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 today. It is my great pleasure to take a few minutes and talk to you about a man who

passed away on Sunday named Jim Spratlin. I knew him for a year and a half, and during that time he had a deep

impact on my life. He was an incredibly impressive person, and I got the opportunity to share just a few

things at his service recently, and I want to share them with you as well. He always had this way of

kind of opening my eyes and moving me in the right direction,

and even now, several days after his passing, he's doing exactly that. I had intended to come into

the office today and talk to you about how to handle troubled people, people who just won't listen,

people who aren't doing the right thing. What is our job in that, even as we face great frustration? And while that's important

to talk about, and I may get around to it here in a week or two, it's not exactly something that

fills us with joy. But after spending time with Jim's family and smiling and laughing, I just

want to post something positive, something that can move you in a better direction. Instead of reaching back or down

and trying to lift someone up who's resisting it with their heels dug in, what if we looked

forward and ahead at someone who's doing great? Someone who, if you will let them, can be an

inspiration and a new direction for you. In other words, you kind of honestly

assess that you're the one that maybe isn't quite where you'd like to be. And if you'll have

the right attitude, you can make some moves in the direction of this person and start seeing

some pretty tremendous results. So I'll share a few things about Jim in a minute, but first, I really

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