Dictionary: Face
Synonyms: countenance, physiognomy, profile, features, expression, facial expression, look, appearance, air, manner, bearing, guise, cast, aspect, impression, grimace, scowl, wry face, wince, frown, glower, smirk, pout, moue, side, flank, vertical, surface, plane, facet, wall, elevation, dial, display, (outward) appearance, nature, image, front, show, act, false front, facade, exterior, mask, masquerade, pretence, charade, pose, illusion, smokescreen, veneer, camouflage, respect, honour, esteem, regard, admiration, approbation, acclaim, approval, favour, appreciation, popularity, estimation, veneration, awe, reverence, deference, recognition, prestige, standing, status, dignity, glory, kudos, cachet, effrontery, audacity, nerve, gall, brazenness, brashness, shamelessness, look out on, front on to, look towards, be facing, have/afford/command a view of, look over/across, open out over, look on to, overlook, give on to, give over, be opposite (to), accept, come to accept, become reconciled to, reconcile oneself to, reach an acceptance (of), get used to, become accustomed to, adjust to, accommodate oneself to, acclimatize oneself to, be confronted by, be faced with, encounter, experience, come into contact with, run into, come across, meet, come up against, be forced to contend with, beset, worry, distress, cause trouble to, trouble, bother, confront, burden, brave, face up to, meet head-on, dare, defy, oppose, resist, withstand, cover, clad, skin, overlay, dress, pave, put a facing on, laminate, inlay, plate, coat, line
Antonyms: dodge, fear, back, give way, back down, dodge, avoid, throw in the towel, withdraw, cave in, retreat, succumb to, lay down one's arms, throw in the sponge, defer, submit, escape, bashfulness, shun, evade, elude
Showing 401 to 425 of 456 results
401. Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Sweet
Leonard Sweet
The creation story in Genesis 1 has been variously identified as history, science, myth, theology and cult liturgy. We have grown accustomed to seeing this text well-guarded by sharply defined and separate camps - its borders closed to any mediating scouts. In the old model "creationist" war against "evolutionists," "creation science" rams into archaeological research and biblical literalists hold out against historical-critical scholars. Even within supposedly kindred camps there is suspicion and ...
Sermon
James Merritt
There is a true, but old story about a pastor who went to see a play one time that featured a very famous British actor and the theater was just packed. He noticed that a lot of the people there were members of his church who hardly ever attended church. He happened to meet with this actor the next day and he asked him this question, "How do you draw such large crowds by presenting fiction while I present facts and hardly anyone comes to here me?" The actor, who had been at this man's church before, said " ...
403. Parenting 101
Ephesians 6:1-4
Sermon
James Merritt
There was a young couple who had just purchased brand new appliances for their house, and they decided to give their old refrigerator to their parents. Since they lived many miles apart, they just shipped the refrigerator to their parents. A few days later the phone rang, her mother said, "Honey, we want to send you a check for the refrigerator." The daughter said, "No, Mom, it's a gift. We want you to have it." The mother said, "But you could have sold it and made money." The daughter said, "Look, Mom, ...
404. A Guide for Growth
Philippians 1:1-11
Sermon
Maxie Dunnam
My friend, Don Shelby, minister of First United Methodist Church in Santa Monica, California, has told a moving story which introduces the sermon today. It happened when Don was a pastor in San Diego. One weekday morning, on arrival at the church, he was called to the sanctuary. The custodian wanted him to see a strange offering which had been placed at the very center of the altar. Upon examination they discovered it to be a pair of brown corduroy trousers, a belt, a white T-shirt, a pair of tan suede ...
Sermon
Maxie Dunnam
A man went into a department store, picked up a game of chess took it to a salesman and said, “Tell me how to play it as you wrap the package.” That’s descriptive of our situation. We want to know how to do it quickly. We don’t want to take the time to follow each necessary step. No fascination is keener than our fascination with short-cuts. We want to be “saints suddenly”. We dream long for instant maturity. And that’s what I want to talk about today as we continue our consideration of Christian growth. ...
Sermon
Maxie Dunnam
There is a story told about two men sitting together on an airplane. As some are wont to do, when strapped together 30,000 feet above where they ought to be, they begin to get acquainted. One man was an astronomer, the other a theologian. After a while, each began to share his understanding of the other’s discipline. The astronomer said, “I believe that all religion can be summed up in the phrase, “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” The theologian, somewhat miffed at this simplistic ...
Sermon
Maxie Dunnam
Circumstances sometimes call us to do strange things — things-we would not otherwise do. Circumstances also cause us to do things we should have done but never got around to doing them before, like learning that we might have cancer, might provoke us to write a will. That’s really too serious an illustration for the story I’m about to tell. Two out-of-town visitors were walking along a street in New York City late one night. One of the pair, wary of the reputation of city streets at night, kept glancing ...
Sermon
Maxie Dunnam
Here again chapter divisions do not adequately communicate content and continuity. Verses 24—26 of Chapter 5 could easily be a part of this chapter because Paul is talking about how the Spirit governs our lives in our social relationships. As indicated in our commentary on Gal. 5:13—15, Paul calls us to be servants. This requires more than service when, where and to whom we choose; it is a style of life. We willfully become servants. The constraining force of Christ love replaces the binding force of law ...
Sermon
Lee Griess
It's no wonder that the image of the shepherd was so frequently on the lips of our Savior. It's no surprise he used that illustration so often. For the image of a shepherd and the sheep was very much a part of Jesus' heritage and culture. Abraham, the father of the Jewish people, was the keeper of great flocks of sheep. Moses was called by God to be God's deliverer of the ancient Jewish people while living as a shepherd and tending the flocks of his father-in-law. And David, the greatest king of the Jewish ...
410. Caught in the Middle
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
Sermon
John N. Brittain
It has become very popular to talk about how stressed out we are because we (both individually and collectively) are caught in the middle of too many demands and stretched too thin. For some years, we have heard about the "super-mom" syndrome of trying to juggle a full professional life with the many duties of motherhood. More recently, there is a lot of talk about the increasing time demands the workplace is putting on everyone, creating conflicts not just between work and family but between work and ...
Sermon
Mary S. Lautensleger
When a carnival came to town, the strong man was one of the most popular attractions. One of his tricks was to squeeze an orange dry with his bare hand. Then he would offer $1,000 to anyone in the audience who could manage to squeeze even one more drop from that orange. Having nothing to lose, people were always ready to accept the challenge to make an easy $1,000, but they always failed. They would squeeze and squeeze, but their efforts were fruitless. Then, an older man stepped up to try his strength. ...
412. Luke 18: 9-14
Luke 18:9-14
Sweet
Leonard Sweet
We are all familiar with the axiom, “You are what you eat.” It is a declaration that assumes the choices we make about what we put into our mouths reveals something about the rest of the choices we make in our lives. The story told in today’s gospel text suggests that Jesus used a different indicator to examine the internal motivators guiding a life. Jesus’ example finds that prayer what people pray for, how they pray, where they pray reveals more about the state of our soul, the focus of our life, than ...
Sermon
John Smylie
Our Lord's new commandment, to love one another as he has loved us, is easier said than done. Love is such an overused word in our society, and even in sermons, that it's sometimes difficult to get a grip on what it is that love really means. Perhaps our Lord's love is particularly difficult to get a handle on because of the preconceived notions we may have about him. Sunday school images of the mild and gentle Jesus may come to mind: Never a harsh word spoken, a smile on his face, a sweetness in his ...
414. Yielding to Spiritual Maturity
Matthew 7:15-23, James 2:1-10 (11-13) 14-17
Sermon
Thomas Lentz
Peter Drucker has conducted management seminars for both businesses and churches. He says, "Leadership is not magnetic personality. That can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not making friends and influencing people; that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations." James is delivering a similar message. A person may profess to be a devout believer and may ...
Sermon
Richard Gribble
In 1950, sportswriters selected him as the greatest athlete of the first half of the twentieth century. He was a star in the National Football League, perfecting the dropkick as an effective scoring weapon, and played professional baseball for seven years. He was a star in basketball, track and field, swimming, and lacrosse. Jim Thorpe, a true All-American athlete, was the best there was. His recognition for a lifetime achievement in sports did not come, however, without help. Thorpe was born in 1886 in ...
416. Living to Please God
1 Thessalonians 2:1-16
Sermon
King Duncan
A surgeon says that one night during his residency he was called out of a sound sleep to the emergency room. Unshaven and with tousled hair, he showed up accompanied by an equally unpresentable medical student. In the ER they encountered the on-call medical resident and his student, both neatly attired in clean white lab coats. The medical resident said to his student, “You can always tell the surgeons by their absolute disregard for appearance.” Two evenings later, the same young surgical resident was at ...
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
There is a reason the disciples are best known as the “duh!-ciples.” Jesus hand-picked his own team, these twelve companions in ministry and mission. How could his chosen dozen have been so duh! and dumb? Come on, now. Don’t deny that this very thought has not crossed your mind at some point or another when reading any of the four gospels! From the safe distance of twenty centuries it is easy to look back self-importantly at Galilee and assert that, “If I’d been there I’d have ‘gotten it!’” Really? You ...
418. Enough Foolishness!
Ephesians 4:17--5:21
Sermon
King Duncan
Is there anyone in the room who has felt dumb in front of a computer? It’s happened to all of us at one time or another, I suspect. A technical support advisor received a call from a woman who had been told that her computer was infected by a virus! This alarmed her. She wanted to know how she could disinfect it. The tech advisor asked her what software she was using. She sounded a bit confused. What did he mean, software? After a few minutes on the phone, the tech support guy realized that she had ...
Sermon
Frank Ramirez
It was over forty years ago, in the middle of December 1963, when my aging father retired from the Navy. He was only 37 years old at the time, but to a nine-year-old that sounded pretty old! He and mom packed us into the car and we moved from Nor­folk, Virginia, back to our native California, taking the old High­way 66, a two-lane highway that could really cause motion sick­ness at times! Dad made sure we stopped at important places from the sights of Washington DC to the austere majesty of mountainous ...
Sermon
Richard Gribble
One day a man went to his son's bedroom and found him sitting on his bed with a whole stack of comic books around him. The father said to his son, "Matthew, where did you get the comic books?" Matthew responded, "I took them out of the library." "You took them out of the library? You mean you stole them from the library?" The boy responded, "Yes." The father called the library and said he was going to march his son immediately down with the comic books to apologize and to restore all he had stolen. After ...
421. Sing Praise
Colossians 1:15-23
Sermon
April Yamasaki
Theologian Karl Barth was once asked to sum up his life's work. Instead of quoting from one of his many books, sermons, or university lectures, he responded with the words of a children's song: "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so." Whether we sing a children's song like "Jesus Loves Me," or a great hymn of the church like "How Firm A Foundation," the songs we sing can express what we believe. In turn, they also shape our understanding of God, of who we are as human beings, and of the ...
422. The New Census
Ephesians 1:1-14
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
From our first days in school, or on the playground, we learn the “Count Off.” To keep track of a classroom full of kids, one of the first things first graders learn from busy teachers is to “count off.” Especially during fire drills or field trips, it is imperative that every child be accounted for. The presence of every one of them is assured by reaching the proper total number. Besides learning to count off to get a total tally, sometimes the kids “count off” by two’s or four’s, a fast, easy way to ...
Sermon
King Duncan
Some of you can remember back in the 1970s when mood rings were a big fad (sort of like the pet rock). They were especially popular with young girls. The theory behind the mood ring was that body heat fluctuates with the emotional state of the wearer . . . and the ring was attuned to the body’s temperature. None of this was ever established scientifically, of course, but, like most fads, it provided some fun for people especially for comedians and cartoonists. For example, in a 1976 Peanuts comic strip, ...
Sermon
James Merritt
You have fired up the grill, got some big juicy steaks on there, you are just about ready to take them off, some grease from the fat falls on those hot coals, flames spit up and catches your finger on fire. Sitting right next to the grill is a glass of ice cold water that you have been drinking on a hot summer day. So, finger on fire, glass of ice-cold water – what do you do with your finger? Exactly! You would immerse it into that water! Normally, water extinguishes fire, but in this case baptismal water ...
Sermon
R. Robert Cueni
Today we observe All Saints. Because it is an important celebration, we need to come to some agreement on what is meant by a "saint." If you Google the word, you discover many different definitions and understandings. Among some Protestant groups, every Christian becomes a saint upon joining the "Church Triumphant." In that understanding, All Saints honors and remembers all who have died in Christ and sainthood is the designation of all deceased Christians. Among other Protestants, saints are understood, ...
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