Richard Ellis Talks

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.