Sermon and Worship Resources

Synonyms: thirstiness, dryness, parched, craving, strong desire, longing, yearning, avidity, hunger, voracity, keenness, eagerness, lust, appetite, passion, love, crave, want, covet, desire, hunger for/after, lust for/after, hanker for/after, have one's heart set on

Antonyms: aversion, distaste, apathy, dislike, hatred, antipathy, disgust, disregard, abhorrence, acrimony, wet, animosity, animus, antagonism, bad feeling, bitterness, be averse to, detestation

Showing 3451 to 3475 of 5000 results

3451. The Joy of Being a Caring Person

Mt 25:31-46 · Lk 16:19-31

Sermon

Robert G. Tuttle

... , in whose lives his spirit lives - these are the ones who change the sad picture of an uncaring world. True Christians are the ones who represent the Father, God - who can leave ninety-nine sheep safe in the barn, and then go out gladly and spend all night long searching in the wilderness for me. Paul Scherer tells of Toscanini in his last performance, when he was 85 years of age. The old man lifted his baton, and "all the music they (the orchestra) had in them swept up toward that face of the Master they ...

3452. "I Don’t Want to Be Perfect - Or Do I?"

Matthew 13:1-23

Sermon

Robert G. Tuttle

... which we have loved or from which we were estranged. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year the longed for perfection of life does not appear, when old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage, sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness" - and we move on! And some seed ...

3453. The Gospel According to Christ’s Enemies

John 11:1-16

Sermon

Richard Hoefler

... as an amateur cook, I have learned that the secret to oatmeal cookies is not just mixing together the right ingredients but the proper timing of them in the oven. If you take them out of the oven too soon, they are soggy. If you leave them in too long, they are dry. But if you take them out at the exact right moment, they are chewy and really delicious. So in the Scriptures, the time - the right timing - is absolutely important. In Galatians 4:4 Paul says, "When the right time finally came, God sent his own ...

3454. I Knew You’d Come

John 6:16-24

Sermon

Richard Hoefler

... that the human imagination is one of our greatest deterrents to faith and creates our most destructive fears. Pictures etched in our minds by our imaginations can destroy our soundest logic and most convincing reasons. If I were to place a twelve-inch wide plank fifteen feet long on the floor and ask you to walk across it, you could do it with little effort. But if I were to place that same plank between two twenty-story buildings and ask you to walk across it, few would even venture to try. The plank is ...

3455. In Debt Forever!

Romans 13:8-14

Sermon

Raymond Gibson

... eyeballs. We also knew that he knew, too. After all, he had traveled the same route forty years earlier. Debt is a fact of life for most ministers. For most Americans, too. Take away the credit system in the U.S. and the economy would collapse. Not long ago, some economist figured that the average American adult carries four credit cards and owes his creditors 63% of his net worth. That estimate doesn’t include his or her share of the national debt which will soon exceed one trillion dollars or $5,000 for ...

3456. A Thinking Person’s Thankful Prayer

Philippians 1:1-11

Sermon

Raymond Gibson

... lustily sing, "Oh, How I Love Jesus!" at prayer meetings! The sequoia trees on the West Coast are among the oldest living things on earth. Some of these trees were living six hundred years before Moses led the Hebrew people out of Egypt. The secret of their long life is said to be their interdependence. Their roots are not deep, and there is no central tap root. The trees always live in clumps. Their roots intertwine, and they hold each other up. The strength of one is the strength of all. It is unlikely ...

3457. What It Takes to Stay Christian

1 Thessalonians 1:1-10

Sermon

Raymond Gibson

... if he hoped not it would grow up." The steadfastness of hope that helps Christians stay Christian never really meant much to me personally, however, until one day I heard an old story about Francis of Assisi meeting some of his brother monks after a long journey. One Franciscan brother greeted his friends by saying, "God protected me in a marvelous way. While crossing a narrow bridge over a mountain gorge, my mule jumped. I fell and narrowly escaped death by hanging on the bridge. God by his love saved my ...

3458. A SERMON-DRAMA FOR EASTER

Drama

Tom Eberle

... to share in his life. Narrator: Is that it, then? Just as the story of the resurrection becomes real each time we hear it, so the Lord’s meal provided for us leads us to his presence each time we partake of it. To worship God is not to wistfully long for some far-removed spirit. It is to taste his love shared with us now. Maria: It is time for us to offer ourselves anew to God by gathering our gifts for the altar. [Maria and Severus go to the back of the sanctuary and bring the communion elements forward ...

3459. A LITURGICAL DRAMA FOR ALL SAINTS’

Drama

Tom Eberle

... this, for they shall be that. It makes for nice reading, but they ask the impossible of us. Minister: And Doris Day is the only one around who still believes in the impossible? Box: You guessed it. Minister: Will you at least hear me out? Box: I will as long as you give me a chance to cross-examine. Minister: O.K. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven. Box: I object. Irrelevant and immaterial. Who the heck knows what it means to be poor in spirit? I thought the whole idea of ...

3460. Old and New

Mk 2:22 · 2 Cor 5:17 · Is 43:19

Sermon

Robert Noblett

... a survey of which Old Testament offering is most widely remembered, I think it would have to be the twenty-third Psalm. The Book of Psalm, as we know it, has been in existence since around 100 B.C. This means the twenty-third Psalm was probably around long before that. They are old words - The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, He makes me to lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside still waters, He restores my soul. Nevertheless, their oldness is not mildewed oldness. It is an oldness like unto ...

3461. Holy Handicap?

2 Cor 12:9

Sermon

Robert Noblett

... are rendered impotent by association. If anything, they are made stronger and more valiant! A tiny scratch on the first band of a long playing record is hardly grounds for adjudging the entire record to be unworthy. A dent in the bell of a trumpet is not ... the power of God, shot through with blessing. I’ll let Robert Coles, the emminent Harvard psychiatrist, have the final word: Long ago an itinerant preacher drew upon His awesome healing powers, as He trekked the Middle East portion of the Roman Empire. ...

3462. Are You Exercising Your Faith?

Mt 4:1-11 · Phil 3:12 · Gen 32:3

Sermon

Robert Noblett

... had placed my fist in front of my eyes, I would have blocked the whole city out and even the end of one finger could have blocked out that little southern section of the city that represented my old stomping grounds. What a contrast from those days of long ago when I was growing up! Then my entire world was represented by that two or three square mile area. But now that I have grown up, I realize that my old stomping grounds represented an infinitesimally small part of the world. Now I know something about ...

3463. How Fares Your Christian Sight?

Is 6:8-10

Sermon

Robert Noblett

... that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness - that I myself am the enemy who must be loved - what then? As a rule, the Christian's attitude is then reversed; there is no longer any question of love or long-suffering; we say to the brother within us 'Raca,' and condemn and rage against ourselves. We hide it from the world; we refuse to admit ever having met this least among the lowly in ourselves. Had it been God himself who drew near to us in this despicable form ...

3464. God and the Weather

Matthew 5:45; 16:2-3 · Psalm 18:7-11; 46:1-3, 11

Sermon

Robert Noblett

... s harmony and wrote of it in his journal on the 13th of November, 1858: It is wonderful what gradation and harmony there is in nature. The light reflected from bare twigs at this season ... is not only like that from gossamer, but like that which will ere long be reflected from the ice that will encrust them. So bleached herbage of the fields is like frost, and frost like snow, and the one prepares for the other.1 It should be added here that part of nature’s balance means weather that we too frequently ...

3465. Habakkuk

Habakkuk 3:1-19

Sermon

Warren Thomas Smith

... , we find that quality of living which is not dependent upon circumstances for ultimate meaning and purpose. Adversity is a wind separating wheat and chaff. What we really are often comes to light only when the going gets tough. The superficial do not long endure amid difficult times. The Christian faith is never more gloriously expressed than during severe trial. Gratitude to God, whatever the situation; this is faith. Why gratitude? Because God is God. He has made us, redeemed us, sustained us. He is life ...

3466. Herod Antipas

Luke 13:31-35

Sermon

Warren Thomas Smith

... in the dust. For the first time, a king without a crown was hailed by Jerusalem: a king who did not depend on name or station and with him, a new kingdom, and a new system of values. Our world has largely judged people and institutions by appearance. As long as a king wore a diadem or bore the title, people assumed he was a king; king by virtue of appearance. The origin of king was that he represented his nation at its best, the handsome Prince Charming. A king was supposed to have been good looking; also ...

3467. Phoebe

Joel 2:28-32

Sermon

Warren Thomas Smith

... she is responsible for more than conveying the manuscript? Could she have helped Paul write it? More, could Paul have assisted her" (Yet again, is it possible that it is hers - Phoebe’s Epistle to the Romans?) She may be first in that long line of theologians, including Katherine Zell, Theresa of Avila, Ann Hutchinson, Madam Guyon, Evelyn Underhill, and Georgia Harkness. Phoebe - her name means radiant. Her influence lingers on the stage as fragrant as myrtle and as bright as morning sun on the waves of ...

3468. Onesimus

Isaiah 43:1-13

Sermon

Warren Thomas Smith

... , she should not be denied the post because of age, race, or sex. It is here that we have failed, and the church must admit her slowness to put into practice Paul’s "... as a brother." It is a mark of our shame that it has taken so long, and that we still have so far to go. Onesimus the slave is the stark symbol of our time. He is very much alive and can be seen: Detroit, Calcutta, South Africa, London, Watts, Latin America, and Atlanta - all house or dispossess thousands of the children of Onesimus. We ...

3469. Can We Really Get Along?

John 4:1-26

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... main reason that Easter at the pyramid continues to have such a huge impact on Memphis is because it focuses on something that both races share--faith in our risen Lord Jesus! And we meet in that ultimate symbol of common ground in Memphis, the pyramid. As long as we are content to sit tight in our segregated suburbs, not much progress can be made. But let's suppose that your Sunday School class were to exchange teachers for a month with a class at Mississippi Boulevard Church and then the two classes were ...

3470. Converting the Converted

Matthew 10:1-42

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... converted! Christians Need Conversion Why must this be so? For one thing, church members need to be converted. Is it true that the church is a field for evangelism? Are we Christians in name only? Are we only hearers of the Word and not doers? Are we long on confession and short on consecration? If we look at ourselves as members of the church, we see that, in general, we must give an affirmative answer to these questions. Some of us can be religious without being Christian. You know, Paul was at one time a ...

3471. Mary Magdalene, Stephanus, and Lucia

Drama

Jon Joyce

... hear what ... what they plan to do with the Master? STEPHANUS: [Hesitates. He really does not want to answer and regrets that he has talked so much] I ... I don’t remember. Come on, Lucia. We gotta go. If Dad finds out we been talkin’ to a Jew so long, it’ll be the whip again. MARY: [Her kindness shows through as she reacts to STEPHANUS’ last remark] You get the whip for talking with a Jew? [STEPHANUS and LUCIA both nod] I hope you shan’t tonight. LUCIA: You’re such a nice lady, I don’t think ...

3472. This Grace In Which We Stand by Dr. Gene E. Bartlett

Romans 5:1-11

Sermon

Leonard Mann

... was the mood in which the New Testament writings first came into being. Those writers were sure they had come upon something which everyone ought to touch. To them it felt like new life. That purpose seems to have given form to the letter to the Romans. For a long time, Paul, a Roman citizen himself, had wanted to visit the Christians who were in Rome. But again and again the way failed to open. When at last it really opened he wanted to make the most of the visit in every way. So to prepare for his visit ...

3473. Miracle On Main Street by Dr. George A. Buttrick

John 1:1-18

Sermon

Leonard Mann

... language, for he’d already arrived at the designated place. I didn’t let the theft trouble me because I’ve often stolen the black man’s place in suburb or pew or store. I mean by keeping my mouth closed. Weren’t we silent far too long about the Viet war? We didn’t stop Communism. We invited it, for Communism thrives on chaos. What has happened is judgment, yes, God’s judgment. We can’t reach heaven through a bombed village. We never escape God. So sometimes we doubt God, and sometimes we ...

3474. Go Away, Devil!

Matthew 4:1-11

Children's Sermon

Wesley T. Runk

... to try that kind of a trick on my mother and father, and the first thing that they wanted to give me was some awful looking medicine. I used to get well in a hurry! All of us are tempted. Did you know that Jesus was tempted? He was. A long time ago Jesus met the Devil out in the wilderness and the Devil tempted him. It was an awful experience for Jesus. He was tired and hungry from not eating anything and the Devil kept coming after Jesus and promising him all sorts of things if he would just forget ...

3475. Knowing Who You Are

John 20:24-31

Children's Sermon

Wesley T. Runk

... ’ body. Thomas knew that Jesus died with some wounds and he wanted to see those marks before he would believe. Everybody agreed that this was pretty good proof, but nobody else would have the nerve to ask. Thomas wanted to be sure. It wasn’t too long after that time that Jesus came and stood in the middle of the disciples and called Thomas over to his side. "Take a look, Thomas," Jesus said. "Feel the marks that the nails and the spear made and then you will believe." Thomas looked at the identification ...

Showing results