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 4126 to 4150 of 4981 results

4126. Home Alone

Revelation 21:10, 22-27

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... end up bonding with a set of images: your parents, whom you don't know; the servants, whose real lives and feelings you know nothing about; and the legendary family name, which somehow feeds everybody" ("Drowning in Wealth," Psychology Today, April 1989, 32). ... which they have been trained" (Charles Lindholm, Charisma [Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1990], 182). Little wonder that our families feel like pressure cookers. The demands on the home are getting greater as the ability of the home to meet ...

4127. Speak Up for Forgiveness

Hebrews 13:1-8

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... mean a water-rolling-off-the-back kind of disengagement from people or situations that hurt us. Quite the opposite. Forgiveness requires deep involvement with the offending party and situation. It requires facing up to and feeling the full brunt of the hurt. Hidden feelings do not have the necessary strength to forgive. Master storyteller/pastor/theologian/novelist Walter Wangerin, Jr., divides forgiveness into six steps in his wonderful book As for Me And My House: Crafting Your Marriage to Last (Nashville ...

4128. Pit and Rock

Colossians 1:11-20

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... 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 of our family tree to measure how far we've come or to see just how much we have to rejoice over. The Foot ...

4129. Three Wise Gifts

Matthew 2:13-23

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... 20 1990). His co-worker at Rodale Press, Mike McGrath, tells of his horror when learning of Rodale's death. What I learned - and learned hard - is that you can never really be sure that you'll ever see someone again. So it's best not to leave business undone; feelings unspoken. Bob's passing has taught me that when we say goodbye to someone, it may well be the last time we see that person. It probably won't be; but it could be. Anyone who walks out a door just might be walking out of your life. Forever. So ...

4130. Five Steps to Takeoff

Mark 1:14-20

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... for us today in the spiraling kairos time it inhabits. Living in the tension of this coiled power, Christians should be able to feel both the power of God's presence and the pull of worldly conflicts. Like the pilots of those aircraft, we sit perched on ... in this kind of music, make them available in print, or use an overhead and put them on a screen.] I am a man who hides his feelings. I don't think I can keep from revealing All the thoughts inside of me That are out of control. So Lord, I'm letting go. There ...

4131. Prophets or Professionals?

Deuteronomy 18:14-22

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... are talking to someone you actually know and care about, you respond to the caller with conversation. Before you know it, you've spent 10 minutes listening to a long-winded sales pitch. If the caller is really good, he or she then tries to make you feel guilty for taking up all his or her time by listening, and shame you into signing up for whatever the person is selling. Being polite doesn't help. Politeness only eggs the person on. Being firm only makes the caller more determined. The only recourse we are ...

4132. The Monster Under Megan's Bed

John 6:1-21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... messing with the "Menu" button. Those same traits keep Megans clicking away at the mouse, moving from screen to screen, as they "feel" their way through a new CD-ROM game. The ease with which even the youngest children seem to pick up and master ... in their souls. It's time to sit at the feet of our children. 3. Peacemaking The sensibility and connectedness our children feel toward the natural world is carried over into a realization of the connectedness and interdependence all people share with one another. ...

4133. The Widow's Might

Mark 12:38-44

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... lose the back seat ... but regain your youth and your sex appeal. Get the designer label instead of the knockoff ... and feel superior and elegant. The standards that calibrate our 21st-century scales weigh out the gift of the poor widow and find ... ,500 of whom were kids. They did VacationBibleSchool, sports camps, drama and various other activities with the children. Lori says: "I could feel God working through our hands as we played with the children, our mouths as we verbally shared his love, and our eyes ...

4134. Give me a C...

1 Corinthians 1:18-31

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... form of "top that" - one that almost seems to suggest a link with Paul's focus on an apparent weakness as a source of strength. This is called the "we were so poor..." boast. Middle-class adults are most prone to this kind of bragging. In order to make ourselves feel good about where we are on the economic ladder, we emphasize just how deep the hole was that we started in. "We were so poor, I never had a new pair of shoes until I went into the army." "We were so poor, putting screens in the windows was our ...

4135. Sleep Loose

2 Corinthians 13:11-13

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... to accept that God is love for us. The joy and bliss of the Holy Spirit is ours. 6. Join the cloud of witnesses Paul invoked the presence of "all the saints" in his farewell to the Corinthians. Likewise, we must feel a part of all the saints, the entire community of faith. It is in feeling the strength of all that support that we can relax and "sleep loose." Nancy Wilson is one of my favorite singers. There is a T-shirt that says "Aged to Perfection." Nancy Wilson's singing of the blues, jazz and Big ...

4136. These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

Matthew 10:24-39

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... people into this idea slowly. Why not start with this? Try a karaoke moment in your sermon this week, and ask the people in your congregation to name some of their favorite things. Start out generally any favorite thing a food, a place, a feeling, a person. What are the little things that make their lives worthwhile? Columnist Jim Shahin asked readers to send him a list of their "favorite things," which he defined as "those things that make life worth living." The response was incredible. People thanked him ...

4137. Do You Look Good On Wood?

Matthew 16:21-28

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... to follow Jesus, you had better look good on wood." Would you look good on wood? Do today's churches offer a faith strong enough that it can command a sacrifice? Do you have enough faith to offer up a genuine sacrifice for Christ's sake? Can you imagine the feel of the splinters as you take up your cross and follow him? Can a church in today's self-centered, self-help culture ask its people to sacrifice something for the sake of the gospel? Jesus' challenge to all would-be disciples requires more than a ...

4138. The Lord Needs You

Jeremiah 1:4-10

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... God who created at least 200 billion, billion stars? The God who created this galaxy (Milky Way), a galaxy so big that it takes a light ray 100,000 years to pass from one end to another? And how many galaxies did God create? Countless. Perhaps we would all feel a little less threatened if we would remember that, at one time, the Lord even had need of an ass. (And no, we're not trying to make a complete equivalence here, but let your own conscience be your guide!) A beast of burden. An animal, the symbol of ...

4139. And Again I Say...Amen!

Luke 6:27-36

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... face. To them you can turn the other cheek. The problem is those who stab you in the back or who say nothing and go elsewhere. Keeping your enemies close at hand helps keep you at your critical best. Practitioners of some of the trendiest "feel good" therapies would cringe at Jesus' apparently masochistic suggestions in this week's gospel text. Why open yourself up to all that negative energy? But Jesus' advice wasn't to urge us to wallow in a sea of hurtful, negative experiences. By squarely facing the ...

4140. Stone Testaments

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... window that connects with your story this morning in a powerful way. Maybe you are trying to go through life solo, trying to be strong without bothering anybody, and you know that God made us to be part of teams, and there's a person here this morning that you feel God wants in your life more than you've let him or her. Whatever it is, I'm going to ask you to take your flower (stone) and to go to someplace or someone in this sanctuary, deposit your flower (stone) and say, "I mark you as a milestone in ...

4141. Never Give Up

Luke 13:1-9

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... denied he even knew him. But God never gave up. - The disciples all ran away. But God never gave up. To never give up should be the hallmark of every Christian. But it is not always easy to maintain hope in the face of a down-the-drain situation. Ever feel like Jeremiah: "For twenty-three years ... I have spoken persistently to you, but you have not listened" (25:3)? Have you been at it for 23 years? When the gardener in today's gospel text volunteers not to give up on the slow-to-fruit fig tree, he commits ...

4142. Who Are the Encouragers?

Luke 14:1, 7-14

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... whose moves were very guided for them, but a source of pressure and uncertainty in my work. Problems which I could have tackled with gusto under normal circumstances seemed to loom in all directions. Discouragement lurked around every corner, trying to capture my feelings. Prayer was no longer a contemplative luxury, but the only way to survive. My own intercessions were multiplied by the prayers of others. Friendships were deepened as I was forced to allow people to assure me with words I had preached for ...

4143. Fan the Flames

2 Timothy 1:1-14

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... mile, to give the extra coat. Love-perfect living recognizes that love is relational - it must be practiced, acted out, in relationship to others. Jesus knew it was easy to love the idea of "humanity," but very difficult to love a given individual. Contrary to what we may sometimes feel, it is our contact with others that fuels our faith. It is as though each person who touches us brings a log to throw on the fire. The more we reach out to others in love, the higher the flames of faith can climb. 3. A Self ...

4144. The Dailyness of Healing Measures

Luke 17:11-19

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... room physicians may someday save your life, you will never know them like you do your family physician. And they will never know you. It's just not their job. We all sort of like that kind of anonymity. It saves us the trouble of feeling too dependent upon another human being for our well-being. It's not surprising, therefore, that the nine lepers healed on their way to Jerusalem responded to their restored health much as most of us would. Undoubtedly, they were overjoyed and enthusiastic about their new ...

4145. Making Christmas Last - Sermon Starter

Luke 2:21-40

Illustration

Brett Blair

... reaching in his stocking to be sure that there is no more candy. In the background we see a table with a thoroughly picked turkey still sitting there. The caption on the cartoon reads simply: The morning after. Well, perhaps we feel a little that way. Perhaps we fell somewhat let down. If you feel that way it is quite understandable. Over the past weeks our emotions have been wound tighter than a toy doll. Our festivities have led up to near fever pitch. And then, suddenly, it is all over. Is it any wonder ...

4146. Mark 8:27-38

Mark 8:27-38

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... for Christ's sake, which is for the salvation of others, will find themselves securely part of an eternal relationship with God. The rhetorical questions in verses 36-37 highlight the fragile mortality of humanity and emphasize our dependency on the divine. Whatever gains we may feel we have made in this life, the old truism remains that "you can't take it with you." The value of our life was established before we were born. It is a gift we receive with our first breath, a gift we can never repay. Following ...

4147. Luke 4:1-13

Luke 4:1-13

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... of life or death for Jesus. It was more like the temptation an unguarded cupcake represents to a struggling dieter. The issue is not survival. The issue is willpower and a sense of purpose. The devil is advocating an "if-it-feels-good-do-it" philosophy that celebrates petty indulgences. But Jesus isn't biting. Preacher and exegete extraordinaire Fred B. Craddock, in his new commentary on Luke Interpretation series, [Louisville: John Knox Press], 1990), makes a fascinating observation about Luke's rendition ...

4148. Galatians 6:7-18

Galatians 6:7-18

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... of Christ, boasting and persecution are all sandwiched into these terse lines. The "marks of Jesus" he bears (v.17) are most likely the scars Paul has earned by preaching the truth of this "new creation" to an old and corrupt world. And despite the sternness of verse 17, Paul feels enough unity and camaraderie with those in the Galatian community to add the vocative "brother" (the NRSV adds "sisters" as well) to his usual closing blessing. Perhaps because of their foibles and follies, Paul ...

4149. 2 Kings 4:8-17

2 Kings 4:8-17

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... takes no offense at this, for her own architectural design has clearly defined her concern for the prophet's ritual cleanliness. The Shunammite's happiness centers on making other people happy. Her efforts on his behalf have been so unusually hospitable that this prophet feels the need to reciprocate the gift in some way. But his first offer is as awkward and unnecessary as his conversational style. The holy man reveals his political connections when he offers to speak on her behalf to the king or the area ...

4150. Luke 2:41-52

Luke 2:41-52

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... , all those special allowances granted very young children were gradually being revoked and replaced by greater expectations and responsibilities. Not yet a full adult under the law, at 12, Jesus was also no longer a child. What parent hasn't experienced "that sinking feeling" that Mary and Joseph felt the horror of realizing that your child is one place when in your mind he or she is somewhere altogether different? The scene Luke draws suggests that Joseph and Mary had made their pilgrimage with quite a ...

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