Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 426 to 450 of 832 results

Jeremiah 1:1-19

Sermon

King Duncan

... of the manhunt. It made him sad to see what he had done. Some time during the night Brian untied Ashley, and she asked him if she could do some reading. He asked her what she wanted to read, and she pulled out her Bible and a copy of Rick Warren’s best-selling book, A Purpose Driven Life. That night she opened the book to Chapter 33, her reading for the day. She read aloud the first paragraph. Brian interrupted, “Stop.” He said, “Read it again.” The paragraph raises the question: “What is your ...

427. Let Me Say That Again

John 14:15-31

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... - what in the world am I doing? On a particular day when my confusion was almost debilitating, I met Joy, a young Chinese student. She told me the story of her conversion. She was exuberant and wanted me to know that through a missionary she had gotten a copy of my Workbook of Living Prayer and that had played a tremendous role in sustaining and shaping her spiritual life. she said, “I worked for three years to get to Asbury, never dreaming that the person who wrote the book that had meant so much to me ...

428. Awake to Glory

Luke 9:28-36

Sermon

J. Ellsworth Kalas

... of Monday, November 23, 1654, he felt the reality of Jesus Christ in such intensity that he wrote: God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob. Not of the Philosophers and Scientists. Certainty, Certainty, Feeling Joy, Peace. God of Jesus Christ He copied on parchment the full witness of his experience and sewed it into the lining of his coat, where it was found by his servant after his death nearly eight years later. For Pascal the greatest reality was not what he discovered in laboratory experiments ...

429. Abraham and God's Promise

Genesis 15:1-18

Sermon

King Duncan

... spiritual conference centers in the country. Henrietta Mears was frustrated by not having a good single-volume introduction to the Bible that could help her students understand what it was all about, so she wrote one herself that sold hundreds of thousands of copies and continues to sell today, decades after her death. She did all these things and many more, despite doing them in a day when many people thought a woman had no business doing such things. Time and again she took the step of faith, and ...

430. A Time of Transition

Joshua 5:9-12

Sermon

King Duncan

... a whole lifetime.” Finzel continues, “Don’t laugh, my friend. Because the same amount of change projected ahead into our future won’t take four hundred years. It’ll take twenty‑five. Which means by the time your son or daughter picks up your dog‑eared copy of this book twenty‑five years from now, he or she will have the same vantage point you have right now over that hapless inhabitant of the 1600s.” (4) Scary, isn’t it? Business consultant Tom Peters suggests that each one of us is an R ...

431. What Is Required of Us?

Matthew 5:17-20

Sermon

Phil Thrailkill

... Most Jews heard long passages of Scripture read on the Sabbath and then commented on by teachers. Scripture was on scrolls and immensely expensive to reproduce. But now most people can read, even if they choose not to, and most homes have at least one copy of Scripture, even it it lies mostly unread. So in a real sense our access and our accountability are much higher than Jesus’ audience. Hear the promise and warning of Jesus in verse 19: “Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and ...

432. Going Hard against the Grain

Matthew 5:33-37

Sermon

Phil Thrailkill

... difference. One can then become two. These people also give up the right to hurt others who hurt them. They leave settling scores to God and refuse to be consumed by bitterness over old wounds. You simply can’t make them respond in kind. They know that to copy the tactics of their opponents is to become like them, which they refuse to do. They have learned that it is more fun to be like Jesus than to be like the devil! Over time they gain a reputation for peace-making and for coming up with outrageously ...

433. Facing Fears, Kingdom Style

Matthew 6:25-34

Sermon

Phil Thrailkill

... We are not fated, and the world is not ruled by luck and the stars and lucky charms and magical rituals. Such doctrines are in fact demonic. To know a God who already knows my needs is the beginning of freedom and responsibility. So if we are not to copy the pagans, what are we to do? The answer to which comes in verse 33 as a comprehensive program for the organization of life, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things (meaning whatever we need to do what God has called us to ...

434. To Live Is to Dance

John 10:1-21

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... - he said, I’ve been a piccolo trying to a play in the tuba section. When we really accept Christ, and receive the freedom he offers, we’re freed from the pressure of having to fit someone else’s image. Christ doesn’t turn out cookie-cut, carbon copy, people. He affirms us as unique, unrepeatable miracles of God. And he frees us so that we don’t allow the world or even other Christians to squeeze us into their mold. Life becomes a dance and we respond creatively. A second word I would suggest is ...

435. Pigs Get Slaughtered

Luke 12:13-21

Sermon

King Duncan

... walking very close to the line that separates the worshipers of God and the worshipers of mammon. Robert Fulghum is a best-selling author. His best-known book is titled All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. More than 15,000,000 copies of his books are in print, and they are sold around the world. Needless to say, he has done very well financially. In an interview several years ago with a Christian magazine called The Door, Fulghum reported that since his success, people are always saying ...

436. Grace for a Complaining People

Exodus 16:2-15

Sermon

Arley K. Fadness

... ?"4 Dr. Victor Frankl, a concentration camp survivor and a psychotherapist, wrote a wonderful book titled Man's Search For Meaning. The book is now in its 73rd printing. It has been published in twenty languages, and the English editions alone have sold over 2.5 million copies. When asked about the success of his book, Dr. Frankl replied, "I do not at all see in the best-seller status of my book so much an achievement and accomplishment on my part, as an expression of the misery of our time; if hundreds of ...

437. A Christian's Resumé

2 Corinthians 6:3-13

Sermon

Richard W. Ferris

It's time to update your resume! If you're a part of the workforce of the early twenty-first century, that's a common-sounding statement. Job security is almost nonexistent. Competitive wages might mean a couple dollars above minimum wage. Advancement could very well propose that for your good efforts you would be awarded more work for the same salary. Benefits rarely include 100 percent paid insurance and retirement fund, but rather offer you both at cost to be deducted from your paycheck. With those ...

438. Irrevocable Gifts

Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32

Sermon

Jeff Wedge

... is always the relative who thinks no one ever ages past the age of seven, and somehow manages to give gifts which are quite inappropriate. Or the clothing that is at least two sizes off, either too large or too small. Or the third or fourth copy of the same gift. Or almost anything that is not completely appropriate. To handle these problems, many stores set up special "gift return counters" on the day after Christmas to accommodate the long lines of customers who have gifts to return. Some people even give ...

439. Heaping Coals and Virtues

Romans 12:9-21

Sermon

Jeff Wedge

... could have trouble sustaining, just as some people have problems with passionate Christianity today. "Serve the Lord." This sounds like the simplest statement on this list to understand. Ironically, it is also one which presents a different problem. When scribes copied the New Testament in ancient times, they regularly used abbreviations to make the work go faster. One system of abbreviation commonly used dropped the vowels from words, much as written Hebrew does. From this system, there are two possible ...

440. When Is Being Right Wrong?

Romans 3:19-28

Sermon

Rick Brand

I finally got a copy of the Rules of Life. We all want them because we think that having a set of rules for life will make life so much easier and less confusing. Just find the twelve rules and follow them and it will take away a lot of worry and agony out of ...

441. Are You Trying to Prove Something?

Genesis 12:1-9

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... more I discover that the hymns I love are all in hymnals that are out of print. In fact, I got a letter this week from Abingdon Press, informing me that my latest book is now going on their out of print list. They said they've got a few copies in the warehouse, wondered if I would like to buy them. I feel like writing them, and saying, "Why don't you try and sell them!" I got that, and I started thinking, my whole world is going out of print. At any rate, Whittier's hymn is no longer ...

442. Called to Freedom

Matthew 11:25-30

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... Frederick said, no. In Wittenberg Luther would begin to write. The printing press had been invented 100 years before, and Luther would be one of the first best-sellers. Between 1517 and 1520, Luther would write thirty tracts which were distributed in 300,000 copies. Luther never received a penny from any of his writings, but he made a awful lot of publishers rich. These thirty tracts form the blueprint of the Reformation. The first affirmation is the priesthood of all believers. Luther said there is no need ...

443. Why Join the Church?

Acts 2:1-21

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... a utopia, a perfect society. It was now possible. The most famous of those utopian novels was one written by a man named Edward Bellamy, called Looking Backwards, which is still, incidentally, among the best sellers of all time. It sold millions of copies. It was written in the 1890s, and it looked forward to seeing what the world would be like in the 1990s, in the decade in which we are living. It envisioned people living in ideal cities, with beautiful environments crafted by human engineering, with ...

444. Million Dollar Christmas

Matthew 19:21

Drama

Matthew Powell

... New hats, Essay Reader 1: Pictures of all kinds, Essay Reader 2: Chiefly enlarged family photos, Essay Reader 3: And rocking chairs for the parlor. Essay Reader 1: My mother wants enough money to print a little book of poems she has written so that she can give copies to her friends. Essay Reader 2: Money to buy candles to light for my dead brother. Essay Reader 3: My mother's longing is for rosebud wall paper for the living room. Essay Reader 1: A season's ticket to the symphony. Essay Reader 2: Being able ...

445. Keep on Praying

Luke 18:1-8

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... persistence in the world doesn't pay off without the engines of prayer to power our lives, to make our hopes and dreams soar in the Spirit. This is one of the greatest problems in our churches today: we're another cargo cult religion. We're copying programs, crafting planes, building hangers, and landing strips galore. But unless these programs and planes are powered by prayer, and the winds of God's Spirit, our lives and our churches are grounded, unable to take off and reach the heights to which God is ...

446. Quarterback 101

Jeremiah 32:1-44

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... Baruch, Jeremiah's scribe and a historian of Zedekiah's court, saw to it that the record of this sale became part of the Jeremiah scroll. The safely-sealed jar with the documents was lost to time. But in Scripture we have here an enduring copy of this legal exchange and of the divine promise of restoration which it represented. Jeremiah was history's first prophetic quarterback. He symbolically threw this deed, this seemingly foolish land-purchase made in the face of an approaching army, far out in front of ...

447. Soul Deep Not Skin Deep

Luke 16:1-15

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... first century culture is a celebrity culture. We worship these celebrity icons and look to them to lead us in the ways of perfection and holiness - perfect faces, perfect figures, perfect physiques, perfect clothes, cars, and cribs. We non-celebrities try to copy their perfection, their holiness as much as possible. We have makeovers for our bodies, our homes, our wardrobes - all in an effort to match the trademarked perfection we worship in our cultural celebrities. "Life Is What You Make It" is the newest ...

448. An Uncomfortable Comforter

Luke 11:1-13

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... ." When all her peers wanted to visit Disney World and Hawaii and Washington, D.C., Katherine wanted to visit "Heven." [If you can put this on the screen so that people can read her original spellings, it would be great; even better have a first grader copy her essay so that they could see original first-grader handwriting with first-grader spellings.] "I would like to visit heven. It is a wonderful place. I want to go there because Sidney is there and because Jesus lives there. I asked Jesus into my heart ...

449. For All the Saints

Luke 19:1-10

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... of as very "saintly." John Coltrane is a name that dominates that history of jazz. His name also needs to grace the history of the church. In fact, there's even The Church of Saint John's, where the saint is Saint John Coltrane. [If you can, get a copy of the Coltrane recording "A Love Supreme" and play it while you focus your a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music. I feel this has been granted ...

450. The Monsters We Are All Afraid Of

Luke 20:27-40

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... clouds the water all around and hides the octopus. The black ink can take the verbal form of words (some of them exclamations, some of them expletives), or in a work environment can take the form of fluids like memos, spreadsheets, charts, copies, faxes, forms, etc. Second, there's the Peacock Egoboo. When feathers get ruffled, the peacock plumage comes out – bragging, showing off, strutting one's stuff in rituals of dominance and domination. Third, there's the Beaver Egoboo. Eager beavers love to tear ...

Showing results