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. As always, I'm really thankful that you've joined. I hope I can encourage you today directly from the scripture.

We are going to read Philippians chapter

four verses four through nine and walk through that together. If you happen to be having a wonderful day,

I think I can stretch the corners of that smile a little bit further. And maybe if things have not gone so

well for you today or this week, this can be the beginning of that

tide turning as you think about what it means to be a Christian who can connect to, draw strength

from, and be blessed by God. Now, if you notice the title on the way in, there's something else on my

mind as well. How do Christians resolve conflict? How do we work through disagreements and we turn into

encouragers instead of distractions? Whether it's work or family or church, like everything would be

great if it wasn't for people. I think we would all agree with that, and I'm readily admitting

that I would need a mirror to identify all of the

problems. I'm a people, too, just as you are. And yet, in things like neighborhoods and families and

churches, God designs things to happen that are optimistic, that are unified, and they glorify him

in the presence of other people, people that we share important things in common with,

which I'll be talking to you about today. And yet at the same time, we don't always see things the

same way. We have different biases and ideas and backgrounds. And I just think all too often we

celebrate the fact that we're both in Christ, but that becomes a minor point over on the side

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