Synonyms: thirstiness, dryness, parched, craving, strong desire, longing, yearning, avidity, hunger, voracity, keenness, eagerness, lust, appetite, passion, love, crave, want, covet, desire, hunger for/after, lust for/after, hanker for/after, have one's heart set on
Antonyms: aversion, distaste, apathy, dislike, hatred, antipathy, disgust, disregard, abhorrence, acrimony, wet, animosity, animus, antagonism, bad feeling, bitterness, be averse to, detestation
Showing 2626 to 2650 of 3108 results
2626. Chosen
John 15:1-17
Sermon
David G. Rogne
It is a difficult thing not to be chosen. I can still remember what a relief it was to be appointed by the teacher as one of the two captains who would choose team members when our class would be divided for softball. It meant that I would be, in effect, the first one to be chosen. What agony it was, however, when others were doing the choosing. As an uncoordinated youngster, with very little to offer toward the team's success, I was likely to be chosen last, and the humiliation was keenly felt. Perhaps ...
Sermon
David G. Rogne
One of the churches where I served was located next to a Jewish synagogue. That synagogue was served by a rabbi who quite typically walked to the synagogue on the Sabbath, though his house was some distance away. It was not that he didn't have a car, but that for him it was improper to drive on the Sabbath, for that constituted work. Sometimes I would see him riding a bicycle to synagogue. I suggested to him that that was a lot more work than simply turning on the ignition in an automobile. He said that ...
Sermon
Fredrick R. Harm
Just a few days ago we greeted loved ones and friends with a cheery, "Happy New Year." And we sincerely hoped it would be a year of joy and happiness for all. A New Year's card put it beautifully: "I am the New Year -- all that I have I give with love unspoken. All that I ask -- you keep the faith unbroken!" Newspapers and magazines covered the fascinating story of Admiral Richard Byrd's second trip to the South Pole. The 180th meridian is an imaginary but important marker. It is the International Date ...
Sermon
Paul E. Robinson
"Love is a many splendored thing...." Or so we heard Don Cornwall and the Four Aces sing time and again. Of course you or I might have other words to describe love, depending on our situation. Love. "I love you." "I love to play golf." "I just love pistachio lush!" "It's tough to love some people." "Jesus loves me, this I know." Love. What can be said about love that has not already been said? The writer of the first letter of John obviously thought deeply about love and did his best to write about it. ...
Sermon
Glenn McDonald
For several years an earnest and energetic woman has been attempting to make August 8 a national holiday in the United States. She'd like to call it, "National Admit You're Happy Day." She has canvassed the governors of all fifty states, personally requesting their support. At least fifteen governors have responded positively. A good many others have been less happy with the idea -- including George Pataki, the governor of New York, who has said, "The state of New York has no official position on happiness ...
Sermon
Glenn McDonald
No one ever really prepares you for your first theological bull session. Usually it arrives without fanfare or advance warning. Usually it happens long before you enter the relative clear-headedness of your adult years, or before you take that philosophy course in college. Usually it happens when you're a junior high school student, up late with friends at a sleepover, or camping out in somebody's backyard. There's just something about a smoky fire and charred food and stars out overhead that turns twelve- ...
Sermon
King Duncan
A pastor was shaking hands with people as they left the church. A couple greeted him and said, "We listened carefully to every word you said." The pastor thanked the couple and said that he looked forward to seeing them next week. "Oh, we won't be here next week," the couple responded. "We're going to another church next week to get a second opinion." (1) It's not easy being a pastor. It's not easy being the church. The first Christian church had challenges right from its birth. In today's lesson Jesus had ...
Sermon
Maxie Dunnam
Dick Sheppard was one of the great preachers of England in another generation. He was really one of the British church, a great preacher prophet. His preaching often set all of Britain aflame. The morning after he died, almost all of England mourned his passing, and a London newspaper proclaimed a great truth. The paper carried a picture of the pulpit of the church where Dick Sheppard preached, St. Martin’s in the Field. A soft light shone down on the reading desk where there was an open Bible, and in the ...
Sermon
Maxie Dunnam
Scott Peck became famous when he wrote his first book entitled The Road Less Traveled. The first sentence in that book is a perceptive commentary on life — simple and direct: “Life is difficult.” For some, that is an understatement. For all who are alive and aware, it is an experienced truth. Life is difficult. Jesus would concur. Listen to him in verse 24 from our scripture lesson: “Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able....” A long time ...
Sermon
Maxie Dunnam
Dick Sheppard was one of the great preachers of England in another generation. He was really one of the British church, a great preacher prophet. His preaching often set all of Britain aflame. The morning after he died, almost all of England mourned his passing, and a London newspaper proclaimed a great truth. The paper carried a picture of the pulpit of the church where Dick Sheppard preached, St. Martin’s in the Field. A soft light shone down on the reading desk where there was an open Bible, and in the ...
2636. Fit for God
Psalm 24:1-10
Sermon
King Duncan
A customs officer at the U.S.-Canada border tells about a man who came through the border crossing one day with his four- or five-year-old son. The customs officer asked the man if he had anything to declare. The man said no, but he looked suspicious, so the officer pressed on. "Are you carrying cigarettes?" The man answered no. "Are you carrying any kind of booze?" Again, the man answered no. "Do you have any type of cameras, or film?" The man answered no. At that point, the little boy looked up at his ...
Sermon
King Duncan
A five-year-old boy was stalling going to bed. He asked for a glass of juice. "No, sir," his father answered. "No more juice. I’m king of the juice in this house." "That’s not right, Daddy," the young fellow retorted. "Our Sunday school teacher said Jesus is the king of the juice." Pilate summoned Jesus to his palace and asked him, "Are you the king of the Jews?" Jesus doesn’t answer the question directly. How could he? The title "King of the Jews" hardly sums up his mission. But finally he does concede ...
Sermon
Maxie Dunnam
Last words are important. Let that truth sink in. Last words are important. East Side Baptist Church is a little country church down in Perry County, Mississippi. It is the church in which I was converted under the preaching of Brother Wiley Grissom, a fifth-grade educated pastor who preached the Gospel with power. The church is about 200 yards up the hill from our old home place. Behind it is a cemetery where I’ll be buried someday. Mom and Dad—whom in my adult life I affectionately called, “Mutt” and “Co ...
Sermon
King Duncan
Author Dennis Rainey tells about an exercise he leads each year with his sixth grade Sunday School class. He divides the class into three groups. These groups then compete in putting together a jigsaw puzzle. As these 12-year-olds scatter into three circles on the floor, he explains that there is only one rule in the competition: to put together the puzzle without talking. The contents of puzzle number one are deposited on the floor and Group One immediately goes to work. The group promptly sets up the box ...
Sermon
Mark Trotter
I have a poor memory, but I hold to a certain comfort that Albert Einstein had a bad memory, too. It was reported that Albert Einstein couldn't even remember his own telephone number. He said that he never remembered anything that he could look up. But that sounds like a pretty lame excuse to me. Memory is a mystery of the brain. How does information get stored, coded, and then retrieved in the brain? We don't know how. Do all sense impressions, everything that happens to us, all that we hear and see, get ...
2641. Let's Get Serious
Matthew 21:28-32
Sermon
Mark Trotter
I confess that I have been struggling on how to approach this sermon this morning. We are coming into the season where we talk about stewardship and ask that you consider what your support to the Church will be in the next year. My instinct on these matters is always to be non-direct. But the gospel lesson for this morning, you heard it, makes it hard to do that. It is anything but non-direct. It is one of Jesus' shorter parables, just a few lines. It begins with the question, "What do you think? A man had ...
Sermon
R. Robert Cueni
As was his custom, Jesus went that Sabbath morning to the synagogue for worship. As he was preaching and teaching, he happened to glance toward the fringe of the crowd where he saw a very crippled woman. She was bent over and was unable to stand up straight. When he inquired, Jesus was told the woman had been that way for eighteen years. Can you imagine? For nearly two decades this woman spent every waking moment bent double. When she went to the market she did not see the distant green hillsides. She saw ...
Sermon
Bill Mosley
Schindler's List is a true story of World War II. It focuses on the heroism and self-sacrifice of Oskar Schindler, a Catholic from Krakow, Poland. Schindler goes from wanton war profiteer to a conspirator who tries to free condemned prisoners from concentration camps. In one sequence, we see Jews being herded like cattle onto freight trains, hungry, hot, and thirsty. The train is taking them to the death camps. The German soldiers are lolling about the station docks and enjoying the suffering they see, ...
2644. Dealing with Criticism
1 Corinthians 4:1-5
Sermon
James L. Killen
No one likes criticism. We all like to be liked. But the moment any person ventures out to offer any leadership, or to express any opinion that is not shared by everyone else, or even just to live in any unique or creative way, she or he is likely to be enveloped in a cloud of criticism. Most of us find that a very unhappy experience. After it has happened to us a few times, we are sorely tempted not ever to do or say anything again that would invite criticism. But that would not be the right thing to do. ...
Sermon
Richard W. Ferris
In a large stone cathedral in Europe there was a grand, magnificent pipe organ. On a particular Saturday afternoon, the sexton was making one final check of the choir and organ loft high in the balcony at the back of the church. As he was making his inspection, he was startled to hear footsteps echoing up the stone stairway behind him. He thought the doors were all locked and that no one else was in the church. He turned to see a man in slightly tattered traveling clothes coming toward him. "Excuse me, sir ...
2646. A Holy-wood Ending
1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11
Sermon
Richard W. Ferris
A couple from Minneapolis decided to go to Florida for a long weekend to thaw out during one particularly icy winter. Because both had jobs, they had difficulty coordinating their travel schedules. It was decided that the husband would fly to Florida on a Thursday, and his wife would follow him the next day. Upon arriving, as planned the husband checked into a hotel. He settled into his room and decided to open his laptop computer and send his wife e-mail back in Minneapolis. However, he accidentally left ...
2647. No Shame
Romans 1:16-17; 3:22b-28 (29-31)
Sermon
William G. Carter
I am very taken by what Paul says. He claims, "I am not ashamed...." Most of us have known people, maybe a lot, maybe a few, and they are ashamed of something. I struck up a conversation with a woman I had known for a couple of years. I thought I knew her fairly well. One day she blurted out that she had been married four times. I said, "You never mentioned it." She said, "I guess I'm ashamed." A man lost his job. That was hard enough. What made it more difficult is that he lost the job because he was ...
Sermon
Jeff Wedge
There is a cliché thrown around the business world that states that people should do well by doing good. This translates into a rationale for doing works of charity and for being generous to employees, customers, and communities. The reason for these good deeds is to engender good feeling and, in the long run, to make more money, in other words, to do well. By being good to employees, costs for recruitment and training and replacement will be greatly reduced. By being good to customers, there will be ...
2649. Worthy of God
1 Thessalonians 2:9-13
Sermon
Rick Brand
It seems fair to say that the saints of the Lord have always shown us what it is to be worthy of God. It is why we remember them and rejoice for them. They have shown us what a life worthy of God might look like. To talk about the saints, we may talk about Kagawa in Japan, about Mother Teresa, about Bishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela, about D. T. Niles in India, and about Saint Patrick in Ireland. To know the stories of Dorothy Day in New York City and Oscar Romero in Latin America is to have examples of what ...
Sermon
Mark Trotter
Have you tried to pray, and found it difficult? The words hard to come by? Or, have you ever been asked to pray in public, and panicked, saying, "I can't do that"? Well if you have had that experience, and most of us have, then we are amazed when we hear someone stand up in public and deliver a beautiful, eloquent, lengthy prayer. I heard about a man down in Texas who was a "professional prayer." For a fee he will come to your convention, meeting, or club, and give an invocation. His pious eloquence has ...
Showing results