I Really Appreciate You

March 9, 2026·26 min·2 clips

Richard Ellis asks if you'd really hear 'well done, good and faithful servant' from Jesus based on how you're living right now.

Appreciation costs more than it sounds like it should. Richard starts with the awkward part: tell one person you appreciate them, and everyone else may wonder if they were left out. From there, he turns the question inward. Can a believer receive value from Christ and then live like that value is not true? He is blunt about self-cruelty. Food, drugs, alcohol, and the people you run around with become, in his telling, evidence that people often treat themselves like throwaway things. Your people matter. He tells men they will resemble the five men they spend the most time with, so who you run with can shape who you become. Matthew 6 carries the weight of the message. Jesus' words about food, clothing, bodies, and birds give Richard a way to ask whether worry is really what happens when people forget their worth. Birds trust without theology. People, especially God's children, should know better, because the Father who feeds birds has already given them value and care. Worry makes the soul small. Richard frames anxiety as living like everything depends on human panic instead of God's fatherly rule. He does not turn this into easy prosperity. When someone complains that God has not given everything desired, he answers that restraint can be the mark of a good father. Matthew 10 keeps the case going. The birds are not cute scenery; they are proof, for Richard, that divine attention reaches small creatures and wounded people. Value should change behavior. The message lands as a pastoral shove toward trusting God, choosing companions wisely, and treating your own life like something Christ has claimed.

As heard by us

A blunt pastoral reminder that value and trust belong together.

This sermon argues, plainly and without much ornament, that appreciation starts with value: people matter because they bear God's image, and Christians, his child.

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Why you'd press play

Hear a blunt reminder that your value to God changes how you handle worry.

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