Hello and welcome to the third season 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.

Okay, so you heard it in the intro.

Season three of the Excel Stillmore podcast starts right now. January the 4th, thank you for tuning in.

It's a little hard to believe to me that we've been going for two years now. We started in January,

2019, 134 episodes recorded, and now we're ready to start 2021 with a lot of faith and optimism,

but also with a plan. So many Christians want to go out and get better. But oftentimes,

they lack a vision of what better looks like. and even if they have that, they lack an understanding

of the steps to get there. So I really hope that the opening episodes for this year give you a

lot of clarity in that way. In particular today, we're going to talk about money. We want to talk about

your income and how you use it,

and in what ways the usage of what God gives you reflects how you serve in the kingdom.

I believe it is a colossal mistake, and a lot of Christians have made it,

to separate our service to God, our love for others from the

money in our bank accounts. You will see today that Jesus himself connected those two things,

and we need a reset among Christians to see that more clearly. If you follow this program, then maybe you

heard last week's episode. We ended with the story of two people, Lorenzo and his daughter, Heather,

and they came to our church building, and they had monetary needs, and we investigated their story, and we helped them, and it wasn't easy

for me to do. You heard me admit that last week, but as a result of it, not only did they get the help

...