Sermon and Worship Resources

Synonyms: touch, feel, sense of touch, tactile sense, tactility, contact, using one's hands, sensation, sense, suspicion, sneaking suspicion, notion, inkling, hunch, fancy, apprehension, presentiment, premonition, foreboding, love, care, affection, fondness, tenderness, warmth, warmness, emotion, sentiment, emotional state, compassion, sympathy, empathy, fellow feeling, understanding, concern, solicitude, solicitousness, tender-heartedness, brotherly love, sensibilities, sensitivities, self-esteem, ego, pride, opinion, belief, view, impression, intuition, instinct, estimation, guess, theory, hypothesis, thought, way of thinking, point of view, atmosphere, ambience, aura, air, mood, climate, character, overtone, undertone, tenor, spirit, quality, flavour, colour, aptitude, knack, flair, bent, talent, gift, skill, art, trick, faculty, ability, propensity, inclination, sensitive, warm, warm-hearted, tender, tender-hearted, caring, soft-hearted, sympathetic, compassionate, empathetic, responsive, receptive, intuitive, thoughtful

Antonyms: bad feeling, acrimony, animosity, animus, antagonism, antipathy, aversion, bitterness, detestation, disgust, dislike, disrelish, enmity, friction, grievances, grudges, hatred, hostility, loathing, malevolence, malice

Showing 1 to 25 of 633 results

1. The Bent-over Woman

Luke 13:10-17

Sermon

R. Robert Cueni

... she didn't return the money and no one noticed. She took a little more and a little more. Now she owes thousands. She got away with it for years. She is terrified. It is only a matter of time until she is caught. The worry and fear have bent her over. Maybe she has been having an affair with the man who lives next door. It began innocently enough. A little innocent flirting. Then one thing led to another. Day by day, the weight of the guilt accumulated until now the burden bends her over. Maybe some other ...

2. Bent Out of Shape

Luke 13:10-17

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... for the sabbath.” All of the synoptic gospels drive home this quote more than once, for Jesus is adamant, the Sabbath was not intended to burden people but to ease their burden. Whether the man with a withered hand or this woman bent and disabled, Jesus restores their ability to function as a vital part of their community again. Not only is their physicality restored, but their dignity, their relationships, their name, their future. Their shame has been negated, their “sin” removed, their past wiped ...

3. A Bent Over Woman

Luke 13:10-17

Illustration

Richard A. Jensen

... totally submissive to this man, with no ability or will to save her own daughter." Hedda Nussbaum was a nobody. She was a thoroughly "bent over" woman. "I'm a piece of ----," Joel made her write over and over. She wrote it and she believed it. The tragedy ... own would have been an act of disloyalty to Steinberg. She was not a free person. She was not free to act. She was, indeed, a "bent over" woman with not an ounce of self-esteem left in her. And Hedda is not alone in this world. In the United States alone 1 ...

4. Bent to the Ground

Luke 18:9-14

Illustration

R. Curtis Fussell

... lived on a farm in the country. The city boy had never seen wheat growing in a field. It was an impressive sight for him, the wheat golden brown and ready for harvesting. He noticed that some of the wheat stood tall in the field, whereas some of it was bent low, touching the ground. The city boy said to his cousin, "I bet the ones standing tall are the best ones, aren't they?" His cousin smiled knowingly and reached over and plucked the head of one of the tall-standing wheat stalks and one that was ...

5. As the Twig Is Bent

2 Timothy 3:10--4:8

Illustration

Larry Powell

... . Moreover, the popular quip, "You can believe anything and belong to such-and-such church" would seem to indicate that instruction is either not being laid out or is not being retained. Instruction prepares. Alexander Pope put it simply: "Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined." Instruction serves. Tools for the journey and knowledge for the doing! Read 2 Timothy 3:14-17 and reflect on how religious instruction is profitable to those who aspire to follow the way of Christ. How is the Word of ...

6. Love to Life

Luke 13:10-17

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... of the other roadways in our body, all the muscles and nerves, all suffer together. In this week’s gospel text Jesus deals head-on with a debilitating back issue. The woman Jesus sees in the synagogue, the woman he calls forward without her ever seeking him out, is “bent over and quite unable to stand up straight.” Luke’s text doesn’t tell us anything else about this woman. We do not know if she was rich or poor, a paragon or a pariah, someone who was honored or ostracized. All we know is that she ...

7. Now Stand Up Straight!

Luke 13:10-17

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... of the abuse he had received as a child. Nobody had every told him, I love you. He asked this crowd of young people, "Will you love me?" God so loved the world he sent his Son. The Son sent his disciples into the world to touch those who are bent over, so that they will stand up straight. One of the most gratifying and also the most humbling experiences that a pastor can have is to receive a testimony from somebody who has been healed in the Church. Most of the time they can't pinpoint when it happened, or ...

8. Straight Backs And Rekindled Dreams

Luke 13:10-17

Sermon

King Duncan

... designed a bicycle treadmill pump to get water up to the hillside paddies on which the people depended for food. For centuries this water had been carried laboriously by pails. Homer's wife Emma was curious about the fact that every woman over sixty had a bent back. Then she noticed that after the monsoon season the sweeping of debris from the streets was inevitably done by older people who used a broom with a short handle. Since wood for longer handles cost too much and was in short supply, Emma found a ...

9. Cure for an Aching Back

Luke 13:10-17

Sermon

King Duncan

... the Sabbath. I admire her. I wonder if I would have that kind of courage to be in public with that kind of condition. Even more important she had not allowed her physical condition to impair her relationship with God. She had been this way for eighteen years all bent over and unable to rise up. The pain was sometimes severe. Yet, her habit was to be in worship to praise her Maker. Friends, that’s faith. That’s devotion. I know people who will miss church if they have a slight headache. Or if there is a ...

10. Remembering Jesus

Matthew 26:17-30

Sermon

David O. Bales

... remember Jesus, it sinks into us from our freed and forgiven memory that we’ve been lifted up to true life. The consequences of the meal Jesus serves remind us in miniature of what his entire life accomplished: Jesus lifts us up. Even if we are perpetually bent by arthritis or confined daily to a wheelchair, in the eyes of our Lord Jesus we stand before him as true human beings, heads lifted — not in arrogance, but looking now at the world as did Emma Atkins, in order to see where Jesus summons us to ...

11. A Crippling Spirit

Luke 13:10-17

Sermon

Brett Blair

... in some way it is responsible for this woman’s tragic circumstances. As we take a closer look at this story there are other spirits at work. Take a look at them with me. There is at work a crippling spirit. I. Because of her particular ailment she was bent over and her eyes were always facing the ground. She missed the sky, the birds, and the rainbow. But physical ailments can do far more than bend a back. It can rob us of our livelihood and cause bankruptcy. It can take us away from our families. It can ...

12. Christmas Gift

Isaiah 61:1-11

Sermon

Thomas D. Peterson

... in the worst of hard times. Israel was in exile, hundreds of miles from home, temple, and heritage. It was as though she would fall off the map of history. Just a little more and her name would be forgotten. Speaking the Word of God, Isaiah bent down upon the weary, defeated tribe and whispered into her ear, "Good tidings." Here was the ancient equivalent of "Christmas gift." The world was hearing an early proclamation of good news from God. What did the whisper amount to? At first it was the awareness that ...

13. Luke 13:10-17

Luke 13:10-17

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... the woman in this week’s text is diagnosed as coming from “a spirit,” not a physical ailment. In 13:4 Jesus referred to the “eighteen Galileans” crushed when the tower of Siloame fell on them. Now it is an eighteen-year bone-crushing burden, that has bent over this woman in the synagogue. The incident reported in this week’s text is unique to Luke. It is the last time this gospel writer specifically locates Jesus in a synagogue. As in an earlier episode (6:9) where Jesus heals on the Sabbath, it ...

14. The Broken

John 8:1-11

Sermon

James Merritt

... would Jesus do? Typical Jesus – something shocking! “This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.”(John 8:6, ESV) Every time I read this story I am dying to know ... and said to them, ‘Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.’ And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was ...

15. Proper 16

Hebrews 12:14-29, Jeremiah 1:1-19, Luke 13:10-17

Sermon Aid

John R. Brokhoff

... Luke 13:10-17 A spirit can cause physical disability. Jesus was in a synagogue teaching. He saw a nameless woman who had been bent over for 18 years. At once Jesus saw she had a spiritual problem. Satan possessed her to the point that she could not stand ... . 2. Saw (v. 12). When you teach or preach, do you see a crowd or individuals? Jesus saw an individual who was in trouble, one bent over for 18 years. He cured her by casting out the evil spirit that handicapped her. The woman did not go to Jesus, fall on ...

16. Pride: The Deadliest of the Seven Deadly Sins

Luke 18:9-14

Sermon

R. Curtis Fussell

... in the country for the first time. The city boy had never seen wheat growing in a field. It was an impressive sight for him, the wheat golden brown and ready for harvesting. He noticed that some of the wheat stood tall in the field, whereas some of it was bent low, touching the ground. The city boy said to his cousin, "I bet the ones standing tall are the best ones, aren't they?" His cousin smiled knowingly and reached over and plucked the head of one of the tall-standing wheat stalks and one that was ...

17. The God Who Doesn’t Give Up

Hosea 11:1-11

Sermon

... , "That’s enough. I don’t want to go through this again." The feeling is one of exasperation, disappointment and anger. You have bent over backwards to give a person a chance, but that person has failed to do his or her part. Some of the same ... a father, and a son who is undependable. This son chooses to disregard everything his father has taught him. In fact, this son seems bent on his own destruction and there’s nothing that the father or anyone else can do. Listen to this lament: When Israel was a ...

18. Resurrection: From Brokenness to Wholeness

Matthew 15:29-39

Sermon

Leonard H. Budd

... a youth, and this day he walked behind the crowds that followed Jesus. His walking was slowed because of his left leg being bent, never going straight. It meant that he would step-slide, step-slide, step-slide where others would step-step. For as long as ... so hard and with so little result that he dared not now cast too great a hope upon the moment. Jesus looked down to the bent leg, and stooped down to touch the twisted knee. "My friend," he said, "life is not just arms and legs - nor eyes, nor ears. Life, ...

19. Toward Health With Confidence

Sermon

Leonard H. Budd

... little. And my mother was a cripple. For eighteen years her back had been unable to right itself. She walked as a stick of wood bent in half. And it had been since I was born. They say - those who lifted me into this life - that my mother was a cripple ... the crowd. I had meant to go find her, for while we had not spoken of his power I knew that she wanted to bring her bent back to his healing. There she was. Right at the center of the crowd. Leaning against the wall of the well. Turning her head sideways so ...

20. The Love of a Father (Father's Day)

Matthew 10:1-42

Sermon

King Duncan

... legs crooked. We would have made him straight and tall like his brothers. But somehow you made it up to him. You gave him a way with critters. It comforts us to know that he is in a place where his being bent doesn't matter no more. We would like to think that you have taken that bent back and those crooked legs and straightened them. And Almighty God, if it ain't asking too much, we pray that you will give him some critters to play with maybe a few redbirds and a squirrel or two. Thy will be done ...

21. God Is Like a Father

Mt 6:25-34

Illustration

King Duncan

22. Listening for the "Ching-ching"

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1

Sermon

Lee Ann Dunlap

... when our fountains run dry and all our compassion is spent, God continues to care. Amidst the grief, the confusion, the chaos, and the uncertainty, Jeremiah points the way to God's own heart. This is a God who continues to care even for those of us "hell-bent on self-destruction." This is a God who refuses to give up even on us, and who continues to work redemption's plan. "Is there no balm in Gilead?" the lamenter asks. "Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored?" The region famous for ...

23. Luke 13:10-17

Luke 13:10-17

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... an explainable exception to Sabbath rest laws. But rather that freeing the woman from the eighteen years of bondage she has suffered is exactly what should be accomplished on the Sabbath. The spirit of the Sabbath the synagogue official preached was as twisted and bent as the woman’s back had been. Jesus’ Sabbath Day activity freed Sabbath compassion to stand straight and tall in that small synagogue. The synagogue leader who had tried to roil up the room against Jesus now finds that he, and all other ...

24. Proper 16

Psalm 71:1-6, Isaiah 58:9b-14, Jeremiah 1:4-10, Luke 13:10-17, Hebrews 12:18-29

Bulletin Aid

Julia Ross Strope

... to God many times and the Holy One has sustained us and restored us to hopefulness. People: We are standing straight and tall! With our minds and bodies, we thank God for divine goodness among us! Prayer Of Thanksgiving God of the Straight-Standers and the Bent-Overs — thank you for your constant presence caring for us no matter what our posture is, no matter what our doubts are, no matter what our certainties are. In this hour, as we listen for your voice, stretch our imaginations so we can be creative ...

25. How Much Are You Worth?

Matthew 10:29-31

Sermon

King Duncan

... his legs crooked. We would have made him straight and tall like his brothers. But somehow you made it up to him. You gave him a way with critters. “It comforts us to know that he is in a place where his being bent doesn’t matter no more. We would like to think that you have taken that bent back and those crooked legs and straightened them. And Almighty God, if it ain’t asking too much, we pray that you will give him some critters to play with--maybe a few redbirds and a squirrel or two. Thy will be ...

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