Richard Ellis Talks

The Bible tells us that Jesus will come back to get all of His followers, and we must be ready for His return. While we wait, we should wake up every day and get ready spiritually just as we get ready physically. God places people in our paths that He wants us to reach for His purposes. We need to be ready, willing and able to share His Word with them when that takes place.

No matter what struggles or trials we encounter here on earth, we have a Savior who has gone ahead of us to prepare our eternal home. Since we are not there yet, He has instructed us to use this time to spread the Gospel and disciple other followers to go and do the same.

Our lives are sometimes filled with stress, even to the extent that we may feel crushed. God has promised us that with His power in us we can bear all things, but we cannot do it without Him.

God’s Spirit in us is what will attract other people to God when we let His light shine through us in every day situations. Trading ourselves for God to fill us with His life is the best trade we can ever make, and when He’s living in us then His Spirit will prompt us to share the message of the Gospel with others.

When it comes to being a true Christian, the standards set for us are literally unattainable. The Bible lists rules to live by such as loving our enemies, caring for widows and orphans, submitting to authority, and the list goes on. It is impossible to live this way unless Jesus Christ lives in us and He bears fruit in our lives.

The devil can make plenty of promises for quick satisfactions, but the sin that is involved to get those is not worth the losses we take when we choose to follow him. Following Jesus, on the other end, involves promised suffering, but the growth and maturity that comes along the way builds up eternal rewards that is worth far more than we can imagine.

The Bible is clear that there are certain people bound for hell who will not ever repent and turn to God. We must be listening to God to know when to stop reaching for these people. As for believers who stubbornly choose to remain in sin, the Bible instructs us to leave them to their sin and let God take care of them.

Sometimes we feel like God is not hearing our prayers, but often times that can be because we have sin in our lives that’s keeping us from hearing from God. We need to repent of our sins and live in the peace that God offers us, allowing for open communication on both ends.

The story of Esther shows us how she took the chance that God gave her to obey Him and ultimately save her people. Our purpose in life is not to be happy and live nonchalantly but rather to seek out the people God has placed in our lives so that we can take the chance when it comes to share the Gospel with them.

Before time began it was the plan for Jesus to leave His throne and come to earth, serving the lowest people and giving His life for us all. God calls us to live in the same way, walking out in our identity as a servant of the Most High God, reaching the world with His Gospel.

While we can take on many good things, they may not all be things that God is calling us to do. We need to listen to God when He gives us a task, and while we are accomplishing it we should feel rested instead of exhausted because He’ll give us all we need to accomplish His work.

We face a real spiritual enemy, the devil and his demons, whose whole purpose is to steal, kill and destroy. Being aware of that enemy, our job is to look out for people who are broken down and help them get to God who is capable of fixing their brokenness.

Just as we can check the quality and level of oil in a car by pulling out the dipstick, God can check the health of a church or individual Christian whenever He pleases. We must live according to His Word, spreading the Gospel and expanding His Kingdom by building relationships with others through reaching out and listening.

The Bible teaches us that everything we have is given to us by God, and our job is to be a good steward of what He’s given us. We are to hold these possessions loosely if He decides He wants to use us to give it away. He has promised to always provide food and clothing, and with that we can learn to be content in any and all circumstances.

When we harbor sin in our life, we tend to hide from God and from others. In order to experience the true freedom and healing that God offers through His forgiveness and mercy, we need to confess our sins to Him and to another believer who will hold us accountable.

The Bible tells us that God’s angels are all around us, yet we cannot see them. He has more power for us, in and through us, than any kind of demonic power that could ever come against us. We must ask God to show us those who are not saved so that we can share the Good News of salvation with them and one day see them in Heaven.

We can easily find ourselves bound to certain sins until God breaks us of it, causing us to repent and change our ways. God can give us the power to overcome sin, but we have to first be broken so the He can change us and help us move forward.

Just like showing up at a gym doesn’t make any difference in our physical health, attending a church doesn’t change our lives. It’s when we engage with other believers who are bold enough to ask us the difficult questions and gracious enough to help us work through our sin that change happens. We need to be willing to do the work to make a difference in our lives.

Just as God welcomes everyone that will turn to Him for grace and mercy, we must not cast out anyone seeking a Savior in this lost world. People can have wicked pasts, but God can miraculously change their lives and use them for His good.

If Jesus showed up with a van ready to take us all home to Heaven, how many of us would run to the van and how many would hesitate or not go at all? The best thing we can do while here on earth is get right with God through salvation that comes through Jesus Christ, and then be right with others and do the work of spreading the Gospel truth that God has left us here to do.

The Christian life is meant to be raw, living fresh and exposed so that we have people in our lives to help move us into growth. We too often hide our sin behind doing all the right things, but it doesn’t make a difference in our hearts when we live that way. Jesus was exposed on the cross so that we could live under His righteousness.

We can look around at the world we live in and see that everything points as evidence to the living God. When we align our lives to stand in His truth from His Word, agreeing that we are sinners in need of His saving through the death of His Son, we are choosing to walk in wisdom revealed to us since before the world was ever made.

We are all born into sin and we will all die a physical death, however those who do not accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior during their life on earth will also die a spiritual death. We who are saved must share the message of the Gospel to everyone around us in hopes to help save some who are headed for certain death.

As Christians, we need to look out for one another and help those that are wounded. When we help the wounded, they become well and can then help others. When a body of believers is filled with well and healthy people there is nothing that can stop them from reaching the world around them.

When we live in faith and immediate obedience to God we experience His peace. Living in sin without confessing immediately leads to more and more sin until we find ourselves in a mess of our lives. All we have to do is stop putting it off and turn to God right away and move forward with Him.

The devil threatens us with all sorts of temptations in this world. The only way we can overcome those threats is by putting our faith in Jesus, the only Way, Truth and Life.

There are moments in our lives that have affected us deeply, either moments when people have hurt us or when we have hurt others. We tend to carry the weight of those moments around with us for a long time, and for many it can be for the rest of their life. God delights in turning those times into beautiful tools to be used by Him to make a difference in others, but we have to forgive first so that we can move on.

People often treat churches like gyms where they may have a membership and they might even go sometimes, but they don’t really use it for the purpose that it’s intended. We need to not only attend church but be an active member in it, working out ourselves to become trainers so that we can help others become trainers as well.

We are promised in Scripture that if Jesus is our Lord and Savior then we will be with Him forever in Heaven after we die here on earth. While we can look forward to eternity with Jesus, we are still on this earth because God has a job for us to do. We need to do the work that He’s called us to do before going home to Him.

Christianity is not based on feeling but rather on the fact that God loves us and sent His Son to die for us. We must not let our faith waver with our feelings, but rather make the choice to believe in Scriptural fact that God loves us and live out our love for Him.

Whether we’re in a position of authority or under someone else’s authority, ultimately we answer to God for our actions. He has placed certain authorities in our lives that we must submit to, even if we don’t necessarily agree. God may want to put us in a position of authority later on but we have to show ourselves trustworthy first.

The difficulties we face in life can often feel overwhelming and bring us to a point of asking God for what life was like in our past. Sometimes God will give us our past as a blessing to help us realize how much we hate it. Jesus promises to give us rest when we come to Him with our heavy burdens, and He provides all of our needs as He bears our burdens with us.

God has had a plan in place since before there was time, and He wants to use us to accomplish that plan. The work He has set up for us to do is what we must finish, pouring all of our effort and energy into it. No matter if we’ve quit for a time, we always have the option to pick up and start again so that we can finish strong.

God sent His own Son, who is equal with the Father, down to earth to live a sinless life, die on a cross and be raised to life so provide the gift of salvation for us. We need to respond by believing in Him and accepting Him as Lord and Savior in order to obtain the life He has to offer.

God made one way for humans to be on this earth and that is through the reproduction between man and woman to conceive a baby in the womb of that woman for her to give birth. He made one way for us to enter eternal life in Heaven and that is through His Son, Jesus Christ. He stands at the door of our hearts knocking and waiting for us to let Him in and do His miraculous work in and through us.

Without faith in the Gospel that characterizes every part of our lives, our spirituality can become flat. People who don’t know God are attracted to Him when we share our faith that is living in us, producing love and joy in every circumstance.

When we become Christians, Jesus’ righteousness is placed on us and our sins are all forgiven, giving us the opportunity to approach God with boldness. However, simply because our sins are all forgiven doesn’t mean we should go out and sin all the more. God still disciplines those He loves, and we should fill our lives with Scripture to fight temptation.

God has promised to provide for all of our needs, and He has always been faithful to that promise. When we take what He has given us and give it away as He leads us, His blessings come pouring in and we get to continue being part of His way of blessing others.

In the grand scheme of eternity we are here on earth for only a brief time, just as a vapor appears and disappears so quickly. Rather than wasting that precious time by following the ways of the world, we need to follow God’s call on our lives to honor Him in all that we do, remembering that not only do we represent Him to the world but we also carry Him around in us by His Spirit.

Too many Christians follow religious rules and feel good about themselves while looking down on others who are struggling. God wants a relationship with us that makes the change in our lives that He brings real to the core of our being.