Richard Ellis Talks

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.

When we accept God’s forgiveness and give ourselves to Him, He shines a light in us and cleans us up. That light shines through us to anyone around, exposing the darkness they live in and attracting them to hearing about the Gospel and how they can also begin living in the light.

The Bible teaches that there is both a physical and a spiritual death. Unless Jesus returns in our lifetime, we are all going to experience a physical death. In order to be saved and made alive spiritually forever we must believe in the saving work of Christ on the cross for our sins.

When we look for Biblical teaching, we need to be willing to find something that may make us uncomfortable because it convicts us of our sin. When we are teaching others we need to speak the truth to them, but in a loving way. When the Word of God is preached, the power of God, through Christ, comes with it and brings change.

God has chosen specific people to reveal Himself to through Scripture. If the light has not turned on for us to see the power that God offers us, we must ask Him to show us so that we may live with purpose between now and Heaven.

The world offers us life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, yet following the world’s way brings us death, slavery to sin, and despair. The Bible tells us the truth about following Jesus as the only way to have an abundant life, true freedom from slavery to sin, and joy the exceeds all the sorrows of this world.

It is only by God’s Spirit revealing to us the promises and truth in Scripture that we are able to see and understand what He offers to us. God did not just give us a ticket to Heaven but instead He continues to reveal Himself and His limitless power through His living Word.

Jesus modeled perfect love by giving His life for us. He calls us to love each other as He loves us. When we love God, we cannot help but to obey Him and that love and obedience shows the world to whom we belong.

God hates evil and promises to hold vengeance in His hands, yet He also uses times in our lives when we feel destroyed to turn us around to follow Him. We will all come to an end in this life whether by death or by Jesus returning, but the question we have to face is where we’ll be after this life. The only way to hold assurance to the hope that is offered through Christ is to surrender to Him, acknowledge our sin, and repent.

Instead of focusing on just getting to Heaven, we need to look around for whom we can take with us. When it comes to evangelism and discipleship we need to be trained by others so that we can train others to go and do the same thing. As a Church, we need to work together because our unity, explained only in Christ, will attract more people to join in.

It is too easy, and sadly too common, to make fun of what other people believe. The truth is that what we believe as Christians is just as crazy to them when they hear the Gospel story. Rather than make fun of someone else’s beliefs or idols, we need to be open to hearing about their beliefs so that at some point they will be open to hearing about ours.

The world is full of “what ifs” that can cause us to fear greatly. When we truly give our lives to God, we can find peace and rest in the fact that He holds our lives and nothing happens to us that He has not allowed and protected us through.