Welcome to Season 6 of the Excel Stillmore podcast. I am your host, Chris Emerson, and I am here to encourage you in your walk with the Lord, and I'm glad you've joined.

Our 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

205-326736-3-64. Thank you again for your ongoing encouragement and support. Let's get started.

Hey, welcome. Thank you so much for listening today. I would like to kind of try out something new on you,

if that's okay. If you get a chance to give feedback, I'd really love it. I just kind of got up this

morning and I had an illustration in mind that I thought I might could present in a sermon and then

turn it towards spiritual application, but I just really wasn't sure that it would work. I don't

love starting sermons with big long illustrations that aren't found in the text. And I'm not saying that illustrations can't be

in sermons. I definitely do that, but I'm just more cautious about it. So I was telling her and

kind of about to let it hit the cutting room floor. And she just reminded me. She's like,

Chris, go record it. Like, that's exactly what your podcasts are. It's kind of the reason why you

created them. And, and of course, she's right about that.

It turns out she's right about a lot of stuff.

So I came up here to share it with you.

Now there is a thing or two I want to do first,

but I would like to make sure you understand as we go into this.

The example I want to share to get us to spiritual things

has to do with the stock market and investing and the Dow Jones and

some of that stuff. And if that is not your jam, as is the case with like two-thirds of the country,

please don't turn off the episode. Hang in there with me just a little bit because the purpose

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