Hello, welcome to the Excel Stillmore podcast.

I am your host, Chris Emerson, and we are here to talk about tips and strategies that you can employ to deepen your faith, improve your relationships, and just get the most out of your life.

Thank you for joining. Let's get started.

All right. So today's episode is for people who are really trying. You are listening to the

podcast. You are working on Excel still more. Maybe you've done a little reading

in First Thessalonians where they increased and abounded. Maybe you've made some lists of areas

that you want to get better. Maybe you're doing some morning praying or Bible reading or journaling.

You're trying to eat a frog every day or have a daily highlight, any of the number of things that we've been talking about.

This episode is for you.

If you are on a journey to get better, but you keep falling short.

You haven't given up.

You're still working on it.

You can note successes.

You feel like you're getting stronger.

But it seems like in every day of progress,

there's something that doesn't come together and it's causing you some disappointment.

That's the way I feel a lot, and I want to talk about why that's not exactly a terrible thing.

I think some of us believe that we're going to try something new or jump right in, and when we fail a time or two, we just give up because we don't want to deal with a disappointment of failure.

What we're here to talk about today is if you are really going to fight the war for stronger faith, for being a better, more productive person, then you have to accept that you will lose some battles.

If you're not losing battles along the way, if you're not having to deal with that little pain within you of disappointment when it doesn't work out,

then you're probably not fighting the war. And this is why most people don't get better.

This is why years pass,

...