Sermon and Worship Resources

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 2926 to 2950 of 4959 results

2926. Gratitude Takes Practice

Luke 17:11-19

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... that dissolves all barriers, because their loved ones are suffering. Shouldn't that be learning for us? At the depth of life all God's people are one. We're all alike in our heartaches and sorrows, our hearts beat with the same throbbing love and desire for life. One of my favorite musicals is Big River, Mark Twain's wonderful story set to music. One of the moving scenes is when Huck and his black friend Jim, sing that heart-gripping ballad "Worlds Apart" from "BIG RIVER": "I see the same stars through ...

2927. A Pattern For Giving And Living

2 Corinthians 8:1-15

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... that counts for eternity -- in fact, when we give ourselves in this fashion, we secure all of our tomorrows with God. There is an implicit judgment in this; and I want to put it as plainly as I can. Holding back in our giving, spending more on our wants and desires than we give to Christ and His Church is a sign that we have not yet given ourselves completely to the Lord. Let me put it another way. Refusing to take the leap of faith and do what the Lord commands us to do, to begin a pattern of giving ...

2928. Dealing With Guilt And Shame

Romans 7:7-25

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... 't stay there. We can't wallow in our sin. God is such a lover -- and He loves to love. He will hug us and kiss us and cause us to stand erect and look Him straight in the eye. He will insist that we have fellowship with Him. His desire is that our heart be united with His heart. So, we are to know our sin, but not wallow in it. V We can go from that deep experience of having received forgiveness, to live as forgiven persons, constantly appropriating that forgiveness, as we stay sensitive to all the reasons ...

2929. The Life Question: What Are You Looking For?

John 1:35-42

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... been the most influential spiritual model for me in my life. I bent down to her and I asked her, 'What can you teach me about loving Jesus?' She thought for a moment, opened her eyes so wide, smiled so big and said, 'Love Jesus with all your heart.' I desire to do just that. I told her that if she sees Jesus before I do, tell Him I love Him. There was an excitement in her voice and a joy in her voice when she said, 'Oh, I will." The point is that what Dorris was looking for -- the love ...

2930. What If

1 Chronicles 7:1-5

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... . Prayer is the basic identification we have with the world and with the God. Now does that sound strange? It's not just the basic identification we have with God. It's the basic identification we have with the world. Christian prayer destroys our false desire, either to be independent of other people or independent of God. Clarence Jordan paraphrased Paul's great word, "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself into a vivid symbol; God was in Christ putting his arms around the world and hugging it ...

2931. To Live Is To Grow

1 Timothy 4:1-16

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

When our son Kevin was four years old, he said to his mother one day, "Mommy, I don't want to grow up. I want to always be your little boy." If that were a permanent desire, it would be unhealthy. After the Second World War, Gunther Grass wrote a novel which achieved best seller fame. He called it the Tin Drum and it was about a boy who decided at three years of age that he was never going to grow up. That really is not ...

2932. Smart Living

Ephesians 4:17--5:21

Sermon

King Duncan

... . We know the smart thing, the wise thing, the intelligent thing, and yet we continually choose the stupid thing, the hurtful thing, the destructive thing. The problem is not with our heads, but with our hearts. We relate to Paul when he writes in Romans 7: "For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing . . . I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work ...

2933. Putting the Puzzle Together

John 6:60-71

Sermon

King Duncan

... , and began to read: "Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature" (Rom. 13:13-14). "I neither wished nor needed to read further," Augustine would write of his conversion. "At once," he continues, "with the last words of this sentence, it was as if a light of relief from all anxiety ...

2934. Choices

Mark 9:42-50

Sermon

King Duncan

... in show business were marred by heavy alcohol and drug abuse. She projected an image of toughness, but inside she was hurting. One day, Blige read an interview with superstar Beyoncé, in which Beyoncé spoke of her love for her mother and father. Blige found herself crying over the desire to experience that kind of love. In recent years, after giving her life to Jesus, Mary J. Blige is able to say, “It was later, when I gave my life to Jesus Christ, that I found out who I am. I’m a child of God. God is ...

2935. God's Anxiety Reduction Plan

Philippians 4:2-9

Sermon

John P. Jewell

... : Meaning continuous, conscious contact with God in all things - and - b) Supplication: Meaning specific petitions in which we turn the difficulties over to God - with - c) Thanksgiving: Meaning - we rest assured that God is taking care of the situation. We may not have the answer we desire, but we can rest in the ability of God to bring about the divine intent for our lives. It is as though we called a friend who had both the ability and authority to take care of a tough problem and the friend said, "Don't ...

2936. When God Comes with a Blessing

Luke 1:39-45, Luke 1:46-56

Sermon

John P. Jewell

... of joy in the life of faith. "Perfect obedience would result in perfect happiness if only we had perfect confidence in the power we were obeying." ¹ The joy of our celebration is rooted in the obedience of Mary and Joseph and then of Jesus whose heart's desire was to honor God and obediently carry out the work God gave him to do on our behalf. What joy there was in that first proclamation of the good news that took place between Mary and Elizabeth. God had come with blessing - first to Elizabeth and then ...

2937. The Perfect Man

Hebrews 10:1-18

Sermon

King Duncan

... we? We find we have little influence with ourselves, too. That’s why perfection eludes us. St. Paul was the most important follower of Christ who ever lived and yet he wrote, "I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing. (Romans 7:18-19) Hey, St. Paul would feel at home in our ...

2938. Learning to Give Thanks

Luke 17:11-19

Sermon

King Duncan

... and he said to him, "You thank God when you have nothing to wear, nothing to eat, and no bed to lie on. What else do you thank God for?" The simple man replied, "I thank God that he has given me life, a heart to love him, and a desire to serve him." After the man had left with a coat from Wesley’s closet, some money for food, and words of appreciation for the witness he had made, Wesley wrote something like this in his journal, "I shall never forget that porter. He convinced me there is something in ...

2939. Christmas and the New Family

John 1:1-18

Sermon

J. Ellsworth Kalas

... about blood, marital, or adoptive ties. I am not even talking about the circle of friendship. The family about which I wish to speak is that new family which came to birth on Christmas Day. It is a family to which all of us can belong if only we desire to do so; and its potential for joy and fulfillment is almost unlimited. You will find the story in our scripture -- the opening verses of the Gospel according to Saint John. I don't know that there are any three or four paragraphs in all of literature with ...

2940. God's Battle Against Sin

Zephaniah 1:1-3

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

... me, little incidents in the span of time, a cause for the eternal God to rejoice! Could it be that is what God has wanted all along? That he created us in the first place for no reason at all except that his love produced us? And that he has desired nothing else except to make us into his people -- a faithful people with whom he could enter into covenant fellowship; a trusting people to whom he could pour out good gifts; a loving people who would answer to his love with our own love for him? When we look at ...

2941. Salvation Oracle

Isaiah 43:1-13

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

... wondrous as his gifts are to all of his baptized folk, with our baptisms has come a task given each one of us. God has created us, says our text, for his "glory" (v. 7). In baptism, God has poured out the Spirit of Christ upon us, and now he desires that we use that power to glorify his name in all the earth. That is, we are to make the Lord God esteemed and honored, worshiped and loved by all people everywhere. We are given the task of so proclaiming Christ that every knee bows and every tongue confesses ...

2942. Portrayal of Holiness

Isaiah 6:1-13

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

... our sins. And only when God forgives our sins in the Assurance of Pardon can we then hear God speaking to us through the Holy Scripture and sermon. Cleansed, given a new beginning by the love and mercy of God, we can then hear plainly what it is that God desires of us. Like all the prophets, and indeed, like us, Isaiah is given a task. He is sent to announce God's Word to his people. But the awful Word he has to deliver is one of judgment on Judah's sin. In fact, Isaiah hears that his preaching to ...

2943. Responding to the Story

Deuteronomy 26:1-15

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

... , suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. The third day he rose again from the dead...." On that basis, then, we respond and say, "I believe." God's acts always come first. We did not construct our faith out of our own thoughts and desires. Rather, God did particular deeds and said particular words, and we say, "Yes, I believe God did those things and spoke those words," and then we work out our response of faith in accord with what the deeds and words have revealed to us about God ...

2944. Endings

Isaiah 43:14-28

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

... be joyful. We have a friend in Africa who told us, "Where there's death, there's hope" -- hope for release from an oppressive government, hope for a remedy from poverty and tyranny. The endings of injustice, suffering, oppression, prejudice are devoutly to be desired. Israel, in our Isaiah text, had no such joyful feelings about endings, however. Her life as a nation was at an end. The troops of the Babylonians had swept through her land, burned her temple and houses, broken down the walls of Jerusalem, and ...

2945. Passover and The Lord's Supper

Exodus 12:1-30

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

... and I are not at home where we live either. The land that we inhabit is much too filled with violence and corruption, with evil and hatred to be called God's kingdom. We cannot be satisfied with the status quo, for it does not at all match what God desires for us and for all people. And so God says to us, as he said to Israel, be prepared to travel. Set out on the journey of faith to make your home, your neighborhood, your society into new places worthy of God. Follow the leading of the Lord Christ who ...

2946. Suffering Servant Song

Isaiah 52:13--53:12

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

... that, if possible, he not go to the cross. But our Lord realized that such was the will of his Father. And so he gave up his life willingly, because that was the plan of his Father. Not because his God was some sort of abusing Father. Not because God desired vengeance and blood. Heaven help us if those are our thoughts! No, it was the will of God that his Son die on the cross, because God loves us and wants to save us. God took upon himself our sin in the person of his Son. God himself bore our ...

2947. My Prayer For You: Barefoot Days of the Soul

Galatians 5:1-15

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... the way and allow the lust to conceive and bring forth the sin of adultery or fornication …to harbor racial prejudice that prevents you from being the “good neighbor” Jesus calls us to be. …to give in to your selfish desires of getting and spending, as though your immediate satisfaction were all that mattered – thinking only of your gratification today – forgetting that we are creatures of eternity. …to shut yourself off even from those you love, because intimacy, sharing the heart-longings ...

2948. If You Get Too Close to the Cross, You Will End Up Carrying It

Mark 15:21-32

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... about it. . . . our addiction to sex or our distorted feelings about sex which are crippling our marriage; . . . our warped need for approval by others which is turning us into chameleons – being and doing what we think will please others . . . our insatiable desire for happiness and security – for things, for status, which makes us driven people who can’t recognize happiness when it could be ours; . . . our fear: our fear of failure, which keeps us under stress in our work; our fear for our children ...

2949. Some Healing Is Up To You

John 5:1-15

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... are healed without any knowledge of the fact that Jesus is doing it. And there are stories about the faith of one person working for the healing sake of another. But in this instance, Jesus is saying some healing is up to you. You have to participate; you have to desire it; it has to be an act of your will. Look at that man again. Had he lost hope? Had he settled down into a kind of negative despair? Or consider this possibility; or was he content in his illness because to be healed would mean he would have ...

2950. Generic Christianity Is Not Enough

Romans 12:1-8

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

Preaching to you only once a year is not an easy task -- so I spend a great deal of time simply seeking to discern what message God desires to speak through me. In that discernment process -- involving a lot of prayer and reflection -- my memory served me well. The Holy Spirit brought to my mind an experience I had here in Memphis. Since it was an experience worth remembering and since it happened here, I have an idea ...

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