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 today. If you tuned in last week, then you know exactly where we're going. In what

is coming together to be two separate episodes, I'm asking you one thing.

What is your no line? I mean, what has to happen? What has to be present? What has to be at stake

in order for you to say no to something that many other people are saying yes to? Last week, we asked

that question in the context of just daily

life decisions, relatively amoral things. We're not talking about immorality and things like that.

We're just talking about the way you spend or keep or share your money, the way you accumulate

or distribute things, the way you use your most precious commodity, time,

and the way you clear or fill or allocate your schedule.

We're asking, are there some occasions where you have to say no to something

because it doesn't service your goals?

Or saying yes to that thing, which isn't

inherently sinful, would take you off mission for other things that are more important. Are you

clear enough on your purpose and your identity that while in America you could say yes to nearly

anything, in fact, the American dream is largely built on having

pretty much everything, yet for you, it is not consistent with what happened when you died for

Christ. In that episode, I tried not to be super specific, and certainly I wasn't trying to

...