Richard Ellis Talks

Guest (Male): Today on Richard Ellis Talks, I am trying to do at least a couple of things. I am trying to take as many people with me as I can when I go or that come behind me, and I'm trying to leave as many people behind who can carry it on as possible. That's it.

Welcome to Richard Ellis Talks with Richard Ellis. Richard's going to take the next few minutes to share some great words of hope and insight for you. And in today's broken world, that is something everyone is desperate to hear. Richard shares unapologetically the truth of the Bible in a way that's clear, relational and uplifting.

So thank you for taking this time to listen. We know it will bless you. And when you have a moment, you might want to check out our website so we can stay connected with you, richardellis.com. But right now, let's go ahead and get things off and running with today's talk. Here's Richard Ellis.

Richard Ellis: The title of today's message is Killing Time. If you look up the definition for killing time, it is to engage in an activity, usually a rather aimless or idle one, with the goal of making time seem to pass more quickly or less slowly. If you're killing time, it means that you believe you have time to kill, right? Got plenty of time.

You talk to people that are older, they realize they're running out of time, one way or another. And all the old people just said "Amen" if you're wondering. So Psalm 102, go there. Now, I'm going to read you a bunch of verses that, if you're not careful, could be almost a little depressing.

And kids, it's hard to explain all this stuff to kids, but I'm telling you, even if you're young, you got to figure some stuff out. You only have so much time down here. Even if they freeze your you-know-what and think one day they're going to bring you back, it ain't happening. The Bible says it is appointed unto men once to die, after that the judgment.

So far, only two people in history, am I getting this right? Have not died. Two people got taken up. The rest of them died. Even Jesus died, right? Got raised from the dead, but he died. You're going to die. If Jesus does not return in my lifetime, I will die. And my sand is falling very quickly.

In Psalm 102 verse 3, "For my days are consumed like smoke and my bones are burned like a hearth." So just poof, just gone. Strike a match sometime and then blow it out and watch that smoke dissipate. That's your life. In the grand scheme of eternity, time and eternity, that's it.

I was going to read you Psalm 144:4, but it's just more depressing scripture. I'll read it to you. "Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow." Just like gone. Now, you say, "Well, if that's all true, that is kind of depressing." No, that means you got that long. What are you going to do with that long? Right? You better figure it out. Go to Mark chapter 4.

The old man that discipled me told me one day, Claude said this, he said the difference in your life will be what you do with your spare time. What do you do with your spare time? Now, you say, "Well, I'm using some of it to rest." I get that. But if you talk to people who used any time they had to read, to seek for wisdom, to spend time with godly people, if you got spare time and you're just killing time, you're going nowhere.

You say, "Well, that was kind of my plan to go nowhere." Well, it's working. Working that plan, I guess. Mark 4:13. And he said to them, "Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables?" He's talking about the seed and the sower here. "The sower sows the word." Now, this is going on in real time right now, okay? This is happening with me and us, anybody listening to this right now.

"The sower sows the word, and these are the ones by the wayside where the word is sown. When they hear, Satan comes immediately and takes away the word that was sown in their hearts." Boom, it's gone. They hear it and they're like, before they can even respond to it, bam, Satan steals it away.

"These likewise are the ones sown on stony ground, who when they hear the word, immediately receive it with gladness." So boom, not gone. "Oh my gosh, this is so exciting. That's so true. That's so amazing." With gladness they receive it. "And they have no root in themselves, and so endure only for a time. Afterward, when tribulation or persecution arises for the word's sake, immediately they stumble."

Oh, I'm out. Too hard. Too hard. I can't do that. I can't say that out loud. I'll be rejected. I'll be unliked. I'll be canceled. Can't afford that. That's my whole life. So you hear something and you're excited to hear it. You're glad. It says gladness. But then reality comes along and it's only for a time, tribulation, persecution, and then they stumble.

Verse 18. "Now these are the ones sown among thorns; they are the ones who hear the word, and then what happens? The cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things." I love that little phrase, because if whatever the first two didn't cover, that grabs everything else.

"Cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful." It was about to happen, but here it comes. And then the good news, verse 20. "But these are the ones sown on the good ground, those who hear the word, accept it, and bear fruit; some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred."

You say, "Well, how do I get to pick which of those numbers?" You don't. You receive the word, you hear it, you accept it, you bear fruit. Stop comparing your fruit basket to other people's fruit basket. Has nothing to do with anything. You're going to give an account for your life, your time. Run the race that God has set before you, not someone else.

Right? This kind of freaks me out a little bit, honestly, because I'm not the smartest guy in the room. And I have some things that intimidate me a little bit, some insecurities, possibly. But I'll meet someone, or not even meet them, I'll just see somebody walking down the road. Someone that you can tell is just a very poor person, no transportation, clothing worn out.

And I say to myself, "Like, Lord, what in the world?" It just blows my mind, the opportunity that I have had and that I have, and what about that person? Did they do something wrong? Why did they not get access to education, or whatever was missing, and that's what they got? They may out-fruit me all day long with what they got and what they're doing with what they got.

You say, "Oh, that poor person." I may be the poor person that when you get there, he says, "You know what? You're feeling so sorry for that person that seemed to have nothing. They heard the word, they accepted it, they bore so much fruit that compared to what you could have done, they out-fruited you." You say, "Well, what does that even mean?" It means you're supposed to do the most with what he has given you. And we all have the same amount of time.

Now, this all gets down to if any man desires to come after me, again, what does it say? "Let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me." And that is not what we want to do. I want to do what I want to do when I want to do it. And Jesus, you can just get in line. Hey, could you talk to that person? Hush, I'm busy. I'm doing what I want to do. If we can work that in, we'll work it in, but just hush.

You say, "Well, nobody's doing that." What do you think quenching the Holy Spirit is? What do you think all these just pushing him back? You ever hushed the Holy Spirit? Promise you, we're doing it way more than we realize. If you wonder how it happens, just watch your kids. "Excuse me, excuse me, Daddy, excuse me." If they're polite. "Sir, I'm busy. Can't you see I'm busy?" "Excuse me." They're just trying to get your attention.

What if God's trying to get your attention and ain't nobody got time for that? Well, but I got to do what I wanted to do. And? Where's the fruit from that? Let me say this before I forget to say this. Retirement is a very disturbing thing to me. I am yet to figure out who invented this evil. So you're going to plan your life so that you can get to a point, lock it down and sit down, and do whatever you want to do for the rest of your life. And that's your plan?

My idea of retirement is chomping at the bit. If I'm a business person and I've been in the business world, if I had stayed in the business world and that's what God had for me, I would be chomping at the bit to get enough money in place so that I could quit that job if that's what God had and go to work. Go to work! Discipling people, ministering to people. Like, my gosh, I've got all this time now to do what I didn't have time to do before.

And then you run the last quarter harder than you ran anything else. Don't let the enemy lull you to death. Take my ease. I'll read it to you in the Bible. Luke 12. Luke 12:15. Bring me all your retirement verses and I'd love to chat about them. I'd love to chat up retirement with you. Let me tell you about retirement. I'm slowly finally getting some lighter hairs. I've been working on this a long time.

You know what the book says? You're really not supposed to even be paying attention to what I'm saying until I got a white head. A hoary head, the Bible, King James calls it. So if things are going the way they're supposed to be going and you have spent your life the way you're supposed to spend it, when you finally got white hair, you got people flocking to you saying, "What's up? Help me."

Now, our culture's flipped this back, upside down, every wrong way you can. And now 20-year-olds are so smart, nobody knows anything but 20-year-olds. They're the geniuses. Let me tell you, you may have information, but you do not have transformation without some application of some wisdom. And we've thrown our old people away, when they're the carriers in many cases of the wisdom, the stuff we need to really live the way God intended. Don't quit.

Luke 12:15. And he said to them, "Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of things he possesses." Then he spoke a parable to them, saying, "The ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully." So he's bearing fruit, literally, physically. "And he thought within himself, saying, what shall I do, since I have no room to store my crops? So he said, I will do this. I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there I will store all my crops and my goods."

"And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry. But God said to him, Fool." He said soul and God said fool. "For this night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided?" So is he who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.

Does the Bible say don't lay up treasure? It does not say that. It says don't lay up treasure and not be rich toward God. If you got more on this side than you got on the other side, you're on the wrong side. Make sure you're shipping it ahead. In your spare time, ship it ahead.

Now let me go back to the retirement thing. Let's just say you're a total screw up. You've wasted your life, nothing to show for it. You did what you wanted to do. No discipleship, no evangelism, no nothing. You haven't served, you haven't done jack anything. Then stop and say, "God, show me how to redeem the time that I have left." And cry out to him and say, "Help me. If I've got ten days or ten or twenty or thirty more years, help me hit the finish line strong. Send me someone to disciple me, to show me how to do this, to impact the lives of men and women, children, and live the life you intended." And let him change your life.

There are people in that category sitting in this room right now. If you're not here, you missed something. So on this stage earlier, some musicians played. A pianist, a bass player, a drummer and a guitar player. And if you were here, you experienced something. You say, "Oh, I was listening, I saw it online." You did not experience what we experienced. Why is it that people can buy CDs for X or download some songs for nothing, and then they'll spend 500 bucks to go to some concert? Because there ain't nothing like being there when your band plays.

Now, that's a shout out to being here. Number two, none of those men that played today picked up that instrument Tuesday. They just watched a video online and said, "Oh, I could do this," and then by today, here they go. Every one of them has been sharpening that ax for years and years and years and years. It took time.

A very specific story, Boots who plays the bass. When Boots first showed up, this is a long time ago and he's one of the greatest bass players you'll ever hear in your whole life. Boots had been playing in bands and bars and traveling and doing that. So at first, Boots could not stand and play. If you go back, if you were here years and years ago, Boots would sit down to play.

You say, "Well, why couldn't he stand up and play?" Because he had stood so long playing his instrument in bars and places that he felt like he was doing that same thing in this setting. And it just felt weird to him. It took him a while to realize that he could stand and play his instrument for God in worship.

Now, if you weren't here, it was a powerful experience for some because, oh my gosh, they're incredible. They can go, they can play these instruments. But if you know these men, you know it's an even more powerful experience because they were using the time that they had spent to express something through their hands and their instruments to God, worship, praise.

When you do the same thing with your skill set, your ability, you're a teacher, you're a CEO, you're an employee, whatever you do. You say, "Well, I'm just doing a job." No, you say, "Lord, I give you my hands, my feet, my eyes, my ears, my mind, my skills, my body. And I ask you to use this for your glory, somehow for your glory. And let my life literally worship you every day all day long through the skill set that you've given me."

That'll change the way you go to work, right? I'm not here just to do a job. I am bought with a price. Someone owns me. I'm here to let him live in and through me and serve him. John chapter 6. Now, you say, "Well, it started out kind of sounding like it was depressing. Now it's kind of turning a little." Man, this is crazy exciting! I mean, you get one little life.

Oh, and I'm trying to take better care of myself to carve out some more years. I know my buddy John over here, I'm not even going to say how old he is, but I promise you, if he could carve out another twenty, he's in. Because he knows he can make a difference and you only get one shot. When you get to this point, I jokingly say, you know, you start thinking "Put me in, coach," and I say, "No, put me in first class," but that's a whole other joke.

"Put me in, coach, I don't want to be on the bench." If you're on the bench or up in the stands somewhere or not even in the field house, ask yourself why am I not on the field? I played ball, but I didn't get in the games a lot, a lot of reasons for that. But I'd usually try to get near the coach. Because if he's trying to figure out who wants to put in, "Oh, okay, you get in." I'm not hiding down the end of the bench somewhere. Put me in, coach. Let me make a difference. I only got so much time.

Verse 27, John 6:27. "Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set his seal on him." So you say, "Yeah, but you got to work to eat." The Bible says it, yeah, but don't just work for food that perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life. It's eternal stuff. It's the forever stuff, the stuff that's going to matter.

I am trying to do at least a couple of things. I am trying to take as many people with me as I can when I go or that come behind me, and I'm trying to leave as many people behind who can carry it on as possible. That's it. So that if I'm laying on my deathbed and I say, "Okay, Lord, we're about to be out of here," and go, "Yeah, I'll see you in a minute."

And hopefully, you know what, I'm not going to say hopefully. If this goes well, I will not be laying on that deathbed saying hopefully I'm about to hear "Well done, good and faithful servant." I am going to lay there knowing that's exactly what I'm going to hear. You say, "Well, that sounds cocky." No, that's the plan. That was on the schedule.

Plenty of business people in this room that get year-end reviews. If you go to your year-end review thinking you're going to get your year-end kicked, then you screwed up somewhere. If you go into your year-end review and you know you had a great year and you did everything that was on the schedule and more, you go in there expectantly, humbly but expectantly because you did your job. And if you don't get a good review and a bonus of some kind, you go, "Well, what happened? I want some explanation."

Live your life in such a way that you hit the finish line, see Jesus and you're like, "Okay, I'm ready. Well done, good and faithful servant." Right? Because that was the plan. A little more encouragement. John 9:4. And this is Jesus talking. "I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work." Like, you won't have an opportunity when this shuts down. Do all you can while you can is what my mama told me, and she's gone. But her prayers are still getting answered.

Ephesians 5, just a few more and we're done. Ephesians 5:15. So this is Paul writing to this church and this is his encouragement to do this. "See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time," and redeeming is to buy something back, "redeeming the time, because the days are evil."

"Therefore do not be unwise." What did he just say? Not as fools but as wise. And then again he says, "Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit." And he goes on to talk about that.

So look again at verse 17. "Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is." So if you are wise, what's going to happen? You are going to have an understanding of what the will of the Lord is. Figure it out. You say, "Well, how am I going to know that?" Ask him. Read the scripture. "In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. For this is the will of God," that you what is the one about sexual immorality? Abstain, right? This is the will of God, over and over some things flat out say this is the will of God. So go look them up, say, "Okay, this is it, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. Yeah, let's go live that life."

Hebrews 10. Hebrews 10:24. Now this is just simple, practical stuff, okay? "And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works. Okay? Let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works. And then what's the next phrase? Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much more as you see the Day approaching."

Now I pound on you every once in a while about showing up on time, about being here when we gather. Now let me explain this to you. If you're a godly mature person and you're sneaking in here and sneaking out, you are not a godly mature person. I need godly mature people in the room when the ungodly show up. When the lost show up, I need scanners scanning.

We need people that come in here who are prayed up and look around and say, "Okay, I've been sitting in this part of this room for twenty years or ten years or however long you've been sitting there, you know everyone that sits around you." So you're scanning. Look around the room. "I've never seen that person before." Holy Spirit says make a beeline and do what? Consider one another to stir up love and good works, exhorting one another and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.

For me, this is a workday. For you, this is a day of rest and a day to work. There are people that show up here early and you know what they do? They walk through the whole room and meet everybody and then they come get me and say, "Hey, come meet this couple from Midland. Midland!" You say, "Well, dude, I just kind of come like it's a movie. I'm watching the movie and I'm, you know, I brought snacks even and I'm leaving. And if it gets boring, I check Facebook and I'm out of here."

What are you doing? "I just came to be fed." Okay, be fed. Do some encouraging along the way. If God sends people to this church, who do you think they're oh, they're sending them to you, Richard, you're the pastor. Good luck with that, I can't take on everybody. The elders can't take on everybody. Our job is to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry. Your job is to be present.

So that when somebody does walk in, we swarm them, we surround them, we love on them. The Holy Spirit says, "No, not them, you. You go. You're going to connect. You're up." "Well, I'm tired, Lord, I'm resting." We'll rest this afternoon. Right now, you're going to be nice to these people. "Well, I had a bad week." Maybe they did too. Let's encourage each other. Love, good works. Be present. God needs a body together. Time together.

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: James 4, one more then we'll be done. James 4:13. "Come now, you who say, today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit. Whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away."

So what are you supposed to say? "Lord willing." There are some things I don't ever want to do again in my life, but before I say I will never do this again, I say, "Lord willing, I will never have to do this again." Because I don't know what his will is, but I want his will more than I don't want to do something again.

The fact of the matter is, time is killing you. And if on top of that, you're just killing time, poof, you're gone. You say, "Yeah, but I made some money. Yeah, but I gave to charity. Yeah, but I, yeah, but I, yeah, but I what?" Did you do the will of the Father? Did you do what scripture even remotely what scripture says so that you can hear "Well done, good and faithful servant"? Now, you say, "Well, I haven't. I screwed it all up." Then let's start today. Let's stop killing time and make it count.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Richard Ellis Talks. We really appreciate that you spent this time with us. But we want to keep the conversation going with you. So give us a call anytime at 855-6-RICHARD. That's 855-6-RICHARD. Or through our website, richardellis.com, by sending an email to us so we can stay connected with you.

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