Excel Still More

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! You gotta love Nick Saban. He says it like it is and asks you what you are gonna do about it! This straight talk can make us uncomfortable but it can also call us to needed change. Today, we look at a quote from him, one he'd actually recently heard from and NFL coach and is using with his guys. I hope you will find it u...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Question: Do you want to live to be 100? I feel like if you and I were chatting you might not give a resounding yes. We've seen a lot of disease and decay and death, and the idea of being here then might invoke a picture of sorrow and pain. But did you know there are people in their 90's and older still living rewar...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! The ESM Podcast has largely been built for individual application and growth. For one thing, that's a whole lot easier to talk about and accomplish in comparison to collective behavior. You can change you. But changing others... that's a whole lot tougher. Changing the direction of an entire family, church, or cultu...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Sadly, I was in my mid-20's before I first learned about the story of Nehemiah. It was taught to me beforehand, and I REALLY could have used it in may teenage years, but it wasn't until I was in full time ministry work that this story took root in my heart. It is a story of passion, hope, hard work, belief in God, c...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Seven Social Sins demands that we match up social responsibility with internal character development. It is worth the effort! To help you follow along today, let me include all FOUR of the lists we will feature today: Seven Things God Hates: Pride, Lying, Murder, Wicked Plans, Rushing to Evil, Lying about Others, Creating Str...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! As our youth prepare to head back to school, let's talk a bit about standards and rules that they will face. If you are a student, are you the kind of person that puts your best effort into excelling under rules, or do they no apply to you? Should they be changed to accommodate you? Let's talk about what happens whe...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Alert - This is not an episode about weight, diet or exercise! Instead this is a snippet of a quote from a powerful illustration given by a professor to his students. The weight in question was that of a glass of water he was holding. His question: "how heavy is this glass of water?" The answer is surprise and needf...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! So today's title is a bit misleading. At least, we've got some things to cover before we get there. Below I have posted a poem titled "Let Them." It's about letting people go when they don't want to stay. This is extremely difficult for me, so this poem is helpful. But it does require some Gospel...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Tension is: Often Challenging and Difficult Outside Comfort Zone or Settled Law Demanding Humility and Openness to Learn Carries Benefit in the Wrestling and Working Required Presents a Choice: 1) ignore.  2) Reject.  3) Give in.  4) Study. Challenges you to seek Balance when it is Easier to Fall to one side. Unhealthy Tensio...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Please take a moment and check out the Balancing the Christian Life Conference . It goes live as an online experience on July 27th through 29th. If you are interested in the Excel Still More 3 Month Journa l mentioned in today's episode, you can order through the link provided.  I hope you'll go on this journey with...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Spirit and Truth. Truth and Spirit. Two words Jesus linked together in proclaiming who will be a worshipper of God. But they can be so hard to balance. Spirit is personal, emotional, in some ways subjective. Truth is the opposite. It is objective, universal, the will and authority of God. Jesus is asking us to give them equal...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! How do you see Jesus? We are called to cast our eyes on Him. We are told to see Him and we are given descriptions of Him. For me, for a long time, most of my images of Jesus had Him on the throne at times, but often looked back into His ministry on the earth. Maybe Jesus healing people. Maybe Jesus on the cross. Those are gre...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! You are going to love this episode! Yes, you get a tip on how to get let go from jury duty, but don't stop there. More importantly, you will hear the beautiful testimony of young ladies who have turned to faith. These Oklahoma Sooners are leading with their love for Christ, and they have the baptisms to prove it!  Behind...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! The devil will try anything to keep us from honoring our Lord. In centuries past he could keep people in the dark in terms of knowledge. Maybe keep people from getting a Bible, or keeping the preacher from making it to town. Maybe people had questions but couldn't get answers or help.  That is not the case anymore, at le...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Today I get to share some things that have continued to have deep impact in my life. These two ideas are separate, but equally powerful. I hope to weave them together for you so you can implement each by implementing both together. Firstly, as we've talked about in different ways over the years, you have to see the value...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Thank you for your feedback and support after last week's episode! Talking about sexual abuse was hard. And from the large amount of feedback I got, I know it is hard or people to think back on the abuse of their past. But I pray we can bring awareness and activism in terms of fulfilling the kingdom mission to protect th...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! The title is " The Danger of Forcing Forgiveness " on the website. I was titled "The Tyranny of Forgiveness" in the printed magazine. Both articles are the same. Today's topic is heavier than usual. Sadly, the topic of sexual abuse and how abusers use forgiveness to cover themselves is needful in our...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Today was a trip down memory lane for me. I listened to the very first episode of Excel Still More: Just Get Better. That episode drew a little bit of criticism in the early days for sounding like another way of packaging work based salvation. I filed that away as something to consider but I just wasn't in a place in my...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! I chose a thumbnail for this episode after the content was recorded. It isn't actually referenced in the audio today. But I really love it. We need to be transformed. We want changed hearts and minds and lives. That means building everything around the cross of Jesus. Not the resurrection. not the ascension. The cross. T...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! I encourage you to give this seven minute speech a listen: The Sixteenth Second . Kyle Martin, a 2019 high school graduate, gives a powerful commencement address to his fellow graduating class. He put in a ton of work to accomplish being number one, but he reflects honestly on what it cost him. He learned a lesson early that...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! In 2011 Robert Downey Jr. gave an acceptance speech at an award show. In that speech he spoke of how he had to "hug the cactus," the deep, dark part of his life, in order to remove it. It was hard and painful, but it brought him humility and a changed life. For many of us, we can't just walk by a cactus like th...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Sam Bennett is a collegiate golfer from Texas A&M. He made an amazing showing at the Masters tournament recently. But his tattoo got as much attention as his golf game. He lost his father two years ago and had his father's last written words identically tattooed on his arm. The message is powerful and needful for us...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Special thanks to my friend, Kam Armstrong, for calling my attention to the book Sacred Fire , by Ronald Rolheiser. He expresses three levels of life, both physically and spiritually: Essential Discipleship (the struggle to get our lives together), Mature Discipleship (the struggle to give our lives away), and Radical Discipl...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Are you in the body of Christ? That sounds serious. What does it mean? It becomes easy to see a relationship what Jesus as JUST a relationship with Jesus. But we are a part of something more - a group of people who belong to Him. He has added you because of your value in helping His body function and in assisting other Christ...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Today we look at Jesus and His disciples. Jesus is perfect. Disciples are not. How is that supposed to work? In fact, in Mark 9, there are at least 5 shortcomings of the disciples. They are not Pharisees. Their hearts are good. But their walk was imperfect. Let's look at that list and appreciate how gracious and kind Jes...