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 3601 to 3625 of 5000 results

3601. Ignite: The Fire Burns Brightly

Acts 2:42-47

Sermon

James Merritt

I am going to let you in on a little secret that very few people know about me and that is I am deathly afraid of fire. I prefer colder weather to warmer weather. If I had to choose between being in a sweater at 45° or being in a bathing suit at 95° I would choose what is called “sweater-weather.” I have an inordinate fear of fire and heat. My mother thinks it may be because when I was just a six-month-old baby she accidently spilled hot coffee all over my stomach. She says that is the only time she heard ...

3602. Envision: A Church After God’s Heart

Matthew 22:34-40

Sermon

James Merritt

It doesn’t happen very often. When it does happen it is so different from everything else that can happen that you realize that it has “this is a God thing” written all over it. At least, for me, on very rare occasions, an opportunity comes along that you realize only God could have put before you. You know it because only God could have engineered all of the circumstances that were necessary to coalesce and come together for this “God thing” to happen. It works like this: God begins to stir your heart and ...

3603. Just Grace

Matthew 20:1-16

Sermon

James Merritt

The woman’s accounting firm is having its best year since she founded it ten years ago. Taxes are due the next day and she wonders if maybe they have taken on too many projects. I majored in accounting and I know missing the tax deadline is a quick way to lose creditability with customers. She decides to bring on some extra help. A friend had mentioned a temp agency in town that was pretty reliable. She Googled the name, locates the number, and makes the call. The nervous woman breathes a sigh of relief ...

3604. One in Christ

Ephesians 2:11-22

Understanding Series

Arthur G. Patzia

Christ and the Unity of Believers The apostle is addressing Jewish and Gentile believers in 2:1–10. He begins by showing that both groups of people were living in disobedience and sin; both stood in need of God’s mercy and love. The Good News in the passage is that a loving and gracious God acted to correct that through his Son. In union with Christ, believers become a new creation and are resurrected and exalted with their Lord. As such, they are lifted out of their former evil condition that they might ...

3605. No Confidence in the Flesh

Philippians 3:1-11

Understanding Series

F. F. Bruce

First Conclusion: Call to Rejoice “With this communication about Epaphroditus now the epistle seems to be at an end” (Ewald, ad loc.). If so, nothing remains but a final word of greeting. The reader is therefore prepared for Finally. 3:1 Finally: the natural inference from this phrase (drawn by most commentators) is that Paul is on the point of finishing his letter. If the letter be regarded as a unity, it must be assumed that something suddenly occurred to him which prompted the warning of verse 2 with ...

3606. Woe to Ephraim

Isaiah 28:1-29

Understanding Series

John Goldingay

Oh You Drunken Leaders: Introduction to Chapters 28–33: We return to the kind of material that occupied chapters 1–12—prophecies and stories directly concerning eighth-century B.C. Judah and Jerusalem. The difference is that much of these chapters relates to a subsequent period, the reign of Hezekiah and the period of his seeking help from Egypt in asserting freedom from Assyrian domination in 705–701 B.C. The fundamental issues in Judah’s life remain as they were a few years earlier. Centrally, the ...

3607. The Jewish Leaders as Negative Foil for Jesus’ Followers

Matthew 23:1-39

Teach the Text

Jeannine K. Brown

Big Idea: For Matthew, the Jewish leaders are disobedient to the Torah and pursue the honor of their positions, providing a foil to Jesus’ followers, who are to renounce concern for status and live in community as brothers and sisters. Understanding the Text Matthew concludes his narration of confrontation between Jesus and the Jerusalem leaders with a series of judgment warnings upon the Pharisees and teachers of the law (23:1–36). The chapter begins with a call to Jesus’ followers to avoid the motivation ...

3608. Good for Nothing

Luke 13:1-9

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

The story is told of a man in Easter Liverpool, Ohio, whose oil well caught fire. It was one of those uncontrollable fires and the man offered a $3000 reward to whomever could put it out. Well, all the fire departments from the surrounding cities and villages came and tried, but the fire was so intense that no one could get near enough to begin to work on it. Then a volunteer fire department from the village of Calcutta arrived on the scene. They had one fire truck, one ladder, three buckets of sand, two ...

3609. God's Sovereign Choice

Romans 9:1-29

Understanding Series

James R. Edwards

The Election of Israel What remains of God’s promises to the Jews now that the Messiah has come and the Jews from whom and for whom he came have, for the most part, failed to recognize him? That is the theme of Romans 9–11. Finding the exact term to describe Paul’s discussion of the theme is somewhat difficult. On the one hand, Romans 9–11 is more or less an excursus complete in itself. The beginning declaration (9:1) and the concluding doxology (11:33–36) delimit it clearly from the remainder of the ...

3610. All for Some Dumb Sheep

John 10:11-18

Sermon

King Duncan

There was a best-selling book in 1995 by Daniel Goleman called Emotional Intelligence. This book provided us with many examples of the effects that our emotions can have on our rational brain. The book begins with the story of Gary and Mary Jean Chauncey, who were in an Amtrak train that crashed into a river after a barge hit and weakened a railroad bridge in Louisiana. Gary and Mary Jean were trapped in their compartment as they tried desperately to save their eleven year-old wheelchair ridden daughter ...

3611. Holy Happiness

Luke 6:17-26

Sermon

Susan R. Andrews

Psychiatrist Robert Coles tells a story about a poor black woman in New Orleans who sells her body almost every night to wealthy old men in order to take care of her five children. And each night this woman takes half of what she earns as a prostitute and gives it to the nuns who run the local soup kitchen. Coles asks the question, “Is this woman blessed or is she cursed?” From her perspective, I’m sure the answer is both. But from the perspective of today’s gospel lesson, she is more blessed than she is ...

3612. The Unclean Palate

Acts 10:1-8, Acts 10:9-23a, Acts 10:23b-48

Sermon

Lori Wagner

How many of you have eaten a bug? A snail? Caviar? You know those are fish eggs, right? What about Octopus? Snake? Haggis? Squirrel? Groundhog? Some of us are more adventurous than others. But on the whole, we eat what we are comfortable with, and we avoid what is not comfortable. And what is not comfortable is usually what is either not acceptable to us in our culture or just not in our daily habit of rituals. For example, some of us might eat this: But never would we eat this: Or this: What kinds of ...

3613. Let’s Really Know Jesus

John 14:1-4, John 14:5-14

Sermon

David & Marian Plant

I am married to a directionally challenged person. In the car if I ask her which way to go, she may say left while pointing right. After years of marriage I have learned that the pointing is always correct, not so much the words used. Thomas was a wonderfully directionally challenged person. Jesus told him there was a place prepared for all. Thomas went... how do I get there? Jesus’ response to Thomas was one of the truly great responses of all time from Jesus. “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No ...

3614. Dance of Love

John 14:5-14, John 14:1-4

Sermon

Lori Wagner

Space is what keeps the world in balance. Everything, even molecules, have space between them. Space is what defines matter. Without space, individual quantities of matter don’t exist. Our sense of self, our individualism, our sense of community, our sense of reality, our sense of who we are in relationship to others, is all dependent upon space. You may notice, now that you’ve been in quarantine for about two and a half months, that you are either seeking more or less space, depending upon your situation ...

3615. Easter Fear

Mark 16:1-8

Sermon

Will Willimon

At the end of this service last Easter, after the glorious music, the majesty of it all, throngs of people were surging forth after having sung their ''Alleluias'' and their ''Hosannas," shaking my hand, telling me how beautiful everything was, how well I did, how great it was to be here. And then there was this young man, surely a student, who filed through the door, shaking my hand, saying only, ''I don't know. I just don't know." As we all danced forth into the warm glow of Easter, the certainty of our ...

3616. Listen!

Luke 9:28-36, (37-43a)

Sermon

King Duncan

Where are you most likely to get important news and information that you rely on each day? From a print newspaper? From an app on your phone? From social media? From a cable channel? What about from a man or woman standing in the middle of your neighborhood and shouting out the latest headlines? Not likely. If you’d lived about 1,000 years ago in England, you would have gotten the latest news and headlines from a town crier. The job of town crier began officially in the year 1066. What happened in 1066? ...

3617. The Grip

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Sermon

Lori Wagner

Readiness. This is a word that our culture often has lost sight of. We tend to be a rather impulsive people today. When we want something, we want it now, …or better yet, yesterday. We leap into new ventures without checking them out fully. We rush headlong into situations that may or may not do us harm. We rack up credit by the thousands without a plan to pay it back. We have children without thinking through what those responsibilities will mean for us. We lash out at our friends, partners, and spouses ...

3618. Swimming Against the Tide

Luke 6:27-38

Sermon

Lori Wagner

Salmon and Steelhead Trout are what scientists call anadromous fish. This means that they hatch in fresh water, then swim to the ocean to live out their lives, then return once again to fresh water to spawn. When the tide turns, they literally swim upstream against the current in order to reach their spawning grounds. This strong instinctual behavior to swim against the flow is driven by their need to reproduce.[1] That drive to reproduce is also the key to how we carry on our faith. We have an astute old ...

3619. People With Power To Forgive

John 20:19-23

Sermon

Maurice A. Fetty

Jesus began his earthly ministry preaching, teaching, healing and forgiving sins. And now at the end of his earthly ministry in his post-resurrection appearance to his disciples, Jesus is passing on to his disciples the ministry of preaching, teaching, healing and forgiving sins. Through the gift of the Holy spirit they are to be empowered to continue the work he inaugurated. We often overlook in the gospels the connection between forgiveness and healing -- healing that is both physical and spiritual. ...

3620. The Good Soldier

John 20:1-9

Drama

Pamela Urfer

Cast: Two Roman soldiers, FLAVIUS and LUCIUS, and an ANGEL Length: 15 minutes FLAVIUS and LUCIUS are seated on their stools, center stage. FLAVIUS: (Complaining) What was all the hurry about for this burial? I don't understand why we had to rush. LUCIUS: (Distracted but agreeable) Hmmmm. FLAVIUS: I don't know why I even ask. It's so typical of the military: Hurry up and wait. LUCIUS: True. FLAVIUS: First we break our backs to get this job done ASAP and then everyone rushes off and leaves us here without a ...

3621. Pontius Pilate,Pragmatic

Drama

Peter C. Garrison

Pontius Pilate's problem is that he is so practical, so cold-blooded, that he can ask, "What is truth," and never see it standing right before his eyes. (Please read Luke 13:1-5; Mark 15:1-15;John 18:28--19:16; 1 Timothy 6:13) Pontius Pilate The historian Josephus records that Pilate was replaced as Procurator of Judea for having executed Samaritan leaders who sought sacred vessels supposedly stored on Mount Gerizim since the days of Moses. Complaint was made to the Roman legate, Vitellius, and Pilate was ...

3622. A Light Verse

Matthew 17:1-13

Drama

Robert F. Crowley

Theme: Does knowing Jesus change a person's life? Summary: Two Christians are busy learning Bible verses and ignore Ollie, who is slow. They learn patience and kindness from the one they have hurt. Playing Time: 5 minutes Place: A work place Props: Two coffee cups Costumes: Contemporary, casual Time: The present Cast: Greg Mark -- Greg's friend Ollie GREG: (ENTERING WITH TWO COFFEE CUPS) Well, here's your coffee, just the way you like it, double cream and no sugar. Are you ready for this week's verse? I ...

3623. Proper 17

Hebrews 13:1-25, Jeremiah 2:1-3:5, Luke 14:1-14

Sermon Aid

John R. Brokhoff

COMMENTARY Old Testament: Jeremiah 2:4-13 Yahweh protests Judah's faithlessness. Jeremiah takes no credit for what he says to his nation: "Hear the word of the Lord." In this passage Yahweh asks why they have deserted him for gods that were no gods. Why did the nation desert him after he was so very good to the nation in leading them through the wilderness for a land of plenty? Priests, rulers and prophets turned against God, and therefore Jeremiah was shocked. The people of God are guilty of two sins: ...

3624. What Do You Say To A Burning Bush?

Exodus 3:1-22

Sermon

Steve Burt

The Moses I always pictured is the Charlton Heston Moses, the one who leads his people out of Egypt, who parts the Red Sea, gives commands. But the Moses we hear and see in today's scripture reading is different, not the heroic, bigger-than-life character. He's tending sheep, but to see how he got there we must look back to Exodus 2:11-15. A nutshell summary goes like this. Moses is standing around, observes a fight, and kills an Egyptian. We can't just write that Egyptian off as somebody who doesn't count ...

3625. The Tinsel Time Machine

Drama

Edward Long

Production Notes A minimum of characters are needed. No elaborate costuming, make-up, or stage setting are involved. The play can be performed in chancel or on stage. "Extras" may be readily incorporated at the last minute (wearing winter coats) into the "carolers" in the England segment. It can be performed books in hand, or some or all of the cast may wish to memorize their lines. Only three rehearsals are needed for an effective presentation. The action is simple. The actors and actresses are urged to ...

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