Richard Ellis Talks

Just as the crowds in the Gospels worshipped Jesus one day and the next day turned on Him to crucify Him, we can receive His salvation and mock His grace. When we continue to live a life of sin, we proclaim Jesus to be our Savior but not the Lord of our lives. His forgiveness is always there, but we must not be so fickle to praise Him one day and crucify Him the next.

God designed His Church to live in community with one another as one Body. When one part is hurting then the whole Body needs to hurt and weep with that part, and when another part is rejoicing then the whole Body needs to celebrate. This is the mark of a truly healthy group of believers.

Scripture says that Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. Just as in every situation He was led by the Spirit, we must also live our lives led by the Spirit so that in every step we are portraying Christ who lives in us.

There are plenty of people praying for themselves or for others that God would send help, and we are that help that God sends but we have to be listening to His calling and respond in obedience. Following Jesus means being willing to give up whatever it takes to reach others with the Gospel before it’s too late.

God offers us a free gift of salvation to anyone who will believe, and we all have just as much opportunity to take Him up on the offer and be saved. The other part of that is His offer to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Jesus, and that is a road far less traveled but even more rewarding.

When it comes to obeying God in what He has called us to do, it is not something that happens once and we’re done; it is an every day pursuit. God has invited us to ask Him for anything according to His will, and so when we ask Him for something we must continue to ask Him with perseverance.

Just like we can sow seed into the ground and expect it to grow what we planted, we can sow spiritual seed into the lives of others through both the Gospel and our giving. The sowing of seed is our job, but as a farmer has no control over the weather to produce the growth of the seed, it is only in God’s control of how He decides to grow what has been planted.

Whatever is in our hearts will eventually come out of our mouths. We must fill our hearts with God’s truth from Scripture so that when He presents us with an opportunity to speak to someone else about Him the things that we say will have His power behind it and it will make a change in their lives.

We all face difficulties in our lives when life seems to be mean, but we always have a choice on how we will handle it. If we trust God in the meantime and focus on His purpose for allowing those times, we are filled with His sustaining peace and joy and He is able to use us to reach others.

The Bible tells us that God picked us to be in relationship with and follow Him, just like Jesus picked His disciples while here on earth. Rather than seeing all the reasons why we should not be chosen, we need to accept God’s love for us and live in obedience to Him.

God can choose anyone He wants to exalt to a position of leadership, but whether He chooses us for that or not we must remember that our lives are meant to magnify Him. When others look at our lives they should see God’s greatness through the hope that we cling to in all circumstances.

The Bible is replete with verses about the words that we say, instructing us to use wisdom in everything that comes out of our mouths. Whether it’s true or not, our job is to edify and speak in love, building each other up rather than tearing each other down.

Not many people have something in their life that they would die for. In a relationship with Jesus Christ He desires a commitment from us that we give our whole lives to Him. The Bible teaches that we are to be a living sacrifice to God, living and doing all things for Him.

The idea of Fat Tuesday is to party hard and get sin out of our system before seeking forgiveness on Ash Wednesday and moving into Lent. The Christian life does not work this way because all sin has consequence. Although God forgives us, we must strive to live a life that is obedient to Him at all times, making nothing else an idol.

Anything that we build our lives on other than Jesus Christ is a sham and we will crumble when trials come. Suffering is an inevitable part of life, but when Christ is our foundation rather than any other person, material or habit, He gives us the strength to stand firm against the crushing waves of life.

The Christian life is about constant pursuit of God through Scripture and gathering together as believers. Instead of letting the change He’s made in our lives fade out and get to a point of rejecting Him, we must be intentional about not going back to our old lives and instead pressing on to learn about Him more and allow Him to continue molding and shaping us.

God says that He would rather us be hot or cold instead of lukewarm, meaning that we either jump in relationship with Him and grow or run away. The way that we live our lives impacts the world around us, and God has us hear to reach others for His Kingdom. The only way that we will reach others is when God is working in us and through us and people can see a difference in our lives.

When we become Christians, we are put on Satan’s his list. Unfortunately, it has not been difficult for him to entice people away from following Jesus by offering them what the world has to offer. We must be so committed to Christ, as He was to us to the point of death, that nothing Satan can offer us is better than the deal we get by being God’s child.

When we face difficulties in our lives, it’s easy to want to go back to the past when life seemed easier. God wants to use those difficulties to grow our faith in Him so that we can receive His spiritual blessings that we would never have if we went back.

While the world tells us to hate our enemies, hold grudges, and sin in this way or that way, Jesus tells us to live backwards according to the world’s standards. The only way we can do this is when He is living in us, and when we live this way we realize that we are really living forwards in the way He designed us to live.

Everybody likes to be encouraged and praised, not just for things they’ve done but for who they are. If we think about saying something encouraging to another person, we should not hesitate to say it, whether or not it is reciprocated. Most importantly, for who He is and all God has done for each of us, praising Him should be done endlessly as He is deserving of it all.

When we are faced with a sudden crisis we have the option to respond in despair or respond in worship to God. Trials will come, and while we walk through them with Him, we need to keep our eyes looking up because Jesus promised that He would come back for us suddenly out of the blue.

The Bible instructs us to seek God first and foremost, putting aside any other distraction from our minds and hearts. Once we are in that kind of relationship with Him where He is all we want, He will put things on our hearts to ask for and has told us to ask Him with boldness and persistence.

Sometimes it feels like God is hiding from us when really we’re the ones trying to hide from Him. Instead of continuing in our sin, we need to seek after Him with our whole hearts and find that His promise is true that He will be found.

When Jesus lives inside of us, we often neglect cleaning house for Him because it can get very messy sorting through our lives. What we need to do, rather than making the outside look clean by doing all the right things, is clean our house from the inside out so that the things that truly matter in our heart can be made clean forever.

Instead of being content with a ticket to Heaven, we need to seek God to give us more and more of Himself on this earth. He offers us so much more than the gift of salvation, but we must seek Him, putting Him first above all things, and let Him deepen our wisdom and understanding to fuel our passion and purpose in living for Him.

When we focus on the attack that is coming at us from the devil, we lose sight of the God we serve who is more powerful and has promised to protect us. As Christians, God lives in us and He has the power to fight anything that may come against us if we would just call out to Him and obey what He says to do.

The taming of one’s tongue comes from the Holy Spirit, otherwise we may not always say something but we still think negative things that we will eventually say the more we think them. Rather than trying in our own efforts to tame our tongue, we should work on growing in relationship with God so that He can tame us over time.

The easiest response to boredom or even suffering is to move on to the next thing rather than sticking with it, whether it’s relationships, jobs, or church. When God calls us to stay in something, He gives us the power to do it and others benefit from our perseverance.

We may not be chosen to die a physical death for Christ’s sake, but everyday we are called to die to ourselves, take up our cross and live for Him. We must ask ourselves if we’re really willing to take a stand for Christ no matter the cost. If the answer is yes, no price we must pay can compare to the victory we celebrate in Heaven.

It is not sinful to be upset about something, but how we handle it can be sinful. When we try to control ourselves we end up out of control, but when we give ourselves to God and allow Him to put His peace, love, and joy in us then we can respond righteously.

This life is full of moments of suffering, but none of it is outside of God’s hand to purposefully use it for His greater purpose. God is for us, and we can look to Him with trust and faith despite any of our circumstances, knowing that He will always be with us and fulfill His promises to us.

Everyone faces difficulties, and that is why God has designed the community of His Church to respond to those struggles in such a way that encourages and comforts those who are struggling. The mature believers are ones who have patience with those who fall because they can look in their past when someone else helped them.

Although we may feel like there is nothing special about us, God has made us special and is simply looking for us to be available for Him to use us in extraordinary ways. When Jesus lives inside of us, we are meant to do amazing things because it is not us doing those things but rather Him doing them through us.

Often times, God will mess up our plans to put us in contact with lost people in this world who need to hear about Him. When we live our lives in obedience to God, seeing His hand at work instead of the inconvenience of our changed plans, we will be amazed at how He will use us to reach the lost.

It’s easy to thank God for how He’s blessed us and go on about our lives without taking the time to look around and see how we can help others. As the Body of Christ, we are called to reach out and help all those in need that we come in contact with. We must have eyes to see the needs and willingness to follow through in meeting those needs.

It’s easy to get caught up in thinking that we’ll just be happy when we get this thing or that thing. Instead, it’s about our mindset exactly where we are, choosing to trust and rejoice in the Lord no matter what season of life we are in.

God has made us for a purpose, but when we give into the sin struggles that the devil uses to sabotage us, we get off course and often create a lot of unnecessary damage. The worst form of sabotage is suicide because there is no coming back from that here on earth and it ends a life that God may have had many more redeeming plans for.

Instead of being shocked when God does what He told us He would, we can look back and see how He has always been faithful and then trust that He hasn’t changed. When God tells us to ask Him for something, we need to ask and rest in the assurance knowing that He will do what He said.

Because God is so holy, He had to remain separated from His people because of their sins before Christ. It was Jesus’ perfect sacrifice of His death on the cross that broke the barrier between us and God so that now we can have access to God at anytime and any place and we can approach Him boldly.