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 5000 results

276. Getting Out Of Our Own Way

Matthew 16:21-28

Sermon

Roger G. Talbott

I'd like to ask you to relax for a moment about the clothes that you are wearing. Think about how your clothes say something about who you are: your gender, your age, your economic status, maybe even how you feel about yourself. As you think about that, imagine yourself in quite different clothes. Note that your real self would not change. Even if you were wearing Eskimo clothes or Arabian clothes, you would still be who you are, so your real self is not your clothes. Therefore, you are not your clothes." ...

277. Heaven: One Way And One Way Only

John 14:1-6

Sermon

James Merritt

There are so many songs about heaven; so many thoughts about heaven. One song just asked the question, "How far is heaven?" The answer is that heaven can be as close as your heart or it can be an eternity away. Contrary to one world view that says that the only heaven there is, is the happiness that we experience here on earth, Jesus Christ definitely believed in a place called heaven. In the very passage that we are looking at today, He told his disciples - "In My Father's house are many dwelling places; ...

278. A Faith for the Uncharted Way

Matthew 1:18-25

Sermon

Leonard Mann

A few summers ago my family and I made a motor trip west from our home in Ohio to the Pacific coast, and returned. We crossed the prairies and the plains, the Mojave Desert and the great salt flats of Utah; we drove through the Badlands and the Grand Tetons, and crossed the Sierra Nevadas and the Rocky Mountains twice. We followed the trails of the pioneers, the Mojave, the Wyoming, and the Santa Fe. We traveled on good roads in a good automobile with a good road map. We had never been in any of that ...

279. The Easy Way Out

Luke 4:1-13

Sermon

Glenn E. Ludwig

One of the responsibilities that parents often have with children is the supervision of musical lessons. Getting the kids to practice is never easy. The first problem is just getting them to sit down to do it. Then, the second problem begins. Did you ever notice how easy it is to re-play the familiar? When you listen to those practices, ever notice how often you hear the same pieces over and over again? The prospect of struggling through a new piece seems like torture, so the temptation is not to bother ...

280. The Stop-and-Think Chair

Matthew 18:15-20

Sermon

Roy Howard

Schools opened here last week, and I remembered something from one of the teachers. Like all good teachers, she has certain expectations — norms of behavior — for her students. The students agree to these community norms for the classroom that are posted in the room. That’s not new. What I find intriguing in her classroom is the consequence if someone breaks the norm. When a community rule is broken, the offending student is assigned to the clearly labeled stop-and-think chair. There the child sits ...

281. Home By Another Way

Luke 2:1-7

Drama

Lois Anne DeLong

Characters (in order of appearance) Narrator Wise Man 1 Wise Man 2 Wise Man 3 Servant 1 Servant 2 Servant 3 Merchant Caravan Shepherd 1 Shepherd 2 Angel Angel Choir Mary Joseph Merchant Dream Narrator Props Campfire Table Two chairs Star Three gifts Bundle Tambourines Notes This play uses the journey of the Wise Men to illustrate that God doesn’t always call us down the expected path. It also shows the way God often prefers to work through the simplest of people or situations to bring about his plan. It ...

282. God Doesn’t Always Behave Like We Think He Should

Philippians 2:5-11

Sermon

Mark Ellingsen

In some ways life hasn’t treated you like you wish it had, right? All the childhood dreams have not been fulfilled, have they? Some friends have been lost along the way. Beloved family members are gone. Maybe family life hasn’t been quite what we’d hoped. The job’s not all we thought it would be. You name it. For all of us life hasn’t turned out just the way we had planned. Life is not like the prosperity gospel preachers have promised.[1] God has not delivered on what they promised. He has not seemed to ...

283. One-Way Street

John 14:5-14

Sermon

James Merritt

It is one of the most photographed streets in America. It is one of the most famous streets in America. Amazingly, it is only one block long, yet tourists will come from all over the world and rent a car just to drive on this street. You may not recognize the name of the street, but you will most probably recognize the picture of it. [Show photo of Lombard Street in San Francisco] This is Lombard Street in San Francisco. The hill is so steep that it would be too dangerous for most vehicles to travel in ...

284. Gift of Positive Thinking

2 Corinthians 1:18-22

Sermon

Donald Charles Lacy

For generations the "power of positive thinking" has been touted throughout our land. It is among the most popular and utilized thoughts and themes we have ever known. Cutting across all strata of social and economic patterns it is generally a principle espoused. While the influence generated is obvious, secular and less than desirable ways of life have utilized it. It is frequently taken from a Christian basis and becomes a means to achieve ends that at a minimum are questionable. Of course, there are ...

285. The Way Up Is the Way Down

Matthew 5:1-12

Sermon

Phil Thrailkill

Potato chips, cheese curls, and candy may be some of your favorites, but for twenty-four mule deer in the Grand Canyon National Park, these indulgences proved deadly. Park rangers were forced to shoot more than two dozen mule deer who became hooked on junk food left by visitors. It was death by Cheetos and suicide by Snicker bar! Why eat twigs or chew bark if a Twinkie is nearby? Once deer taste the sugar and salt of snack foods, they develop an addiction and will go to any lengths to eat only junk food. ...

286. A Thinking Person’s Thankful Prayer

Philippians 1:1-11

Sermon

Raymond Gibson

Dr. Wayne Dehoney, a Baptist pastor in Louisville, Kentucky, tells of a college freshman who attended his first dormitory prayer meeting. Rather unexpectedly he was called upon to pray a sentence prayer. The young man had a slight speech defect which became pronounced when he was under pressure, and thus he prayed: "Lord, make us more thinkful for all our blessings." That young man prayed a better prayer than he realized. Our English word thank stems from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning "think," and certainly ...

287. What Do You Think You’re Worth?

Matthew 10:1-42

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

"Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father’s will. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered." [Matthew 10:29, 30] What do you think you’re worth? It is not likely you are worth the billions of a Paul Getty or a Howard Hughes. Do you go to the other extreme when you would sell yourself for a nickel and give three cents change? Are you like the young lad who wore a football t-shirt with the letters 00, a double cipher? Was this the way he ...

288. An Easier Way?

Matthew 16:21-28

Sermon

(Author's note: this sermon was preached as a first-person monologue by Jesus' disciple Peter. To help the congregation grasp the time difference, I costumed a bit by wearing the khafia, the common headdress of the Mideast. I also wore a cross, which I used as a "prop" near the monologue's end. At the same time, the sermon incorporated a "time warp, " with Peter speaking at one point as if he could see through the centuries.) I was asked the $64,000 question. The big question where "winner takes all." The ...

289. Jesus Transfigured

Mark 9:2-13

Sermon

Harry N. Huxhold

Dr. Jaroslav Pelikan of Yale University wrote a remarkable study of the significance of the person and work of Jesus Christ, Jesus Through the Centuries. Dr. Pelikan demonstrates how Jesus has been the dominant figure in the history of Western culture. Each age has made Jesus relevant to its own needs. Jesus has furnished each new age with answers to fundamental questions as every generation has had to address new social problems that tested the more fundamental questions of human existence. The world had ...

290. What a Way to Start a Church!

Acts 2:1-21

Sermon

William J. Carl, III

What a way to start a church! It's certainly not the typical format for new church development. Where is the planning committee, the fund-raising, the arm twisting, the real estate deal acquiring the land, the faithful few who volunteer from other churches to give the whole thing its initial push? Not everyone has the personality to start a church from scratch, but Paul did. "I planted, Apollos watered," says Paul (1 Corinthians 3:6). Some preachers are just good at planting churches and getting them ...

291. Prayer: A Way of Life

James 5:13-20

Sermon

Richard Gribble

Once there was a monastery in the woods that had fallen upon hard times. In the past it had been a thriving community that was well known and respected throughout the region, but over the last generation the monks had died one by one and there were no new vocations to replace them. Besides this, the monks did not seem to be as friendly to each other. Something just wasn't right. The Father Abbot was quite concerned about the future of his monastery, now consisting of himself and three brothers and, thus, ...

292. On God's Side Or In God's Way?

Acts 11:1-18

Sermon

King Duncan

I want to go back for a few moments into TV history. Some of you grew up watching the hilarious Roadrunner cartoons. These cartoons featured a character named Wile E. Coyote. Wile E. Coyote’s virtually endless quest in life was to capture his nemesis, the Roadrunner. The coyote was stubbornly persistent in this quest despite the fact that, not only did he fail time after time after time, but meanwhile he repeatedly plummeted from high cliffs, was blown up, and was continually getting flattened by numerous ...

293. God Moves In Mysterious Ways

1 Kings 17:7-24

Sermon

Robert Allen

There is a small Catholic chapel in the heart of Santa Fe, New Mexico, called Chapel of Our Lady of Light. It has a fascinating story attached to the early days when there was a convent school run by the Sisters of Loretto. Apparently, the only way for the sisters to get into the loft where they slept was to climb up a ladder. This was not a major problem for the younger nuns, but it was difficult and dangerous for the older nuns to be climbing up and down the shaky ladder. They were unable to install a ...

294. Lateral Thinking

Luke 10:25-37

Sermon

Mark Trotter

Edward De Bono invented what he called "Lateral Thinking." He established a school in New York. He called it, "The Edward De Bono School of Thinking," and started giving seminars on how to think laterally. He also established a school in England. He gave it the more appropriately British title, "The Cognitive Research Trust," but it did the same thing. It taught people how to think laterally. He explains what he means by "lateral thinking" from an experience when he was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. One ...

295. The Most Beautiful Word

2 Corinthians 5:11--6:2

Sermon

Louis H. Valbracht

What is a sinner? We might have many definitions. For instance, Pascal put it, "There are only two kinds of men, the righteous who believe themselves a sinner and the sinners who believe themselves righteous." Or Mary Wilson Little put it, "Men who make no pretensions of being good one day out of the week are known as sinners." Or, as Oscar Wilde has said, "Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner." It would be so simple, wouldn’t it, if the fact of sin could be brushed off as easily as ...

296. God's Way Of Doing Things

Ruth 3:1-18, 4:13-22

Sermon

John P. Rossing

I know a couple who have on their wall a framed piece of needlework that someone gave them for a wedding gift. It has their names and their wedding date, and it says, "God gave us each other." I think many Christian couples believe that they were brought together by God's providence. People often feel the same way about their vocations, believing they have been led into a particular life's work by God. As a church, we trust that our plans and decisions are guided by God's spirit. But why would we think ...

297. It Doesn't Have To Be This Way

Luke 8:26-39

Sermon

James W. Moore

The noted author, John Killinger, tells a powerful story about a man who is all-alone in a hotel room in Canada. The man is in a state of deep depression. He is so depressed that he can’t even bring himself to go downstairs to the restaurant to eat. He is a powerful man usually the chairman of a large shipping company but at this moment, he is absolutely overwhelmed by the pressures and demands of life… and he lies there on a lonely hotel bed far from home wallowing in self-pity. All of his life, he has ...

298. American Idol

Exodus 20:4-6

Sermon

James Merritt

With 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, suicide bombers, Osama Ben Laden, need I say more? Homeland Security is maybe the number one concern facing this nation right now. We have already established that the Ten Commandments are all about Homeland Security, because the greatest way to secure the homeland is to secure the homes in that land. That is exactly what the Ten Commandments were given for. Remember these are not arbitrary rules; these were family laws. They were laws given by God to His family (the Nation of ...

299. Behold the Blood of the Covenant

Exodus 24:1-18

Sermon

Larry Powell

Jesus of Nazareth had his own agenda. From the beginning, it had confounded even those closest to him. * We think of Joseph and Mary searching anxiously up and down the caravan line for their twelve-year-old son, only to discover that he had remained in Jerusalem to sit among the teachers at the Temple (Luke 2:41-52). * We think of Jesus standing as a young man in the synagogue at Nazareth reading from the book of Isaiah, concluding the reading with the astonishing claim, "Today, this scripture has been ...

300. Think on these Things

Philippians 4:4-9

Sermon

Donna Schaper

In the letter to the people at Philippi, Paul wanted us to think on things that are beautiful, pure, and excellent. He wanted to teach us asset-based thinking. He wanted to teach us the art of appreciative inquiry. He wanted to limit criticism and the culture of complaint. Paul wanted us to be thankful. Oddly, being thankful does not come naturally to us. We stayed at our best friend's house while taking our daughter on a college visit. We forgot to send a thank-you note. We had a wonderful time — good ...

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