Richard Ellis Talks

Richard Ellis: You will never end up being a follower of Jesus, even as a Christian you will not follow him unless you are willing to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow him. That’s saying no to the flesh, no to me, that is taking on suffering, whatever that means in your life, and then you can follow him.

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 is Richard Ellis.

Richard Ellis: The title of today’s message is My Soul To Take. So I’m going to talk to you today about your soul. A lot of people don’t even know what their soul really is, so we’ll get into that a little bit. The word soul comes from an English word sawool or sawl, which literally means life, spirit, or the animating principle of a person.

In the Old Testament, the word for this is nephesh, which means breath, life, living being. New Testament, psuchē, psychē, where we get the word psychology, which means breath, life, or yourself. It can mean life itself, the inner self, your mind, your will, or emotions, or the person as a whole. So you have a body, physical. You have a soul, which is your inner life, personhood. And then you have a spirit, which is your capacity to relate to God.

Now you say, well, can you separate those things out? When you die, your body stays here, your soul, your spirit, you’re with the Lord. As a Christian, absent from the body, present with the Lord. But then I’ll read you some verses in a minute where yes, it’s not that you’re trying to do this, but you can separate out your soul and your spirit.

First Thessalonians 5:23, I’m way out of sequence here, but just read you this that includes all of these. It says, "Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." So a prayer here that they will be sanctified completely, whole spirit, your whole soul, whole body be preserved, implied there.

Jonathan Edwards, "The soul of a man is an immortal and precious thing, more valuable than all the world." And John Wesley said, "You have one business on earth: to save souls." So there’s a principle among speakers, it’s the WIIFM principle. Does anybody know what that principle is? Look at y’all. Here is what it stands for. What’s in it for me?

And so if you’re a speaker, you approach the audience from that perspective. Because they’re going, well dude, who cares about this? What’s in it for me? Well, if you’ll pay attention today, there’s a lot in this for you. You benefit, but God gets glory if you figure this out.

Genesis 2:7, so let’s go left to right here and here we go. Genesis 2:7. And it says, "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being," or some translations say a living soul. So man did not receive a soul, he became a living soul. When God makes him, he makes him soul. He’s got a soul.

Now go to Matthew chapter 4, verse 8. And this is going to tie in with another passage in Matthew we’ll get to in just a second. So this is where Jesus launches his ministry. He fasts 40 days, 40 nights, and then the devil shows up to tempt him. And by the way, this passage says the Spirit led him into the wilderness to be tempted. So this is God leading him in there to encounter Satan and go through this.

And down in verse 8, this is the third temptation. "Again, the devil took him up on an exceedingly high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, 'All these things I will give you if you will fall down and worship me.' Then Jesus said to him, 'Away with you, Satan! For it is written, "You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve."' Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and ministered to him."

So what is the final thing the devil’s offering him? I’ll give you all the world. Now, the devil has been trying to make this deal with people from the beginning. He has certain things that he can offer you and me. And he says, okay, here’s my deal. I will give you whatever it is this thing you want, and whatever I’m offering you, I think this is going to be the thing. I’ll give you this, but you will worship me.

And we say, well, somebody made a deal with the devil. And by the way, he can make deals. He is a dealmaker. And you sign up for his team, the devil will bless you. Success, money, whatever it is you’ve signed up for. But then they own you. You tend to belong to whoever you worship. And that is a very dangerous thing.

Now go to Matthew 16:24. Now, this little passage I’m about to read you, 24 to 27, if you figure this out, your whole life will change. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be perfect and have no problems, but your life will change. Matthew 16:24. "Then Jesus said to his disciples," okay, so these are his followers. "If anyone desires to come after me," in other words, you have a desire to follow me, what is the first thing you have to be willing to do?

You have to be willing to deny himself. "Let him deny himself." So you say, well, I want to do this. And he says, if you’re going to follow me, that’s not what we’re doing. So you’re either going to follow me or do what you want to do. What are you going to do? I want to follow you, so I’ll deny myself. Next thing, "take up his cross, and follow me."

That is the sequence. You will never end up being a follower of Jesus, even as a Christian you will not follow him unless you are willing to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow him. That’s saying no to the flesh, no to me, that is taking on suffering, whatever that means in your life, and then you can follow him.

Now you say, well, I don’t want to do that. Then he gives you, what’s in it for me principle. "For whoever desires to save his life will lose it." And the word lose here is ruin, destruction, forfeiture. "But whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." So if you spend your life trying to save your life, you are going to lose the only life you’re ever going to have.

And the older you get, the shorter life becomes. And unfortunately, when you’re young, you think, well, I’m never going to die so I’ve got plenty of time. The older you get, you realize it’s closing in. Too many people dying around me. I’m not going to be here forever. What am I doing? What have I done? What am I going to leave behind? What have I shipped ahead? Have I protected me and my life and tried to save me from denying myself or any suffering? And in doing that, I’ve lost my life.

I’ve been praying a little bit about whether to share this story, and it’ll blow my reward in heaven to tell you, but I’m going to tell you. I hit golf balls in my yard and over the fence in my alley there’s two, at least two young teenage boys. And that house, particular house, there have been families running drugs in there before, you never know what’s going to come out of that house.

But as I look over my fence to the alley and their fence, these little boys, young boys, are in the backyard bouncing a basketball and shooting it on the roof. They have no basket. So I’ve watched this about as long as I can possibly take it. Then they took a crate, a black crate, and strapped it to a tree in the alley and they would shoot into that crate and slam dunk in that crate.

I’m like, what is going on? I kept waiting and this goes on for months. And I’m thinking, somebody in that house is going to realize these boys have no basket. Couldn’t take it anymore, got on Facebook Marketplace, found a basket, and loaded it up in my wife’s car, snuck it in their driveway. And now I have the joy of watching those little boys when they found it, and they thought, well where did this come from? They don’t know.

Why am I telling you this story? If you ever get it in your thick skull that denying yourself and thinking about someone else might possibly bring you more joy than you would ever have saving your little whatever you have, get over yourself. Pay attention, look around you. What is Jesus up to? What is he trying to do in and through you?

Oh well, I can’t get involved there, that looks messy. What if Jesus wants to do messy today? Well, I don’t have time for this, I think I’m going to, someone else will show up. No, they won’t show up. It may be months or years before someone shows up because he sent you. Well, I don’t know what I would say. Stop worrying about what you would say, why don’t you just get out of the way and let him speak?

Now I can’t even go out in my yard without saying where’s that basket? Have they put water in the base so it won’t fall over and crash and break and now I’ve got to buy another one? Now was that expensive? No. It would have been really expensive for me to disobey. That’s where it gets expensive. It is not about me. It is not about you.

Haven’t you figured out by now, you have food and clothing, that’s what you’re supposed to be content with, and most of us have more than that. Why are you on the planet? Let your radar run. Say, Lord, how can I deny myself today, take up my cross if there’s some suffering involved, and follow you? If you’re not following him, you’re not going to end up where he is going. Don’t you want to end up where he is going and where he wants to be?

Well, what if it’s a hard place? I’ll tell you where the hard place is. Waking up, going to sleep, waking up, going to sleep, and doing nothing but fueling my sin and feeling like crap the rest of my life because I can’t get over myself. Oh, but I’ve got to save my money for retirement. I get you got to plan. Why don’t you plan to let Jesus do something with his money? How about that?

So if you want to come over, I’m putting some bleachers up to watch them play ball. I’ll tell you what I actually did. I actually reached out to Shaq. I sent an email, didn't know if it would get through, and I said, hey look, I'm going to take care of this anyway, but we could have a lot more fun if you’d show up and bring them the basket. Now he may show up with another one, but I wasn't willing to wait that long.

Do you have any idea how fun life can be denying yourself? Go to a grocery store, walk around, find a family that looks like they’re struggling to buy groceries. Go up to the cashier, hand them your card, say when this lady comes through, put it on this card. Bada bing bada boom, go hide and watch. What? What happened? Somebody paid? Bless somebody, my gosh. Most of the stuff we’re buying we don’t even need anyway.

So, back to Matthew 16. Said to his disciples, you desire to come after me, deny himself, take up his cross, follow me. And whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? Somehow, the devil offers you the whole planet and you get it, but in the process you lose your soul, who you are. It’s gone.

Now what have you got? You’ve got nothing. But I was told if I died with the most toys I win. No. If you die following Jesus, you win. Anything short of that, you lose. Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? Now I’ve thrown this out here before, but I’m throwing it out again. Ask yourself, I ask of myself, what is it that I have agreed to withhold?

I will refrain from denying myself, taking up my cross, following Jesus if you will give me this. And he goes, you got a deal. And then boom, you’ve got not a blessing from heaven, you’ve got a blessing from hell that’s got you locked down and causing you to lose your life. Break the deal. Don’t even talk to the devil about it. Say, Lord, I confess this, I made a deal, and it’s straight out of here. Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul, for his very life?

And for some of you it may be security. I can’t trust him, I’ve got to have some other means. I’ve had guys show up here, in one particular case, one young guy was dealing drugs and he got saved and he stopped dealing drugs and he’s working hard trying to make it legally and he couldn’t make ends meet so he’d go back and dabble and he’d deal some marijuana on the side and then it got into meth and he ended up in a bathroom, I buried the guy, ended up in a bathroom shooting up heroin.

You say, well how did that happen? He went to trust in his old ways, not his new Jesus. A stripper showed up, these are all kind of crazy stories, beautiful girl, you’d never known she was a stripper, sat down with her, she was working these clubs, she tried to get out. It’s hard going from making whatever, beautiful woman making whatever on a pole to go work for what? Target?

And so the guy that ran the club would call her and say, hey, somebody’s sick Friday night, I know you’ve got a truck payment coming, why don’t you just work for me one night? But then she couldn’t dance without drinking, so she had to get liquored up, get drunk to dance, and now she’s back, she’s undertow, gone. People say, well she shouldn’t be stripping. Well let me tell you something. What is she going to put on her resume? Good on a pole?

Well she got herself into that. Well why don’t we as the body of Christ help these people get out of it? Right? Or are we going to shoot them? We’re not throwing you under the bus, we’re all idiots. I’m one of the biggest hypocrites in the room. I don’t want you following me around every day all the time. What I think, what I say, how I can treat people, it ain’t pretty.

So when somebody walks in the gathering of a church and we figure out where they are and say okay, you’ve done it your way and you know that doesn’t work, this is His way. You’re going to deny yourself, you’re going to take up your cross, you’re going to follow him. We’re not trading our soul, our lives in for all this crap. We’re going to show you and walk with you to help you get up on your feet and figure out how to live the life he intended.

And you say well that’s messy. Follow Jesus around the New Testament, what do you think that was? He’s touching lepers, nobody touched lepers. He’s got scantily clad women caught in the act of adultery dragged in front of him by religious people going, "We caught her doing it! We caught her doing it! What do you say we’re going to do to her?" Well we’re not going to stone her, knock yourself out if you’d like to start.

So that last verse 27, "For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works." I got a load of stuff to answer for because I lose it. It breaks apart for me on deny yourself. I’m out. I don’t want to deny me, I want to do what I want to do. Anybody ever feel that way? Right?

So when you make a move and you go to do what he wants you to do, you’ve got to remember I’m probably going to have to deny myself to keep going to the next step. But I promise you, if you get through the next step, you deny yourself, you take up your cross, whatever that means between you and him, and you follow him, he will lead you and take you places that you think to yourself, what if I had missed this? What if I had missed this situation, this person, this family, this child, this couple, this need?

Ecclesiastes 2:11, go back to the left and let me just read you this. And if you’ve got struggles with all this stuff and the undertow is so strong on you, especially in terms of money, possessions, pleasure, wine, whatever it may be, go read Ecclesiastes. He is the expert. Why do you have to repeat his nonsense to learn it?

Ecclesiastes 2:11, "Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labor in which I had toiled; and indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun." Total waste. John 10:10, I haven’t quoted it in a while, but what does it say? "The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy."

This is Jesus speaking, and he says, "I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly." The devil has no interest, hell has no interest in you having an abundant life. It has never been that way, it will never be that way. If you’re married, he is trying to destroy your marriage. The second your children are conceived and hell gets word of it, they are doing everything they are planning ahead to destroy you and your family.

They will hunt you down. They hate you. Steal, kill, destroy, those are not kind words. So you have to pick a plan. And usually when the devil shows up, he knows how to disguise himself as an angel of light. And so he can make himself look beautiful and deceive you. Especially when you’re picking a spouse. "Oh, he’s so hot! We had great sex!" You’re an idiot. You’re a total idiot.

You fall for that and then you wake up and go, "Oh my gosh, I didn’t know he was this way, I didn’t know she was this way." You got rolled because you chose to get rolled. You’re a fool. You’re going to be blaming, "Oh God, why did God do this to me?" You’re an idiot. You say well that’s not very kind. I’m not trying to be kind, I’m trying to wake you up and don’t do it again.

So when I meet someone who says, "Hey, I met a girl," and I say, "Dude, I don’t want to meet this girl, I want you to introduce her to all the godly women you know and let them flush her out." "Oh, I met a guy." "All right, send him to my house. Some hot little whatever, oh he’s so..." "I’m sure he is. Put him in a room with about four men. We’ll bust him wide open." "Well but you’ll run him off." "Okay, that’s the plan. And if we can’t, maybe he’s going to have a shot."

Enough of this romance crapola, just, "Oh and it was all it..." That’s going out the window. This is Sunday. My wife was out of town for six days. I woke up this morning feeling her feet on my feet. I almost didn’t come. So you think you’re the only one to sleep in on a Sunday? In fact, I need to wrap up because we need to go home.

Now I’ve been at it for many decades with this woman and I chose very wisely and God protected me. So you say well if the devil’s so angry and hell-bent on destroying our lives, then what do we do? You’ve got to get as close to Jesus as you possibly can and you’ve got to stay tucked in by him where he is in you and you listen.

And your flesh says, "Hey, I’m going to do this," and he says, "Nope, that’s not what we’re doing today," and you go, "Oh, this is going to be hard to say no." He said that’s why they call that denial. You’re going to deny yourself, suffer through this, and follow me. And you say well I can’t. How do you know you can’t? You won’t even try.

I used this with the men the other day. Baby elephants are born and baby elephants, they’ll tie a rope around their foot and then some little stake thing is screwed into the ground. And that baby elephant pulls on that rope and that stake, they can’t get away. And those elephants are so stupid that they can be 20 years old, thousands of pounds, and all they’ve got to do is put a little rope around their foot, tie it to that deal, put it in the ground. They don’t even pull on it anymore.

You have the God who created the entire universe living inside your physical body. Pull it out of the ground, get out of here. You do not have to be a prisoner to sin, to death, to all this nonsense. You say, well what if it doesn’t move? What if I’m truly trapped? In Jesus' name, you’re never trapped.

Let’s read First Peter 2:11. You know what? Read First Peter 1 first. Just hold that and go to First Peter 1:6. I was going to leave this out, I can’t. Okay, hold both of those and go to Hebrews 4. Go back to the left. This’ll help you so I’m going to take a minute to do this. It helps me. Hebrews 4:12.

"For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." And this is what I want to say about this. So I told you that the soul is mind, will, emotions, that’s who you are as a person. The spirit is how you connect with God.

But those sometimes get so intertwined you can’t tell which is which. Is it just an emotion I’m having or is it God speaking to me? The word of God can split those out where you can identify which it is. Is it just me being emotional or is this what God is saying to me through His word?

So you need scripture because this is how it surgically separates out and the Holy Spirit will say, "No, this is not me, this is just your emotions. This is just the you that is you thinking it’s me. It is not me, it’s just you." Or then you can say, "Wait, this is the Spirit of God," and you can only see these things through the word of God. Okay? So the word of God exposes what is truly spiritual versus what is merely soulish, natural, or self-driven.

Okay, now go to First Peter 1:6. "In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith, the salvation of your souls."

So we go through all of this and what does it result in? If you’re a believer, the salvation of your souls. Now, if you do all these verses and you deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow him, it could get really rough. But I promise you this, it is better than going your own way and thinking it’s quote-unquote easy. Easy, but you lose your life. That’s not easy in the end.

Guest (Male): Before Richard comes back to wrap things for us today, I’d like to share a couple important things with you. Let me encourage you to take a minute and check out our website, richardellis.com. You’ll find today’s talk right there in the talks page, along with all of Richard’s audio and video messages.

You can even forward them to a friend so they can hear them too. You’ll also find the prayer wall to add your prayer requests, a link so you can connect with us, the contribute page for you to be able to give to this ministry, all of our social media links, and much more. So check it out, richardellis.com. And Richard’s back now to wrap up today’s talk.

Richard Ellis: Then First Peter 2:11. "Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul, having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may, by your good works which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation," in other words when he comes.

At my wedding, at my mom’s funeral, trying to think where else, we sang a song, an old hymn called "It Is Well". And where is it well when it’s well? It is well with my soul. Can you say that? Can you say it is well with your soul because you’ve made a decision to follow him, deny yourself, take up your cross, follow him? Not lose your life, but find it.

There’s a little prayer that some kids pray, maybe they still do. "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." You cannot pray that unless you know Jesus because he will not take your soul. You get you some Jesus. Simple prayers like that work.

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