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 3001 to 3025 of 4988 results

3001. The Chair

Psalm 46:1-11

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... Our God" by Martin Rinckart, 1586-1649 Translated by Catherine Winkworth, 1829-1878 Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices, Who wondrous things has done, in Whom this world rejoices; Who from our mothers' arms has blessed us on our way With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today. O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us, With ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us; And keep us in His grace, and guide us when perplexed; And free us from all ills, in this ...

3002. Thanks Be to God

Deuteronomy 26:1-15

Sermon

Richard Gribble

... God has given us. The words of a popular Christian hymn appropriately express what our feelings and attitude should be: For the fruits of all creation, thanks be to God. For the gifts to every nation, thanks be to God. For the ploughing, sowing, reaping, silent growth while men are sleeping, future needs in earth's safe keeping, thanks be to God. -- F. Pratt Green 1. Paraphrased from "The Woodcutter and the Doves," in William J. Bausch, A World of Stories for Preachers ...

3003. Don't Be a Turkey (Thanksgiving)

Luke 17:11-19

Sermon

Alex Gondola

... excuse for being "bird-brained." It has a bird’s brain! There is less excuse for human beings. Take the nine lepers Luke writes about in the lesson I read. Didn’t that group include some pretty big turkeys?! Jesus had given them a tremendous, free gift. He had healed all ten from a disgusting, painful, and unsightly skin disease. Even more important, he had made it possible for them to re-enter society and to be reunited with their families. Ten lepers were healed. But only one leper, and a Samaritan at ...

3004. Eleven Plus One

Acts 2:1-13

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... of a disciple community is once again formed. The first chapter of Acts introduces the reader to this new infant community, as it first attempts to regain its feet. But it isn't until the Pentecost experience – not until the disciples receive the gifts of the Spirit – that The Twelve are once again able to stand together and take its first steps into the future. Pentecost solidified the disciples into one Dream Team that changed the world. "But Peter, standing with the eleven . . . " So who were these ...

3005. God's Original Seatbelt (Mother's Day)

John 13:31-38

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... estimates that 150 million Mother's Day cards will be sent this year (but only 95 million Father's Day cards), making Mother's Day the third largest greeting card holiday of the year. U.S. Americans spend an average of $105 on Mother's Day gifts, $90 on Father's Day gifts. The phone rings more often on Mother's day than Father's day. (Business Week survey, as reported in "Happy Mother's Day," The Boomer Report, May 1998, 3.) The busiest day of the year at car washes? The Saturday before Mother's Day. What ...

3006. Hands On

Luke 7:36-50

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... the truth of the gospel." -Wolfgang Simson, Houses that Change the World (Cumbria, UK: OM Publishing, 2001), 113. Go to a different corner of this church depending on what you think your gift is. Those that are left in the middle get representatives from each of the five and have them pray over the ones who don't know yet what their gifts are. 2) Put your hand to your chest. Press your thumb to your chest. Pray for those closest to you. Your kids, your family, your friends, etc. Press your index finger to ...

3007. Kudzu Frittata

James 3:13-18

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... -promised abundance. Who can look at Christ on the cross and accuse God of playing too close to the vest. Christ's sacrifice is complete. The resurrection boasts God's love at its most extreme and extravagant. Abundant life is gifted to us in full. But to receive this gift we must first approach God humbly. Only when we can approach with humility the wonders and wisdom of life, James' text reminds us, will we know genuine fulfillment and satisfaction. Steve Kirsch is the founder of four high-tech companies ...

3008. Let the River Flow

Colossians 1:15-23

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... let it loose in the world. We DO need to let people know there is a way to open up the floodgates that keep God's goodness locked up tight within them. How? By offering people Christ. That's it. Jesus the Christ and Christ's gift of coherence. All the fractured, splintered pieces of our selves are joined together and become one harmonious outflowing of love. Again, how fitting that it's a Christ-hymn that describes this divine intention of coherence – of unity and purpose in all of creation – in each ...

3009. Let's Dance

Matthew 28:16-20

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... neuron is natural. For older children and adults movement must be taught, muscles trained, ears tuned, in order to get body and spirit back in synch with sound and soul. Some of us learn to move again. Some of us never get back that early gift of rhythm. A dance is made up of many different entities – motion, emotion, resonance, rhythm, beat – all of which must fully and flowingly entwine in order to create the whole. Because of the nature of the relationships within a dance, the church in the middle ...

3010. More Power to You!

Romans 1:1-17

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... The Good News is an explosion of transformation in our midst. Through the dynamic power of God Almighty, humanity has been offered the gift of righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ. God has the power to change human lives. God has the power to provide a new ... – this is the power path to salvation. God does not power-over us. It's our exercise of free will to receive God's gift of righteousness that empowers us to break out of the power-over cycle of sin and guilt. It's the experience of grace through ...

3011. You've Got Mail!

John 10:22-42

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... envelope. And even though letter-writing was honed to a fine art, it couldn't replace the sound of a loved one's voice, the sound of sighs and laughter. Bringing a long-distance voice up so close that it whispers in your ear is the gift of technology. Recognizing a disembodied voice as it drifts through our cell phone or computer is a well-developed skill of postmoderns. AOL hosted an interesting contest. The usually anonymous voice that proclaims "You've Got Mail" has been replaced by a selection of twelve ...

3012. The Weakest Link

1 Timothy 1:12-20

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... we should all claim our cracked and crazed, wrenched and rusted, weakest-link status. It is our very "hanging-by-a-thread" nature that makes us ripe for divine intervention, for the re-forging gift of salvation, the miracle of stronger-than-steel, magnolia faith. We ARE the weakest links. Not good-bye! But hello. Hello divine mercy. Hello Christ's gift of grace. Hello a new beginning in service and love. I want you all to look around you this morning? Look at as many people as you can. Who among you is the ...

3013. Are You a Leg-Grabbing Christian?

Matthew 6:25-34

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... and hearts with nagging fears about how you are going to make it in this tough, competitive world. But that doesn't mean leg-grabbing Christians don't have to work hard. There's a big difference between works righteousness and righteous works. Jesus' gift to us of redemption erases the daunting, haunting need for us to earn our way to salvation through works righteousness, through good works. But Jesus does call Christians to the greatest challenge. We're called to come and participate in the most righteous ...

3014. Squeaky Wheels

Mark 10:46-52

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... into the dark that surrounds him, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me" (verses 47-48). But the crowd surrounding Jesus tries to shush up Bartimaeus. Jesus offers spiritual sustenance to all who hear him. But those who have already been fed now believe that these gifts are intended only for a special few certainly not for such cast-off dregs of society as a blind beggar by the roadside. Blind Bartimaeus won't be silenced. He refuses to listen to the no the crowd throws at him. He refuses to admit defeat ...

3015. Blue Highway Blessings

Ephesians 1:1-14

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... wants us to savor the sweetness of its approach here and now through our experience of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, Paul declares in verse 14, is God's pledge in Greek, our arrabon, our deposit or down payment, or in contemporary Greek, an engagement ring. God has gifted us with a first installment of God's kingdom that we're invited to experience every day of our lives. When we're living life in the Spirit, we live a both/and kind of existence. On one hand our real life, our full inheritance as God's ...

3016. Do You Have a GPS - A God Positioning System?

Galatians 3:1-14

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... . Some in the church trace Christianity's meditative roots to the sometimes quirky behavior of the first desert fathers - early Monastics who moved into the solitude of the desert to contemplate the depth of Christ's love and the grace of God's gifts. But there's little need to look beyond Jesus to see a meditative life in action. Whenever Jesus was faced with pressing questions, with compressing crowds, with clueless disciples, with combative Pharisees, what did he do? Time and again he advanced (I hate ...

3017. It Was for Us

Luke 23:26-43

Sermon

James McCormick

... introduced to a God who actively seeks us out in all our favorite hiding places in order to draw us to himself and to give us the gift of abundant life. He is the good shepherd who goes out in the night seeking the one sheep who is lost. He is the father out ... with the man on the cross and became a new man in Christ. From that moment on, everything was new. Life became the good gift God intended it to be. When asked to describe his experience, he said something like this: “I just came to Jesus. And, much to ...

3018. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

John 16:17-33

Sermon

James McCormick

... that a great artist must have unless he has known suffering. I read recently that Beethoven once said of Rossini that he had in him the makings of a great musician, if only he had had some failures and difficulties with which to struggle, but that his great gift was spoiled by his facility of composition. In other words, his music came too easily. He needed to be able to struggle. And so do we. Struggles in life also can make us more caring about the difficulties of others. When we have been hurt, we can ...

3019. Promises to Keep

Hebrews 8:1-13

Sermon

James McCormick

... ’re doing?” With all the innocence of youth, Billy replied, “Coach, I said I’d be here.” “I accept Christ as my Savior and Lord and pledge my allegiance to his Kingdom. I will be loyal to his church, and uphold it by my prayers, my presence, my gifts, and my service.” We said that! It’s a marvelous thing to make big promises in life. It’s an even better thing, once we have made big promises, to keep them! Prayer: God, our Father, we are grateful that You love us so much that You keep Your ...

3020. Weak Sauce

1 Corinthians 9:1-27

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... of life, those whose existence is characterized by a weak heart, a weak will, a weak mind, a weak body, a weak position, a weak spirit. Paul's prime identity isn't as a learned Pharisee, a Roman citizen, an accomplished speaker, a skilled leather-worker, a gifted writer, a recognized apostle of Christ. Paul confesses to being a namosh a Hebrew word which combines the meaning of weakling, wimp and loser. Paul is a namosh. Paul is a weakling. And it's that weakness that enables him to become all things to all ...

3021. In Life Nothing Works but the Impossible

Matthew 1:18-25

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... , from the rafters high, "I cooed Him to sleep that He should not cry; We cooed Him to sleep, my mate and I." "I," said the Dove, from the rafters high. Thus every beast by some glad spell, In the stable dark was glad to tell Of the gift he gave Emmanuel, The gift he gave Emmanuel. The only problem I have with that song which I love? Where are the dogs and cats? From a very early age I pictured dogs and cats at the first Christmas. Why not? Especially dogs. I admit it: I’m a dog person. You may ...

3022. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24

1 Thessalonians 5:12-28

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... is a duty, but one that should flow naturally from one's experience of and reverence for God. In verses 19-20 Paul shifts his focus to a subject of particular importance to the Thessalonian community. Evidently the spiritual gift of prophetic utterances was exceptional within this church. Yet some members were extremely hesitant to accept these prophetic pronouncements or validate their authenticity. The apostle offers pastoral advice to both the spiritually fervent and the spiritually reticent. His first ...

3023. Our Sin Against God

Genesis 2:4-25

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

... . Someone makes a racial slur, and we just stand there and don’t say a word. We just go along. The result of our failure to heed God’s commandments and to follow his will for our lives results in the distortion and corruption of every one of the good gifts that God has given us in his good creation. And that is illustrated by verse 7 of our text. The man and the woman in this story, who stand for you and me, were created as mutual helpers for one another, to be joined together in the joyful oneness of ...

3024. Seeking a Shepherd King

1 Samuel 16:1-13

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

... outward symbol of the receipt of the Spirit. Our text says therefore that “the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward” (v. 13). Just as with baptism, that sacramental act is entirely the Lord’s doing. David has not deserved the gift or done anything to receive it. Rather he is the recipient of the objective act of God. It is strange in our text that despite verse 7, the outward appearance of David is described in verse 12 — surely an indication of the narrator’s and the ...

3025. Cha-cha-cha Christians: The Dance that Advances

2 Peter 1:12-21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... s nice to be nice because it’s nice.” Woodstock responds: “But everything isn’t nice!” . . . . I tend to side with Woodstock . .. *** DOXOLOGY (Tune: 261 ["Lord of the Dance"],words VCH) Bring praise to the Maker, who abides in heaven, Bring praise to the Son, gift of God to sinners given, Bring praise to the Spirit in whose name we are one ‑ A Trinity of praise is begun! Dance, Spirit, fanciful and free, Dance to the rhythm of eternity! Oh dance, and praise a world without end In God’s holy ...

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