Richard Ellis Talks

The greatest two commandments are to love God and love others. We cannot do the second without first doing the first, and we cannot love God until we receive His love for us. When we are relationally aligned vertically, we can’t help but spill out that love onto anyone else we come in contact with.

A true friend is someone who mourns when you mourn and rejoices when you rejoice. This is the kind of friendships that should be among believers in the church because others will look at that relationship and believe that they can be loved and accepted as well. All friendships have to be grounded in love.

No one knows when Jesus will come again, but while we wait for His return our job is to spread the Gospel to the world. God will equip us with all that we need to fulfill His purpose on this earth, we just need to be obedient in preparing ourselves and others for Jesus’ return.

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 has given us His Spirit once we make Jesus our Lord and Savior to guide us in our everyday decisions. We need to walk with the Spirit continuously so that we are always in tune to hearing His direction and following His leading.

Since the beginning God saw that it was not good for man to be alone. He created us for community with Himself and with each other. When we live life together with others, we are held accountable and are able to grow stronger and healthier as God transforms us into the people He created us to be.

The truth about sin is that it reveals our nakedness, but a sacrifice must be had in order for us to be covered. Jesus chose to put on mankind, live amongst us, be violently beaten and hung completely exposed for our sake. When we stop running around using the temporary things of this world to seemingly cover us for a time, we will find the peace that our soul longs for.

Just as armies in the Old Testament waited for God’s leading before they went into battle, we need to wait on God to follow Him so that He can fight our battles for us and we can be conquerors. We must have faith in what we cannot see to know that God fights for us and loves us.

The world is full of temptations, and the devil is constantly offering anything we could want in return for our soul to stay dead in trespasses and sins. Jesus came and died for us, making it possible to be saved. The only way for our soul to be in eternity with God forever is by choosing to deny the temptations of this world and our flesh and follow Jesus.

Just as there is purpose for the fruit that grows on trees, there is purpose for the fruit of the Spirit that grows in us. God wants to use us to reach the world, but we are only able to be used by Him and grow fruit when we remain connected to Him in every area of our lives.

The Bible tells us that if we remain connected to God that He will work in our lives, sometimes in painful ways, to prune away the areas that are not productive. As Christians, we are to bear much fruit from His Spirit, and when others see that fruit they glorify Him.

Since Adam screwed everything up by bringing sin into the world, Jesus came and paid the price to offer us a second birth so that we may become eternally alive spiritually. When the Holy Spirit speaks to us to take Him up on this offer, we must respond and receive this gift.

God’s Spirit lives inside of us when we become Christians, and it is through the power of His Spirit that we are prompted to speak to others about the Gospel. We need to have His power turned on in our lives so that we can respond to those prompts and fulfill His purpose in and through us.

The Bible is very clear that not only did Jesus come to earth in a real body taking on real flesh, but it was also His real flesh that was resurrected from the dead. Through His victory, He offers us a new life where He can live in and through us and change the world.

Life is like the TiVo function on a TV in that God is outside of time and knows all that will happen because He’s already designed it and seen it happen. The Bible tells us about what the end times will be like and it is necessary that we heed to warnings given and share them with others.

Just like God had perfectly orchestrated the details in Esther’s life to get her in a position to save her people, God has worked in our lives to put us exactly where we are for His purpose. We must step out in obedience and share the Gospel with those around us so that we can fulfill our purpose on earth and grow His Kingdom by reaching others for His sake.

It’s easy to get busy and distracted by doing a bunch of good things, but none of it can take away from the importance of being still and sitting with Jesus. Our relationship with Him is grown when we spend time with Him and it is out of that relationship that we should serve, not the other way around.

People have struggled with doubting God since the beginning of time, even in the first sin. The goal is not to get rid of all our doubts, but rather to choose to believe despite our doubts and see God reveal Himself to us along the way, whatever our path may hold.

The story of Gideon in the Bible shows us a picture of God’s great power as He stripped away time and again what would be attributed to men’s power and made it clear that it was God’s power that led Gideon to victory. As Christians, we have no reason to fear anything we face because God’s same power that was in Gideon resides in us through the Holy Spirit.

When we live without bearing fruit, God may choose to allow crap come into our lives in order to fertilize us so that we can be useful to Him and bear fruit. He does not want us to be a vegetable and do nothing for Him, never changing or growing. When we abide in Him, we grow and change and our relationship with Him bears fruit in our lives that others can see.

Often times it’s like opening a can of worms when we talk about pain and suffering we’ve gone through. Rather than keep these things hidden away, Jesus wants to use those worms to go fishing for other hurting people. When we allow God to use our pain to reach others, His purpose gets fulfilled in our lives.

When we are not getting filled by God continually through reading His truth in Scripture, our spirits get in a place of deficit and we are vulnerable to attack. God has given us His Word so that we may take in His truth, apply it to our own lives and then share it with others. It is His truth that we can stand firmly in, but it does not help us unless we read it and understand it.

When we experience God’s forgiveness at great lengths, we find ourselves loving others all the more. The Bible encourages us to greet each other with a holy kiss, showing intimacy in a way that lets go of hatred, animosity, insecurities and indifference.

There are times when we feel as though our lives are so full of suffering that we cannot take anymore, and yet His mercy covers us and keeps us going throughout each day. Then there are times when His goodness is poured out over our lives in ways that we are so full we can’t help but spill it out and give to others.

God did not save us so that we could sit around waiting to go to Heaven. He saved us and left us here to accomplish His plan which is to seek and save all others who are lost.

God wants us to have constant communication with Him, through the good times and the bad. He wants a relationship with us so that He can speak to us and show us His will. When we abide in this relationship then our prayers start to match up with His will and we see His amazing answers.

While it’s not wrong to have doubts about our salvation, there is a time to get past our doubts and fully surrender to God in faith. We must acknowledge when we have doubts, face them and then move past them because continuing to live in doubt without moving into faith can be the most detrimental choice to choose.

The religious leaders were mad that the Israelite people were believing in Jesus as the Messiah because it caused them to lose their position of authority to the people. Even throughout their plots to kill Jesus, He remained sovereign over the timing and how it was done. He calls each of us to follow Him, and all we have to do is believe and let Him live through us.

The Bible teaches us that obtaining wisdom and applying it to our lives can keep us from having to learn from our mistakes. God urges us to seek after wisdom despite the cries of the world that beckon us to follow in its ways of destruction.

We all still struggle with certain sins, but over time we should be growing in our relationship with God so that the mess from sin becomes less and less. When we get involved in a church family, we can receive help from others to scoop up our messes and eventually we can begin helping other new believers with their sin struggles.

There is never a time when God is sleeping or distracted from caring for us. The same God that intricately designed and created the entire universe looks after each of us because of His great love for us.

The Bible tells us that we can trade our nothing in to get Jesus who gives us life. We are also told to not be anxious about anything, but rather to give thanks in everything. God promises to take care of us and provide all that we could ever need.

We are all in a spiritual battle, but we may not all be on the same side. When we love God, we obey His commands and He provides us with armor, weapons and a plan to make us victorious over sin and the devil.

When we pray to God, He encourages us to ask with persistence for the things that we care about. When we live in constant prayer, we keep our eyes on Him and it can help keep us from falling into temptation. Our surrender to God must always remain in our prayers, asking for anything with an openness to His will being done in our lives.

When we become saved, our lives will show God’s active work in us and through us. When we share the Gospel news to others, we must believe that God is working on the other side where we can’t see and trust the Holy Spirit to do the work to bring them to salvation.

As Christians, we need to stop categorizing our lives by church, home and work. Our lives are supposed to be lived congruently, meaning that our Christianity must be woven in everywhere we go. In all that we do, we must work in a way that honors and glorifies God, remembering that the biggest blessing is eternal life with Him.

It’s easy to run away from God and live our lives according to our own rules and the world’s deceptive ways. No matter how long we’ve been gone, we can always return home to God in our hearts and He will always welcome us. It is also important that we find a church to call home so that we can have accountability and spiritual family to build us up.

As His children, God wants us to come to Him and tell Him we love Him. You cannot do that unless you know Him and see the things He has done for you. When you have that relationship with Him, you cannot help the worship that then overflows.

Jesus said to His disciples that if they follow Him that He would make them fishers of men. He says the same to us, making it inevitable that if we are truly following Jesus then we will be “catching fish” all along the way.

When we love other people that are different, we show others that our love comes from God and it’s Him who can unite us all. God loved the whole world and sacrificed His Son so that we could all be a family. No matter what reasons we may have to hate other people, we are called for higher reasons to love them with God’s help.