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 3676 to 3700 of 5000 results

3676. God Stood Up

Sermon

James Bjorge

... at Christmas time. Here is what it said: "Baby Jesus Doll! It’s new. It’s beautiful! It’s out of this world! It’s a doll made of soft vinyl, 11 inches tall, dressed in pretty pink with a gold halo. Yes, you can now cuddle the Baby Jesus, love him, dress him ... Help bring Christ back into the world. For boys and girls of all ages." Send to ... It is true that the Manger Child was a "sweet, little Jesus boy," as the spiritual attests. But we can never reduce him to an impotent babe, a mere toy, an ...

3677. Worn Out? Tired? Weary?

Matthew 11:25-30

Sermon

Louis H. Valbracht

... the forerunner of fatigue. Thus, a business man’s arm may be long on work but short on play and worship. A debutante’s arm may be long on play and short on work. A spinster may be long on work and worship and short on play and love. The old saying that "all work and no play make Jack a dull boy" is psychologically sound. And so, all work and no worship leads to chronic fatigue. It’s a simple, psychological and physical fact. Try an experiment. Some time spend the first week of your vacation doing ...

3678. Whispering The Lyrics (revised)

John 14:15-31

Sermon

Thomas Long

... proper verses, taught them the joyful commandments. But now that Jesus approaches his death, now that he draws near to his time of departure, now that the disciples will be on their own without him, that task is to be handed over to the Holy Spirit: "If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth ..." (John 14:15-17). The primary task, then, of the Holy Spirit is reminding the faithful of ...

3679. The Kingdom of God Is a Party

Matthew 22:1-14

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... for survival, eight hugs a day for maintenance, and twelve hugs per day for growth. But did you know that some people do not receive a single hug all week except when they come to church. Here within the church we should have the radiance of Christ's love on our faces and warmth in our handshakes and hugs. We are part of the best party on earth! Something else about the Kingdom party is special: Everyone Is Invited! In the parable Jesus told, there were guests invited to the wedding but they would not come ...

3680. Pillars of the Church

Exodus 17:8-16, Colossians 3:1-17

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... Cannon replied, "Thank you, brother, for sharing that with me. But please do me a favor--don't share it with anyone else." Bishop Cannon would testify that while sharing is usually a good thing, it's much better in a small group where people share the truth in love. I hope that you have a small group of people who serve as Aarons and Hurs for you. Such groups are absolutely essential in large churches like this one. If one does not have a small group within the big church, one may become a spectator. Do you ...

3681. Marriage: God's Idea

Genesis 2:4-25

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... my wife is still the miracle of my life. She knows my hands and she knows my heart; she performs magic with my dreams. She is female joy giving birth to life. She graces this paradise like a priestess making ritual of the common life of marriage. She is love; she is the mother of our children. She is home. Thank you, God, for the miracle of my wife." Author and business leader Fred Smith stopped one day at a doughnut shop in Texas. Seated at a table near him were a young farm couple. He was wearing overalls ...

3682. God of Wrath and Grace

Genesis 6:1-8:22

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... wrong? One never knows when it could be too late to repent. The first truth we must see in the Noah story is this: God’s wrath is a fearful reality. The other truth we must see is this: The Last Word With God is Always Grace. Grace means undeserved love, unmerited favor. There is an ark in every flood, and a rainbow after every storm. The last word in our text is not about judgment but about grace. See verse 18, “But I will establish my covenant with you; and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons ...

3683. Reconciliation

Luke 23:26-43

Sermon

Burton F. Blair

... us out of Paradise. We spend all of our time trying to find our way back to Paradise. Jesus said it well. He said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind" (Matthew 22:37). We are to see, ... to be God’s person. God is to be our center of being. But we are sinners. We have said, "No!" to God’s love and care. Of course, with every act of sin, there is a consequence. Sin - regardless of name - brings the dreadful condition called "separation"! We ...

3684. Reconciling Palms and Thorns

Isaiah 50:1-11

Sermon

Donald Macleod

... he set his face like a flint to go to Jerusalem, that before the crucial encounter between evil and the redeeming and reconciling love of God would be resolved, it would take inevitably the shape of the Cross. For his mission was to turn all humankind from ... to Uganda with my life!" This is the kind of life intimated by a faithful observance of Lent. This is the way the divine love acts. It identifies itself with us in Christ so that by faith we can go on identifying ourselves in his mission with him. And ...

3685. What Does God Expect Of You?

Micah 6:1-8

Sermon

Robert Allen

... are very few verses in the Bible that are better known than Micah 6:8. It is a verse that attempts to answer the question, "What does God expect of You?" Micah asks: ... and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God? This particular passage is a profound statement of faith. It is known as one of the four mountainpeaks of spiritual faith in the Old Testament. It presents religion in an easy and understandable style. Micah points out that the ...

3686. A Season Of Joy

Luke 2:8-20

Sermon

Robert Allen

... much more resourceful ... much more sophisticated ... much more artistic. He had his Son born of a simple peasant girl. And the place of the Baby’s birth wasn’t in a big palace. It was in a stable where the cattle and other animals looked on. Everyone loves a baby and there is a certain joy which fills our hearts when we hear of the birth of a baby. The shepherds were the first to hear of Jesus’ birth. They were watching over their flocks in the fields when they were suddenly startled with an angelic ...

3687. The Ten Commandments

Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

Brett Blair

... the negative and put them in the positive: Do unto others what you would have them do unto you, the golden rule. In other words, love requires us to take action. It is not enough simply to refrain from coveting what our neighbor has. If we want to be please ... to go the second mile. But to go the second mile you must first go the first. The Ten Commandments represent the first mile. Love represents the second mile. Both are needed; both are necessary. One is law, the other is grace. One is duty, the other is ...

3688. Stewards and the Hungry

Matthew 25:31-46

Sermon

Jerry L. Schmalemberger

... the Marshall Plan after World War II. Perhaps it could work now as well. Communism gets its best foothold with people who are oppressed, poor, and hungry. Perhaps our best defense is to feed and set free these who could otherwise be our enemies. Jesus said to love your enemies, turn the other cheek. The Apostle Paul said, "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink" (Romans 12:20). Let us witness for a moment what some have seen with their own eyes. Standing together at the feeding ...

3689. Stewards of Life, Death, and Beyond

Matthew 6:19-24

Sermon

Jerry L. Schmalemberger

... fact that we die reminds us that we are finite and not infinite. It reminds us that we are mortal and not immortal gods. I love the story of Abraham’s death as reflected from the Old Testament: "Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age, an ... recently died of cancer. She said while in the hospital, "I’m ready to go any time. I’ve had a good life and a loving family. They told me I had sixty days to live when we finished the chemotherapy. I finished the sixty days last week. Harry says, ‘We ...

3690. A Shepherd Who Became a Sovereign

2 Samuel 12:1-31

Sermon

R. Blaine Detrick

... backs on God, when we do something we know is wrong. Yet how easy it is, under the impulse and passion of the moment, to say, "Oh, just this one time. I can get away with it." This story reveals again that even the best of men - even those who love God and worship him, who praise God and serve him - even they can yield to temptation and fall into appalling sin. No matter who we are - at any time in history, at any place in the world - the Bible warns: "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he ...

3691. How Can We Meet Grief?

2 Samuel 18:19--19:8

Sermon

Edward Chinn

... . She tried to get information out of him about the death of the town’s richest man. "You knew him well," she cooed. "How much wealth did he leave?" The old lawyer tipped his hat and replied, "All of it, madam, all of it!" Not only do our loved ones leave their wealth behind; they leave behind them, too, the memory of their words and their example. In quiet moments, we reflect with gratitude on what their lives have meant on us to our own journey. During the Civil War, there was a stockade at Andersonyule ...

3692. Epiphany 6

2 Kings 5:1-27, 1 Corinthians 9:1-27, Mark 1:40-45

Bulletin Aid

Paul A. Laughlin

... us to open our hearts in boundless compassion; that we may minister to all people in your name, and carry the Gospel in word and deed throughout our own society and the entire world. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen Prayer of Confession Most merciful and loving God, we confess that we have let our own prejudices and petty loyalties get in the way of our effective ministry to all peoples of the world. We have focused on people whose nationalities, lifestyles, values, and needs are most like ours, and have all ...

3693. "Why Belong to Church?"

John 14:15-31

Sermon

... days. V. I should belong to the church because of hope. There is a hope in the church that lives when promises are dead and that paves the way for progress. It is a glorious hope and a lively hope that envisions peace and social justice: that men can still love each other as Jesus taught them too. It is a hope for all time to come and a hope for eternity. The great hope that cast its anchor behind Jesus Christ in a pessimistic, chaotic, dismal day - when men seem to be at each others throats and when hatred ...

3694. God Isn’t Dead - Death Is Dead

Mark 16:1-20

Sermon

Charles L. Koester

... 000 years ago. He himself said of this earthshaking event, "Because I live, you shall live also." His joyous and powerful message is the glorious assertion and truth of God’s promise to a troubled world and a sick people. It is God’s personal word of love to you. "Because I live, you shall live also." Once, for all, and forever, death is dead! Yet, as we hear the gospel proclamation this morning, the haunting question still nags at us. Alive again? Can it really be true? The women at the empty tomb were ...

3695. Joseph

Drama

Charles L. Koester

... , to your medicine cabinets? "Emmanuel, God with us," the Angel said ... my Mary, the mother of God’s Son, and me ... me, the stepfather of the Son of God. Incredible! A story or the truth? I could not comprehend it at all! Yet, one thing I knew ... I loved Mary deeply, with my whole being. I wanted her for my wife; I would have to believe her story and what I had seen and heard, comprehensible or not. Shortly before the child was to be born, we received word of an enrollment for taxation. The Romans, who ...

3696. Why Christmas?

Isaiah 8:11-22

Sermon

Theodore L. Yewey

... should be boiled with his own Christmas pudding and burned with a stake of holly through his heart! ... There is only one thing in the world more ridiculous than Merry Christmas and that is the thought of a home with love as its center.... Merry Christmas! ... Friends! ... Love! ... What could be more idiolic? Bah! Humbug!" So says Ebenezer Scrooge of Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol. We cringe at such sharp and cruel statements. They slam against us like the direct hit of a snowball square in the face ...

3697. OUR LORD FORSAKEN

Sermon

E. Jerry Walker

... They toil not neither do they spin, and yet I say to you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed as one of these." He had said this to demonstrate the deep significance of his teaching about God’s care and love, but with the thought, bitter sorrow was renewed. Where now was this loving Father? How could he have let this dreadful thing come to pass? At the base of the hill was an enlarged cave with a huge sealing stone at one side. The men carried their burden into its dark depths, the women close ...

3698. Academics, Fanatics, and Other Disciples

Mark 1:14-20

Sermon

Maurice A. Fetty

... to memories of faded realities. If we Christians are going to stop retreating from the world with our tail between our legs, and turn around and lead, we are going to have to get smart. We are going to have to get a "thinking man's" religion again, to love God with our minds as well as our emotions and sentiments. To be sure, true religion has to do with the heart, with the feelings and emotions, with, as Pascal said, the reasons of the heart, which the mind (that is, the cold, rational mind) knows not of ...

3699. An Unusual Legacy

2 Samuel 23:1-7

Sermon

Roger Prescott

... one "Peanuts" comic strip Lucy comes up to Charlie Brown and says, "Yes sir, Charlie Brown, would you like to have been Abraham Lincoln?" "Well, now, I don’t think so," he replies slowly; "I’m having a hard enough time being just plain Charlie Brown." I love it! I love it! God does not expect us to be persons other than ourselves. But he does expect us to make full use of our given abilities and to live lives of integrity and faithfulness wherever we are in our little corner of the earth. Even though he ...

3700. Paul of Tarsus

2 Corinthians 12:1-10

Drama

Michael L. Sherer

... to explain it, but there is something inside me that drives me to keep going, even when my enemies do their worst. When I became aware of the fact that Christ would give me strength to do what he had called me to, I realized nobody could stop his love working through me. You asked if I found my ministry exciting - or frightening. I must answer, honestly, some of both. If you decide to join me, you should expect the same. There’s much to be done. Those of us who know what treasure Christ has given us will ...

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