Hi, everyone. This is Heidi St. John. I'm glad you guys have joined me for the Off the Bench podcast.

We're a couple days out of the elections right now, and it's a good time to remind everyone listening that we have elections in this nation for a reason and party platforms exist for a reason.

And today I'm going to give you a little bit of history of the Republican Party and tell you why I believe the platforms need to be remembered.

Stick around. I think you're going to be encouraged. All right, you guys. Well, I'm glad that you've joined me here at the Off the Bench podcast.

Before I get started today, I want to remind you that we are just at the very beginning of the November study at Mom Strong International.

We are studying guiding principles for every season of parenting. So whether you're a parent or whether you're not, whether your kids are grown and out of the house,

whether you're just starting out or whether you're a grandmother or you just want to know what God says in his word.

This is a great study. If you're watching on YouTube, I'm going to hold it up for you so you can see it looks like this. This, this time it is called the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

You can download this and print it and go through it with me. And if you've never done a study at Mom Strong International, I just want to tell you, you're missing out because this is an opportunity for you to dive into the word of God to get to know his word better.

To understand his heart for your family and for your role in the culture right now as women, it's so important because we have turned for a long time now away from the principles of God's word.

And so really, my heart is to steer you back toward them and to have that be something that you cherish in your life that you really want.

The Bible says that we should seek after the wisdom of God like we more than we would even do money. The Bible says that the words of God are life to our soul.

The word of God is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path and never has it been more important than it is right now that we understand the guiding principles from the Bible so that we can apply them to our lives.

Normally, I'm here talking about the guiding principles of God's word and how it's so important that we know what they are and lean into them.

But today, I'm going to take the show a bit of a different direction. The midterms now are behind us. And as you all know, I ran for Congress.

So something I never thought that I would do is get involved in the political process, always been involved in terms of voting for years. I've been telling you guys how I am voting and why and who I'm choosing and why.

But me running for Congress was something I never thought that I would do and it gave me 18 months of just getting inside what I would call sort of the belly of the beast really running and doing what I've been telling audiences to do for years.

But I off the bench and get into the battlefield and what I have discovered in the last year and a half has given me great alarm and no matter who has won the elections.

I know some of them are still being contested right now, but we're seeing massive changes happen in the United States and we need to see changes good changes.

And no matter what happens for this election, the Republicans have got some hard work that needs to be done. We need to go back to what it is that we were founded on why we stand for what we stand for. It's not about being a Republican.

It's not the name Republican or the name Democrat or independent that matters. It's the platform that matters.

Over the course of the last probably 10 years at least we have gotten very personality driven in the political realm and I think this is true across the country.

...