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 276 to 300 of 841 results

276. The Impartiality of God

Acts 10:23b-48

Sermon

Hubert Beck

... his heart that yearns for his creation, a parental constraint to beget unto himself a family that will do him honor and fulfill the longing for having someone he can love and care for. Love is not love when it sits in splendid isolation and loves only in theory. It is love only when it is concentrated into the caring energy that seeks out a loved one and encompasses that loved one with an affectionate care that reveals itself in deed as well as in theoretical existence. God is like that. He who is love is ...

277. The Agony and Ecstasy of Sight

John 9:1-12

Sermon

Richard Hoefler

... looking at the person; they were looking at the problem which the blind man suggested to their minds. The question of the disciples was an example of the natural religious reaction to suffering. Raymond Brown comments that, "Despite the Book of Job, the old theory of a direct casual relationship between sin and sickness was still alive in Jesus’ time."4 Harvey adds that the rabbis at the time of Christ taught that "suffering and misfortune must be regarded as punishment for sin."5 In this case, however ...

278. The Only Fact That Really Matters

1 Corinthians 15:12-34

Sermon

Raymond Gibson

... resurrection. In the 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians, St. Paul wrote with joyful candor: "But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep" (1 Corinthians 15:20). Notice that Paul did not say, "in theory" or "in hope" or "in supposition," but "in fact." The Resurrection was a fact which Paul boldly and even dogmatically proclaimed, a clear, true, actual reality which was the rock-solid foundation of the gospel he preached to an incredulous world. For Paul the ...

279. Mary of Nazareth

Isaiah 7:1-25

Sermon

Warren Thomas Smith

... her in pious sentimentality, swathing her in a nun’s habit. In reality, Mary is a remarkable individual. Scripture provides a brief, yet fascinating portrayal of her spiritual pilgrimage, an unfolding, a maturing in faith. THE MAIDEN FROM NAZARETH There is an old theory that Mary - a descendant of David was of the priestly tribe of Levi. Tradition has given the names of her parents as Anna and Joachim. We first see Mary as the young maiden of childlike innocence, visited by Gabriel, "Hail, the Lord is ...

280. IN THE BEGINNING ... THERE WAS LOVE ...

Drama

Marcia Millerf

... or not, it is old fashioned. GIRL: It offers so much promise. "Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and the door will open for you." BOY: That philosophy, like singing, is out. Way out. GIRL: Do you believe in the modern theories of philosophy? BOY: Yes. Each person is an individual who must stand alone, firmly by himself. That is why you aren’t supposed to mind being lonesome. GIRL: Do you really believe that? BOY: I do. [THE GIRL turns from him and begins strumming "Greensleeves ...

281. Nicodemus

John 3:1-21

Sermon

... education had not brought him ultimate fulfillment. Master, something is wrong. I have been to the very best church affiliated schools, yet my heart is heavy. I need a sense of direction. And there are educated people out there today that are not looking for more theories--they are looking for what John Wesley called the religion of the warmed heart. Jesus said: Nicodemus, you must be born again. You see friends, it is easy to get caught up in the form of religion and lose touch with the reality of God. We ...

282. Don't Be Afraid of the Future

Matthew 28:1-10

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... concluded that Jesus arose only in the sense that his spirit goes marching on, sort of like the way the spirit of Abraham Lincoln continues to influence America. But William Lane Craig, perhaps the world’s foremost authority on Resurrection, dismisses such a theory. Dr. Craig is an English scholar with two earned doctoral degrees. Currently, he teaches at the University of Louvain near Brussels. Dr. Craig points out that it would have been a contradiction in terms for an early Jew to say that someone was ...

283. Converting the Converted

Matthew 10:1-42

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... upon reaching proper age usually responds to his baptism at the time of Confirmation. At this time he is to know what he is doing, what Christ means to him, and makes a conscious declaration of faith and fidelity to Christ. That is fine in theory, but how many youth between ages twelve and fifteen really understood what they were doing at their Confirmation? Some were confirmed because their friends were going to be confirmed. Some did it because it was a family custom. Even if some were confirmed on their ...

284. Hooray for Humility!

Philippians 2:1-11

Sermon

Barbara Brokhoff

... Jew of earlier days who used to pray each morning: "God, I thank thee that thou hast not made me a Gentile, a slave, or a woman." Contrast that proud prayer with the modesty and humility of the great Albert Einstein, who having hit on his Theory of Relativity equation; E=mc2 - came downstairs in his sweatshirt and bedroom slippers one morning and said: "Mamma, I have a little new idea." Paul says, in the text, "Think just as Jesus thought" - and he humbled himself. There is a beautiful story concerning the ...

285. When Love Runs Out of Breath

Matthew 22:34-40

Sermon

Barbara Brokhoff

... really unprejudiced!) Forgiving, Hopeful, and love is impossible to do by yourself But you already knew all this about love. You’ve given mental assent to it many times over. You believe it. But the hard, ugly truth is that even though we are Christians, we find that in theory all of this is fine, but in reality and in practice it just doesn’t work out that way for us. Most of us have made commitments to love before. We’ve gone to church and got all inspired - we are going to be different. We read the ...

286. Grace, Salvation, and Redemption

Romans 8:18-27, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, Romans 5:1-11

Sermon Aid

T. A. Kantonen

... atonement, present Christ’s whole life of active obedience to God in inseparable unity with the event of his death, and stress the positive and constructive results of Christ’s triumph. Even the element of truth in the Abelardian "moral influence" theory of the atonement is thus included. For Paul the point of view of redemption supplements but does not supplant that of vicarious sacrifice. One-sided emphasis upon the latter can easily lead to pre-occupation with impersonal juridic categories, while the ...

287. Christians In A Warring World - 1941

Galatians 6:1-10

Sermon

Kent Moorehead

... for the sake of the cause it espouses. Thus, pacifists are by no means passive or negative persons who propose to lie down and do nothing in the face of injustice, unrighteousness, and rampant evil. They stand for the "fiery positive." Pacifism is not a theory. It is a way of life - creative, aggressive, forth-putting, sacrificial. It is the way of the cross in contrast to the way of the sword. Some time ago 20,000 American ministers of religion answered a questionnaire, and of that number nearly 15,000 ...

288. Preaching Unpopular Truth - 1943

John 18:38

Sermon

Kent Moorehead

... must accept him - or be dammed with conflict and chaos. The Truth we preach is not a philosophy; it is a Person. It is not an abstraction; it is an Incarnation. It is not a lot of words; It is the word made flesh. It is not a theory; it is Christ. Now we are ready to ask the third question. When shall we preach Christ and his Way? Obviously the unequivocal answer is now. It cannot be postponed to some future date when the times are more propitious, the situation more safe. The assumption that the teaching ...

289. A Mother Who Could Let Go

1 Samuel 9:1--10:8

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... the evidence and make up his own mind." When I hear such foolishness I am reminded of an old story about Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the great English poet. He was once talking with a man who did not believe in giving children any religious instruction. That man's theory was that the child's mind should not be prejudiced in any direction. Coleridge said nothing, but after a while he asked his visitor if he would like to see his garden. The man said yes, and Coleridge took him into a section of the yard where ...

290. Worthy Is The Lamb

1 Timothy 2:1-15

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... thinking. We must stop claiming that Jesus died to save us from our sins. " Dr. D.S. Williams, Professor of Theology and culture at Union Seminary in New York, declared at a major interdenominational conference in Minneapolis: "I don't think we need a theory of atonement at all. I don't think we need folks hanging on crosses and blood dripping and weird stuff." Dr. Williams is not a United Methodist, but there are Methodist students at Union Seminary. Other people trivialize the cross, reducing it to just ...

291. Because He Lives

1 Corinthians 15:12-34

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... JESUS CHRIST CONOUERED DEATH, WE SHALL ALSO. IF WE KEEP THE FAITH. That 20th verse of our text is a great one: "But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died..." Paul didn't say Jesus had risen in theory or in figurative terms or in symbolic fashion; oh no, Paul said, "In fact, Christ has been raised from the dead." Paul refers to Jesus as the "first fruits of those who have died." This harks back to the Jewish harvest festivals. The first fruits of the harvest ...

292. Christ Shall Return

Acts 1:1-11

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... First, it did not take place as the Early Church predicted. Though Jesus never set a date, most Early Church people thought Christ would return within a few years. Obviously, that did not happen. The second reason, said Lewis, is that cherished theory of inevitable progress which secular humanists love so much. But how one can believe in inevitable progress in the face of the Holocaust, nuclear bombs, biological warfare, world wars, and ethnic cleansing is beyond me. The third reason many people reject the ...

293. This Adulterous Generation

Matthew 5:27-30, Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... it is wrong to admire beauty or handsomeness in the opposite sex. I love the story of a young man who was struggling against lust. His pastor had told him that whenever an attractive woman caused temptation, he should just pray for her. The theory is that you cannot both pray for someone and lust after that person simultaneously. Soon thereafter, the young man passed a beautiful young lady on the street who triggered lustful thoughts. He began praying silently, "Lord, bless her, bless her, bless her." In ...

294. The Bite of The Lying Tongue

Exodus 20:1-21, James 3:1-12

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

George Washington, father of our country, is honored as an example of honesty, dating back to his boyhood when he cut down that cherry tree and did not deny it. A recent theory has been circulated that George may have been born in Texas rather than Virginia; that his father gave him a bowie knife instead of a hatchet; and that little George cut down a mesquite tree rather than a cherry tree. When his father asked him about it, George said, "Papa, ...

295. The Cross In My Pocket

Isaiah 52:13--53:12, Luke 9:18-27

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... to follow him as Lord, take a cross for your pocket or purse, as a reminder of who you are and Whose you are. We Christians are a cross-dominated people. The Christian faith is no set of rules for successful living. It is no philosophy or self-help theory. It is a declaration of God's mighty acts in history, centering around a cross and an empty tomb. Have you ever been driving down an interstate highway and seen a cluster of three crosses, perhaps on a hill or in a field? Those crosses were placed there by ...

296. Chapter II

Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

Frank H. Seilhamer

... of the Creation story envisioned happening with God. That story is a poetic framework for telling a basic truth, certainly, but that does not in any way detract from the point it makes. Today we might conceptualize the creation of man by expounding a theory a creation called evolution. Even if that is true, the same message is there. God is the one who fashioned man, slowly, carefully, and lovingly. God made us because he wanted us ... he wanted, and wants us, immensely. Without us God’s creation is ...

297. Three-Dimensional Christianity

James 1:19-27

Sermon

Michael J. Anton

... is avoiding the notion that the principle is more important than the person, that institutions are more crucial than individual persons, that "dog eat dog" is the only practical rule for living. The second dimension follows. That Christian faith is more than a theory, more than a set of beliefs, more than a verbal profession - it is action - the action of visiting orphans and widows as James puts it. And what James says represents all the actions that make Christian faith concrete. The folk song asks, "How ...

298. CENSUS TAKER

Exodus 30:12; Numbers 1:1

Illustration

Stephen Stewart

... of a census - not only of people, but also of all the kinds of properties - is an ancient custom, dating back to the third millenium B.C. in Babylonia and Egypt, and, as our texts show, was not unknown in Israel, still this taboo existed. The prevailing theory among scholars is that this taboo was imposed because the taking of a census (head-counting) is a presumptuous usurpation of God’s rights: only God knows who is to live or to die, and by assigning a military rating to a man (the original purpose of ...

299. The Trinity

Matthew 28:16-20

Sermon

Brett Blair

... might help us to understand this doctrine better if we word it this way: God the Father who is for us, God the Son who is with us, and God the Holy Spirit who is within us. Someone once asked Mrs. Albert Einstein if she understood her husband’s theory of relativity. No, she said, but I know my husband. We cannot begin to fathom the incomprehensible mysteries of God, but that does not mean that we cannot know God. If God, choosing to make himself known to us, comes in the person of Jesus Christ and says I ...

300. When God Is Silent

John 11:1-16, John 11:17-37

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... of anxiety in my life, the most severe being in the early 1970's. I was stressed and anxious, and God did not seem very close. But now I realize that God was preparing me to learn who the Holy Spirit is. At that time the Holy Spirit was all theory for me, with no practical reality. But then God taught me that the Holy Spirit is a real spiritual Person. But His power cannot be activated fully within the life of a Christian unless that person has a deep need and issues a continuing invitation. That is why St ...

Showing results