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 51 to 75 of 142 results

51. What on Earth Is the Trinity?

John 14:15-31

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... attend church fairly regularly, contribute fairly well.They are essentially good people. But their religion has little joy and power in it. They go through the motions, but there is something missing. They have a deep longing for something more, something deeper. They have a hunch that they are missing something, but they dont know what it is or where to go to get it. Again, their group is very large. Not as large as the first circle, but large. Then there is the third group, the Inner Circle. These are ...

52. What Happens When I Die?

John 14:1-4

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... without having blood and oxygen pumped in, and waste products pumped out. We couldn’t survive without this womb to protect us. To which the first, being more of a philosopher, might say: But I hear strange sounds from the other side of this womb. I have a hunch that there’s a lot more going on out there than we can imagine. And that is the way it is with us. Some say there is nothingness after death. But there are those among us who believe that they have heard whisperings of mighty and wonderful things ...

53. Grace Is Not a Blue-eyed Blond

John 1:1-18

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

I often wonder what goes through people’s minds when they hear certain words which we use in church. Words like “incarnation,” “redemption,” and “grace.” I have a hunch that a lot of people confuse incarnation with reincarnation, which is something totally different; and redemption is something one used to do with “green stamps.” As for “grace,” well, that is, indeed, a strange word. Some years ago a minister by the name of R. Lofton Hudson wrote of an ...

54. Jesus: The Life of the Party

John 2:1-11

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... " school, and His disciples washed but once, according to the Gospels. (Cf. Mark 7:5ff) Is John trying to tell us here that Jesus came to do away with the imperfections of the old Law and replace it with the new wine of the Gospel of Grace? I have a hunch that it is so. Then there is the matter of the size of the jars. Each held 20-30 gallons. That is, the whole amount would be between 120-180 gallons of wine! Certainly more than any imaginable wedding party could possible use! Can it be that John is trying ...

55. How Free Are We?

John 8:31-41

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

Mark Twain once remarked that Americans of the nineteenth century were fortunate to have “freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, and the prudence never to practice either of them!” I have a hunch that his wry comment is not limited to folks of the nineteenth century. Freedom is not really freedom unless it is exercised. Still, most of us believe ourselves to be free beings, freely able to make choices and to decide our own destinies. There is an old story of a ...

56. Is Suffering Punishment for Sin?

John 9:1-12

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... only break yourself against them. Human history is littered with the wreckage of persons and nations who have ignored this basic principle of life. God doesn’t punish us for our sins; God doesn’t have to. Sin is itself the punishment for sin. I have a hunch that the Ten Commandments were given to us not for God’s benefit, but for ours. In a newspaper article some years ago, Father Andrew Greeley said that “God is love, not punishment. He does not seek to get even because humans have pleasure. He is ...

57. Doors Are for Entering

John 10:1-21

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... only one door to good health, and that is to obey the rules of good health. The person who persistently abuses his or her body cannot expect good health. They might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later life catches up with them. I have a hunch that the same thing holds true in the spiritual realm, as well. I often think of the words of the late Dr. Leslie Weatherhead of City temple in London, who was asked on a radio program near the end of his life, “What have you learned from life?” He ...

58. Lazarus Laughed

John 11:17-37

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... ?” The professor quickly dismissed the class before any more embarrassing questions could be asked. It seems to me that some of our attempt to “explain away” the miracle stories in the Gospels are more far-fetched than the miracle stories themselves! I have a hunch that when the author of the Fourth Gospel says that Lazarus was dead, he meant what he said. He took this to be a real historical occurrence. Indeed, he may have been writing from first-hand experience, for there is a minority opinion among ...

59. So Who Needs A Shepherd?

John 10:1-21

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... the idea that some folks are going to hell. To me they seem more concerned about saving hell than saving people from hell. But Jesus says that God is a Good Shepherd, who seeks after the sheep “until he finds them.” I wonder: “How long is until?’ “ I have a hunch that God never gives up on any of us. I am not at all sure that all of us will respond to God’s love, but I believe that God’s love is always an open option for any of us. The older version of the Apostles’ Creed insists that ...

60. Some Said It Thundered

John 12:20-36

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... could we ever stand it? There is a certain mercy in the mystery, for God should be hidden from our eyes so that we might be protected from too much light. T.S. Eliot once said that we humans cannot bear too much reality, and I have a hunch that is true. The ancients had an expression: “If you can’t face the candle, how can you look at the sun?” One wonders about the people who, in recent years, have vociferously complained about God’s seeming absence from the world. One wonders just how they might ...

61. One Commandment, Slightly Used

John 13:31-38

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... to conclude this sermon. Zorba says to his uptight, fearful, English friend, who complains about trouble. “Boss, life is trouble. Only death is not. To be alive is to undo your belt and look for trouble!” How does that relate to the commandment Jesus gave us? Well, I have a hunch that to truly love is to look for trouble. But to love is to live!

62. The Shy Member of the Trinity

John 14:15-31

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... the Holy Spirit. Why, then, do we persist in talking about such things? We continue talking this way because until we have spoken about the Holy Spirit, we have not said all that needs to be said about God and Jesus. In this regard, I have a hunch that a large number of our church members are really binitarians, not trinitarians. They accept the Fatherhood (or Parenthood) of God and the Saviorhood of Christ, but they stop there. It is as though God stopped acting on the stage of human history in the year 33 ...

63. If Christ Had Not Come

John 15:18--16:4

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... new kind of a world. Which, of course, is exactly what had happened! During his twenty year’s sleep a revolution had taken place, but he was still living on the wrong side of that revolution. That image is provocative for us, for I have a hunch that a good many professing Christians are still living on the wrong side of the revolution that Christ brought to our world. Christmas celebrates the anniversary of a revolution. After Christ lived and died and lived again, the world has never been quite the same ...

64. Whatever became of Kingdomtide?

John 16:17-33

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... to do the same. These individuals seem somehow to have gotten themselves confused with God! Parenthetically, we might note that Jesus did not go “first class.” He went the way of the cross, and invited others to follow Him. I have a hunch that, Biblically speaking, “worldliness” does not refer so much to minor moral issues such as dancing, card-playing, movie-going, etc., but rather to accepting those systems in our society which perpetuate hunger and hatred and war. Worldliness means selling out to ...

65. Jesus and the Baptists

Mark 1:1-8

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... to the officiating minister. Note that the minister shall say, “What name is given to this child?” And then, repeating the name, though not including the surname, the minister shall baptize the child.... The surname is the family name. Why not repeat it? I have a hunch I did it wrong for about twenty years, before I read the small print! Why not repeat the surname? Because we are saying that the child’s family name is “God.” This child is a child of God! And our biggest problem it seems to me, is ...

66. A Sign for a Sign

Mark 8:11-13

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... the disciples own hunger, or of their eating. Their work is exclusively as servants of the sheep. Is this parallel to Matthew 16 where Jesus tells the disciples that their task is to take the Good News into all the world? I have a hunch that it is so. The “seven baskets full” indicates abundance. The number seven was special in ancient times - the perfect number. The LAYMAN’S BIBLE COMMENTARY suggests that “the number seven may also suggest the seventy nations of the Gentiles.” (Richmond, Virginia ...

67. What Do You Want Me to Do for You?

Mark 10:46-52

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... the rush and push and hustle of the crowds, it is so easy to get lost and not hear the message. Bartimaeus almost did. But he resisted the crowd and raised his voice above it. “Jesus is in this mess somewhere—take me to Him!” I have a hunch that that is the cry of millions of people during this Advent season, all around the world. That is why this season strikes such a deep note of nostalgia in people’s hearts. We are yearning for something without, perhaps, even knowing what we seek. The Christian ...

68. Jesus and the IRS

Mark 12:13-17

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... the conflict ever come, the earliest Christians, at least, understood which citizenship would come first. “We must obey God rather than men” said Peter, in Acts 5:29. But one must ask: by our lives and actions, who gets our supreme loyalty today? I have a hunch that there are millions of people who proclaim Jesus Christ as King of Kings and Lord of Lords who, when the chips are down, practice what Ernie Campbell calls “area code” theology: Christ’s Lordship is O.K. in this area, but not in that ...

69. The Unfinished Story

Mark 16:1-20

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... written by the hand of the Presbyter Aristion (no doubt the Aristion mentioned by Papias as one of the disciples of the Lord.). (Major, Manson, and Wright, THE AND MISSION AND MESSAGE OF JESUS, New York: E.P. Dutton and Co., Inc., 1938, p. 206) I have a hunch that whoever wrote these verses knew of Paul’s experience in Acts with a “serpent” and read it back into the story. Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks and put them on the fire, when a viper came out because of the heat and “fastened on his ...

70. Holy Thursday

Mark 14:12-26

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... Paul make much of this fact, associating Jesus with the sacrifice of the paschal lamb on the preparation day before the Passover. (I Cor. 5:7) So, the Gospels do not agree on so important a matter as the chronology of the Passion Week. I have a hunch that the first Christians who chose which Gospels to include in our New Testament knew very well that they did not agree on all points. But that made them even more trustworthy! If you have an accident on the street corner, and four eyewitness reports agree in ...

71. Promises, Promises, Promises

Luke 1:26-38

Sermon

Paul E. Flesner

... the Bible "holy," we somehow mentally conclude that the events had a "holy aura" about them -- that they were somehow different than events which happen to us today. The problem comes when you and I look for the presence of God in our lives today. I have a hunch that we secretly look for that "holy aura" in the things that happen to us, and when it doesn't appear, we mistakenly conclude that God is "avoiding us." What I'm trying to describe is actually the subject for an entire sermon in itself, but I ...

72. Easter for Thomas, Too

John 20:24-31

Sermon

Robert Noblett

... mean that God's presence is always a mediated one. It comes to us "in" and "through." Through the bread and through the cup; in Christ; through this set of circumstances; in this musical composition or in that verse or thought; in this dream or through that hunch. So it is with resurrection. It is God raising us in this or through that. But let there be no equivocating about who it is that is doing the resurrecting. Show me a repaired relationship, and I'll show you resurrection. Show me a person with an ...

73. Together, But Not Enmeshed

John 15:1-17

Sermon

Robert Noblett

... are vines very near where you live. Typically they grow along the ground and up walls. What's more, they are tenacious. God is the planter of the vine. I believe God is planting seeds all the time. We call them by different names of course -- hunches, ideas, senses, inklings, and the like. Nevertheless, when those seeds issue in fruit that is indeed kingdom fruit, we know full well who has been doing the planting. What's more, God often plants seeds in us so that we can carry those seeds of hope, insight ...

74. The Family: A Place For Persons

Colossians 3:18-4:1

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... 't eat it. But he said he just sat there with his hands cupped over it. It was warm, and he sat there with his head down, his head wrapped in toilet paper -- be weeping his outcast state with this terrible soup. But the soup was warm, so he hunched over it and tried to get some benefit out of the warmth that steamed from it. Then the door opened and the whole room was filled with icy wind. "Close the door!", someone shouted. In came this little woman clutching her little coat. She found a place not far ...

75. How May We Come To God?

Psalm 24:1-10

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... a lot. Other than watching all the game shows on TV, some of the soaps, and a lot of sports, that's about all Mutt does. He reads. Co-Bell, my mother, doesn't read much. She says her eyes are not too good, and she's right – but I hunch she just doesn't like to read, and she gets plenty of jabs in at Mutt as he reads the daily paper and the weekly "Baptist Record" and Time Magazine from cover to cover. But, like Mutt, Co-Bell reads the Bible -- especially the Psalms. For the past couple of ...

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