Welcome back to the ESM podcast. I'm so thankful that you've joined. Today's episode is sponsored by Tyler Kane with statewide mortgage. He's a senior loan officer with 20 years of experience in helping people with their home mortgage needs, whether you're a first-time buyer,

looking to refinance, or just want to discuss future home ownership goals, give Tyler a call

813-380-8487, or you can set up an appointment at his website, which is provided in the show notes.

It just does not get any better than christians helping christians speaking of which thank you again for being here with me

let's get started welcome back to ESM today has a real throwback feel to me. When this thing first started, way back in

early 2019, I wanted to give tips and strategies, as the intro jingle says, to try to just help

you improve things about your life and reach new goals. And it was really about merging self-help

concepts with a spiritual foundation in Jesus.

And those hopes and concepts still find their way into episodes, but I mean, we're at like

350 of these things. We've been kind of all over the place. I've done a lot of sermon work

in the podcasts and a variety of things. Sometimes we lean much more heavily into

scripture, sometimes less. But the reason today's episode feels so nostalgic for me is back

in late 2018, there were two podcasts I was listening to that had practically nothing to do with

Jesus or the scripture or what I love to do every day in reading the word.

One of them was an author and podcast host Hal Elrod, who very cool in the second or third year actually had him on for an interview.

That was a really neat thing.

And the other one whom I've mentioned, I think probably less, is named Rob Dial,

who still does a mindset mentality podcast that you can look up. In fact, I listened to one this

week, and that's why I'm recording this episode. But back in the day, 2018, I would listen to

these guys, and I would think, man, they have such incredible, insightful ideas pertaining to the

human condition and our need for growth and purpose and outlets,

some of which you'll hear today, but there was so little said about God. They talked a lot

...