Excel Still More

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...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Today we are comparing the Pharisees (along with some Priests and Rich folks) to true Disciples (even an outside looking in Gentile woman). The Gospels, and Jesus Himself, demand that we come face to face with the difference and choose who we want to be.  In today's episode we look at several stories I'll note and r...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Mark's Gospel is powerfully and precisely written. It packs a ton of information into shorter spaces than the other Gospels.  (A great Gospel for ADHD sufferers!). Mark also uses the power of COMPARISON to make his points super strong. In Mark 2, he compares the Pharisees with Jesus by showing the questions they asked Hi...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Let's go back - way, way back - to the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. It is so fascinatingly placed! Before it is the Garden of Eden (God comes down to establish a covenant), then Sin, then The Flood. Right after it is God coming down to make a covenant with Abraham that would effect us all. That's a 500 year jump be...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! So how have the last five years treated you? It has been unpredictable and wild for most of us. You might not have thought you had five years left - five years ago. But you did. And now you are here. How did it go? Did you have a vision, a plan, a path? Has it led you to wonderful and encouraging new places, new knowledge, ne...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! We all want faith without limits. We want faith that isn't affected by fear and doubt. We want to believe the best is possible and the promises of God are inevitable. We want to know Him and be known by Him and for that to control everything else.  But how do we get it? One of the problems is believing we can get it. You...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! I referenced Pat Geslinger's book, The Juggling Act . Here's a link. It's terrific.  If someone told you they were feeling distant from Christ, what would you tell them to do? That's not a particularly tough questions is it? We would tell them they need quality time with Jesus. They need to set aside time...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Help me do a solid for a friend and check out my friend Joseph's podcast: Under Review Podcast (website) Under Review Apple (for iPhone users) Relationships live out the story of God's grace in the world around you. The way we treat others, any others, and all others, ought to be a direct extension of the way God ha...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Up top, let me give you a link to Jacob Hudgin's book " The School of Christ " This is it. This is the most important thing I have to share with you - maybe all year. Many of us have to reprogram our brains when it comes to the comparison of God's Grace with anything of myself: faith or works. His goodness...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Let's keep digging in on this flashpoint idea. Firstly, let me share with you a little more about how emotional experiences of all types and spiritual experiences collide. There is a powerful sense in which the two, in the heart of a believer, are not separable. Finding God in all emotion and reaction and change - that i...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! If you would like to read Stephen Arterburn's book "Flash Points" you can find it here . Note:  As a caveat, I am not aware of his doctrinal views nor whole sale support all of the content. But it's got some powerful and encouraging ideas. I hope to address different flash points in upcoming episodes. Thin...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Today it is my pleasure to read Psalm 107 for you in the New Living Translation. (I'll explain why). Four times the text says "LORD, help!" - These represent four situations in life where people get discouraged. So often our hope and faith flourish in blessings, but when trials come, we falter. This can often p...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Happy New Year! And welcome to season 5 of the ESM podcast! Have you ever piloted an aircraft? It's quite a thrill. But properly using the instruments is crucial to success. By success I mean: landing the plane instead of crashing it! One of those instruments is called an Attitude Indicator. It shows you where you are re...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! The topic of God's Grace is beautifully complicated. It is simply too great to fully understand while we live here in the limitations of the flesh. But giving up on understanding grace can lead to big mistakes. Maybe we believe God covers everything not matter how we live. That's not right. But neither is the other...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! I hope you are excited for a productive and incredible 2023. This starts with a proper planning. And great planning includes evaluating the people in your life. Today's episode takes us back to one of our earliest episodes: "Your Inner Circle." We need to evaluate the people who are healthy to have close to you...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! "How do we raise faithful kids?" I have asked that many times and been asked that many times. We often answer with environmental factors. We need to raise them in a Christian home. We need to surround them with Christian people. We need to give them a daily serving of the Word of God. All of these are great. They ar...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! I really hope you enjoy this investigation of the Gestalt Effect. The triangle image for the episode is a practical example of how the eye fills in the details. I first came upon this while reading an excellent book on modesty. I'll share a link for that book: Secret Keeper by Dannah Gresh The word Gestalt simply means s...