Welcome to the Excel Stillmore podcast. I am your host, Chris Emerson. I'm here to encourage you in your walk with God. Thank you for joining in.

Today's podcast is sponsored by Cunningham Financial Group. John Cunningham is a friend of mine and a brother in Christ, and he can help you with financial

decisions and future planning.

He's been a big help to me and my family, and I commend him to you.

You can reach him at 205-913-1720.

I am so thankful you're here, so let's get started. Welcome back to the program. I'm so thankful that you're here. I want to begin by talking to you about our title today. Don't get jealous. There are two words

therein that I want to give specific early attention to because I take them both very seriously.

The first one is right there at the end, jealous. Being jealous is something very few people acknowledge or admit to.

Have you noticed that? And yet, I am convinced that it is alive and well, even in the hearts of

Christians, and it's doing harmful things. And to the extent that we can identify what is there and why it's there and how to get rid of it,

it will free up your emotions, your words, your thoughts, to do great things, to build relationships,

instead of allowing them to be strained over what someone has or doesn't have, or how you compare yourself to others. Maybe you're thinking, all right,

finally an episode that does not apply to me. I have a lot of problems, but jealousy isn't one of them. Well, maybe that's true and

maybe it isn't. Let's dig in a little bit and see. You don't need me to pull out a dictionary

to define it. We all know what jealousy is. It is a negative feeling, a negative emotion towards

someone else because of what they have or don't have, because of their

past compared to yours. It often strains relationships. I feel like as we grow older, we get really

good at hiding it. Maybe it shows up with a passing facial expression, a sarcastic statement, maybe just a tinge of

gossip, or a small, satisfying feeling when something goes wrong for someone else.

When we were kids, there was no hiding any of this.

Jealousy was seen and heard in every scenario. If someone had a toy that another child wanted,

you could tell exactly how they feel about that. If one felt like something unfair had happened,

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