Welcome to Season 5 of the Excel Stillmore podcast. I'm still your host, Chris Emerson, and I'm here to encourage you in your walk with the Lord, and I'm glad you've joined.

The program continues to be sponsored by Cunningham Financial Group. John is a good friend, and he's helped me and my family in everything

from stock and mutual fund investing to annuities, life insurance, and retirement planning.

I certainly commend him to you if you have needs in any of those areas. You can reach him

at 205-326-7364. Thank you again for your ongoing encouragement and support. Let's get started.

Hey, welcome back and thanks for listening in. Allow me just a moment to share with you something personal today. It's pretty early in the week. I'm recording on Tuesday, September

the 5th. And early this morning, one of my inner circle, best friends in life, Tony Mock, passed away.

He was diagnosed with cancer four months ago, and we've been together and prayed together

all throughout the summer. But ultimately it was not God's

plan for him to recover and he has passed on. If nothing else, take a moment today and pray for his

family, his wife, Della, his son Brett and his family, his daughter, Shelly, the Decker

Prairie Church where he has preached for the last 14 years, and if you don't mind,

pray for those of us who loved him very deeply. I also think there are elements of his life

that I've been thinking through today that connect very well with the quotation that I'll be

sharing with you and some of today's content. Tony was gifted some wonderful things from God, and he understood that those

abilities and blessings from God were important, and he needed to give attention to them,

to develop them, to seek excellence in those areas where God had invested in him because

those things really mattered. A couple that

stand out to me having known him for 22 years, one of them is his ability to preach and teach the

gospel. He devoted a great amount of time cultivating that gift to share the truth to the best of

his ability and to influence people. And he became excellent in that

area of his life. I also think about him as a father. God gifted him with two children, Brett and

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