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

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2651. Pay Attention!

Luke 21:25-36

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... When it comes to walking with God, whether in this life or the next, you do not want to be “stuck.” So what’s the answer? What can we do to keep ourselves from being so distracted that we become “stuck” within our negative belief patterns, our pessimistic attitudes, our grieving hearts, or our anxiety and worry? Jesus tells us, we must “pay attention!” The word in Greek is agrypneo –to keep awake, keep alert, be vigilant, watch out, keep watchful, pay attention. Pay attention to what? To the ...

2652. Finding the Sermon

Luke 2:41-52

Sermon

John B. Jamison

... in the first century. It was not only okay to argue and question, it was required for learners to ask questions and challenge their teachers about what was being taught. They believed that if we learned how to think deeply enough to argue about our thoughts and beliefs, we would be able to make better decisions about how to live our lives. And they found Jesus sitting right there in the middle, arguing with them like he was one of them. Maybe our sermon could be about why so many people are afraid of ...

2653. Faces at a Funeral

John 18:1-19:42

Sermon

Wayne Brouwer

... , far away from the town that shaped him, and mostly at odds with his family. There was good reason for his mother to chide, nag, and scold, for my friend had lost his faith, and his parents were worried. But the more they pushed the certainty of their beliefs on him, the more he chafed and backed away. He could no longer live in the simplicity of their dogma, even if it gave them shelter and safety. He wandered in the wilderness of academia, hoping in each class to find a glorious utopia, a grand dream, or ...

2654. What If It's ALL True?

John 20:1-18 · Matthew 28:10

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... ? What if it is ALL TRUE? But you say “Prove It!” Show me the “proof” that it’s true! How do you “prove” if it’s true? In April 2002, 100 philosophers gathered at Yale University for a conference on ethics and belief. One of the keynoters was Richard Swinburne, Oxford University professor and Greek Orthodox Christian. Using the tools of philosophy to explore religious faith is a growing cottage industry, it’s also called philosophy of religion, and here was one of the most celebrated ...

2655. Learning Our Role

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Sermon

John B. Jamison

... was the destruction of the Jerusalem temple. Some believe it was because of the Essenes. The Essenes were a group of Jewish people, possibly a mix of former temple priests and Sadducees who believed the temple had become corrupted. Because of their more conservative beliefs, most of them chose to live apart from the temple and the rest of the Jewish community. They did not believe in offering sacrifices as the temple required. They believed that one day soon, God would return to clean out the corrupt temple ...

2656. Messiah’s Community

John 20:19-31

Sermon

Wayne Brouwer

... could become reborn human creatures through faith that was not dependent upon direct experiential contact with Jesus’ physical body. In this, the missionary nature of John’s gospel message was affirmed, for John ended by issuing an invitation to the same trust and belief to all who read it (20:30–31), even though they do not have opportunity to touch the physical features of Jesus. John is picturing the Body of Christ being birthed. Creation happened at the beginning of time. But the deadly virus of ...

2657. Remember

John 14:23-29

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... someone close to us, we also feel that we’ve lost somehow a part of ourselves. In a sense, we have. A good part of grief means re-assessing who we are without that person. We spend time often re-evaluating our lives, our self-concept, our beliefs, and the relationship we had with that person. We re-live memories, and we try to come to terms with our new place in the world and how that significant relationship will impact us going forward. If you had a tumultuous relationship with someone, you may come ...

2658. You Are the Christ....Now What About Them?

Matthew 16:13-20

Sermon

Will Willimon

... I'm Black Muslim, but what really matters is that we're all just human beings," shows, not that someone is open minded about religion but just the opposite. One is so closed minded about religion that one cannot even conceive that a person's religious belief is the most important thing in that person's life. You do a Jew no favor when you say something which implies that Jewishness is insignificant, a mere quirk of the personality, a premodern vestige which can be overcome by appeals to common humanity, or ...

2659. Don’t Fall Asleep

Luke 12:32-40

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... lives allows us endless possibilities, growth, potential, and becoming all we were meant to be! To be awake means to recognize God around us and all Christ has to offer us. To be aware means we stay prepared for God to bless our lives! For faith is the belief, not in fairytales, but in the power of Holy Spirit fire and light and the gifting of a life full of miracles that move mountains and change minds! When you dare to stay alert to the resurrection life that God breathes into you every single day, you ...

2660. God Is Like...a Name

Exodus 3:1-15

Sermon

Kenneth L. Gibble

... was speaking to him. It’s a very old story, a story in which a divine being spoke directly to Moses. Notice that when the voice from the bush called Moses by name, we are told that Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God. Ancient belief had it that any mortal who looked on a god would be struck blind or would die. The voice told Moses, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt… I will ...

2661. God Is Like...Fire

Malachi 3:1-4 · Luke 3:1-6, 9,16-17

Sermon

Kenneth L. Gibble

... that called for throwing children into the fire as a sacrifice to the gods. Historians of religion tell us that fire sometimes symbolized an attempt to purify the people, to burn away the evil that threatened the village or the tribe. There are vestiges of these old beliefs present in the Bible. You may remember the story of Abraham preparing to sacrifice his son Isaac to Yahweh, to kill the boy and then to lay the body on the altar for burning. But Yahweh intervened at the last moment. This was only a test ...

2662. God Is Like...a Friend

2 Corinthians 5:16-20

Sermon

Kenneth L. Gibble

... on this question, we turn to our scripture readings for the morning. The Good News translation, sometimes called Today’s English Version, offers a helpful rendering of an often-quoted passage, often-quoted because it summarizes so well one of the central beliefs of Christianity ― the idea that God has acted to remove whatever keeps people separated from God. Here again are a few verses from the fifth chapter of Second Corinthians, this time from the Good News translation. When anyone is joined to Christ ...

2663. God Is Like...a Lamb

Exodus 12:3-8 · Luke 22:7-20

Sermon

Kenneth L. Gibble

... the Baptist seeing Jesus for the first time. John pointed to Jesus and said, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). Convinced that Jesus was God’s own beloved Son, the Christian believers made very clear their belief that Jesus had been sent by God to fulfill God’s purposes. One of those purposes was to become the lamb led to sacrifice in order to free the human family from sin and guilt. What an audacious claim the believers were making — that God, as we see ...

2664. Calculated Christianity

Luke 14:25-35

Sermon

Jill J. Duffield

... to help feed their families, the ones who climbed up the economic ladder through mental toughness and hard work. We like to epitomize that Protestant work ethic. When our oldest was in kindergarten and he had an assignment to create a family belief statement, we thought we’d be really creative and write an acrostic poem using the letters of our last name. (We were eager, he was the first.) So, we started with “D” and “thought ‘How about ‘determined’’?” “D” is for determined. But ...

2665. Justified

Luke 17:11-19

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... faith”: It’s a superficial style faith based on a feeling of deservedness or entitlement, not only from life – but from God. Borderline Jews (like today’s borderline Christians) don’t grow from their relationship with God. They don’t commit fully to the belief that they have sinned and fall short of God’s glory! They want to enjoy the blessings of God but without fully entering into God’s will or accepting God’s authority. They have no need to give thanks to God for what they believe ...

2666. A Missionary to His Captors

Illustration

Emerson Colaw

The attack of Pearl Harbor was led by Captain Fuchida. Later in the war, when General Doolittle carried out his famous raid on Tokyo, one of the American men shot down was Sergeant Jacob De Shazer. He spent the rest of the war in a Japanese prison camp and received brutal treatment. After the war, he returned to the states, entered seminary, and prepared himself to go as a missionary to Japan. There he and Captain Fuchida met. The Captain was puzzled as to why anyone would come back to Japan after what the ...

2667. Pruning Process

John 15:1-17

Illustration

Merrill C. Tenney

Merrill Tenney gives his observation about the work of a vinedresser and the pruning process in his commentary on John: In pruning a vine, two principles are generally observed: first, all dead wood must be ruthlessly removed; and second, the live wood must be cut back drastically. Dead wood harbors insects and disease and may cause the vine to rot, to say nothing of being unproductive and unsightly. Live wood must be trimmed back in order to prevent such heavy growth that the life of the vine goes into ...

2668. Admit the Miracle

Illustration

Brett Blair

The French Mathematician, Lecompte de Nouy, examined the laws of probability for a single molecule of high dissymmetry to be formed by the action of chance. Dissymmetry in molecules is found in plants and animals. Non-organic molecules are clean and symmetrical. De Nouy found that, on an average, the time needed to form one such irregularly shaped molecule would be about 10 to the 253 power, i.e. billions of years. "But," continued de Nouy ironically, "let us admit that no matter how small the chance it ...

2669. Hug and Kiss Blessing

Illustration

Bill Glass

A hug, a kiss, and a blessing is the Jewish concept in the Old Testament, and it has carried over into modern Judaism. Recently I visited a prison in Florida, and I asked one of the prison officials there how many Jews were in prison in Florida. He said thirteen. Only thirteen Jews in all the prisons in Florida! Florida has a high Jewish population, and there are forty thousand inmates in Florida prisons. I began to ask the same question all over the country. I’ve discovered that in relation to the overall ...

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