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 3126 to 3150 of 4653 results

3126. Keeper of the Springs

Proverbs 31:10-31

Sermon

Peter Marshall

... that wherever the Christian evangel has gone for nineteen centuries, the daughters of Mary have been respected, revered, remembered, and loved, for men have recognized that womanhood is a sacred and a noble thing, that women are of finer clay, are more in touch with the angels of God and have the noblest function that life affords. Wherever Christianity has spread, for nineteen hundred years men have bowed and adored. It remained for the twentieth century, in the name of progress, in the name of tolerance ...

3127. A Priceless Gift

Matthew 25:14-30

Illustration

King Duncan

Lois Cheney in her book, God is No Fool, tells a revealing parable about a man who was touched by God. God gave this man a priceless gift the capacity for love. The man was grateful and humble, and he knew what an extraordinary thing had happened to him. He carried this capacity for love like a jewel and he walked tall and with purpose. From time to time ...

3128. Merry Christmas or Happy Kitschmas?

1 Corinthians 1:1-9

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... world, are natal gifts. And each and every one is as important as our own child’s precious first steps. The gift by the “born-with-a-wrench-in-his-teeth” mechanic, who manages to keep an ancient boiler, or corroded plumbing, or pray-before-you-touch-it wiring, working in the church, week after week. The gift of enticement and enchantment that enables someone to make Sunday morning just as much fun and just as engaging as Saturday morning, for the children of the church. The gift of stretching a dollar ...

3129. Heresies of the Heart

Jeremiah 31:31-34

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... The heretics of hope would have stood in the destroyed temple, mute and mournful, oblivious to and indeed resentful of Jeremiah's words of consolation. All God's promises are in vain. Human nature and our hardened hearts are beyond God's healing touch. With no cause for hope there is no room for grace, and the result is a carefully nurtured spirit of divisiveness. On this spirit congregations are fragmented, marriages split, and retaining walls erected and fortified. The heresy of hopelessness may even lead ...

3130. Miss Manners and Mr. Goodwrench

Ephesians 4:25-5:2

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... present where you are, to always search for fresh ways to show your willingness to mix your soul into other people's needs and hurts. Despite the apparently merciless behavior Joab displays in the story of Absalom's death, he nevertheless was so intimately in touch with the heart of David and the needs of Israel that he took action which he felt safeguarded both his king and his country. Joab's actions hardly meet with the mandates for mercy and love that we associate with both Jesus and Paul. Yet ...

3131. The Job Description of a Leader

2 Samuel 23:1-7

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... to post a few requirements for candidates. Item number one in the job description for a leader is found in the second verse of this week's Old Testament lesson: "The Spirit of the Lord speaks through me ..." The first requirement for leadership is to have been touched and called by God's Spirit. Or in Jesus' words to Nicodemus: "You must be born of the spirit." This means that true biblical leadership is not a skill or a technique or a body of knowledge that one reams and then practices. To be called by ...

3132. Protecting Your Valuables

James 3:13-18

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... total income totaling just under $1 trillion a year. Furthermore, what kind of value statement do we participate in when the line between environmental plunder and gains in personal wealth has become increasingly blurred? In his brilliant The Midas Touch: Money, People and Power from West to East (1989), Anthony Sampson makes explicit linkages between moneymaking and planetary destruction, the vast new fortunes being made in developed countries and ecological destruction. And how do we curtail our addiction ...

3133. LightWorks

Deuteronomy 6:1-9

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... shines with intensity and clarity? Buckminster Fuller used to say that the thoughts of the world's greatest philosophers and theologians and scientists traveled out and bumped into stars and then traveled back to us. The act of "stargazing," then, is nothing less than reaching out to the stars and touching the history of great faithfulness and love which they radiate through the eons to our own small lights and lives. Don't let the lights go out!

3134. Uh-Huh!

John 18:33-37

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... hit of the early 90s urging a confused generation in confusing situations to "Do the Right Thing." Even the feel-good, extravagant 80s examined its own quest for this elusive quality in yet another film, "The Right Stuff." Yet instead of successfully touching our own interior character, these three forays into the search for "rightness" have simply become cliched components of everyday conversation. The "Uh-huh" soft drink scions are not convincing us to choose on the basis of quality - they only offer a ...

3135. The Crime of Christmas

Luke 2:8-20, Luke 2:1-7

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

Christmas is the Nativity of Consciousness. It is a time for us all, we who have lost touch with the tale, to rediscover the wondrous, the miraculous, the unspeakable; the wild, the odd, the strange; the impossible world of the child, the improbable faith of the believer. The story of Christmas is the story of the unspeakable in hot pursuit of the unimaginable, and some would say unattainable. ...

3136. The Seduction of the Palms

Luke 19:28-40

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... and exuberance of this morning's celebration, the church must not be seduced into losing sight of its central mission and message: obedient service. In the previous centuries, when paper was an expensive commodity and letter writing the only way to keep in touch, writers found an interesting way to economize. One piece of paper could be made to hold twice as much information by practicing the art of palimpsest. After filling the page the paper was simply rotated 45 degrees and then another entire page of ...

3137. Terminator 3

Acts 9:1-20

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... Yet both men are transformed from the inside-out. Saul, through his encounter with the living Christ on the road, spins 180 degrees in his life orientation. The bitter well of hatred from which he had been drawing his sustenance is sweetened by Christ's touch and changed into an eternal spring of love and dedication. Ananias' fear and loathing of his persecutor is also changed by Christ's words into openness and acceptance of a true "brother" in the faith. Simon Peter, filled with guilt and convinced of his ...

3138. Wounding Love

Psalm 23:1-6

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... physical relationships between human beings provides the most secure environment in which this pathogenic weakling can gain a new foothold...Fragility and intimacy form part of the same pattern" (Confessions of a Conservative Liberal [London: SPCK, 1988], 177). Habgood touches another raw nerve twitching in our psychological reactions to the physical assault of the AIDS virus. By attacking our immune system, this pathogen invades that very part of our bodies specifically designed to keep the other out - to ...

3139. Healing in His Wings

Acts 14:8-18

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... cured man in Acts 14, we know his life has been radically altered. His whole identity has been redefined. With his body now whole and his spirit filled with Christ's healing love, how can he be the same? Zacchaeus is also transformed by Jesus' touch. And while we do not hear what Zacchaeus said to Jesus, it is clear that Jesus the healer is also significantly affected by his encounter with Zacchaeus. Our own healing occurs when, in courage or despair, we recognize our inability to cure ourselves physically ...

3140. Thunder in the Mountains, Silence in the Soul

1 Kings 19:9-18

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... (Clarence Thomas) or televangelist (Jimmy Swaggart) will tell you, is all but dead. The home used to serve as at least a semi-private place away from our public lives. Ironically, however, the very gadgets that make it easier to stay home yet stay in touch - personal computer, modems, fax machines - at the same time blur the line between the private and public person. When we try to "escape" to our own private caves, the world now comes along. All this makes the last safe bastion of our personal, private ...

3141. Who Is the Good Samaritan?

Luke 10:25-37

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... bronze people" myth living out a "bronze dream." "Bronze" here serves as his image for people "so clean, so neat, so tanned, so buoyant and assured" that any trace of the frailties that are part of human life - suffering, fear, death - seem not to touch them in any way (26). The over-riding ethic keeping us "bronze people" alive is an ethic of "success or avoidance" (26). The "bronze dream" that attempts to incarnate this ethic is rooted in possessions and self-preservation. In the bronze dream, persons try ...

3142. The Problem of Unanswered Prayer

2 Timothy 3:14-4:5

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... prayer. True prayer convinces the one who is praying that what was once desired is no longer desirable. Prayer makes a new person out of the pray-er. No one can feel the power of God's love and remain the same or make the same request. Once God has touched us, our concern becomes more to convey unbinding love than to receive it. Real prayer forces us to face who we are and to tell the truth about ourselves, which changes our prayers. Have you ever noticed, as did Huck Finn, that "You can't pray a lie"? When ...

3143. Pit and Rock

Colossians 1:11-20

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... when people come together and "count their blessings." Thanksgiving also seems to be a day when we cast our eyes back over the past to contemplate the courses our lives are taking. Are we better or worse off this year? What special blessings have touched our family? What staircases of hardships and suffering have we climbed? Those who live close enough - or can afford a trip - feel tugged back to their families at Thanksgiving as at no other time of the year. Perhaps this is because we need the perspective ...

3144. Is Your Christmas Spirit a Controlled Substance?

1 Thessalonians 5:12-28

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... less to Santa and Frosty and more to the Christ born into this world, miraculously offered to each and every one of us. The Christmas spirit is not warm and cozy. The Christmas spirit is not safe and secure. The Christmas spirit is not out-dated or out-of-touch. The Christmas spirit is a free spirit and a freeing spirit. It frees us from what and where and when we were once living. And it opens us up to new whats, wheres and whens once we are living in Christ. The Christmas spirit Paul preached to the ...

3145. The Truly Human Christ

John 1:6-8, 19-28

Illustration

Donald B. Strobe

... that there are still a lot of happy Gnostics and Docetists among us. The theology of Mary Baker Eddy which forms the basis of Christian Science certainly leans in the direction of Gnosticism. Most popular piety has a Gnostic Christ who never really quite touches this earth. When British mystery writer and lay theologian Dorothy Sayers' famous cycle of plays "The Man Born to be King" was first performed on the radio in England in 1941, there were strong protests. Mr. J.W. Welch, then director of Religious ...

3146. Keep the Stars in Your Eyes

Ephesians 1:3-14

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... is an angel, Whitney Houston a preacher's wife in the Disney movie The Preacher's Wife; Greg Kinnear is a post office angel in Dear God; John Travolta is an angel who drinks beer in Michael) has at last come to a head in prime time. CBS's Touched by an Angel has become one of the most popular prime-time shows and the first explicitly religious drama to break into the Nielsen Top 10 in the ratings service's 46-year history. The first big movie of DreamWorks SKG, the powerhouse studio run by Steven Spielberg ...

3147. Holy Hocus-Pocus!

Mark 13:1-31

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

3148. Hear the Vision?

1 Samuel 3:1-10 (11-20)

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

3149. Five Steps to Takeoff

Mark 1:14-20

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... first duty of the airboss is to signal the removal of the "chocks," the small clamps that lock in place the aircraft's wheels and keep them from rolling. The hand signal for removing the chocks is to put your two fists together, pinkies touching, four fingers facing you and thumbs pointing outward in opposite directions. Suddenly thrust each fist in the opposite direction. The chocks have the same function on an aircraft carrier as do the blocks that you see placed under the wheels of commercial aircraft ...

3150. The One and Only Original Sin

1 Peter 3:18-22

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

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