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.

Okay, so in the last episode titled New Every Morning, we talked about this sense of great

optimism when you get up in the morning. The mercies of God are new and you get a fresh start. That ought to

give you a great outlook on the day. You open up your journal, you lay out some plans, and you go for it.

If there is a however that goes along with that episode, it is this. It doesn't do a lot of good

to wake up every morning optimistic if you find yourself

continually coming short of your goals. Yeah, it's nice to say, I didn't do well yesterday,

but today I get a fresh new start. But if day after day, it's just not coming together. Eventually, you're just going to say,

what's the point? It's all a farce. So today, we need to introduce an effective tool to help you get

better if you've been struggling to make progress on your own. I'm thinking of an interesting Bible story in Exodus 18, where Moses was

trying to do things on his own, and his father-in-law showed up and said, you're going to wear

yourself out. You cannot do it alone. How many people listening are ready to admit that?

That there are some things in your life that aren't good and you're having trouble getting rid of them

because you're not strong enough to do it on your own.

Even with a refreshed new morning, you're just not able to do it.

Maybe there are good things, good deeds in your life that you want to be zealous for. You may even journal them

as your daily highlight. But for some reason, on your own, you just can't be consistent. We don't

want you to give up. Instead, we want to introduce the idea of an accountability partner. This may be a benefit to you. In fact,

I would argue it's a benefit to everyone. We are always stronger when we work together. Of course,

we know that's what the New Testament says. Passage after passage talk about supporting each other,

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