Richard Ellis Talks

It's easy to overlook new Christians and put expectations on them to live and act in certain ways. They will not meet those expectations because they are just baby Christians and they need our help and guidance by feeding them spiritual milk until they are ready for solid food.

Too many Christians live off of the frozen fruit in their lives, acting like religious believers but not having God's work actively present in changing them from the inside out. When we stay connected to Him, as a branch is connected to the vine, He does all the work in our lives that continues to produce fresh spiritual fruit.

It does not matter where we've come from and the mistakes that we've made in the past. God wants to give us a new life and write a new story for our future if we would just give our lives over to Him.

We need to be fully present where God has placed us and focused on where He is moving us forward. Rather than being like a fish who jumps out of an aquarium because they think it's better on the other side, we need to be content where God has put us because it is there that He provides all that we need.

As believers, we are representations of the change that God can make in someone's life and we need to be willing to share His message of truth with others. When we spread the Gospel we are making war on hell and it will not be easy, but it is what God has called us to do so He will give us the strength to do it.

God gave Joseph a dream that took years of hardship until it was fulfilled. Joseph's story is encouraging to us because God used specific places and people to give Joseph a leg up along the way to finally get him to where He needed him to be. God can use our lives, no matter how messy it seems, if we would just trust Him with the pieces and take every step at a time.

We all face giants in our lives that seem impossible to overcome, but with God backing us up and filling us with His power He is able to overcome those giants through us. God wants to bring us to a place where we are stepping out in faith and giving Him the necessary opportunity to intervene so that He gets the glory from the work that is accomplished.

There are many stories in the Bible of men who stood strong in their faith and God used them to change the world. God wants to use us the same way if we would just yield our lives to Him, stand firm in our faith, and allow Him to use us as the light in the world.

Just as a gardener plants seeds and waters those seeds in the ground, it is not him that makes the growth happen. His job is to create the environment where growth is possible. As Christians, this is how we are to approach other people, planting and watering seeds of the Gospel and depending on God for the growth.

The devil offers us many deals that seem good in the moment but that carry heavy consequences. We need to stop falling into his traps and begin reading the Bible, allowing God to speak to us through His Word. As we study and learn the Scriptures, we must cling to God's truth and live our lives according to His instruction.

The Bible tells the story of a widow who continually asked an uncaring judge for retribution on someone who wronged her and he eventually gave in because she wouldn't stop asking. This is how God wants us to come to Him when we ask for something, with faith believing that He can and with persistency.

Our lives are always producing fruit, but we only produce good fruit like love, joy, and peace when we are connected to Christ. Others see when our life is transformed and we start producing good fruit and they want to get connected to Christ so that they can be transformed as well because they want what they see that we have.

We tend to think that God can't use us because of mistakes we've made in the past. Though we may suffer consequences because of those mistakes, God still has a plan and a purpose to use us to reach others for His sake.

We are incapable in and of ourselves not only to be willing to do what's right, but even to follow through and do it. God walks with us through the process of making us willing first, and as we allow Him to work in us He follows through with the doing.

The Bible is clear that there is no amount or measure to sin that could be unforgiveable by God, and He freely offers us complete remission from the debt that our sin has brought on. We must accept His free gift before it is of any use to us, and when we are forgiven then we are able to forgive freely.

It takes courage to persevere when we encounter tough times. When we recognize that God lives in us and there is nothing that could come against us stronger than Him, we can walk with our heads high and face whatever battles may come. As we are going, we should encourage those around us to do the same, knowing that it may just be a little encouragement someone needs to keep going.

It's one thing to pray that someone comes to a place of repentance towards God and their lives get changed. It's another thing to pray as if we are expecting it to happen and ready to party as well as sort through the mess of consequences from their sin.

God designed a plan for salvation before the world was even created, knowing that sin would enter and we would all need a Savior. His Son was chosen to die for our sins, and now we have the opportunity to choose Him and be saved.

We must be willing to open our mouths and speak when God prompts us to because He will give us the words to say and we can trust Him to use what we say to reach the people we're talking to. God wants to speak to us and through us but we have to let Him use us the way He wants to.

God's love was made known to us through the sacrifice of His Son in order to offer us forgiveness and relief from our guilt and shame. We must let go of our past and remember Christ's blood that washes us clean so that we can live in right relationship with God.

God has promised us a future and a hope, but we cannot grab hold of those until we let go of the sin that marks our past. When we access God's power to overcome sin and safeguard our lives from repeating it, we can then walk in the future that He has set for us in freedom.

Just because we have the right to do something without it being a sin does not mean that it's always the wisest thing to do. Rather than living for ourselves, we need to be willing to make sacrifices for the sake of not causing others who may struggle with something to sin.

It's easy for a lot of people to put off a decision for change in their lives, but that indecision is a decision to forfeit the benefit of change. When it comes to salvation, that decision needs to be made immediately because eternal life is at stake.

The Bible teaches us that our lives or like a vapor, here one moment and gone the next. We must value the life that God gave us by using every moment to honor and obey Him.

Jesus lived a sinless life, died on the cross, was buried and resurrected from the dead. He offers to us eternal life that He paid for by His sacrifice and made possible by His resurrection. We must now decide to either accept His offer and follow Him or reject it and die spiritually forever when our earthly bodies die.

Jesus was God forsaken when He submitted to His death on the cross so that we could be in right standing with God and never be forsaken. Not only does His death give us eternal life, but it puts us in right relationship with God so that He can help us walk through the trials and difficulties of everyday life.

Jesus was willing to leave Heaven, come into a sin filled world, live a perfect life, die for our sins, and be raised from the dead all so that we could have access to relationship and eternal life with God. If that's what He was willing to do for us, what are we willing to do to reach other people with this Good News?

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.