Sermon and Worship Resources

Antonyms: keep, claim, continue, stick by, self-control, power through, achieve, defend, bear, hope, acquire, quick visit, adopt, continue along, adhere, remain, pursue, support, take up, keep up, reuse, advocate, stay, persevere, cherish, keep going, carry on

Showing 3626 to 3650 of 4976 results

3626. Let's Dance

Matthew 28:16-20

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... When it does, whatever is most cherished in your life, you can bring it to God in trust and confidence, and leave it there. · When your heart is wormed out with worry, trust in God for a new heart. · When the body is willing, but the brain isn't, keep the Rainbow Room clean and maintained. · When the music of faith stops playing in your life, let God lead the dance. · When you can no longer dance even with God as your dance partner, let the church dance for you. · Then when your mind is healed and your ...

3627. Missing the Mark

1 Samuel 8:1-22

Sermon

Charles Allo

... nows. I was having a hard time focusing on the actual relationship as I was kept trying to make sure I would be okay rather than letting the relationship simply develop. Finally, deep down, driving the decisions during this time were two goals: keeping integrity and keeping me unhurt. You see this relationship was different. I made decisions that at that point kept those goals intact. I wasn't all emotional that led to those poor decisions of the past. I focused on establishing a friendship. I let her in ...

3628. The Longest Running Parade in History

Psalm 118:1-29

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... form: you get kicked out if you can't/won't party. What is making us a hardened-heart, stiff-necked people? What is making us closed-ears, stone-faced, frostbitten? What is sapping our joy? Shutting down our parade? Sending us scuttling home to hide? Will you keep the party going and the parade moving in good times and bad? Will you throne Christ as head of your life come what may, no matter what? Join the Jesus parade, and you celebrate. You party. You wave your hands and dance for joy – not just when ...

3629. This Kiss

1 Corinthians 15:1-11

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... he "was buried" 3. and that "he was raised on the third day." Here is the Christians' "THIS KISS." In the face of these straight-forward yet mind-bending facts, when smacked by THIS KISS of "good news," all believers must bow. If the Corinthians can keep THIS KISS always on their lips, then all the complexities and nuances of Christian theology can be explored and debated without endangering the faith. Too many of us have let complexity and complacency wipe THIS KISS off our own lips. Instead of feeling the ...

3630. Are You a GOT TO or a GET TO Christian?

Genesis 15:1-18

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... stun gun? · How many of you live in a "gated" community with its own security team? · How many of you must walk through a metal detector before you can enter your school or your workplace? · How many of you have bars on your windows designed to keep people out not in? But doesn't it seem the more we have tried to fortify ourselves against successive onslaughts of violence, the more fearful and the more victimized we have become? And the violence grows. One rallying idea that has run counter to our usual ...

3631. The Crowd that Watched God Die

Luke 23:26-43

Sermon

Stephen M. Crotts

... Like Mary the mother of Jesus, we stand at the foot of the cross and witness the awful carnage of innocent suffering. The question that keeps choking in our throats is: "God, why?" Why does my loved one suffer so? Why is my career ended when my dreams are for ... a yellow ribbon around the old oak tree and I'll know I'm welcome home when I see it. If it is not there, I'll keep going." Well, you recall what happened. The ex-convict was on a bus when he passed the house. And what did he see but a hundred yellow ...

3632. The Golden Bull or the Old Rugged Cross?

Acts 16:16-40

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... house of one's own." · "A college education." · "Be your own boss." · "Free Agent." We call it the "American Dream," and while it has been fueled by noble notions such as freedom and equality, it has always been at heart about money. · Getting it. · Keeping it. · Making more of it. · Never having enough of it. After all, money does bring a certain kind of freedom. Freedom to live where you like. Freedom from worrying about putting food on the table. Freedom to move from place to place. And riches do ...

3633. What's Your Status Symbol?

Acts 10:23b-48

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... and persecuted lower class in the Roman world of first century Palestine, one special status symbol came from keeping the strict dietary laws of "kashrut." Since all food had to be ritually clean and eaten according to specific rules, observant Jews were ... never at table with the pagan population. Keeping kosher set them apart, made them special. Peter, standing in the midst of Cornelius and this unclean Gentile household, had just ...

3634. DodgeGod

Amos 8:1-14

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... used for God like Amos to call other people to be done with lesser things? Here are four things you may have in common with Amos. First, Amos had an everyday occupation. He wasn't a professional prophet. He was just an ordinary agricultural man, keeping his herds, tending his orchards, harvesting his figs. He obviously kept abreast of what was going on throughout the nation, and was well versed in the inner workings of the Israelite society. But Amos was a man of ordinary occupation, which means any of us ...

3635. By Heart

2 Timothy 3:10--4:8, Deuteronomy 30:11-20

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... not only because the vast majority of the people didn't read or write, but because, as today's text insists, the heart is where the Torah must live. The eager, impressionable memory of a young child makes memorization of Scripture a relatively easy task. But learning to take and keep God's word in our heart takes a lifetime. Torah that isn't taken to heart can never be kept, never be truly observed. That's why, as great a gift the Torah was to Israel; that's why, as great a gift as the words of both Old and ...

3636. Living in the Red

Galatians 6:11-18

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... has become too far away and the cross is barely to be seen. This is the thesis of John Fischer wonderful book entitled On a Hill Too Far Away: Putting the Cross Back at the Center of Our Lives (2000). As song-writer Fanny Crosby puts it: "Jesus keep me Near the cross, there a precious fountain, free to all, a healing stream, flows from Calvary's mountain." (Refrain: "In the cross, in the cross, be my glory ever, till my raptured soul shall find rest beyond the river.") There are some who say that the cross ...

3637. Life's Four Big 'Ds' and One Bigger 'D'

Galatians 2:11-21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... seminars, legal and drug counseling, assistance for unwed mothers, housing for battered women and children, and she prepares young people for the job market and college. Sweet Alice wants to keep kids in school, off drugs, and off the streets. One of the ways she does this is by a Friday night barbecue in her backyard, where the neighborhood gathers to keep track of what's going in each other's lives and to share the news of the community and celebrate children. But earlier this year the tables were turned ...

3638. Living Outside the Box

Luke 16:1-15

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... deal. And a warning went with the croc-in-the-box: Never leave the crocodile outside of its box. Never. Ever. If kept inside the box, the crocodile would never grow any bigger than the box in which it lived. Even though there was nothing genetic to keep the baby dime-store crocs from growing to enormous sizes, as long as they remained inside their boxes, as long as they were never exposed to greater space and freedom, they would stay the same small, kid-friendly size. The human mind and soul is a lot like ...

3639. Building Bridges While Getting Shot at from Both Shores

Revelation 22:1-6

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... own defense. There isn't even a mention of some faith testimony that they might have declared. In the face of the all-too-human behavior of hatred, fear, and rejection, they kept their composure and yet kept their faith. How can Christians today keep faith while keeping alive a spirit of love and discipleship for the fractured, fractious world we live in? How can Christians not join in the cultural worship of violence when there's a violent image at the heart of our faith-story? The great African-American ...

3640. Prayer

Matthew 24:36-51

Bulletin Aid

Stephen Brown

Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. We do not know when you are coming. We gaze into our sky with anticipation with fear...with trepidation. We do not know when you are coming. We wonder if you will. ... out hearts and homes Come into our minds and malls Come into our living and dying. Come and seek us Come and know us Come and embrace us. Come, Lord Jesus, come now. We await your coming. We pray to be ready. We live to keep watch. Come, Lord Jesus, come now. Amen.

3641. Make Me a Sheep

Revelation 5:1-14

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... on earth. Because sheep are so stupid and helpless, the dogs conclude, worthy sheepdogs end up risking their noble lives to keep dumb sheep safe. Babe refuses to take sides on these opposing world-views. By listening to and learning from both the ... of Life. When we put our head down on our pillows, we can pray: Now I lay me down to sleep I pray the Lord my soul to keep If I should die before I wake I pray the Lord my soul to take. Instead of tossing sleepless on our pillows from guilt and shame, struggling ...

3642. The Dash of Discipleship

Luke 3:1-20

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... the frig, we're dashing off to some 5am Black Friday sales event at a Tommy Hilfiger store where everything is 40% off, but only for four hours. The round of special events, parties, plays and preparations keep us dashing from one scene to another until Christmas morning. According to one popular Christmas-time tune, we even keep up our break-neck pace that day dashing through the snow. We've let Advent become such a hectic dash-through time of the year in part because we have bought into the culture's most ...

3643. The Whole Shebang in Six Words

John 11:38-44

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... , so unforgettable that in the early church it competed with the Lord's Supper as a foundational sacramental ritual. Note this: you can't wash anyone's feet without getting your hands dirty and wet. How many of us aren't living grace-filled lives because we're trying to keep our hands clean and dry? I suspect one of the test-questions at Judgment Day is going to be: Show me your hands? Are they clean? Are they dry? If so, why? Are we afraid to passionately engage with others because we are concerned about ...

3644. A Sign or a Son?

John 6:25-59

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... the greatest sign God had given, the gift of the Son, the miracle of establishing a living, breathing, saving relationship with the one who offers us eternal life this was a relationship as basic and essential to living a true life as bread was to keeping the body alive. No wonder Jesus called himself the Bread of Life. The relationship between the Son and the world is just as essential and life sustaining. Every culture has some sort of bread that represents the basic sustenance of life. Whether it's with ...

3645. What Happened to the Leftovers?

John 6:1-15

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... us back to a time when frugal families handed-down, recycled, repaired, and re-heated instead of throwing away. Many of us here this morning grew up on a waste not/want not mentality. Our current everything-is-disposable and planned obsolescence mentality, which keeps us running out to Wal-Mart or Home Depot for more stuff, would have scandalized our ancestors. In today's gospel text Jesus sounds like Martha Stewart. He commands his disciples to gather up all the remaining food from the multitudes. He was ...

3646. Dip into the Well

Acts 1:1-11

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... it, extremely urgent. Nothing mediocre, nothing in the middle will do. How does the Canadian teenager singer Avril Lavigne put it in her hit song? "Anything but Ordinary." Jesus' 1st century admonition to take it to the edge is actually more in keeping with 21st century currents than with 20th century thinking. The world organizes itself, we've been taught to believe, according to a hump-shaped bell curve in which everything clusters around the middle or average. We even dubbed this bell curve a "normal ...

3647. Don't Lose Your Footing

Luke 24:36-49

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... And that one thing said it all. Her feet. A few years before Mother Theresa died, our friend Shane Claiborne, an urban monk in Philadelphia's "The Simple Way" movement, had the opportunity to work and worship with the Sisters of Charity in Calcutta. In keeping with Eastern tradition, Mother Theresa and all the sisters ritually take their shoes off as they kneel and enter into the hallowed ground of prayer. Shane was stunned to see that when Mother Theresa's feet were unshod, they were so gnarled and twisted ...

3648. Atlas or Jesus?

1 John 1:1-4

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... of the earth. It's no effort at all for the boy to hold this world. It takes only one cupped hand. In this image the child, of course, is Jesus--and it's the power of the divine, not the brute strength of human muscle, that keeps the world safely aloft, steady, and protected. Whether the apostle John himself or a witness to his testimony, the author of 1, 2, and 3 John wrote to some struggling, splintered house churches for whom he felt pastorally responsible. He also saw two essentially disparate images of ...

3649. Are You Running?

John 12:12-19

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... time he spent with his twelve." ("Billy Graham Speaks: The Evangelical World Prospect," Christianity Today, 13 October 1958, 5.) What keeps our democracy working? No matter how many massive political rallies or conventions we may attend, each of us must ... 's no hiding from the voice of our own conscience when we sit alone in front of a ballot. We can only manage to keep the heart of our own faith pure and beyond the reach of crowd-controlled judgments and conclusions by returning to the only size crowd ...

3650. Fear Factor

Psalm 25:1-22

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... many of you have your TV tuned to CNN, Fox News, CNBC all the time? You know what fear is. How many of you canceled travel plans in the fall of 2001 and haven't yet rescheduled your trip? You know what fear is. How many of you have been keeping track of the downhill road trip your retirement plan has been taking in the last couple years? You know what fear is. How many of you have kids that are excited to start on their first solo backpack trip through Europe, their off-road walkabout in Australia, their ...

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