Dr. Jim Richards

I do so much for other people and it seems so unappreciated. One of the great deceptions about giving and sacrificing for others is the idea that it will cause them to love and value us more. There are situations when that is true, but few people know how to identify those who will be grateful and those who will take us for granted. The truth is giving and sacrifices don’t make others value us mor...

Help! I have an incredibly difficult time emotionally connecting. We were created to be social, emotional, relationship-oriented beings. Any number of familial, cultural, or social factors can make it difficult, however, for us to actually make emotional connections. The rise in the need for drugs, alcohol, physical and sexual activity could in part be due to the rise in people who are desperate f...

What if I told you I knew the secret to bringing love into your life, to attracting and keeping true love alive in your life? Would you do it? Everyone says they will; they say they’ll do anything to save their marriage and have passionate love. I’ve shared this secret with hundreds of people in personal counseling sessions. The ones who applied it never failed to find true love; those who didn’t...

Whether we realize it or not unforgiveness keeps us under a burden; it violates our conscience, it corrupts our righteousness, but possibly the worst factor is it makes us vulnerable to temptation. Join me this week and we will explore Jesus’ teaching about lifting the burden of unforgiveness from our heart and living free from temptation.

The most basic concept of prayer is when the believer makes a determination based on the finished work of Jesus and then uses his or her authority to reconcile any situation which is incongruent with the finished work of Jesus. Instead, we often beg God to do what He has already done through Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. Join me this week and equip yourself to take actions of authority:...

Before Jesus taught us how to pray, He taught us how not to pray. Reciting prayers as a formula was one of the ways He taught us not to pray. Prayer has to be from our own heart, spoken in our own words, with our own beliefs, expressions, and emotions. But more than anything prayer has to be approaching God based on our relationship. The only cure for formula-based, ritualistic prayers is an intim...

Jesus gave us another issue that must be resolved before we begin to actually pray. Sanctify God’s name in your own heart. Sanctification is the process of making something holy. God’s names reveal His character and nature. We know God will never act contrary to His name, moreover, He will always uphold His name. If we have made His name holy in our heart, praying in His name takes on an entirely...

What most of us call prayer is more like beggars pleading their master for bread crumbs, unsure of what His response will be. That’s why Jesus taught that before we enter into any of what we call prayer, we should experientially connect to God as Father. Sons are not just legal heirs; they are joint rulers of their Father’s kingdom. They know their Father, what He wants, and how He gets things don...

There is a door in our heart that gives entrance to the Kingdom of God: a place where we can access all the resources of God. We have been provided the key that opens this door. It was a free gift, but too often we don’t use the key we have been given. We attempt to use a key that our pastor gave us, our parents, or one we created ourselves. Millions of believers stand outside, baffled and discour...

The scriptures tell us that God’s mercies are renewed daily. In our limited concept of mercy we see that as God merely forgiving us for what we have done wrong. What we fail to see is that mercy has so many more dimensions. It is also a shelter that provides protection and provision; it is a hiding place where we can experience God’s creative power. It is a place where we can have revelation, and...

The world desperately needs to see the glory of God. For centuries we have believed that more signs, wonders, and miracles would bring the world to Jesus, but it never has and never will. The world needs to see what we have all seen by looking at Jesus. They need to see God portrayed in the lives of people who are one with Him. The more we yield to Christ in us, the more we magnify God in the eart...

Jesus showed us the glory of God by revealing exactly who God was. His teaching, the way He treated people, and all of His miracles were expressions of the true character and nature of God! But in John 17:22, He says, the glory you gave me I have given them. In other words, He didn’t share any of His personal opinions; He didn’t make up new doctrine; His every action was an exact representation of...

Most people look for some outward sign to see the glory of God. After all, that’s what religion has taught us. Religion never wants you to realize that God’s greatest expression of Himself is what happens in us. God’s glory was perfectly manifest in His Son Jesus. Today His glory can only be perfectly manifest in His children who yield to Him. Your Father, like any father, experiences His greatest...

The scripture tells us when we behold the glory of God we are transformed into that glory! For thousands of years mankind has longed to see the glory of God. The children of Israel saw the cloud by day and the fire by night, which led them on the wilderness journey, but it didn’t transform them. While these were definitely expressions of God’s glory and goodness, they were not actually the glory o...

Every believer is told to consider every path before choosing to walk it. Determine if it will lead in a way that ends with your heart in harmony with God. In this path there is no destruction, chaos, or fear, only peace. Join me this week as we gain insight into walking the path of peace!

It is a little known fact that God calls the New Covenant the Covenant of Peace. In this covenant Jesus is our peace offering. It is by His death that we have peace with God. As we celebrate our peace through Him our heart not only connects to Jesus, but it also connects to all the provisions of the Kingdom of God. Join me this week and connect to Jesus as your peace offering.

The ultimate celebration of the Hebrew believer was the peace offering. It was not an offering given to get something; it was a celebration of the fact that there was peace between God and the believer. In that connection the believer not only experienced God’s peace that passes all understanding, they experienced the acute awareness that all God’s resources were available to them. Join me this we...

The way of peace is the process God provided for the believer to always abide in God’s peace, which is the precursor for hearing God and experiencing all His benefits and resources. If you’re ready to leave a life of stress and chaos, join me this week and discover what God calls the way of peace.

Jesus offers a peace that’s different from any other kind of peace. By knowing the difference between the peace of God and all other kinds of peace, the believer can not only avoid deception, but recognize the kind of peace that is supposed to rule our hearts. Join me this week and begin to experience the incredible difference between the peace of God and all other kinds of peace.

The Bible teaches that every aspect of our connection to God is faith and grace. It starts with faith and grace, and every step along the path of this journey is faith and grace. Faith and grace are in no way opposing one another. In fact, either one is meaningless without the other. Join me this week and discover great insights that will make your journey with God easy and light as we explore Fai...

The blood of Jesus is for more than washing us clean at salvation. The Bible teaches that faith in the blood of Jesus is the solution for a defiled conscience. Sometimes our heart condemns us, sometimes we know issues that need to be dealt with, but the Bible actually teaches how we can deal with a defiled conscience: the vague sense of distance from God, or the feeling that something just isn’t r...

One of the most anticipated and celebrated rituals of the Old Covenant was the peace offering. This celebration occurred when the worshiper had made peace with God by dealing with his or her guilty conscience. Today we have that peace through Jesus. Yet, the Bible defines a very specific process whereby we experience that peace. Join me this week to examine the path of peace. Discover the secrets...

God always seeks to protect us from harm. Since we are free-will beings, He cannot force His protection on us. There are two primary things that make it possible to experience God’s protection: first, we must be vigilant. When we see or sense trouble, turning to Him should be our first option. Next, we run to Him. We are not running to Him just as a place to hide. When we run to Him we reconnect t...

Religion has made us believe that once we have failed, we may get forgiveness, but our calling and destiny is over! One of the most crucial factors in motivating people to get up when they fail is the hope of recovering their call and destiny. If we lose the hope of our dreams, we lose all motivation. After all, who wants to live the rest of their life with no purpose, no hope of living their drea...

In the original language of the Bible, the psalmist tells us God is chasing us… not to hurt us, not because He’s angry, but to draw us into an intimate heart-to-heart relationship where we are protected, provided for, given direction and most important: deeply and personally connected to Him. Mercy isn’t just getting by with something; it’s not just getting better than we deserve. Mercy is an expr...