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 551 to 575 of 1400 results

551. Making Sense of the Ascension

Luke 24:50-53

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... validate Copernicus theories through the use of the telescope, but people refused to look into the thing, saying that it was an instrument of the devil, designed only to confuse people. Galileo was called on the carpet by the Pope and ordered to recant his quaint notion that the earth moved around the sun. Not being the stuff of which martyrs are made, he took it all back. But as he was leaving, he is said to have muttered under his breath, “Nevertheless, it still moves!” It wasn’t until 1822 that the ...

552. What on Earth Is the Trinity?

John 14:15-31

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... Spirit. In discussing our Christian faith in God, we must go further than merely stating that we believe in God. That can mean anything or nothing. 98% of the American people, according to most polls, say that they believe in God: but for many, that belief is a vague notion about Someone in the great Somewhere (to quote a popular religious song of some years ago). For a lot of people the concept of God is nothing more than a vast oblong blur. C.S. Lewis once wrote of a girl he knew who said that the word ...

553. Why the Church?

Matthew 16:21-28

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... of Good News to the present. None of us started from scratch. All that we have of our Christian Faith has been given to us by others. It is from the Church, imperfect as it is, that we have heard the old, old story that we have loved song. The notion of God as Divine Parent, which we take for granted, was given to us by the Church. Without the Church’s tutelage, it is doubtful that any of us would ever have thought to pray, Our Father... A man asked Calvin Coolidge one day: Why cant I worship God out ...

554. What the Heck Is Sin?

Luke 15:11-32

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... in our own relationship with our children. God’s love is costly love. His grace is free, but it is never cheap or easy. To say that God loves and forgives sinners may be nothing but pious and sentimental words, and quite meaningless, unless we have some notion of just what that love entails. You see, sin is not a private affair. It always results in somebody suffering, somewhere. The poet John Donne said that no man is an island, and no action of ours is ever done in isolation. If you put sin and love ...

555. What Happens When I Die?

John 14:1-4

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... , but before he could speak, there was heard a rattling at the door, and the answer was given him. Do you hear that? he asked his patient. That is my son. I left him downstairs, but he grew impatient and has come up and hears my voice. He has no notion of what is inside the door, but he knows that I am here. Now, is it not the same with,you and me? We do not know what lies beyond, but we know that our heavenly Father is there! That is the faith which we find in Whittiers familiar lines ...

556. What’s the Good Word?

John 1:1-18

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth,” so says the Fourth Gospel. I would suggest that those are just about the most shocking words in the Bible. Remember that John was writing to counteract the mistaken notion that the God of Creation and the God of Redemption were two different Gods and that God would never become involved with anything as crass and materialistic as this fallen world in which we live. Against that heresy John says that this world is good because ...

557. Christmas and the Condensed Bible

John 1:1-18

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... of Princeton Theological Seminary, and he is a scholar with impeccable credentials and a devoted Christian, although the fundamentalists had a field day with the fact that his surname “Metzger” in German means “butcher.” So I guess I am not opposed to the notion of condensing the Bible per se, although I was never very thrilled with the Reader’s Digest version. But the idea of condensing the Bible has some real merit. For one thing, it seems to me that we have been “condensing” the Bible for ...

558. Jesus: The Life of the Party

John 2:1-11

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... a human being. For my own part, I have an idea that Jesus was invited to the wedding party at Cana in Galilee simply because He was a fun person to have at a party. This may come to some as an even greater shock than the notion that He might have been married! In the New Testament you can trace Jesus' progress through the country by the trail of joy which he left behind. Wherever He went, sorrows were healed, shadows lifted, diseases cured, spirits raised. One of the harshest accusations His enemies made ...

559. Doors Are for Entering

John 10:1-21

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... all religious faiths into one, but the Jesus proclaimed by the Fourth Gospel refuses to be amalgamated into such a neat little pantheon. Which reminds of a conversation I had with an African-American friend some years ago. He took issue with the popular American notion of America as a vast “melting pot” for all peoples and races. He said, “I don’t want to be melted into anybody’s pot!” Instead, he suggested that we might think of America as a vast salad bowl, where each race and nationality ...

560. So Who Needs A Shepherd?

John 10:1-21

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... , “Private property, off limits to outsiders.” They may pray something like this: God bless me and my wife, My son John and his wife, Us four, and no more. Or, God bless only me, That’s as far as I can see. Or a people gets into its head the notion that it alone is privileged by God (after all, don’t our coins say “In God we trust”?). How strange that we should put that inscription on our money! Which god are we talking about? Once we have come to believe that God is the personal property of our ...

561. No Longer Orphans

John 14:15-31

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... rejoice in His presence among us now, as He taught us to do in the days of His flesh. Some years ago there appeared a book with the intriguing title, "What To Do Until the Messiah Comes." I did not read the book, and so I haven't the foggiest notion of what it is about, but in a sense there is something terribly wrong with the title. Christians believe that the Messiah has come. I have to admit that there is much ground for skepticism on this point for, as Martin Buber asked us so eloquently some years ago ...

562. The Huddle Is Not the Game

John 20:19-23

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... had supported him in is so-called “radical” causes. He was far ahead of his time on many issues, for he believed that women had the right to vote, that workers should have a voice in the circumstances of their toil, long before such wild notions were popular. He had many such “radical” ideas, most of which were eventually taken over lock, stock, and barrel by both the Democratic and the Republican parties. At any rate, they now gathered to tell him what a great guy he was. Thomas listened politely ...

563. God Doesn’t Take Vacations

John 5:1-15

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... that God can run the world perfectly well without us for a while, allowing us to take a breather from our responsibilities. During my forty years’ service as a parish minister, I observed that most ministers seem to have a “Jehovah Complex.” That is, they have the absurd notion that if they do not do something, it will never get done. I have a hunch that once in a while each of us needs to resign as Chairman of the Universe, and allow God to carry on his work while we rest. The story is told about ...

564. It Costs to Belong

Mark 10:35-45

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... slogan which used to be used by an auto insurance company. Their slogan was (and still may be, for all I know), “It pays to belong.” But the Church’s slogan might well be “It costs to belong.” That sounds odd to us. Over the years we have gotten the notion that the Church is about the cheapest thing on earth to which you can belong! How few demands it makes on us! In our service club, if we miss a meeting, we are expected to make it up. At the country club we are expected to pay dues. (I have ...

565. Son of Thunder, Son of God

Mark 10:35-45

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... , and I realize that the linguistic experts can tell us all kinds of things about the differences in writing style and syntax between the several books in the New Testament which happen to have the name “John” appended to them. But I cannot reject the notion that the First Letter of John was written by John the Apostle simply because it sounds so out of character. THAT IS PRECISELY THE POINT! The point in the New Testament message is that Jesus Christ came into the world to change our characters! The ...

566. Jesus and the Baptists

Mark 1:1-8

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... the greatest man who had yet been born. That doesn’t sound like much to us, does it? “The greatest.” We are used to superlatives. “You’re the greatest!” we say, casually and unthinkingly. I wonder what constitutes true greatness, anyway? Jesus had strange notions about greatness, didn’t He? He said that greater is the one who serves a hundred than the one who has a hundred servants. From time to time magazines list the 100 most important people in the world today. But isn’t there a monstrous ...

567. Jesus Came Preaching

Mark 1:14-15

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... Have set the whole nations in motion and upheaved the dry, hard ground on which rests our social fabric... Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world.” Actions are important: but words motivate actions. I. MOST FOLKS HAVE STRANGE NOTIONS ABOUT PREACHING. For one thing, I imagine that many people believe that a preacher mounts the pulpit and opens his mouth, and the words just come tumbling out. That may be true if one had only one sermon to preach; but when a preacher must come ...

568. When Tradition Gets in the Way

Mark 7:1-23

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... Journal, July, 1988, p.32) In the sixties, many young people in America thought that they could cut themselves off from the sources of civilization and start anew. Many wanted to bring the present society down around their heads, without having the foggiest notion of what they were going to replace it with. They had an overly-optimistic view of human nature which seemed to think that whatever happens after revolution has got to be better. But usually it is worse - the American Revolution perhaps being one ...

569. Men Like Trees Walking

Mark 8:22-26

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... /Into every troubled breast! Let us all in Thee inherit/ Let us find the promised rest.” The present hymnal restored Wesley’s original words; “Let us all in Thee inherit/ Let us find that second rest.” What “second rest?” The reference is to John Wesley’s notion that God can do more with our sin than forgive it. God can move into us by the Holy Spirit and change our hearts, give us a “second touch,” that, as the hymn says: “Take(s) away our bent to sinning.” The reference is to the so ...

570. Losers Keepers

Mark 8:31--9:1

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... which Peter had learned from his mother’s knee upward. Centuries of Christian history have made us familiar with the idea of a suffering Savior; but in Jesus’ day almost nobody had yet thought to couple the Suffering Servant passages of Isaiah with the notion of Messiah, “God’s anointed.” We are familiar with it. We even sing, “In the cross of Christ I glory,” and “Jesus, I my cross have taken,” yet we, too, rebuke Jesus all the time. We prefer a version of Christianity which leaves a ...

571. Dealing with Our Doubts

Mark 9:14-32

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... of seeing the presence of God in human suffering, we see instead God’s absence. Theologian Paul Tillich reported that when he toured the battlefields during World War I, soldiers most often expressed their disbelief in God in terms of not being able to reconcile the notion of a good God with the evil they saw all around them. They asked: How can there be a loving purpose at the heart of reality and the world be as it is? Albert Einstein confessed his inability to believe in a personal God along these ...

572. Radical Surgery

Mark 9:42-50

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... so. The hand or foot or eye are not the real offenders: it is what is in the heart. The analogy of an operating room, where radical surgery must be performed, is a most useful way to understand this Scripture. Most of us today would accept the notion that the whole body is worth more than any of its individual parts, and when we develop a cancerous tumor on eye, hand, or foot, we cast aside “the offending member”—with regret, of course; but we operate on the assumption that it is better to enter life ...

573. Salty Saints

Mark 9:42-50

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... a Brownie.” God meant for the church to be a great force for peace in the world. The church carries, like that third-grader, the genetics of greatness. But it rarely fulfills its promise because so many of its members would rather be potatoes than salt. We have the notion that the church is here to serve us (it is, in a sense); but even more it is here to equip us to serve the world, in the name of Christ, the Servant Lord of us all. A certain popular comedian used some pretty salty language following his ...

574. Knight of the Woeful Countenance

Mark 10:17-31

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... forget to pray for the Church. We casually allow our attendance to fall off. We either give nothing or so very little that just keeping our name on the rolls causes others to have to sacrifice to make up the difference for us. We would burn with shame at the notion that other people should have to pay our bills for us outside of church, but when it comes to the church, well, most of us haven’t even thought about it. And then, when asked to serve, we offer excuses. We are much too busy. No, we’d better ...

575. Are We Able?

Mark 10:35-45

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... , New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1937, p. 306) So Jesus accepted the penitent thief “just as he was,” along with whatever ignorance or misunderstanding he may have had about the kingdom. And He accepted James and John, with all of their inadequate notions of discipleship. And he accepts us, as well. That’s what makes the “good news” Good News. I read of a family out in Texas which had the custom of putting large plywood letters bordered with Christmas tree lights on their roof each year ...

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