Hello, welcome back for Season 2 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 deepen your faith, build stronger relationships, and do the most with your life in Christ.

Thank you for joining. Let's get started.

Welcome back. Thanks for joining today. I'm so glad we have this time together.

Today we will be looking at a Bible story, Acts

Chapter 23. It was a specific instance in the life of the Apostle Paul, where he had been detained

in Jerusalem, and a group of Jews had made it their purpose in life to kill him. And we're going to talk about the oath that those

men took in that chapter and see if we can determine the difference between an oath and a curse,

and I think the text will help us. And hopefully, as this episode pulls together, you will be

able to reevaluate the commitments that you have made in this life.

Do you make oaths? Do you take vows? Is your yes, yes, as Jesus said, or your no, no. We will talk about all of that.

In the end, there are certain times when we do those things

where we enter into a vow that we must determine to keep for the duration of our lives. However,

I would like to argue today that some vows need to be broken. Some oaths need to be eradicated. If you determine that a commitment you have made,

that you compromise and sacrifice other things in order to stand by your word is actually a curse,

it's time to make a change. And so today we need to look at what's the difference

between an oath and a curse. When should we be willing to break it and what does that look like?

I hope that you enjoy the Bible study portion of what we're doing today. I want to make the

scripture a little bit more of a centerpiece

in upcoming episodes over the next several weeks. Part of this grows out of last week's episode

around the sun, where I talked about how we need to get Jesus and His Word and the True Light

...