Richard Ellis Talks on Lightsource.com - Audio

Your brother votes the other way, so he's not invited to Thanksgiving. Your sister said something years ago and you still don't call her back. You left a group because the leader went to the wrong school. One by one you've cut off the people you disagree with, and somehow your life isn't any more peaceful for it. I'm going to tell you about two brothers who lived next door to each other on a ranch and didn't speak for 30 years, and what it cost them. I'll show you the handful of things I won't budge on, and why almost everything else isn't worth losing a person over. And I'll tell you what happened when I finally said what I thought to my own dad, in my forties.

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You've got a kid in trouble, a marriage on the rocks, a bill you can't pay, or a habit that beats you every single day. So you work the angles, you push harder, you try to fix it yourself, and when you finally do pray, it's one quick line before you move on. Then you wonder why God isn't answering your prayers.I'm going to show you what I got wrong about this for years, and what changed when I started asking specifically and kept on asking. I'll tell you about the letter I wrote to a hotel owner when I couldn't afford his rooms, why a no is still an answer, and why the answer you've been waiting on might be held up by someone who never showed up.

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Maybe you prayed for your mom to get better and she died anyway. Maybe you got burned by people at church, or you went back to the same friends and the same habits and the old life swallowed you whole. However it happened, you walked away from God, and part of you wonders if that door is shut for good. Or maybe it's your kid who's gone, and you're the one lying awake at night. I've been a pastor a long time, and I've watched kids I knew from the day they were born leave and then show up years later. I'm going to tell you the real reasons people leave, including my own, because I made a real decision at six and then made a mess of it for years with nobody around to help me. And I'm going to show you why I don't believe it's over for you, or for the one you love who's gone.

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Maybe home was a place where you kept your head down and tried not to set anybody off. So when a church starts calling everybody family, it doesn’t sound like good news. It sounds like more of the same. You don’t need more jacked-up family. You need a church that feels like family, the real kind.I’m going to tell you about three people I met on one trip: a guy on a golf course, a big tattooed man eating ice cream with his fiancée, and a young woman who had just been in a wedding. The minute I found out where they stood, I quit the small talk and talked to them like family, because that’s what they are to me. I’ll also tell you what it means to be picked, and why nobody who walks through our doors should be left by themselves.Give me your next hour. I think it’ll be worth it.

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You're putting in the hours for the promotion. The money's piling up. The next trip is booked. And you still come home empty, to kids you barely know. Maybe the plan you made for your life isn't working, and it was never going to. I'm going to show you that God had a plan for your life before there was a universe to put you in, and that there's another plan working against you, one built to steal, kill and destroy. I'll put the two side by side so you can see which one you've been living, and how to switch. If that's where you are right now, stay with me on this one.

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Somebody asks how old you are and you say 29. Again. It's a joke, mostly. But you're probably holding on to something you should have put down years ago. The drink at night. The phone at 2am. The comfort you go back to every time life gets hard. You tell yourself you're the one in control, so what is holding you back?I start with why we freeze our age. Then I get into the security blankets grown people carry around, getting older without panicking, and why you can't spend your whole life afraid of dying. And I tell you why I'm holding on to Jesus, and why everything else I love is temporary.If that's you, this is the one to watch.

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You have been fighting the same sin for years. You quit on Monday, you are back by Friday, and on Sunday you tell everybody you are fine. You have started to wonder whether the problem is that you never really changed at all. I am going to show you what the Bible actually calls this, and it is not a struggle, a phase, or a bad habit. It is war. Something is coming for your peace, your marriage, your kids, and it is not in a hurry. I will show you what it uses, why it keeps working, and what you already have that it cannot get past. If you've been there, sit with me through this whole thing.

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Something in you is thirsty and you've been trying to pour things into it for years. Maybe it's a drink. Maybe it's a screen, or a person, or the next purchase. It works for an evening. Then the same empty shows up in the morning and it wants a little more than it wanted last time.I'm going to show you why nothing you drink ever fixes it, and it isn't a willpower problem. What you're reaching for was never built to reach that far down. I'll also tell you about the drive over here this morning, which did not go the way a guy about to preach would want it to go.If any of that hit home, don't skip this one.

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You want to lose the weight and you don't want to change what you eat. You want out of debt and you don't want to change how you live. You want the marriage to get better and you're not willing to stop keeping score. You've been thinking about it for years. Thinking is not the same as doing, and somewhere in there you already know that.I'm going to show you why you can't change, and it isn't willpower and it isn't that you haven't tried. There's a specific thing standing between you and the life you say you want, and I'll name it. I'll also tell you the question an old man asked me when I flat out told him I didn't want to change.Give me your next hour. I think it'll be worth it.

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Nothing hurts. Nothing's obviously broken. You go to work, you handle your business, people would say you're doing fine. And underneath all of it, something has gone quiet in you and you can't remember when it started. No symptoms, so you assume there's nothing to check.I'm going to tell you what happened when two guys called me and told me, not asked me, that I was going to the doctor. I had no symptoms either. I'm going to show you why do I feel spiritually dead is the wrong question to wait on, and what to do when the honest answer is that you feel nothing at all.If that's where you are right now, stay with me on this one.

To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.lightsource.com/donate/1513/29