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 4701 to 4725 of 5000 results

4701. A Friday We Call “Good”

Hebrews 10:16-25

Sermon

David O. Bales

... west of the temple, suffered on a cross for six hours on a Friday we call "Good," which means good for us anyway. Jesus is now the way that we understand our forgiveness. On this Friday, we remember how serious sin is and to what lengths God goes to demonstrate love and forgiveness to us. Our text says that Jesus has opened for us a new and living way for us into God's presence. We have confidence to come back to God because of what Jesus has done — not because of what we've done, thought, or said, not ...

4702. Power Sharing

Ephesians 1:15-23

Sermon

David O. Bales

... for truth. God makes you able to stand up for Jesus, with faith that trusts God even when friends flee, mobs turn against you, the sky turns black, and for your life, you can't figure out what God is doing. God makes you able to serve Jesus with love that wants the best for all, that lives for the benefit of others, and that doesn't worry when your interests come in last. God makes you able to live as Jesus did, with hope that sees beyond today, that overlooks the disabilities you've always had, and that ...

4703. Can I Give Enough?

Mark 12:41-44

Children's Sermon

Marti Kramer Suddarth

... at the hearts of the givers. The people giving large amounts of money probably had even larger amounts at home. They made a big show of giving and made sure everyone knew what they were doing. The poor widow slipped in quietly. She gave her money because she loved God, not because she wanted to show off, and Jesus knew that she didn’t have anything else left at home. While the people giving larger amounts gave part of their money, this woman gave everything she had. She gave everything because she really ...

4704. Handmade By God

Jeremiah 1:1-19

Children's Sermon

Marti Kramer Suddarth

... hairs are growing out of your head. When you comb your hair in the morning and a few hairs fall out and stick in the comb, God even keeps track of that. He does this because he loves you very much. Even on the worst day of your life, even when you feel like no one cares, it’s important to remember that God loves you very much and you are very special to him. That’s why he sent his Son to die for each one of us. No matter how bad a day may seem, it’s a good day ...

4705. Wedding Bell Blues

John 2:1-11

Sermon

Billy D. Strayhorn

... . "Don't you know? It is a way that you can read with your fingers," she explained."Well, I've never heard of it," he replied. "I'll teach you then!" she said. And she taught that blind killer how to read Braille. Years later he would weep out of love for her. Later Catherine found that there was a deaf-mute in the prison, so she went to school to learn sign language. Soon she was communicating with him through the use of her hands. Many said that Catherine Lawes was the body of Jesus Christ that came alive ...

4706. The Ministry Of Do WOP

James 1:17-27

Sermon

Billy D. Strayhorn

... with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights." We're called to DO those Generous Acts of Giving in the name of God. We're called to Praise God through and with those generous acts. Because when we act generously to others, with the Love and Grace of God, it makes a major impact on our lives and on the lives of other people. Watch this clip and you'll see what I mean. (SHOW CLIP: Keys of the Kingdom) That pastor was a DOER OF THE WORD. He was actively involved in the Ministry ...

4707. Family Matters

Romans 8:12-17

Sermon

Billy D. Strayhorn

... are going to become a Christmas dessert for someone special. Hello, Mr. Cereal, you are going to make the boys and girls grow up nice and healthy," and other things like that. After all the items were sacked he would look at the customer and say, "I know your family loves you because you take such good care of them." Ms. Parker says she shut up and waited her turn. Chuck helped take her sacks to the car and she tipped him $2. He looked at the two dollar bills; he looked at her. Then his face lit up, and he ...

4708. A Child Will Be Born

Isaiah 9:1-7

Sermon

King Duncan

... house? Can there be a more perfect story than the story of the first Christmas? God entered the world as a tiny babe. That’s impossible for us to get our minds around yet I can’t imagine any better news in all the world. The Creator of the universe loved us enough to come into our world, and he did it not in power, but in the most helpless guise possible, that of an infant. There’s something about a baby, isn’t there, or even a young child? During the first year and a half of World War II ...

4709. Totally Poured Out

2 Timothy 4:9-18

Sermon

King Duncan

... of people have been touched by the life and the writings of St. Paul. Whose life is better because you have walked this planet? Your spouse? Your children? The people with whom you work? Have you made a conscious effort to touch the lives of others with the love of Jesus Christ? The British writer C. C. Montague once told a remarkable short story about a man is his early fifties who awoke one morning with a curious numb feeling in his right side, which affected him from head to foot. The man had lived an ...

4710. A Small Man Who Was Given a Big Heart

Luke 19:1-10

Sermon

King Duncan

... do need God’s grace. You have come to realize that toys cannot fill the deep hole in your life. Like Zacchaeus, you know you haven’t lived up to the best of which you are able. You feel unworthy and inadequate. You need to know that God really does love you and accepts you just as you are and that God’s grace is sufficient to fill your life to overflowing. The story of Zacchaeus is good news for you. It’s like a story that Pastor Ray Stedman once told about a service at a rescue mission in a ...

4711. Fighting Back Against Falling Back

2 Thessalonians 3:6-15

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... personally. To all these wrong-headed notions there was one simple apostolic answer: “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.” Paul rejected the world of patronage and privilege. Instead he advanced a new ethic of labor as love — love for Christ, love for each other, love for the unlovely, and love for the future. We cannot look back at the first century and find the popular system of patronage and idleness an antique oddity. It is a culture alive and well, wafting over the electronic airwaves of our ...

4712. Christmas 1

Psalm 148:1-14, Isaiah 63:7-9, Matthew 2:13-18, Hebrews 2:10-18

Bulletin Aid

Amy C. Schifrin

... ones who travel, and we give you thanks for those whom you have brought safely to us in this holy time. We lift before you all who are separated from friends and family through geography, strife, illness, or fear. Teach us to seek out the lonely and to love them as you do. Lord in your mercy, All: hear our prayer. Leader: Let us pray for harmony in our communities: Silence Leader: O God of all times and of all places, you have made us in your image and called us your own. Fill our hearts with courage, that ...

4713. Miss Donna

John 1:29-42

Illustration

James W. Moore

... the reception table – punch and chocolate chip cookies in abundance… and some of us said to him, "John, would you like to walk over here and have some refreshments?" But no, he would not leave Donna's side. "I want to stay here with Miss Donna.," he would say. The love between the two of them was so radiant and powerful in that room. Also in the room that day was a man from Chicago. He had flown all the way from Chicago to Houston to be with Donna. Do you know why? Because 38 years ago when he was in ...

4714. The Evangelist Has a Shady Past

John 4:1-26

Sermon

King Duncan

... them to Christ. The only man who has ever lived who was without sin was Jesus of Nazareth, and yet, many of the religious people could not accept him as the Messiah, because he associated with sinners and did not appear very saintly. In fact, aside from his love and his miracles, he seemed very much like a real person. And that is who Jesus wants to share their faith: real people who have had their lives transformed by his power. Are you among that number? Have you had a deep failure at some time in your ...

4715. Worry Not

Matthew 6:25-34

Sermon

King Duncan

... provide us with a secure sense of the world. If we encounter trust during our infancy, says Erikson, the stage is set for a lifelong perception of the world as a good and pleasant place. But if our caregiver wasn’t emotionally adept at expressing warmth and love, then it’s likely we grew up to be mistrustful and insecure. (5) Many of us have a susceptibility to stress and worry built into our very personalities. On top of that, modern life has many built-in stressors. Some of us have very stressful jobs ...

4716. Power: The Easy Substitute

Matt 4:1-11; 20:21

Illustration

Henri Nouwen

What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life. Jesus asks, Do you love me? We ask, Can we sit at your right hand and your left hand in your Kingdom? (Mt. 20:21). ... We have been tempted to replace love with power.

4717. Will You Dance the Metanoia with Me?

Acts 2:14-41

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... the 1st century. Anyone want to argue the fact that we have a world of woes out there? Take your choice of what is the worst: too much debt, not enough jobs, no political harmony, climate change, natural disasters, wars and rumors of more wars, the lack of love, the collapse of compassion. There is one thing everyone can agree upon: we are headed in a wrong direction. Somehow we are have gotten on the wrong track. What no one can agree upon is what the right track is. As people of faith we ask this question ...

4718. It's Not Fair!

1 Peter 2:13-25

Sermon

King Duncan

... his head on the dashboard. First, he had trouble with his vision. One of his eyes wouldn’t cooperate and he saw double. He couldn’t even walk down a set of stairs without stumbling. The worst thing to him was that he could no longer read. Douglas loved to read. Yancey knew Douglas. He knew his story. So, when he started to write about the Book of Job, he decided to interview Douglas. He called him up and scheduled an appointment. They met for breakfast. Douglas told him some of the story. They sat and ...

4719. A Community of Practice, Not a Community of Perfection

Romans 7:7-25

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... , the body of Christ. But we are crippled and compromised by our very nature. We want to do good. But . . . yadda, yadda, yadda . . . we don’t do good. In fact, we do bad. But the “bad” is not what we really “wanted” to do. The disciples loved Jesus. They followed him into the wilderness. They gave up their livelihoods. They choose a life of “if” and “when,” over a stable life of “here” and “now.” Yet it was still so hard to give in and give all. They failed. Until Pentecost gave ...

4720. What to Do with the Weeds

Matthew 13:24-30

Sermon

King Duncan

... it.” Young Freyer was furious. He walked up to one of the women who was carrying a sign and asked her if she thought she was really being effective. In his estimation it seemed as though many people were just walking away mad, rather than walking away in the love of Christ. The woman told him that in Matthew 5 Christians are told they would face all kinds of persecution. Freyer says he wanted to shake her and scream, “BUT HE DOESN’T ASK US TO LOOK FOR IT!” Later he realized why he was so angry with ...

4721. Cross-Bearing

Mark 8:31-38

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... despite Norway's below-zero temperatures, she received that ultimate accolade, the Nobel Peace Prize. In her acceptance speech, she delivered the kind of message the world had come to expect from her. "It is not enough for us to say, ‘I love God, but I do not love my neighbor,' " she said, since in dying on the cross, God had "[made] himself the hungry one, the naked one, the homeless one." Jesus' hunger, she said, is what "you and I must find" and alleviate. Finally, she suggested that the upcoming ...

4722. We Wish to See Jesus

John 12:20-33

Sermon

John Smylie

... the earth, I will draw all people to myself." Perhaps Jesus was saying to Philip and Andrew, to the Greek visitors, and to us, that it is time to gaze upon him in awe and wonder as we allow our hearts to be drawn by his transforming love which calls forth a loving response from us. It is this heartfelt response to our crucified Lord that Jeremiah spoke of hundreds of years before: "The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant ... I will put my law within them, and I will write ...

4723. For the Life of Betsy D. I. Smylie

John 12:20-36

Sermon

John Smylie

4724. Family Values

Mark 3:20-35

Sermon

Kristin Borsgard Wee

... Mr. Rogers exemplified in a gentle way what Jesus was getting at. When Mr. Rogers changed into his sweater and took off his shoes, it was a biblical gesture of self-emptying humility and welcome to all of us in TV land. Then he sang the litany we loved to hear, "It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor, would you be mine? Could you be mine?" Even Mr. McFeely, the postal carrier, went around from house to house making a neighborhood out of what would have been a bunch of ...

4725. The Final Exam

Mark 10:17-31

Sermon

Steven Molin

... take this vignette at face value, it becomes for us a crossroads in our lives, the mother of all final exams! Jesus looks at us in love and says "Give up your (fill in the blank) and you will have riches in heaven." But here's the loophole: The man was asking ... our lives are not so different from this first-century Jew. We want it all! We want our things, we want peace, we want love, joy, freedom, and of course, we want the promise of eternal life. Personally, I think this "you can have it all" theology is ...

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