Advertise on podcast: Richard Ellis Talks on Lightsource.com - Audio

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You get to the end of the month and there's nothing there. Again. You're not reckless, you don't think you live large, and you still can't figure out where it went. Somewhere in there you meant to be generous, and it just never had anything to come out of.I'm going to show you why you never have anything left to give, and it has almost nothing to do with what you earn. It's an order-of-operations problem. I'll be honest with you about my own version of it, including the thing I do to avoid getting asked, which is not something I'm proud of.If that's you, this is the one to watch. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.lightsource.com/donate/1513/29

There have been moments you could not explain away. A conversation that landed harder than it should have. A song at the exact wrong time. A near miss on the road. You told yourself it was coincidence, because the alternative is that God is trying to reach you and you would have to do something about it.I'm going to show you that it does not stop at a gentle nudge. I'll walk you through what it looks like when the pursuit escalates, from a quiet pull to somebody sitting across from you refusing to let it go. I'll tell you about the man I sat with who had days left and could barely get the words out. And I'll be honest about the angry version of this I was raised around, and why that was never going to work on anybody.f any of that hit home, don't skip this one. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.lightsource.com/donate/1513/29

You've had moments you can't quite explain away. A song at the wrong time. A conversation that landed too hard. A near miss on the highway. You brushed past it and kept moving, because sitting with it would mean admitting something you're not ready to admit.I'm going to trace something with you that runs from the first pages of the Bible to the last, and it's the same thing every time: a God who comes looking for people who are hiding. I'll tell you what I was hiding behind, what it cost me to stay there, and the phone call I made from my car decades ago that changed how I live.If that's you, this is the one to watch. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.lightsource.com/donate/1513/29

You believe and you don't believe at the same time. Something happened that you cannot explain away, a loss you cannot fix, a night you still ask why nobody stopped it. And every honest voice in your head keeps asking the same question: if there really is a God and he really is good, why did he let that happen? If you have ever had doubts about faith and felt like that made you a fraud, you are closer to the truth than you think.I am going to be honest with you about the days that are not good, the ones no verse tidies up. I have buried a newborn. I have more grandkids on the other side than I have here. I am not going to hand you a slogan. I am going to show you people in the Bible who stared right at the answer and still doubted, and what happened to them next.If you have been there, sit with me through this whole thing. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.lightsource.com/donate/1513/29

There are mornings you wake up next to the person you chose and feel nothing. Not anger, not love, just flat. And the culture tells you that when the feeling's gone, the thing is over, so you start wondering if you married the wrong person or missed your real shot.I'm going to show you why almost everything you were taught about feelings being the measure of what's real is backwards. I'll use marriage, money, and a construction screw in my tire to show you what actually holds when the feelings drop out. Some of this is going to land easy and some of it is going to be hard, because it cuts against how most of us have run our whole lives.If you've been there, sit with me through this whole thing. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.lightsource.com/donate/1513/29

Somebody asks how you're doing and you say fine. You're not fine. You've got the job thing, the money thing, the marriage thing, the health thing, and none of it is anyone's business, so you smile and say fine and keep moving. And everyone around you is doing the exact same thing.I'm going to show you what's actually going on under the surface of the people you wrote off this week, the rude waitress, the angry guy, the friend who disappeared. I'll tell you about the times I got it wrong myself, including on the drive over here. And I'll show you the only way I know to be patient with people carrying things you can't see. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.lightsource.com/donate/1513/29

You notice people. The guy at the coffee shop who's clearly carrying something heavy. The coworker who is not okay and is doing a bad job hiding it. You see it. And then you say nothing, because it isn't your business and you wouldn't know where to start anyway. And underneath all of it, you've had a quiet sense that God is calling you toward something, and you keep hitting ignore.I'm going to tell you about three strangers I talked to recently, including a man who got hit with a question he'd never been asked in his life and had no answer for it. I'll show you why the problem was never that people aren't ready to hear something real. The problem is that almost nobody is willing to open their mouth. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.lightsource.com/donate/1513/29