Richard Ellis Talks

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.

Just like Jesus struck up conversation with the woman at the well, knowing her secrets and bringing her into knowing Him as Messiah anyway, we need to be looking for conversations to have with others. God already knows all of our junk that we keep hidden, but He loves and saves us anyway, desiring for us to take His love and salvation to the rest of the world.

When it comes to living God’s way, He calls us to die to ourselves and take up our cross, which is a symbol of suffering and death. The truth is that there will always be suffering and we will all die physical deaths, but we can choose to stand before God at the end and say we did it our own way or we can hear Him say if we chose His way, “Well done.”

We so often get caught up with recognition from other people and winning trophies for earthly accomplishments. Those things are not bad to have, but we should be doing everything to bring God glory, knowing that the crown He places on our head in Heaven is worth far more than anything we could obtain on earth.

God doesn’t want us to come up with extravagant words and phrases when we speak to Him. He wants us to simply come to Him in prayer as His kids. When we talk about God to other people, we should do it in a way that is easy to understand, presenting the Gospel clearly and how it’s made a difference in us.

Too often we wait for other people in the Church, especially those in authority, to step up and reach those that are lost. God has given us each specific skills, all that ultimately bring Him glory by ministering to others. Instead of waiting on someone else to do it, we need to take initiative and minister in the ways that God leads us.

Anger is a common struggle, and there are some people that seem to walk around just looking for things to get mad about. This hot headedness is not how God wants us to live. When we let His Spirit take over in our lives, His fruit of peace, joy, love, and so on are what come flooding out so that we can help others grow the same fruit in their lives.

The Holy Spirit is part of the Trinity of God that is mentioned throughout Scripture. As believers, He dwells in us and by His power can do amazing things for the Kingdom of God through us.

Jesus left His disciples with the command to spread the Gospel and make disciples of all nations, ultimately reaching everyone in the world with the Good News. This command is passed to us and seems impossible, but with God backing us up it is not impossible. We just have to focus on Him and obey what He calls us to do and He will fulfill His plans through us.

Often times we see other people who seem to have become successful and be blessed in many ways and we either get jealous or we come up with reasons why God won’t do the same for us. God may hold back monetary blessing because we wouldn’t be able to handle it, or He may be waiting to pour it out but we have to be willing to receive it. Whatever God has for us, we must be content and give Him glory.

We have all had things in our lives that we regret neglecting because of the consequences that came with that neglect. The worst thing we could ever neglect is God’s invitation to us for salvation; neglecting that invitation comes with eternal regret. The way we can handle the mess we’ve already made in our lives by the things we’ve neglected is to repent and do not neglect what God is calling us to do any longer.

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.