Richard Ellis Talks

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.

When Jesus lives inside of us, we often neglect cleaning house for Him because it can get very messy sorting through our lives. What we need to do, rather than making the outside look clean by doing all the right things, is clean our house from the inside out so that the things that truly matter in our heart can be made clean forever.