Richard Ellis Talks

Richard Ellis: God is trying to find out where you're going to run, where you're going to go when the heat hits. Are you going to go back to the old ways, to the old life that didn't work? If it did, you wouldn't have turned to Jesus in the first place. Or are you going to be patient? Are you going to stick with him? Are you going to go on with God and find out who he is and what he has for you and hang in there?

Guest (Male): Welcome to Richard Ellis Talks with Richard Ellis. Thank you for allowing us to share this time with you. You may be stuck in traffic or stuck in life. Either way, today's message is going to help you get on the right track as you learn how much God loves you right where you are.

Richard's unique style checks all the boxes with a lot of hope, insight, truth, and of course, humor. Today's talk with Richard will get our conversation started, but we want to keep it going with you. So let's stay in touch through our website, RichardEllis.com. But right now, let's go ahead and get right into today's talk. Here's Richard Ellis.

Richard Ellis: The title of today's message is "In the Meantime." I've made this comment along the way to different people, and we use this phrase. Someone says, "Such and such is going to happen down the road somewhere." But what are you going to do in the meantime? Or you may say, "I'd like to be married one day." If you're not married, someone says, "What are you going to do in the meantime?"

If you think about this phrase, there's one word I want us to key in on in that phrase, and it's this word "mean." Because sometimes it's just that. It's mean time. Life sometimes can appear to be very mean. There are things that are dished out, things that happen. You say, "God, I'm trusting you." Some people say, "I'm doing everything that I know to do. I'm doing what God wants me to do. And in the meantime, it's mean time."

This is not fun. I thought if I obeyed God, I'd be blessed. I thought if I trusted God, everything would go my way. You surrender your life—that word is used a lot. "I give up." It's like you're under arrest or something. People say, "I surrender." You say, "Okay, God, take all that I am. I confess that I'm a sinner. I believe Jesus died for me, was buried, raised from death. I believe all that. I believe that you can come live in me. I want you to do that. I'm going to let you live in me, through me, change my life."

And all of a sudden, it's like all hell breaks loose, and the meantime kicks in. Now, there are a lot of people that will tell you if you'll give your life to Jesus, everything's going to go great. Have you ever heard that? You're going to be wealthy. You're going to be healthy. You're going to have great relationships. Your marriage will be cured. You'll get married. That would be a nice start for some people.

Everything's going to be perfect. I know enough people in this room alone to tell you some of you, when you finally let go, all hell broke loose. You just thought you were in trouble before. You think, "God, why are you testing me? I had enough trouble before I became a Christian. Now, it's like it's even worse." But what are you going to do in the meantime? And where are you going to turn?

Let me tell you briefly and upfront here for those of you who may be new Christians or this whole God thing may be a recent discovery. You say, "It's exactly what's happened to me. At first, there was like this euphoria, this great feeling and excitement, and then bam. It's like God just cut all the demons of hell loose on me, and every habit I ever had, every addiction I ever had, it's like it just got exacerbated and worse than it ever was."

"I'm under attack. Why is that?" God is trying to find out where you're going to run, where you're going to go when the heat hits. Are you going to go back to the old ways, to the old life that didn't work? If it did, you wouldn't have turned to Jesus in the first place. Or are you going to be patient? Are you going to stick with him? Are you going to go on with God and find out who he is and what he has for you and hang in there?

That's very fascinating. Part of the great joys of being a pastor is not just preaching to people, to crowds, to mobs of people, but actually looking you in the eyeballs and going around a room like this and knowing stuff about you. Knowing what your struggle is, what your pain is, what the problems are, what demons you face, and what day after day comes after you to call you back and say, "It's too hard where you are. Come back over here even if it's for some temporary relief. Come back over here, let's have a little fun. Let's party. It's too hard God's way. Come back and do it my way."

Every time you go back, you get clobbered. Part of the reason you go back to God and turn back to God is you say, "You know what? It sucks on the other side. I don't want to live there. I don't want to be there. I don't want to live that way. I want to do it God's way."

I'm going to read you a number of passages out of the New Testament. Let's start with 1 Thessalonians 4. Thessalonica was a city. This letter was written to the Thessalonians. First Thessalonians, there will be a one before the Thessalonians. You find that, turn to chapter 4, verse 13. I'm going to read down through verse 18.

I'm going to start at the end with the big one, which I think is one of the big ones. It's one of these things, if you've been a Christian a long time, you think about, but you really don't think about a lot. If you're not a Christian and you're just out there winging it, trying to make the best of it, there is this thing out there called death. It kind of looms, it kind of just floats around. There are movies that have tried to depict this death thing that comes after people.

I think there are people, and the scripture talks about this, who all their lives have been afraid of dying, of death. You don't know when it's coming after you. You don't know if today's your day. I mean, it's like there's no rhyme or reason. It's just random people getting plucked out of the crowd like "this is your day." For all you know, it could be your day. You say, "What if I don't die today? Then what do I do in the meantime?"

This is exactly what he addresses here in 1 Thessalonians 4:13. He says, "But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren. I want you to have information. I don't want you to not know, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with him those who sleep in Jesus, or those who have died."

"For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord."

Fine. Now think of the people you know that are dead. They're gone. You can't go talk to them. You can't see them. They're gone. You may be able to think of people in your life—a mom, a dad, grandparents, maybe a child that died prematurely. You say, "God, I long for that." But what the heck am I supposed to do in the meantime? He answers that in one verse, verse 18, 1 Thessalonians 4.

He says knowing that they're gone, you're going to be gone too when you know the Lord. "Therefore comfort one another with these words." Usually people say, "This is only about funerals." Let me tell you something. There are people in this room that have lost someone, and every birthday, every anniversary, every celebration that comes along, every holiday, they get hit with this stuff. They need somebody to remember that stuff.

We have people in the congregation right now who are hitting year anniversaries of a loss of a loved one. It's amazing to watch. You cannot believe in one case specifically how there's been a mobilization of people writing cards, making phone calls. Doing what? Comforting one another with these words. It's going to be okay. It's sorry right now, but it's going to be okay. What do you do in the meantime? You comfort each other. You stick together.

I had a thought this morning. If I said to you guys this, "Having a building to meet in is somewhat of a challenge because we have to rent it and we have to secure this for like a year at a time. I tell you what we're going to do. We're still going to be a church, but we're just going to do this on our own. We're going to save all kinds of money. Next Sunday morning, you just stay at your house. We're going to have CDs made, and you can sing with the CD at your house by yourself."

"And we're going to disband because it takes time to do this. We're going to disband all the Bible studies because it's just too much space having to be rented and too many logistics worked out. We're all going to stay home, and we're going to worship God by ourselves. But we're still going to be all together. We're going to be a church; we're just not going to do it together anymore."

You're not going for that. You know why? You need that person next to you. When it comes to church, there is some assembly required. You say, "I don't want to have to get together." Let me tell you something. There's coming a day when it won't be a "have to." You will be dying to get with somebody else. Because you can't do this by yourself. You need other people. You need that interaction, the fellowship, the friendship, the encouragement, the challenge. You need somebody to say, "Get off your butt and do something" every once in a while.

Or someone to say, "Hey, you need to slow down, you're going to burn yourself out." Or somebody to say, "Hey, I had a question about this. Do you know the answer?" You encourage one another. Comfort one another with these words, he says in this regard specifically.

Now I want you to turn to another passage. This is 2 Peter 3. It's interesting. The ones that I've picked today talk about the Lord's return. Frankly, guys, that's what this deal is all about. The core of what we believe is that Jesus died on the cross, was buried and raised from the dead. He is God in a man, and that's what it's about. But let me tell you something: he's coming back. We are not stuck here forever.

I'm so glad I don't live back when Methuselah lived. I mean, what if you were only like 40 and the average age was like 700? You talk about suicidal people. It's hard enough living 70 years, much less living 700 years. You're barely even getting started.

God is gracious to us not to leave us down here for more than about 70 years. The way we fall apart so fast now, who would want to be here much after that? But he's gracious to us in that we're not going to live that long and that we know that at any moment, literally, he could come back.

To some people, that's not very exciting. To be honest with you, there was a time in my life before I got married, I was like, "Okay, Jesus, I know I'm supposed to be real cranked about you coming back and everything, but I tell you what: if you're planning this thing, if reentry is supposed to happen, I'm getting married like this date. Like a month later, just come back a month later. Let me be married for a month, and then you can come back all you want to and we'll go to heaven."

We get selfish. We say, "Jesus, don't come back yet." Some of us don't even think about these things. We just say, "Whatever, maybe he's coming back, maybe he's not." We don't even live anticipating that he's coming. And the Bible is full of scriptures and commentary that he is coming back. 2 Peter is one of these. For the second time, I'm going to dive in here in 2 Peter 3:10.

Let's jump in here. He says that the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat. Both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up.

If you've missed this, I'm going to read this again. The day of the Lord. There is a day coming when the Lord comes back, and it says the heavens will pass away with a great noise. It is going to be audible. And the elements will melt with fervent heat. It's going to be temperature associated with it. The earth and everything in it will be burned up.

Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness? How should we live in the meantime? Okay, so this is coming. One day it's going to happen. But what do you do in the meantime? He says what kind of persons ought you to be. He says in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat.

Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Verse 14: "Therefore, beloved, looking forward to these things, what do you do in the meantime? Be diligent to be found by him in peace, without spot and blameless."

Guys, let me tell you something. It's not always exciting. In a minute, I'll read you a passage that talks about farming. There is very little excitement a lot of times if you know anybody in your family that's done any kind of farming. If you get on a tractor, even if it's got stereo and air-condition, which I'm partial to those tractors myself. But anyhow, you get in this massive field that has to be cut down. Let me tell you something: it's one row at a time.

And it's not exciting. It's dusty. Even if it's comfortable, it's work. You go down one row and you turn around and you come back another row, and you keep looking and you go, "You know what? This thing is never going to end." It may take days to do it. And the Christian life is not one row to hoe. It's one day at a time, and it's day after day after day. And they just keep coming.

You've got to decide: can you do this? Will you do this? He says looking forward to these things, be diligent to be found by him in peace, without spot and blameless, pure, holy, one day at a time, in the meantime. You say, "But all my friends are having so much fun. It's exciting out there. The way I used to live, there was excitement." Maybe it was temporary, but it was exciting, and being a Christian isn't exciting all the time.

One of the reasons I'm hesitant to put on a show on Sunday mornings—you go to some churches and it's lights and all these things happening, short of smoke and lasers. I mean, it's exciting. But you know what? Life isn't that way. And I want you to come to a worship service and experience here and go, "You know what? This is sustainable."

I don't want to stir your soul; I want to stir your spirit. I want you to find some joy, some peace as he describes here, something that is maintainable, that is steady, that is constant. So that when your friends are flying high, literally, and then they crash, they watch you and there's a consistency, there's a persistence to your life, a patience about you that they say, "You know what? My highs are high, my lows are low. You've got something worked out that just is constant. How do you live this way?"

Hopefully what happens in your Christian life is it may be up and down, but at some point as you mature and grow, it levels out. By the time you get to heaven, it ought to be a little smoother than it is in the beginning. It's like the younger you are as a believer, you sin, then the devil says, "Oh, you're down now. You might as well stay down two or three months."

While we're down here, let's have some fun. If you're an alcoholic, you slip and have a drink. He didn't say, "Well, that's it." He says, "Well, let's just—I'm already drunk now. Let's stay drunk for a few months." Whatever your sin is, if you go down, you stay down.

What happens is you sin less. There's greater distance between sin. And when you sin, there's less downtime. If you've got sin in your life, guys, get rid of it. You say, "But you don't know what I've done." I don't care what you've done. The same Jesus that died for a lie died for adultery. Get rid of it, deal with it. It's eating your life up.

Jesus didn't die and say, "Well, you've got to wait. There's a waiting period here before you can be forgiven." It is instant, just like that. If you'll confess, he'll forgive. He'll make you clean. You say, "But it's the same thing I've done for five years, 10 years, 20 years." Keep confessing it. Sooner or later, you're going to hate the sin and hate confessing it. And you'll stop.

You'll cry out to God and say, "God, I don't want to be this person anymore. This does not work. You've got to help me to be strong and to hoe my row one day at a time." Verse 14 again: "Beloved, looking forward to these things, be diligent to be found by him in peace, without spot and blameless. And consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation—as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures."

"You therefore, beloved, since you know this beforehand, beware lest you also fall from your own steadfastness, being led away with the error of the wicked; but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever."

Did you get the last few phrases in there? 16, 17, 18. Guys, there is always going to be somebody with some new thing, some new exciting thing that'll say, "Well, it's not just the scriptures. It's this over here too. Come over here and do this. We're having a great time. It's really about this, not that."

And it's always some spiritual new high that can't be maintained, usually. He says find out what the book says. Speaking in verse 16 again, he says some of these things are hard to understand, but untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction. It's what I call "jerk-a-verse Christianity." As they do also to the rest of scriptures. They manipulate the thing and make it say what they want it to say.

I've had people, just the sin, for instance, of homosexuality. You say, "Well, you're not going to call that a sin, are you?" Look, it's in the book. They're all in the book. I've had people try to make David homosexual, Jesus homosexual, trying to make it say something it doesn't say. It's not in there. Study the scripture, find out what it says, and stand on that.

Verse 17 again: "You therefore, beloved, since you know this, beware lest you fall from your own steadfastness." Guys, it's about hanging in there. One day at a time, not giving up. Steadfastly not being led away with the error of the wicked. But verse 18: "But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."

What do you do in the meantime? That. Verse 18. Underline it. Grow in the grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That's the safest place you can be in the meantime. How do you do that? You do that by gathering fellowship with other believers, by worship, either corporately as a group like this or individually. It's prayer, it's Bible study, it's all these different things that we incorporate that are scriptural.

You say, "But it's not fun anymore." It's not going to be fun all the time. But there is joy. I'd rather have joy than fun any day. Let me tell you why it's not always fun. About the time you think you've been tested, you don't know. We moved. We sold our house, and we moved into an apartment. And the second morning we're in this apartment, at about seven-something in the morning, I hear this banging on the door. Somebody's out the elevator door.

I bolt out of bed. You know how you're just sound asleep and all of a sudden you are wide awake? There's an emergency of some kind. So I go flying into the kitchen, and I hear water running. Just like split seconds, this whole scenario's unfolded. I'm thinking, "Okay, Catherine's come to the sink. She's crawled up on the sink, turned all the water on, and it's just running."

When I stepped into the kitchen, I hit water. Now I'm telling you, I'm thinking fast now because I'm thinking, "Oh my gosh, there's water in the kitchen." I look at the sink; there's no water running. But I hear water. I open underneath the sink, and here it comes. A pipe has busted. After 30-something years, it decides to go on our second morning in this building.

Part of the reason we moved into this building is to reach some of the people in this building. And now we're on the floors above six other floors, and it's our "Welcome to the Building" flood. The kitchen has that much water in it. It's gone into the dining room where all of our boxes of wedding pictures and stuff are sitting in about two inches of water.

It's moving toward the living room, and it's probably been doing this all night long. The boxes are soaked up. The water has gone down the walls to the sixth floor, into their wall, fifth floor, fourth floor, all the way down to the basement. It's gone into ceilings, and the ceilings are plaster ceilings. The ceilings are starting to give way and fall on people's photography equipment, studios, new carpet, new furniture. So for six floors, including ours, all the way to the basement, it's a disaster.

Now let me tell you something. That's a mean time. Now, what are you supposed to do in the meantime? Now, I don't know if it's a God thing or if it's just after 40-something years of being alive, and I think it's a God thing: nobody's hurt, so everything's okay. It's just stuff. And see, you can't fake this stuff. How you react in those situations gives you away every time.

Your testimony is not "Oh, I'm a preacher in the neighborhood, I'm here to save the building." That's not the deal. What do they care? Who is this person? And is there any difference in your life than everybody else's life around you? How do you react? Or do you respond? You know, I met my neighbors. That one good thing came from it. I did meet the neighbors. Try to do a little damage control and go down and look and see what had happened.

These things happen. Let me tell you something, guys: it's coming. The flood's coming. It's not a matter of "if"; it's just "when." And there's going to be mean time with it. And you're not going to like it. And God's not intending for you to like it, necessarily. He's intending for you to be tested with it.

Hopefully it will cause you, instead of to despair and run back to the old way, it's going to point you to him. You're going to say, "Okay, God, I don't know what you're doing or why you allowed this, and why you've held this pipe together for 37 years and you waited until all our boxes full of stuff were in here to get soaked." But I've got nowhere else to go, God. And I'm not talking about the apartment. I'm talking about him. I trust you.

I don't know how you're going to use this mess for your honor and glory. But you know what it is? The hardwood floor in this place buckled. Now we have like—you can run your toy trucks through the dining room. So it's all coming apart. It hit me along the way, I thought, "You know, maybe it's about the guy that's going to repair the floor." It's somebody.

Listen to me close. Your mean time may get you to somebody that needs you desperately. It's always about people. If God came to me a week ago and he said, "Richard, let me explain, let me tell you what's going to happen. I know you're moving everything. It's been very stressful and all this junk and everything. But there's this guy that repairs hardwood floors. And his mom's been praying for him for about 30 years, and you're about the closest thing I got."

"But the only way to do this is to flood the whole building. And in a part of that, I've got to warp your floor. And because your floor is warped, this guy's going to show up, and you've got to do the right thing. You've got to be the right person because I've got a prayer to get answered here and you're going to be a part of that. Are you in?"

If I knew that, I'd move some boxes and I'd try to get ready. You know what? It's not about getting physical things ready. It's about getting heart things ready, that's one day at a time. If God came to you and said that, you'd say, "Well, sure, yeah, flood the whole place, let's get him." Maybe, maybe not. God just hits you. He allows you to get hit with these things. You know what? He just says they're going to trust me. They've got nowhere else to go; they've got to trust me at some point. And it's going to be okay.

Let me tell you something. There are people in this room living in some mean time. You have no idea what's going on in this room and the people listening to this message today. We've got marriages falling completely apart. People who are separated, have been separated for one, two, three years. You know what? It's in the meantime. There is no resolution imminent.

They live with this stuff day in and day out. There are people with family members, a mom with Alzheimer's. Let me tell you something: that ain't going away unless Mama dies, which is a tragedy of its own. Alzheimer's can go on for five, 10, 15, 20 years. And you're taking care of a person who doesn't even know who the heck you are. That's mean time.

What are you going to do in the meantime? Who are you going to be in the meantime? Is anybody around you going to be able to look at your life and look you in the eyes and say, "You know what? I don't know what you're doing, but you've got the same crap, you've got the same junk in your life that I've got in mine, but something is different with you. How do you make it in the meantime? I'm not making it."

Because of the difference they see and they sense and they hear and they observe in your life, they say, "You've got to tell me a reason why you have so much hope. There has got to be some explanation because I don't have what you have." Because of the way you live—not just because of what you say, but who you are, the fiber of your being and how you respond in situations—people see the difference and know there's a difference and say, "I've got to have who you have, what you have, I don't know what it is." I'm encouraging you, I'm begging you not to turn away in the meantime. You've got nowhere else to go anyway.

Guest (Male): Richard will be back in a moment to wrap up today's talk. But first, I want to share a couple thoughts with you. Let's be honest: real life isn't about living some highlight reel for others to see. Most people have deep hurts, questions, and struggles. We get it and want to help you in any way we can.

So let's keep this conversation going. Give us a call at 855-6-RICHARD or connect with us at our website, RichardEllis.com. You can even put in your prayer request right there on the prayer wall so others can pray for you as well. Call us at 855-6-RICHARD or online at RichardEllis.com. And now, let's get back to Richard with a final word on today's show.

Richard Ellis: The sad thing about all this is for some of you, the meantime, you're going through by yourself anyway. You don't even know God. You don't even know if God knows you, and you're terrified that he does know you. Where you've been, what you've done, what you've thought, what you've said. You're like, "There's no way, man. Now I'm hiding from God. I don't want him to look at me."

If he really knows me, there's no way he's going to take me. Let me tell you something: there's no way he's going to take me either, any of us. It is by his mercy, his compassion. It says he's compassionate and merciful. That's the only reason any of us makes it. You don't come to God and go, "Well, okay, God, I got my hair all straight and how do I look? You going to take me now? I'm all fixed."

You can't get fixed enough to be good enough for God. You come to him and say, "God, I'm like anybody else. Be merciful to me a sinner. I need your mercy, your forgiveness, your grace. You've got to help me, God." And you come empty-handed, and you walk away with everything. Nobody deserves it, but it works.

And he can change your life and in your meantime, make everything different. Give you a reason to hold on. The joy that you look for, the peace that you look for, the patience that you need to endure. These are not things; they're a person, and his name is Jesus. I recommend you go back and read through some of these, underline some of these things, guys, because if you're not in the meantime, it's coming. These are not just random words being thrown out there. I know some of you have reason to be barely hanging on. But it's going to be okay, even in the meantime.

Guest (Male): This has been Richard Ellis Talks with Richard Ellis. The message of the gospel is one we take very seriously in our mission to reach the planet. And you have a vital part of doing that along with us. If you've been encouraged by these talks with Richard, be sure to tell someone about the change they've made in your life.

You can even share today's talk with them through the website, RichardEllis.com. And we'd love to hear your story as well as to how these talks have made a difference to you. Give us a call, 855-6-RICHARD. You can also reach us through our website, RichardEllis.com. And while you're there, check out all the pages we put together for you, RichardEllis.com.

Also, be sure to click on the contribute tab to send your very generous gift. If the program is making a difference to you, your gift will make a big difference to us. Until next time, thanks so much for listening to Richard Ellis Talks.