Hello, welcome back for season two of the Excel Stillmore podcast. I am your host, Chris

Emerson, and I'm here to encourage you with tips and strategies to help you build stronger

relationships, deepen your faith, and just get the most out of your life. Thank you for

joining. Let's get started. Hey, welcome back to the program. I'm super excited about our topic

today. We are going to devote the entirety of this 20 minutes

to talking about money, about finances, about the steps that you are taking to secure your

family's future and to put yourself in the best possible position to use your blessings for the work of the Lord.

If you follow this program, you know we talk about faith, friendships, fitness, and finances

quite often. It's even a weekly reminder sheet built into our journal. But this will be the first time we've devoted all of our

attention to the topic of finances. Are you doing the right things with your money? Is God pleased

with your stewardship? How do you care for it? How do you spend it? And how much does it weigh on your mind?

All of that will be in view today in this episode. Listen, everybody knows 1 Timothy chapter 6 that the Lord talks about the root of all sorts of evil is the love of money.

An inappropriate relationship with physical goods is no good for us.

But he did not say money. He said the love of money. I mean, look, in that exact same chapter,

a little further down, when it talks about the rich, it doesn't tell them you shouldn't be rich. It's said to

use your riches to give, to be generous and godly. We can do this, and it's worth spending time

talking about. I think there are people raised in the church taught that we don't talk about money.

We don't preach about it. It's not a

centerpiece of what we do. I would challenge those people to search how often money is discussed

throughout the Bible. It is all over the place. God knew that that would be a centerpiece of the way we built our lives here,

and God intends for us to use it well. I'm thinking of an old proverb chapter 10, verse 22,

it is a blessing of the Lord that makes rich, and he adds no sorrow. If your financial situation,

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