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 4151 to 4175 of 5000 results

4151. The Discipleship Question: Do You Wish To Go Away?

John 6:60-71

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... : The Challenge of Christian Living. In it, Purdy suggests that we need a new metaphor for the Christian life. He points out the inadequacy of the old metaphors such as "a soldier in God's army," "a scholar in the school of Christ," "a traveler a long the Christian way," "a citizen of the commonwealth; "and a member of Christ's body." Each of these metaphors has served us well in the past, Purdy says, but they are not as useful for today. The metaphor Purdy recommends with much vitality is "Hearers of the ...

4152. The Medicine Of A Cheerful Heart

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... a healing medicine for body and soul. The ancient writer of this proverb knew what it has taken medical science a long time to discover -- that laughter is a healing medicine for body and soul. "I've been fascinated by Norman Cousins testimony ... river. Another man, seeing him there, got out on the bridge with him and said, "Now, let's talk about this." After talking for a long time, they both jumped into the river." That story reminded me of this saying, "Show me a guy who has all his problems behind him, ...

4153. Fair Weather Friends

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... since you talked to another person about the Christian faith? Do your friends, those persons with whom you socialize regularly know how important your faith is to you? Is your faith important enough to share? Do your children know that salvation is their most precious possession? How long has it been since you shared your faith with a friend that as far as you know is not a Christian? Now, here is the clincher: Do you have a friend who may now know you are a Christian. Last Sunday, Rick Kirchoff preached on ...

4154. The Need To Pay Attention

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... direction. Where would you have stopped to spend some time in reflection as you read this 20th chapter of Proverbs? How long would it take you to get through it if you stopped at every point that begged your attention? I invite you ... my father (who knows more than anyone else in the whole world)What God was like.He did not know.I think if I had lived as long as my mother or father, I would know something about God!" (James W. Moore, "Loyalty to the Family") How poignant! Think about it. Can your children look ...

4155. The Heart -- Our Mirror

Proverbs 25:1-28

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... cannot compete in the big league on onion farming when you are spending chunks of every day caring for a wife who has polio. John and Margie Cooper had a 40th wedding anniversary and someone who did not know John very well asked him to explain his long devotion to Margie. "I am a Christian," he said, "and we try to keep our promises. Besides, I love her." When Margie died, their son, Dale, asked John how he had done what he had done all those years. "I never thought about doing anything else," John replied ...

4156. Putting the Puzzle Together

John 6:60-71

Sermon

King Duncan

... friends are blondes. And there is a sexist element to such jokes, I will admit. But sometimes one comes a long that's really funny. A certain young lady calls her boyfriend and says, "Please come over here and help me ... the magazine, then cutting it into pieces. Then he had the little boy try to put the pieces back together. He thought this would occupy the boy for a long time, but he was wrong. In a short time, the boy had the page reassembled. His Dad asked how he had done it so quickly. The boy replied that ...

4157. If Only... Next Time

Isaiah 43:1-13

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

A young man who had made it big had been away from home a long time traveling to exotic places all over the world. He had not been very attentive to his widowed ... and instantaneously relieved of all their problems. But when they finally see that it's not going to be that way at all, when they finally see that it's going to be a long and difficult journey into new life, then they procrastinate and rationalize and give good reasons why they can't go on. But he said the real reasons they don't go on is because ...

4158. From Hurting to Helping

Mark 10:46-52

Sermon

King Duncan

... . Then two of her grandchildren at ages 2 and 4 were in a near-fatal auto crash. In the same year her son Sterling suffered three heart attacks. Then on March 18, 1991, her youngest son Peter, at the age of 27, and having battled chronic depression for 10 long years, walked to a pond about a mile from home, a place where he used to go to meditate, and put a bullet through his own head. At first Antoinette thought she would die too. She never believed she could survive the death of one of her children. She ...

4159. And the Word Is...Love

Mark 12:28-34

Sermon

King Duncan

... asked him to make two identical copies of the ring. After his death each of his sons was presented with a ring. Well, it wasn’t long before each of the sons figured out that his brothers also had a ring and therefore two of them had to be fakes. Only one of ... be your loving and faithful husband; in plenty and in want, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness, and in health, for as long as we both shall live.’ "And that’s when it happened," says Tom Tewell. "God’s Spirit penetrated those groomsmen, and they ...

4160. The Hinge of History

Luke 3:1-20

Sermon

J. Ellsworth Kalas

... All the words recorded from his lips would hardly constitute three paragraphs in our daily paper, or the time of a long commercial on television. Yet his role is so significant that the Gospel writer lists seven historical figures to identify the ... forgiveness of sins" (v. 3b). He became a hinge of history. I think the common people discovered him first, especially those whose hearts longed for a deeper knowledge of God. Soon, people by the hundreds were beating a pathway to the wilderness to see and hear ...

4161. God's Sneak Attack

Luke 2:1-7

Sermon

David J. Kalas

... years old the first time I got to be in a Christmas pageant. I played the part of a shepherd at our church during the Christmas Eve service that year. I didn't have any lines, but I remember that I had to kneel on one knee for a very long time. The whole chancel area of our sanctuary had been transformed into a living nativity scene. There in the center was the manger, with Mary and Joseph on either side. Then we, the shepherds, came up along on one side. Next, the three gift-bearing wise men came up on ...

4162. Jesus, Desirous

Luke 13:31-35

Sermon

Frank G. Honeycutt

... at this man hanging on the cross, his arms eternally outstretched, the span of his reach on that wood will begin to resemble the loving wings of a mother hen, gathering up her chicks in a love that doesn't make sense but breaks our hearts if we look long enough. Jesus does not count on the world ever seeing or understanding such love. And even as he hangs there with wings nailed to a tree, he cannot make us love him. Cannot make us accept his love. But his desire for us is there. Always, eternally there ...

4163. Salvation Oracle

Isaiah 43:1-13

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

... out of Egypt, that is, he bought her back out of slavery, which is what redemption means (cf. Leviticus 25:47-49). And so too he redeemed each one of us out of slavery to sin and death, and he redeemed the person who is to be baptized. Long before our baptisms, long before any one of us had done anything to deserve it (cf. Romans 5:8), God redeemed us from sin and death by the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In our baptisms, therefore, the God who bought us back calls us by our names and claims us ...

4164. Portrayal of Holiness

Isaiah 6:1-13

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

... to Judah will simply make Judeans more stubborn in their rebellion against God, until they deserve even more the judgments that are coming upon them. Isaiah hears from the first that his mission will result in failure! And he cries out in agony, "How long, O Lord?" How long must he preach such a Word? Would we undertake ministries for God if we were told from the beginning that they would be failures? Faith, it seems, is always up against opposition, and does not seem to make much difference in our world ...

4165. Return and Be Forgiven

Isaiah 55:1-13

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

... that bread of life and that living water, don't we? As our scripture lesson says, we have for many days spent our money for that which does not feed our hunger for goodness and our labor for that which does not satisfy our longings. Buying and selling, laboring and longing, the world's rewards have not fed our souls, and there remains within us a restless desire -- for what? Surely for God who created us to live in fellowship with him always. God offers us that loving fellowship, that deep sense that we are ...

4166. Servant Song

Isaiah 50:1-11

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

... God would help him endure the suffering and calumny and that in the end, he would be vindicated and proven right. And the fact that we now have his words in our Bible shows that his faith was not in vain. Sometimes prophets had to wait a long time for their words to be proven true. When we average Christians approach this lectionary passage, however, most often we interpret it as the words of Jesus Christ. It was not written by the Second Isaiah with Christ in mind; the incarnation had not yet taken place ...

4167. Passover and The Lord's Supper

Exodus 12:1-30

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

... of travelers in a hurry: the unblemished lamb of a sheep or goat, roasted on an open fire, instead of in a cooking pot; bread without leaven, because leavened bread takes too long to rise; bitter herbs that are some kind of uncultivated vegetable, pulled up from the ground. Moreover, the participants are to be prepared for flight, with their long robes pulled up and girded, their sandals on their feet, and their staffs in their hands. The whole lamb is to be eaten and any parts remaining are to be burned ...

4168. The Book that Changes Lives

Nehemiah 7:73b--8:18

Sermon

King Duncan

... in verse nine, “All the people wept when they heard the words of the law.” They wept! They were moved to tears to hear this reading of the Law. Surely these people could say with the Psalmist, “O how I love Thy law! It is my meditation all day long “ (Ps. 119: 97). This book that you and I so take for granted has been a source of both light and delight to millions of people through the ages. It has been the source of inspiration, first for the children of Abraham, and then for the followers of Jesus ...

4169. Escape from the Island of Spiritual Sloth

Matthew 6:16-18

Sermon

Frank G. Honeycutt

... -sounding word we no longer use. To my knowledge it appears only once in the NRSV. But even in the newer translations there are delightful allusions to slothfulness. One of my favorites is from Proverbs: "Go to the ant, you lazybones; consider its ways and be wise ... How long will you lie there, O lazybones? When will you rise from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want, like an armed warrior" (6:6, 9-11).1 ...

4170. Unworthy or Not?

Luke 5:1-11

Sermon

King Duncan

... to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sits down and teaches the crowds from the boat. When he finishes speaking, he says to Simon, "Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch." Simon answers, "Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets." When they did this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and ...

4171. The Sufficiency of Christ

Philippians 4:10-20

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... and support others, though that may sometimes be the case. But, that we act on behalf of each other, knowing that we act on behalf of and for the sake of Christ. A woman went to the coffee hour after church one Sunday. She stood there alone for a long time. Finally, someone went up to her and asked her, “Are you a stranger to this church?” She said, “I’ve been a stranger to this church for 22 years.” Isn’t that painful? That shouldn’t be! But it happens – in this church and in every church ...

4172. A Longer Stride and a Larger Embrace

Galatians 2:11-21

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... as you have helped sharpen it. I don’t know to whom the Holy Spirit first gave the word that we are using as a kind of descriptive slogan, but I’m grateful for someone’s sanctified attention: WHERE HEAD AND HEART GO HAND IN HAND. ATS has long been a center for prayer. Both the college and the seminary were born in prayer. I relish the stories out of our history of our predecessor leaders’ complete dependence on prayer. There’s one about the building of Estes Chapel. It was during the war. Building ...

4173. Alive In Christ

Colossians 2:6-23

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... to us. That’s what Paul is saying. I’ve seen that power at work, and so have you. Why don’t we exercise our faith and claim it more often -- the working power of God in the past brought into the present. I was thumbing through a folder not long ago -- a folder in which I keep very special things -- notes and letters that people have written me. Some fantastic stories that challenge my life. Things that I just want to hang on to and refer to now and then. In that folder I came across a letter. It was ...

4174. All This and Heaven Too

Luke 18:18-30

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... the Gospel is that our justification leads to eternal life. So when you put those two things together you have powerful cause to celebrate. Put simply, it means this: Pardon for the past, power for the present, and promise for the future. For a long period of time, some years ago, my daily devotional discipline included what I called Keeping Company with the Saints. I had been invited to join the staff of The Upper Room to direct a ministry, primarily calling people to a life of prayer, providing direction ...

4175. Imitators of God

Ephesians 4:17--5:21

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... newspaper article about a teacher who had taught in the public schools in Los Angeles. She had been a good teacher. But then she went to start her own family and left the profession. She and her husband had three children. They raised them well and not too long ago they sent the last one off to college. This teacher decided she wanted to go back to the teaching profession. She applied and was accepted, and she wrote in the Los Angeles Times about her first day back in a 7th grade class, after nearly twenty ...

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