get? You get one like ours. And that is one of the greatest gifts. It's a beacon of light, a be on a hill.

That's one of the greatest gifts I want to argue that we have ever been given. So this is the word for today. It's not only inheritance what you've been given, but you guys are the stewards of it. 20 years from now, I might not be around here, but you will be. And you will be fighting for these things when I'm long gone. So, here's my charge for you. It's a real simple charge. Read one book this year that was not in any of your classes. That's charge number one for you. Charge number two, talk to somebody who disagrees with you and stand up for your beliefs.

That's charge number two for you. These are pretty straightforward things. I'm I I'd love to come back here a year from now and see if you've read one book that has not been placed upon you that you've chosen freely. And then I want to ask you, have you stood up for your faith at any time in the past year? And then find one thing that needs doing. It might be in your family. It might be in your friend group, your school. It might be in your community. do one thing this year that you didn't have to do. Maybe it's to go on a missions trip. Maybe it's to help clean up one of your neighbors yards as the Forge group did last weekend.

Whatever it is, do one thing that makes a difference to the people around you. So, we have a folding table. This is probably the last time. In fact, I just thought of this. You know, I put on this thing a year ago. It no longer says I don't remember what it said. It said something like Charlie Kirk is my hero. What does the say? We are Charlie Kirk. We are Charlie Kirk. I've not taken it off for a year. But I promised myself that one year from his passing, I would take it off. And so I'd just like to give you guys the honor of seeing that come off.

We are uh we're Christians. We don't mourn like other people. our hope. I'd never had that conversation with Charlie that I was hoping to have. We had a phone call and we talked about these ideas for 30 minutes and then he was supposed to call me back. He got busy. I got busy and then he was supposed to come to my classroom after I was hired by Turning Point to start that program and he never came back. That's a great sadness. Personal sadness. But we shared a common faith that one day we will have that conversation and what a joy it will be. So um today we're done mourning.

We're done. We're not going to have any candles. We're not going to do anything. We're just going to celebrate the life and work of Charlie Kirk and point to the word, the Bible, the word made flesh, Jesus Christ, and the word that we hear every Sunday morning when the spoken word. If you go to a biblically believing church, we're going to celebrate those things because those are our point of orientation. When you get lost in this world, go back to those. Learn about how your fellow saints have disseminated these truths in the great books of the western intellectual tradition. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. You just need to read one book every once in a while and then know your constitution.

Do you anybody here know the first five bill of rights? I see some hands, some shaky hands going up. might call on me. Anybody know know these? What? Okay, let's let's try to remember them together. What's what's freedom of speech? Freedom of speech, which also has freedom of of religion. Thank you. I'm sorry. Right to bear arms. Right to bear arms. Second amendment. Thank you. Freedom of the press. Okay. And I'm sorry. Ordering soldiers. Over. Yep. Quartering soldiers. This is the third amendment. We cannot pardon charges and seizures. I guess it's the fourth. What? What's the What's the fifth one? Double jeopardy. Double jeopardy. You Well, you you have the right to be to have a trial of your peers, a jury.

We've had some great big splash, you know, jury trials recently, and they're meant to make sure that justice finds you. This doesn't always work perfectly, but if this were a different country, the results of these trials would be very different. We strive to do the right thing. We strive after justice and understanding. All of those things are because God has given us certain inalienable rights and the government is not the one granting the rights. They're the ones maintaining and defending them supposedly.

You guys did better than I thought. Hallelujah. We got hope for this generation. Thank you guys. Thank you teachers for pointing these things out. Um, extraordinary, extraordinary stuff. Well, I would like to take a moment to invite uh one of my former students up here. Her name is Sophia Lraange and talk to her. Yeah, I've seen her do her some worship sets as well in the church. So, thank you for volunteering to do worship and all of those sorts of things. She was a student at prep year when I was there teaching when in that infamous semester when uh Charlie Kirk passed. Can you tell us about your experience there in that in that first 10 days?

Yeah. So, as he said by Nick Sophia, um, and that I remember that day very clearly, um, as a lot of us do, we had just moved to campus about 8 days before that happened. Um, and I remember we were in the middle of the class with a guest speaker and one of our staff members came in the room and told us that something had happened and we needed to cry. Um, and then a couple minutes later she came back in and told us that he had been shot. Um, and I remember not thinking that it was real. Um, I think a lot of us, even though we never really verbalized it, thought that he was untouchable.

And so to hear that he had been shot, just felt like a we didn't believe it. Um, but they came in later and told us that he had passed away. And I remember even through all the tears and the fear that came over class after that um we took the turn to worship together and something I didn't know until recently was that our worship during that time had touched the staff of our building. Um they could hear us worshiping from our classroom upstairs and they could hear us crying and pleading with the Lord. But more than anything, they heard us praising him for the time that he did give us try.

And so, um, I think the Lord really used that time to grow our class spiritually, um, to bring us together, um, but also to give us a new mission in life. Yes. Well, Prepier went on. It was, as far as I understand, it was the only branch of Turning Point USA that did not take a break because we had students. We had to keep teaching. and I kept teaching all semester and then you I came back to Champion and you finished out and now you're in the uh the honors program and you're living in the woman's house in the honors program which is part of the package when you come to Champion and how's that going? How does it feel to be a independent woman within your own house in a college uh environment?

Honestly, it's been a huge blessing coming here. Uh the Lord really just pushed us right into a community. Um, I have an incredible housemate who she's, you know, strided to pursue the Lord just like I am. And so, um, it's really just been a blessing to get to spend time with her, get to know her even more. Um, but to learn how to pursue the Lord with people around you. That's incredible. Now, one of the things that the honors program tries to do with students is to have them in an internship. And so you came here interested in a what I call a political internship.

Tell me about your thinking, why you did that, and what what you're doing now. Well, my interest in politics started in high school. Um, it was around my sophomore year. I had just realized that I didn't know as much as I thought I did. Um, and I believed a lot of things, but I couldn't articulate them clearly. Um, and so that's how I got involved with Turning Point with Charlie Kirk. U but after that the Lord I believe gave me a specific calling into politics and I just been praying for different areas to grow in that to prepare for a career in that and well that's how the Lord brought me to prepier but when Dr.

Firestone and Matthew Swift presented internships to us last year. Um, one of the opportunities was with Pastor Eric Capesky in the Moral Campaign and uh, the Lord really just tugged out my heart with that one and opened a lot of doors there. So, she's one of our superstars within the Capacy for Mayor campaign. And so, she's doing a hands-on internship this semester trying to win hot springs. And so, um, we're putting into practice, at least that's part of my story, and I think it's part of yours, this whole trajectory of Charlie, that the Bible, the great books are great ideas giving rise to civic engagement, being involved in your in your community, in your government.

Is that is that fair? Yes. Okay. And, uh, how would you uh, you know, I guess this is my my final question. Um, if you're looking at these young people and they're thinking University of Arkansas, you thought Champion, can you help us think through why somebody might come to Champion as opposed to some place like that? Um, when I was a senior in high school, I had had my whole entire college journey planned out. I knew where I wanted to go, how long I was going to be there, what my job was going to look like after that, and my dream was to go to a big prestigious uh Christian private school that was focused on politics. And the Lord closed that door.

I could understand why. Um, but he led me here to champion and he made it very clear that this was where I was supposed to be. And to be honest, um, I think our guy is in the business of storytelling. And this is not something that I would have written on my oak. But when God makes something clear to you, there's only one way that you can go. And that's how he did it for me, which he did. And it's been the biggest blessing so far. Uh I couldn't imagine being anywhere else.

and just think of what he gets to do after this and the stories that I get to tell of coming from a small Christian university that not a lot of people know about to wherever he leads me after. That's incredible. Well, let's give it up for Sophia Le. Thank you. Well, we are getting close to uh running out of time here. I just want to make sure the message is clear. If you're in a dark place in your soul or in your mind or in your body, remember the inheritance that you've been given.

the Bible, the great conversation of of the saints about the Bible and how we should live and of course the US Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and all the work of people who have made this great argument that America is the greatest country in the world. And uh we're going to be handing it over to you guys. And don't forget, Charlie Kirk was about your age, maybe just a hair older, just out of high school when he started Turning Point USA. You guys have so much potential. People forget about you guys.

I don't forget about you. Charlie doesn't forget about you. And uh know that God's got a great plan for your life. Let me close us in a word of prayer and we can get get out. Father God, thank you so much for um for inspiring us with one person's willingness to stand up to share biblical truth in a way that people could understand and to go into places, dangerous places, not places you would expect to be dangerous, but anytime you're standing up for Christ, there's danger. And so, Lord, we just thank you that you gave us that witness. another great saint in Charlie Kirk. We thank you for his life.

I pray for the people who are mourning this day around the country who are remembering his great wife Erica Kirk. Lord, we lift her up to you how hard it must be to have lost a spouse and how much harder it is to forgive your enemies and those who have taken his life. But Lord, you have empowered your church through the you through your Holy Spirit and you make the impossible possible. So we thank you for her witness through all of this. Father God, I just pray that you would be with all of us in our own unique ways. We're not going to ever be able to take Charlie's place. But Lord, we can use the gifts you've given us individually to make a difference in this world for your kingdom. And so we lift that up to you and we pray in Jesus name. Amen.

Thanks for stopping by to spend some time with me here on the fire. Guys, appreciate it. I hope today's reflections offered you some new insights and perspective on life. If you enjoyed the episode or found it valuable, I'd appreciate it if you'd take a moment to like, subscribe, and share it with someone you care about. I'd also love to hear your thoughts. What resonated with you? What challenged you? Or what would you like to hear more about in future episodes? Drop a comment below or send in your suggestions to the email in the description. Your input helps shape where we go next. This has been Dr. Chris Firestone. Until next time, keep asking the big questions. And remember, the kingdom journey is always best with your friends. Further up and further in. Bye for now.

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