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Christ-centered articles adapted from the Excel Still More podcast, organized so you can explore the areas of life you want to strengthen.
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Caring for Your Body · 7 min read
Why Movement Matters for Your Body and Your Life
Your body is not the whole of who you are, but it affects nearly everything you do. Caring for it can support energy, service, focus, and long-term faithfulness.
Latest articles
How Your Influence Shapes the People Around You
You are already casting a shadow. The question is whether your everyday example is helping the people around you move closer to Jesus.
How to Break Your Dependence on Your Phone
A practical Christian approach to creating purposeful stretches of time away from screens and replacing them with things that matter more.
How Jesus Taught Us to Pray
The Lord’s Prayer does more than give us words to repeat. It rearranges what matters most when we come before God.
How to Start Your Day with God and Purpose
One intentional hour can bring prayer, Scripture, planning, and relationships into focus before the demands of the day begin.
Jesus, Others, Yourself: A Better Way to Live
Many recurring problems grow when life revolves around self. The J.O.Y. pattern offers a daily way to reorder attention and move forward with humility, hope, and purpose.
How Small Compromises Grow Into Bigger Sin
Most visible failures begin much earlier, with a quiet concession in the mind. The best place to change direction is before the first domino falls.
The One Priority That Orders Everything Else
Trying to balance a dozen competing priorities creates confusion. Christian life becomes clearer when Jesus has first place and everything else answers to Him.
How to Start Again After Falling Behind
You do not need a perfect past or a dramatic reset. You need one faithful next step from where you are right now.
How to Persuade With Love, Credibility, and Truth
People rarely change because they received facts alone. Christian persuasion works best when care, character, and truth reinforce one another.
Why Christians Need Accountability
Some battles are unnecessarily hard because we keep trying to fight them alone. The right Christian partner can help us resist sin and become more consistent in doing good.
How to Wake Up Without Yesterday’s Guilt
A new morning does not erase yesterday’s lessons, but in Christ it does not have to carry yesterday’s condemnation.
When Changing Your Environment May Help You Change
Sometimes growth requires more grit. Sometimes it requires moving away from the people, places, or patterns that keep pulling you backward.
How Parents Can Discipline for Real Change
Good discipline is not about repeating the same punishment. It is about wisely training a particular child toward a particular change.
What It Means to Put Yourself Second
Christian humility is not self-hatred. It is the decision to let Jesus be first and to treat other people as worthy of real attention, service, and sacrifice.
How a 30-Day Fast Can Reset Your Focus
A biblical fast is not merely about removing something. It is about creating room for something more important and staying with the new pattern long enough for it to take hold.
How to Become the Kind of Person Who Encourages Others
Encouragement is more than being pleasant. It is a deliberate way of seeing people, stepping outside yourself, and helping others remember the goodness of God.
How to Plan a Day With Less Stress
Peace is not always found by doing nothing. Often it begins by narrowing your options, spacing your responsibilities, and deciding what matters before the day starts.
What You May Need to Give Up to Find Freedom
Some stress cannot be solved with a better calendar. Certain burdens have to be surrendered before peace can take root.
Why Grit Matters More Than Talent
Ability matters, but persistence often matters more. Scripture is filled with ordinary people whose commitment and consistency allowed faith to keep moving forward.
Turn Good Intentions Into a Real Plan
Knowing why something matters and what you want to accomplish is not enough. Progress usually depends on thinking carefully about how you will actually do it.
How to Resolve a Conflict That Has Gone Too Far
Some relationships cannot be repaired with one quick conversation. Jacob’s meeting with Esau offers a picture of prayer, preparation, humility, and patient reconciliation.
How to Do Less and Accomplish More
A full calendar can hide an unfocused life. Essentialism asks a better question: what deserves a yes badly enough that other things should receive a no?
How to Notice the Opportunities God Is Putting in Front of You
We often ask God for opportunities while overlooking the people, conversations, and open doors already sitting directly in front of us.
How to Keep Going After a Bad Day
Growth does not require winning every battle. It requires refusing to abandon the larger war when one day exposes weakness.
How to Bring Focus Back to Your Prayer Life
When prayer becomes distracted or routine, the throne-room scenes of Revelation can restore awe, humility, gratitude, and attention.
Start With Why: The Motivation Behind Lasting Change
Goals become stronger when they begin with a reason deep enough to survive inconvenience. Before asking what you will do, ask why it matters.
How to Repair a Relationship One Step at a Time
Healthy reconciliation often begins the way a zipper does: align the two sides at the bottom, establish common ground, and build upward from there.
Why Movement Matters for Your Body and Your Life
Your body is not the whole of who you are, but it affects nearly everything you do. Caring for it can support energy, service, focus, and long-term faithfulness.
How to Discipline Children Without Losing Connection
Discipline works best when a child can still see the face, love, and purpose of the parent. Correction should teach, not merely overpower.
A Simple Framework for Growing in Every Area of Life
Faith matters most, but faith does not live in isolation. A balanced life pays attention to relationships, finances, and the body as areas of stewardship under God.
What It Means to Finally Grow Up in the Areas You Already Know
Maturity is not discovering a thousand new truths. Sometimes it is deciding that the truths you already know will finally govern the way you live.
Trust the Process When Growth Feels Slow
The wicker basket cannot hold the water, but every trip to the stream still changes it. Some of the most important growth happens before you can measure the result.
Why Christians Should Be Willing to Do Hard Things
A life built only around comfort will eventually become smaller than the life God is calling you to live.
Why You Should Try Something Three Times Before You Quit
The first attempt often tells you more about unfamiliarity than ability. Give a new discipline enough repetition to become informed before you decide it will not work.
How Christian Affirmations Can Build the Right Kind of Confidence
Healthy affirmations are not pretending you are powerful on your own. They are deliberate reminders of who you intend to be because Christ is with you.
How to Prepare for the Worst Without Living in Fear
Christian optimism does not require pretending nothing can go wrong. You can expect good while calmly preparing yourself for a difficult outcome.
Three Levels of Gratitude and Why the Third Changes You
Gratitude becomes powerful when it moves beyond noticing good things to recognizing the Giver and responding with a changed life.
Why Remembering Someone’s Name Matters More Than You Think
A name communicates something simple and powerful: I noticed you, I remember you, and you matter enough for me to pay attention.
How to Create a Daily Highlight You Will Actually Remember
A good day does not have to happen accidentally. Choose one meaningful thing in advance that would make today worth remembering.
Close the Door on the Things You Have Already Decided
A mostly closed door is still open. Some choices become easier when you stop renegotiating them every time temptation or inconvenience returns.
Count Your Pronouns to Become a Better Listener
A conversation can reveal how much of your attention is turned inward. One simple test is to notice how often the words are I, me, and my.
How to Get Out of Your “Me Bubble” in Everyday Life
Ordinary situations can shrink your world until everyone else feels like an obstacle. Driving is a surprisingly good place to practice becoming less self-centered.
Eat the Frog: Do the Hard Thing First
One avoided task can follow you around all day. Doing the necessary thing early creates momentum and removes a surprising amount of mental weight.
Choose the One Thing That Must Not Be Compromised
Before entering an important day, room, meeting, or conversation, decide what matters most and let every smaller choice serve it.
Ask God Bigger and Better Questions
Prayer can shrink into small requests and familiar phrases. Beautiful questions recognize God's greatness and ask for wisdom, direction, opportunity, and transformation.
How to Build an Inner Circle That Makes You Stronger
You are called to love everyone, but not everyone should have the same level of influence over you.
The Marriage Secret Is Simpler Than Most Couples Think
Many struggling couples know what the Bible says about marriage. What has disappeared is often the unhurried time in which kindness, sympathy, humility, and affection can actually be practiced.
How to Have Your Best Month From the Inside Out
The quality of a month cannot be safely measured by vacations, raises, or trouble-free circumstances. A stronger life is built from the inside out.
Be Wise Small: The Power of Tiny Faithful Choices
Wisdom is knowledge applied. The easiest way to begin applying it may be to stop trying to transform everything at once.
Why Speaking Last Can Make You Wiser and More Useful
Listening first gives you information, lowers emotional heat, and makes your eventual words more likely to fit the actual need.
Just Get Better: The Starting Point for a Life of Growth
You do not have to fix everything today. You do have to reject stagnation and take the next faithful step.
Listen Before You Lecture: How to Lower Conflict and Build Rapport
I am your host, Chris Emerson, and I'm here to encourage you with tips and strategies to help you deepen your faith, build stronger relationships, and do the most with your life in Christ. I hope that you are well and safe wherever…
How to Build Self-Control Without Relying on Willpower
Don't define yourself a failure if self-control is hard. But also understand that self-control is really important to get you to the next level of what God wants you to be for his service.
Why Christians Should Be Optimistic About Evangelism
If you're a child of God and there are people in your life who believe in God, the Bible, Jesus, why not them? If you're someone who is not saved, let me just say this we can't save everyone until we save you.
Why Practice Matters More Than Good Intentions
I'm just trying to acknowledge that and let his light permeate and bring warmth to every aspect of my life, putting proper and prioritized emphasis on him. We're going to look at practice makes perfect, but we are going to connect it…
When a Commitment Becomes a Curse
I am your host, Chris Emerson, and I'm here to encourage you with tips and strategies to help you deepen your faith, build stronger relationships, and do the most with your life in Christ. It was a specific instance in the life of the…
What the Sun Can Teach Us About God and Our Days
In fact, in our solar system with at least eight planets, sorry, Pluto, and all of the moons, and any other entities around, that they rotate together around this powerful star called the Sun. Heliocentric is what we call it, life…
How to Go Deeper in Bible Study
And we want to talk about how someone like you who knows the word really, really well, can get even more out of it. If you are more of a casual Bible student, a bit more hit and miss, maybe you read the Bible with some regularity, but…
How to Accept the Human Experience Without Losing Faith
It can be a bit sobering and personal, but I think it's something that we need to talk about. And the better you are able to accept and understand the human experience, the better off you will be as you navigate it in your attempts to…
What a Cluttered Storage Shed Can Teach You About Your Life
The storage shed represents your life and how it gets so filled with things, time and energy, appointments, obligations, and we want to keep it refined and thinned out and properly organized, but that's not the way it usually works.…
Why Christians Have Every Reason to Be Hopeful
There is no reason to let it stop me or get me down, because there will be a new birth. There will be a coming forth through this, and I will be better, and there will be reason to rejoice again, and maybe I can even rejoice now…
Is God Angry? How to Think Biblically About Crisis and Judgment
I'm not connecting that not yet to the pandemic or the countries that were affected first or the lives that were lost. Is God angry when he looks across this world at all of the humans he has created and blessed with an eternal soul…
The 13th Step: What Comes After Recovery
It's a four-lesson booklet that helps people learn how to become a Christian and what the church is all about. And I gave him two copies of that booklet, and I said, Hey, would you mind just taking a look at lesson one, a few pages,…
How to Pull Yourself Together When Life Is Disrupted
Now, I'm speaking to you today, and you are a Christian, and that means that you see all of this a little bit differently than people in the world. People in the world lament that there are no sporting events taking place, that their…
How to Help People Grow Without Controlling Them
They're about self-evaluation, looking at the stress in your life, trying to speak last in conversations, any number of episodes. If you just work on you and you figure out how to get better, the people around you begin to notice…
How God Prepares You for the Work Ahead
I hope you can understand that maybe in every day of your life, certainly as you live the Christian life, God is always preparing you. He is training you, molding you, and making you stronger because there are very important things He…
What If You Chose Just One Bucket-List Goal?
But it was only about 15 years ago, around 2005, that a man named Justin Zaccom wrote a screenplay for a movie called The Bucket List. He first apparently coined this idea of listing some things that you would like to accomplish,…
Will This Hour Be Consumed or Remembered?
So ultimately, what I'm asking you today, the time that you have available to you, maybe it's first thing in the morning, maybe on your daily commute, or at your lunch break, or right when you get home from work or school or just…
Be the Change You Want to See
As you learn things and adopt them, and the people in your life see how good they are for you, and that you're getting stronger and you're happier, they will instinctively be drawn to you. And I have to say, the people in my life, and…
Stop Starting Over: What to Quit and What to Keep
And I don't know if you've ever felt this before, but sometimes when people look at you and say something, and keep in mind she wasn't even actually looking at me from her perspective, it's like every syllable has this pounding drum…
A Christian Approach to Money and Financial Progress
I am your host, Chris Emerson, and I'm here to encourage you with tips and strategies to help you build stronger relationships, deepen your faith, and just get the most out of your life. We are going to devote the entirety of this 20…
Why Wise Counsel Matters for Big Goals
Maybe they'll learn better one day, but they're not going to go out and be shaped by the influence of others, even if those people have incredible marriages. We fight for progress through our own faith and courage, but when we come…
Set Goals That Honor Your Real Values
I am your host, Chris Emerson, and I'm here to encourage you with tips and strategies to help you build stronger relationships, deepen your faith, and just get the most out of your life. Today I'll be asking you to look inside of…
How to Win the Week One Day at a Time
You look at January and say, How much do I need to accomplish just this month with my time, my energy, my finances, to accomplish enough that I can put that first rung in, something manageable, not too stressful. And then, of course,…
Build the Ladder Before You Climb
Whether last year was a good year and you accomplished much, or you feel like you just crawled out of it broken and barely still there, we will use what is good in you, what God has blessed you with, and we will increase and abound…
How to Hold Your Ground When Pressure Comes
This may look like a more regular daily Bible read than you had before as you grow in your knowledge of God. It may be shown in better worship habits or being more involved with your church.
Overwhelmed? Just Pick One
I am your host, Chris Emerson, and we are here to talk about tips and strategies that you can employ to deepen your faith, improve your relationships, and just get the most out of your life. After today, there'll just be one more…
Stop Assuming the Worst About People
We've tried really hard to focus periodically in this series on how to build stronger relationships with the people around you. If you want to excel in your faith, in your accomplishments, and have greater peace, then you cannot have…
What Would You Do If You Had Seven Days Left?
Well, however you want to interpret this illustration or try to debunk it, I have a question. If that happened and you came to understand that in all likelihood you had less than one week left on this earth as did everyone and…
Direction Matters More Than Position
There is a drive in us to grow, to get better, to know where we're going, and to pursue that journey that must continue to be at our core. It is that sense of urgency that allows all of the practical episodes in between to really have life.
The Real Purpose of Education Is Action
At the end of those sessions, before we dismiss to the classes, everyone together recites the same line week after week. The purpose of education is to know God and make Him known.
How to Stop Living a Divided Life
But basically, cognitive dissonance describes stress, anxiety, and uneasiness that a person lives with when there is a difference between their behavior and their beliefs, when they're living an ununified life, a divided life,…
What a Long-Lived Island Can Teach Us About a Better Life
If you are a Christian, you understand that that is not necessary for your life to be valuable. We know that even if our life ends today in the flesh, the spiritual world and its eternal nature lies beyond.
How to Have Better Conversations Without Making Them About You
Oftentimes the difference between one that feels great and one that feels wasted is on me, and maybe you can say the same. Also, even if it's the other person, somebody you work with, it's just a terrible conversationalist, somebody…
Stop Saying You Were Going To
I know on the listening end, everything kind of plugs along at a regular pace, new episodes on Mondays and Thursdays, but on the recording side, sometimes we have to get a little bit ahead when we know there'll be a gap in recording,…
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
And in each one of those, early on in the origin story, Uncle Ben sits down with Peter Parker, who's just beginning to come to grips with his newfound power, his ability. And he's done something to disappoint his aunt and his uncle,…
When “Never Again” Is the Right Decision
It makes you think about the brevity of life we all consider how short and easily extinguished human life is. Maybe you think about evil in this world and how we're always needing to defend ourselves and fight against heartless,…
Why Writing It Down Changes What You Do
I would just say, look, I know you're telling me something right now, but just know that I forget a lot of stuff and I may not do it. Or if I did forget something important, or I studied something and the day later couldn't remember…
Do You Need More Relationships or Deeper Ones?
I am your host, Chris Emerson, and we are here to talk about tips and strategies that you can employ to deepen your faith, improve your relationships, and just get the most out of your life. I have to tell you as we get started today…
How to Compare Yourself Without Becoming Miserable
For instance, last week a group of guys and I were studying at the end of the Gospel of John, where Peter and Jesus are having a conversation before Jesus ascends to heaven, and Peter was in a good place with the Lord, and he knew…
Are You Living 90 Days or 52 Weeks at a Time?
But one day some Israelites come to town and they inform him that back in his homeland, back in Jerusalem, the people had not repaired the walls. They had returned home from captivity, set free and allowed to go back to the place…
Why Saying Thank You Changes Relationships
Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. In fact, verse 17 says, Whatever you do in word…
What It Means That Jesus Is With You Always
If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, even there, your hand will lead me, and your right hand will lay hold of me. He's all the way up in heaven, he's down below the grave of death, he is in the…
Cast Your Bread: How to Invest Today With Hope
This is a follow-up to something we did two and a half weeks ago, I think, an episode titled Eternity and Today. In that episode, we focused heavily on how important it is for you to think about eternity all the time, but stay focused…
How to Restore Order When Life Gets Chaotic
I am your host, Chris Emerson, and we are here to talk about tips and strategies that you can employ to deepen your faith, improve your relationships, and just get the most out of your life. so today is our official back to school special.
How to Process Negative Thoughts Before They Control You
These circles represent the way you choose to process uncomfortable or tempting or negative thoughts that come into your head. It would be nice if I could tell you that there was some secret to never feel any of those things, never…
Eat the Frog Again: Why Hard Tasks Still Matter
It's visual, it's weird, it's gross, but it's also easy to remember and it connects with something we need every single day. Every one of us has a list of things that need to get done that we just don't want to do.
One Small Hole Can Sink the Boat
I turn around and look, and the plug in the back of the boat, which by the way was an old plug that had been tack welded into place. The water was kind of dark and it had already filled up the back end of the boat, and I had no way to…
How to Live for Eternity Without Missing Today
Lewis tries to hold the guideline of the direction and the efforts of the demons to what we know about the devil's work in the Bible, but sometimes he misses the mark. However, if you're interested in another way of looking at how the…
How the Five Love Languages Can Improve Your Relationships
And just to be clear, while I'll be giving you a synopsis of that book today and challenging you in very specific ways as it relates to the five love languages, I highly recommend that you get the book and read it if you want in-depth…
Before You Blame Someone Else, Ask: Is It Me?
I am not going to suggest today that whatever's going wrong in your life is all your fault. No more so than everything that happened in that hospital and all of the deaths involved were the fault of a doctor not washing his hands.
What Is Jesus Worth to You?
However, every once in a while, I just feel like recording an Excel Stillmore episode that centers on Jesus. I think that sometimes in this journey we can forget that all of the goals that we set and the planning and the journaling…
How to Correct Your Course Before You Drift Too Far
But there's also a list of lovable losers, people who did not win anything, not first or second or third place, but because they refuse to give up, they live on in our hearts. One of those was a guy named Derek Redman, 1992 Barcelona,…
What Do You Do After the Applause Ends?
When you do something and others tell you you did a great job, that was super impressive, you're awesome, it makes you feel good. And it's a part of God's plan for encouragement.
Make Giving Easy: Build Generosity Into Your Life
I certainly have a long way to grow on this, but I'm pretty excited today to share with you some of the things that have really worked well for me in being more mindful of people around me in need and ready to act when those…
Know What to Change and What to Accept
It says that you have control by the power of God, and we'll talk about prayer and some of the spiritual elements, but in the power of the Lord, you've got the control here. Either you do something to make it better, or if that cannot…
What to Do After a Spiritual Mountaintop
A couple of base camps below, there were some who they'd left behind who were observing this. We know that he promised that when he reached the mountaintop, the ultimate top of the world, that he would pull out the picture that he…