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 to another ESM episode. You can probably tell from the title what we'll be talking about today. This isn't gossip, which is sometimes a true

statement, but not always. And part of what we're trying to do today is figure out what is this

sin of gossip and how do I know when I've crossed that line. Today's recording has a little bit of a

unique field to me. It has been requested that I

preach a sermon on gossip at the Lindale Church next Sunday. Not because we have some astronomical

problem, but as I said, because some of us, myself included, aren't really sure of the difference

between a private conversation about someone

else that's okay and communication that is utterly unproductive and can in fact become

destructive. So on the Bible study and sermon prep side, I'm still pretty early on in this.

This episode will release on Monday morning. I will be building

the sermon throughout the rest of that week to present on the upcoming Sunday. And the main

reason I'm sharing that with you is this. If you want more Bible passages behind the discussion,

you can tune in to the Lindel Church next week. But more crucially, if you have some thoughts you would like to

contribute to this topic or some powerful passages that have helped you, then please share those with

me this week. I would certainly appreciate your thoughts. So let's get this rolling with this

starting idea. I'm not really sure a lot of us know what gossip actually is. This sometimes comes through in our

...