Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 3076 to 3100 of 3160 results

3076. God Doesn’t Always Behave Like We Think He Should

Philippians 2:5-11

Sermon

Mark Ellingsen

... -emptiness to hear or care for another. He wrote: “We cannot let another person into our hearts and minds unless we empty ourselves. We can truly listen to him or truly hear her only out of emptiness.” Mother Teresa, a believer who knew a good bit about giving this sort of love, explained it well. As she put it: “Love to be real, must cost, it must hurt, it must empty us of self.” The next time you feel these doubts or wonder about God, keep in mind that God doesn’t behave like we think he should ...

3077. Treasures from the Past

1 Corinthians 15:1-11

Sermon

Mary Austin

... . My parents were savers so this was a big job. They believed that you never knew when you might need something again, and so their grandkids were delighted to find their parents’ childhood toys in the basement whenever they visited. There was a lot for him to sort through. Each time I visited, I would notice a brown cardboard box sitting next to the door. At the end of the visit, my dad would announce that the box was for me. When I got home, I would find some vintage dish towels, wedding gifts that ...

3078. They're Drunk

Acts 2:1-21

Sermon

Will Willimon

... . Many of us, when faced with a story like that of Pentecost in Acts 2 or our neighborhood Assemblies of God congregation, don't think Holy Spirit. We are knee-jerk conditioned to assume that what we have here is some sort of psychological problem or cultural backwardness. Freud characterized religion as "neurosis," an "intoxicant," "childishness to be overcome" and most of us, when it comes to dismissing faith, are Freudians. I was teaching a class at the Divinity School. The students were presenting ...

3079. Revolutionary Rules For Living

Luke 6:27-36

Sermon

Derl G. Keefer

... fateful June was triggered by death, cholera, of a popular liberal politician and former Napoleonic general, Jean Maximilien Lamarque. Many of the world’s revolutions have the same generic principles. Welch wrote that for many today Jesus has been “relegated to a sort of ‘nice guy’ and ‘cool teacher’ status. Actually, he was far edgier than that.” Reading the scriptures we get the true sense of who Jesus was as a real revolutionary leader and force of life. Just as he challenged the status quo ...

3080. The Teacher

Mark 1:21-28

Sermon

Will Willimon

... . We've been bombarded with information, facts, and figures. We don't need any more information. We need to see the larger picture, some more reliable pattern. We need a teacher with authority larger than our own. I was guest at an Anglo-Catholic sort of Episcopal church in Waban, Massachusetts where a rather eccentric friend of mine serves as priest. After a two hour service with incense and boy choir, I was chatting with this rather condescending person at the coffee hour in the parish hall. She informed ...

3081. The Journey

Mark 8:27-36

Sermon

Will Willimon

... graduates to go into some of the nation's worst public schools. This is Teach America's means of transforming our schools into something better. This woman stood up in front of a large group of Duke students, a larger group than I would suppose would come out to this sort of thing, and said to them, ''I can tell by looking at you that I have probably come to the wrong place. Somebody told me this was a BMW campus and I can believe it looking at you. Just looking at you, I can tell that all of you are ...

3082. Ordinary Sin

Luke 22:28-34, 54-60

Sermon

Will Willimon

... people appearing in Greek tragedies only as buffoons. But in · Simon Peter, Auerbach finds a much richer depiction of what it means to be a person: [The story] takes place entirely among everyday men and women of the common people; anything of the sort could be thought in antique terms only. As the most serious and most significant sympathy? Because it portrays something which neither the poets nor the historian of antiquity set out to portray: the birth of a spiritual movement in the depths of the ...

3083. The Gift

Luke 2:1-20

Sermon

Will Willimon

... to handle the wildly inappropriate gift from a stranger, but what if you see yourself as a suave dude and a swift intellect and then one year your wife--your wife--gives you a pair of singing undershorts that perform ''O Tannenbaum''...? That's when you go through a sort of identity crisis. You'd like to get a gift that aims high--Whitrnan's Leaves of Grass, a ticket to Nepal,...instead here is a pair of bedroom slippers with lights in the toes so you can see your way to the bathroom at night." (''What I'm ...

3084. Church, Interrupted

Mark 1:21-28

Sermon

Will Willimon

... us! We were awakened out of our thoughts and alarmed. Father pulled me down onto the embankment, down into the abyss, held me there. Then the train tore past, a black train. All the lights in the carriages were out, and it was going at frantic speed. What sort of train was it? There wasn't one due now! We gazed at it in terror. The fire blazed in the huge engine ... sparks whirled out into the night. It was terrible. The driver stood there in the light of the fire, pale, motionless, his features as though ...

3085. Christian: Don’t Get So Hung Up On Churchy Things!

Revelation 21:10, 22--22:5

Sermon

Mark Ellingsen

... to seek more experience of the presence of God who needs no temple, whose glory lights up the world and our lives. This kind of spirituality, faith that puts spiritual development, Bible reading, and prayer at the center of our activities, this sort of spirituality is what it will take to make us a vibrant congregation — a spirituality that can attract the millennials and the religiously unaffiliated. Let us continue to celebrate God’s Incarnation in our buildings, in our programs, in our organizations ...

3086. For Us

Luke 22:7-38

Sermon

Will Willimon

... go to to get to you. As Calvin said, God never forgets, in dealing with us, that we are creatures, not angels. Therefore God deals with us in ways that creatures can understand, water, bread, wine. There is among us an outbreak of ''God-in-general," that sort of mushy spirituality that gets God as vague as possible. Amorphous. That we can make God over into anything we like. Tonight, for you, God gets specific, as specific as broken body pieces of torn bread, as explicit as blood red wine. I'm sorry, those ...

3087. The Howling

Acts 2:1-21 · John 14:8-17, 25-27

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... , and Arabic. And more, including a number of dialects. All recounting works of God not just on behalf of the Jews but of everyone in the world. At that time just after the festival, and even on a regular basis, Jerusalem had become a melting pot of sorts, a city of the nations, where Jews and others from all nations of the known world would come to live and worship. They tended to huddle together, each in their own corners of the town. Most spoke Greek as their lingua franca, but they each spoke their ...

3088. Unconditional Commitment

Luke 9:51-62

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... challenge that Jesus is presenting to anyone wanting to follow him, especially during this vital time near the end of his ministry. How serious are you about doing this? Jesus might have said. What does it take to come with me? Unconditional commitment. No half-way. No sort of disciples. You’re in or you’re out. Look ahead, not behind. Once you come on the road with me, there’s no turning back. Can you look ahead and not back? Can you leave your friends and family? Can you risk danger, little sleep ...

3089. We Have Waited

Isaiah 25:1-12

Sermon

Will Willimon

... of the church—the discipline of waiting. The discipline of honesty about the human condition, sin, evil, injustice, unfulfilled hope, unanswered questions. It is the discipline of a church willing to be tentative in its hope, to see faith as a now-but-not-yet sort of thing, the discipline of keeping close to those whose sad lives mock our facile assertions of deliverance. And pity the poor God who has no better defense than the church. Only a church which is able to keep ranks in a waiting world, only ...

3090. The Lawyer

Luke 10:25-37

Sermon

Dave Zuchelli

... is that?” That might have been my response if I had been Jesus in that moment when asked, “And who is my neighbor?” The question was obviously a set-up. This expert in the law was trying to trip him up to catch him in some sort of “gotcha” moment. This was typical of his exchanges with the legalistic types — the Scribes and the Pharisees who were hung up on the law without regard for the Spirit behind it. They were so protective of their territory; they weren’t interested in hearing something ...

3091. Peter Asks A Question

John 13:1-7 · 1 Corinthians 11:17-34

Sermon

Frank Ramirez

... story. He's going to do something. He's going to say something. He will not be content to remain a passive spectator. When Jesus asks the question, "Who do people say that I am?" I can picture the other apostles hemming and hawing and looking at the ground, sort of like school children who do not want to be the one who answers the question for the teacher. Everyone is afraid it is a trick question, and no one wants to get the wrong answer. Not Peter. "You're the Messiah!" he says. Right answer! Then, when ...

3092. Bigger, Better, Basta!

Luke 12:13-21

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... value-perceived object. Symptoms of hoarding can stem from an array of triggers: Perfectionism Worry Anxiety Trauma or loss Financial stress Food insecurity But the most likely culprit triggering the hoarder to accumulate is the need to “fill” up some sort of deep, hollow wound or emotional gap, often caused by true deprivation, abuse, stress, or trauma. Some hoarders must buy two of everything. For some, it’s simply about food. In fact, food hoarding is often associated with eating disorders, whether ...

3093. Giving Away the Kingdom

Luke 12:32-40

Sermon

Dave Zuchelli

... upon us will be expendable in our quest to serve him well. In verse 39, Jesus speaks of a thief. The owner of the house must be ready for the thief who would come and steal into his home. The Son of Man (Jesus) is not a thief of that sort. Yet, he steals our hearts. We want him to be near to us. We expect him to come. Thus, we are always ready and waiting for him to show up. We don’t have to think about it, we just are. And show up he does. He comes on our ...

3094. Stay Awake

Matthew 24:36-44

Sermon

King Duncan

... and mind with the heart and mind of God. We have so many competing priorities and demands on our time and resources. To pay attention to others’ needs in the way that Jesus did requires both discipline and love. We need the discipline to sort through those competing priorities and demands while asking ourselves the question, “What needs has God put right in front of me that I can meet?” When a natural disaster hits, there are plenty of agencies that provide emergency supplies and food and healthcare ...

3095. Watch This!

Luke 14:1, 7-14

Sermon

Dave Zuchelli

... vast majority of people use plastic for their purchases, gathering the information to make these kinds of analyses is relatively simple. For many years, the church would not do this because it was thought to be intrusive. The business world has been using this sort of information for years. They use it to sell their product or introduce the public to some new service. It’s readily obtainable on a grand scale, and they have no compunction about getting to know the habits of possible consumers. The church ...

3096. The Joy Of Being Found

Luke 15:1-10

Sermon

Richard Hasler

... don’t wear that button out in the world.)… I am not great at quoting scripture but I do an okay job of sharing my experience with Christ so I figured God could do his work and I’d be willing. One of the people of the group was sort of the leader — I’m guessing he had some experience with this because he seemed to know when to move this girl forward. The rest of us gave our “amens” and shared whatever we were inspired to add. We held hands, cried, prayed, and gave thanks … eventually we were ...

3097. Small Beginnings, Great Endings

Luke 17:5-10

Sermon

Richard Hasler

... a common sight. In the Hebrew scripture this image of the birds flocking to the trees was often used by the biblical writers as a sign of God’s great coming kingdom. For example, in Ezekiel 17:23,”In the shade of its branches, the birds of every sort will nest” the prophet looks forward to that day of God’s great coming kingdom. It was the grand dream of the Hebrew prophets that someday God’s kingdom would include not only the covenant people of Israel but the Gentiles too, that is all the other ...

3098. Capernaum by the Sea

Matthew 4:12-23

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... around the Sea of Galilee would understand Jesus’ method. Fisherman at that time used a heavy, broad, wide net in order to catch an abundance of fish. They would throw out the net indiscriminately and pull in the catch. Afterward, they could sort the fish, throw back crustaceans and other undesirable sea creatures, and keep the remaining fish, searching for their prize catch. The only way they could ensure the largest possible catch of their favored fish, the Tilapia, known today in the region as ...

3099. Don't Be Afraid

Matthew 17:1-9

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... , God provided Noah with a womb of an ark, but encouraged him back to the land and the light when the storm lifted. When Paul was confronted with the truth and Light of Jesus, he was so taken off guard that it blinded him for a while in order to sort through what he had experienced. After a time, his vision was restored and yet his image of others had been altered during his time in the dark, womb-like muddle of his thoughts. Much like others Jesus healed, Paul saw when he was ready and able to see. We do ...

3100. Singing the Lord's Song

1 John 3:16-24

Sermon

Billy D. Strayhorn

... the Lord will approve here, and reward you when he cometh in the clouds of heaven. Melissa Arney, one the active young leaders of the congregation in Groesbeck shared that she and her family were driving along in their van one day singing camp songs and hymns to sort of pass the time and rejoice in their faith. After about five or six songs, her three year old daughter, Morgan, got real close to the window, looked up and said: "Did you like that God?" When Melissa asked her what God said, Morgan's eyes got ...

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