Welcome to the Excel Stillmore podcast. I am your host, Chris Emerson. I'm here to encourage you in your walk with God. Thank you for joining in.

Today's podcast is sponsored by Cunningham Financial Group. John Cunningham is a friend of mine and a brother in Christ, and he can help you with financial

decisions and future planning.

He's been a big help to me and my family, and I commend him to you.

You can reach him at 205-913-1720.

I am so thankful you're here, so let's get started.

Hey, welcome back as we finish up this little two-part series called Take the Stairs.

I really wish you and I could have a conversation. I would love to know how things went for you last week. If you did not hear last week's episode, I will recap it in a

certain way in a moment, but I trust that you did and that you chose one of the eight qualities

that are found in 2 Peter chapter 1.

Qualities that Christians not only have, but are purposefully developing.

I pray that that was your experience last week and that you are ready this week to either

choose that same quality again or pick another.

We are going to talk about all of that early in today's episode. I will share a conversation

with you that I had with a friend who tried this last week and expressed to you some of his

conclusions as well as some of my own. But there are also two other sections that I want to introduce to you today.

So we'll break down into three pieces.

I told you last week that Luke, my son, preached a sermon called Take the Stairs,

and he started off like we did last week, talking about your individual responsibility to be disciplined.

How it is that you need to be telling yourself,

take the stairs. But his lesson went on to explore that there are other people in your life who will also say that to you. And those people are important. And sometimes they will direct you. And sometimes

they will lead you. And sometimes they will make it to where you have no other option but to do the hard

...