Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 51 to 75 of 656 results

51. An Arranged Wedding, But An Intentional Marriage

Genesis 24:1-67

Sermon

R. Robert Cueni

... wit. Now I want to divorce Dan because he laughs at everything and never takes anything seriously." Good marriages learn to accept the frailties and weaknesses of one another. Marriages improve when husband and wife accept that every imperfection cannot be corrected. Because of the imperfect nature of human beings, a really satisfying marriage will be committed to regular forgiveness. In any relationship, there will be times when a partner will hurt or disappoint you. There will be times when you will hurt ...

52. Yes, But How?

Sermon

Lee Griess

... I enjoy listening to office gossip?" Who goes on a date and confesses to the other person, "Listen. I have to tell you I tend to be difficult to live with and I can be a real bore at times"? However imperfect we may be, we've learned from life around us that it's better not to parade our imperfections out in public. As the little girl said to her classmate who had to sit in the corner, "To err is human, but to admit it is just plain stupid!" How ironic it is then, that Jesus would tell us to ...

53. Wedding: Short Service

Bulletin Aid

Derl G. Keefer

... sacred, wife. If your life is to be successful, it will be done as God is asked to control and guide it. Allow God to mold your lives together to form a beautiful duet of love. Human imperfections will appear where dating bliss first blurred your sight. Remain unmoved in your love for each other. Imperfection and faults can be overcome with time, patience, and devotion to one another. Let God be the perceptible presence in your home. Also, allow your home to be a harbor of rest and repair from the pressures ...

54. I Am The Door

Sermon

Ronald Lavin

... before he would walk through Christ the door to the kingdom of God beyond. Think of yourself as only having a limited time to live. After all, that is true for all of us. Think of yourself as one who has a living relationship with God through Christ now, imperfect though you may be. Think of yourself hearing the Lord speak these words personally, "I will see you again, on the other side of the grave. I know the way. I will be with you." Or, think of yourself in a church building that is on fire. You rush ...

55. We Haven’t Got To Them Yet

Mark 12:28-34

Sermon

Thomas Peterson

... good the relationship is crucial. We could make the same care for preachers, doctors, roommates, parents and children. None of us is perfect. We all make mistakes. If the bond is kept, the behavior can be adapted in many ways and understood and forgiven when imperfect. But what we do not and cannot understand, and find so hard to forgive, is when persons misuse us and then cut us off. A core teaching of the Bible is that righteousness is not perfect behavior, ritual purity, proper feeling in prayer. Rather ...

56. God Doesn't Ask A Fig Tree To Produce Bananas

Luke 13:1-9

Sermon

Lee Griess

57. A Letter From Paul

Sermon

Erskine White

... class privileges, they will pass away. As for cycles of poverty and exclusions from the economy, they will cease. As for inequitable divisions by race and sex and income, they, too, will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our morality is underdeveloped, but when the perfect society comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. I believed that self-interest and greed could make a society great and I counted material ...

58. When Will The Pain Go Away?

Matthew 24:1-35

Sermon

George Johnson

... sense a kind of solidarity with those who suffered and that kept hope alive for him. His pain took on meaning. We seldom know all the facts. New information is always needed. One should never stop looking for more insight and knowledge. But our knowledge will always be imperfect. To act in love means to follow the hunches we have been given even before we are 100 percent sure. That's why faith, hope and love are always tied together. We do the loving things with the faith that God is with us and can forgive ...

59. Redrawing The Landscape

Multiple Scriptures

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... themselves out of the larger human family. They not only die alone, but whether they know it or not, they live alone as well. As we live in our day and time, many trespasses will come against us. The world of the twenty-first century, with its limits and imperfections, can hurt us, as men and women have always been hurt. But it is our time, with our people, in our world. It is the only world we will have. It provides the only connection with life we can make. It is a fact of existence that small circles ...

60. Illusion Or Reality?

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... limited. We should never labor under the illusion that they are not. Yet at the same time, if we are to remain true to our Christian calling, we must live by grace and hope. Such will demand that we somehow, in our aloneness and imperfection, find pockets of existence which enable us to live beyond some of the limitations humans place upon our social institutions. When The Public Is Not Cordially Invited Advertising can be dangerous. This is especially true for churches. Each time I read an advertisement in ...

61. Can A Nation Repent?

2 Chronicles 34:14-33

Sermon

Erskine White

... of national life. And God's oracle said to King Josiah: "Because your heart was penitent and you humbled yourself before when you heard words against this place ... I also have heard you, says the Lord" (34:27-28). To be sure, an imperfect world can only repent imperfectly. Jeremiah later thought there was too much emphasis on ritual and not enough on justice and faith. But measured by history, it was an impressive effort. Indeed, the Bible says in 2 Kings that there was no other king like Josiah, before or ...

62. For One Who Worked With Disturbed Children

2 Corinthians 12:11-21

Eulogy

William Luoma

... short. None of us is ever fully sufficient for the needs of those around us. We do the best we can as mothers, fathers, and as husbands and wives, but down deep, we know how imperfect we are. God's help comes through that age-old announcement of the Cross of Jesus Christ. His great love, proved through his suffering and death, has paid for our imperfection. The love of Jesus Christ reaches out to each one of us, and that is the best help of all. III. God heals It takes time to heal. You just can't rush that ...

63. Epiphany 7

Matthew 5:43-48, Matthew 5:38-42, 1 Corinthians 3:1-23, Leviticus 19:1-37

Sermon Aid

... them, for they know not what they do." If he had done the human thing, he would have been cursing his tormentors and the ones who betrayed, judged, and condemned him, just as the thieves - one, at least - were doing beside him. And while all human beings are imperfect and no one can attain sinlessness, there is one way to approach God's perfection, and that is by forgiving one's enemies as God forgives us. "Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us" is the prayer of those who know their ...

64. All Saints' Day

1 John 2:28--3:10

Bulletin Aid

... to be self-righteous and, because we are Christians, to consider ourselves better than most others and perfect in comparison to some. Forgive us our conceit, O God, and force us to take a long, hard look at ourselves and to see just how unfinished and imperfect we are. Move us beyond the salvation that we have by your merciful grace, and guide us through the process of sanctification, by which, with the help of your Spirit, we shall grow into true children of yours in the image of the Christ. ln his ...

65. Shepherding One Another in a Collapsing World

Romans 9:1-29

Sermon

Robert G. Tuttle

... the tensions of this city. God is still at it! Tolstoy explains this perennial spirit: "The perfection in the Gospels is unattainable in earthly terms, ... It is in aspiring after this perfection (this love), as individual pilgrims passing through the world, that our intrinsically imperfect natures can be redeemed ... And the world be made a happier, more just and more brotherly place to live."2 That is the Holy Spirit working within us inasmuch as we will let him. Still we hear the echo of Paul’s loving ...

66. When Yes Means No and No Means Yes

Matthew 21:28-32

Sermon

Jerry L. Schmalemberger

... son’s behavior! Neither son would bring joy to me, if I were his father. That’s the key to understanding this parable. Jesus is not praising either one. Jesus holds in front of us two sets of imperfect people of whom one set is no better than the other. Neither son was a joy to his father. Both were imperfect people; but one certainly pleased his father more than the other. I personally wish Jesus had added a third son to his parable. I would have liked a son who listened to the request, agreed to do it ...

67. Salvation as Hope

Romans 13:8-14, 1 Thessalonians 4:13--5:11, 1 Corinthians 15:35-58

Sermon Aid

T. A. Kantonen

... eternal perdition. He does not presume to know the answers to all ultimate questions. "Who has known the mind of the Lord? How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!" (Romans 11:33-34). On the last things in particular "our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy's imperfect" and "we see in a mirror dimly" (1 Corinthians 13:9, 12). But this we know: "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him, God has revealed to us ...

68. Voluntary Blindness

Matthew 6:1-15

Sermon

Herchel H. Sheets

... to the feeling that God is in one’s debt, and that, as the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable implied, God ought to consider himself fortunate in having such a fine person as this on his side. Walter Bagehot said, "So long as men are very imperfect, a sense of great imperfection should cleave to them."8 But letting one’s left hand know what one’s right hand is doing tends to obscure the perfect. One’s goodness comes between him or her and the perfect, shutting it from one’s view. Then one is unable ...

69. Call Waiting

1 Samuel 3:1--4:1

Sermon

Frederick C. Edwards

... lump in my throat and tears in my eyes. All I could do was to hug her. How did I know that a young teenage girl had been listening so intently and making all that part of her own life? You may have some similar example from your own experience. Imperfect persons, such as you and I, are indeed used for God’s purposes. Remember that. You never know who’s looking. You see, we are all guides for someone else, with powers beyond our knowing. If you know who Eydie Gorme is, you’ll know she is a wonderful ...

70. Stewards and Our Bodies

1 Corinthians 6:12-20

Sermon

Jerry L. Schmalemberger

... New Testament means life and is used interchangeably with that term. "Drinking is always wrong." Not so - but it may be for some even in moderation. "Illness is God punishing us for our sins." Not at all. We become ill because we are finite and mortal and imperfect. Now let’s consider what we do believe about the meaning of being a steward of our own bodies and what Saint Paul meant when he wrote to his congregation: "You know that your bodies are parts of the body of Christ ... your body is the temple ...

71. "Why Belong to Church?"

John 14:15-31

Sermon

... I ought to be better than I am. Henry Ward Beecher once said, "the church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones." We Christians especially talk about this: the fact that we are sinners and we are not doing God a favor or the congregation when we join. We are very imperfect as individuals and as an institution. We are open to criticism, and that includes the Pastor! We never claim to be perfect in the first place. If someone asks you what ...

72. A God Pleasing Savior and God Pleasing People

Malachi 1:1-5

Sermon

Daniel G. Mueller

... have to make up our minds to please some and displease others. And we hope, in so doing, that we pick the right people for each. If we lived in a perfect world and were all perfect people, this would never be a problem. But because we are imperfect, because we are sinful, we are unable perfectly to please one another and to be pleased. People expect too much from other people; people don’t give as much as they expect to get. This imbalance is affirmation of sin, for it causes separation in our lives. Our ...

73. Service

Mark 10:35-45

Sermon

Warren Thomas Smith

... soul in the institutional church; I love it. I believe in the church. I readily accept the statement, "The Church is of God, and will be preserved to the end of time ..." At the same time, I see - as do you - the imperfections in the church, and these imperfections are there because the church is made up of people - like you and me. Preferment has been a problem in all branches of Christendom: Roman, Greek Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist. Yes, and the Free Church tradition, with its system of the ...

74. Smart, Wise, and Foolish

1 Corinthians 1:18--2:5

Sermon

Gregory J. Johanson

... reminds us that we do not need to earn God’s love. We call it grace! We are loved because we are his creation, and the foolishness of it all is that sometimes God’s perfect love for us must be communicated to us through the imperfect love of an imperfect mate or parent or teacher or boss or therapist or child. What an inefficient system! I think God occasionally must also let us know he loves us through a faithful Bassett Hound or Dalmation! A second characteristic of real inner wisdom is to be able to ...

75. You Are Not Yourself!

Colossians 3:1-17

Sermon

King Duncan

... we can yet be. We see ourselves with all our warts, our blemishes, our failures. That is not how God sees us. Because we ask Him for forgiveness, He blots out all out past failures. Then He sees us as we can yet be-without the curse of our many imperfections. Do you remember the classic fairy tale RAPUNZEL? It is the story of a young girl, imprisoned in a tower with an old witch. The young girl is in fact very beautiful, but the old witch insistently tells her that she is ugly. This was the witch’s way of ...

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