Synonyms: replica, copy, representation, mock-up, dummy, imitation, double, duplicate, lookalike, reproduction, prototype, stereotype, archetype, type, version, style, ideal, paragon, perfect example, specimen, perfect specimen, fashion model, supermodel, mannequin, sitter, poser, subject, artist's model, photographic model, design, mark, configuration, variety, kind, sort, original, original design, exclusive, toy, miniature, facsimile, prototypical, prototypal, archetypal, illustrative, perfect, exemplary, classic, flawless, faultless, consummate, impeccable
Antonyms: deficient, imperfect
Showing 726 to 750 of 1182 results
Sermon
James Merritt
... of us that many of us will face at some time in our life. Today, I am dealing with the fear of loneliness. If you have ever been lonely or felt lonely, you know it is one of the most terrible feelings in the world. Celine Dion re-did a classic song a few years ago entitled, "All By Myself". The lyrics themselves are haunting. Here is just a part of it. Livin' alone I think of all the friends I've known When I dial the telephone Nobody's home All by myself Don't wanna be All by myself ...
Sermon
James Merritt
Everybody at one time or another has read the comic strip "Peanuts" by Charles Schulz. If you have, you can't help but love Charlie Brown. In one of the classic cartoons, Charlie Brown is at the beach building a beautiful sandcastle. He has worked on it all day long and as he stands back to admire his finished work, it is suddenly consumed by a huge wave. Looking at the smooth sand mound that had been his creation just a ...
728. Why Me?
Proverbs 16:4, Colossians 1:16
Sermon
James Merritt
... Schultz had a way of capturing just exactly what most of us feel and go through in life with his famous cartoon. I remember one where Lucy is philosophizing (as always) and Charlie is listening. As usual, Lucy has the floor and she is delivering one of those classic dogmatic lectures. She says, "Charlie Brown, life is a lot like a deck chair. Some place it so they can see where they are going. Others place it to see where they have been, and some put it to see where they are." The last caption shows Charlie ...
729. Liar, Liar
Exodus 20:16
Sermon
James Merritt
... can honestly tell you that you can become a part of God's family forever. [1] James Patterson and Peter Kim, The Day America Told The Truth, (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1991), p 200. [2] Albert M. Wells, Sr., Compiler, Inspiring Quotations, Contemporary and Classical (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1988) p. 90. [3] Readers Digest, January 2004, pp 117-119. [4] James Patterson and Peter Kim, Op.cit.p 49 [5] Patrick M. Morley, The Man In The Mirror (Brentwood, TN:Wolgemuth and Hyatt, Publishers, Inc., 1989) p ...
730. Bring It On
Hebrews 4:15-16
Sermon
James Merritt
... His angels charge over you, to keep you, In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.'" And Jesus answered and said to him, ‘It has been said, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God.'" (Lk. 4:9-12) Here was the classic temptation to look out for number one. What Satan was trying to do was perform by-pass surgery on Jesus, saying "Why don't you just by-pass the cross and go straight for the crown?" You see Satan was not only trying to tempt Jesus to do something that ...
Sermon
James Merritt
... church the real meaning of worship, and to show that worship is more than music. He did not allow any singing in their services for a period of time, while they learned to worship the Lord in other ways. During that time God moved on his heart to write this classic song. Listen one more time to these words: I'm coming back to the heart of worship, And it's all about you, It's all about you, Jesus. I'm sorry, Lord, for the thing I've made it, When it's all about you, It's all about ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... ) Hearing loss is becoming quite widespread and is a nuisance. But there is nothing funny about deafness. The world of non-hearing people can be lonely and difficult. One of the saddest instances of deafness that I know is that of the immortal composer of classical music, Ludwig van Beethoven. For a musician deafness would be the tragedy of tragedies. As he himself wrote on one occasion, "How sad is my lot, I must avoid all things that are dear to me." There was a terrible time when Beethoven was struggling ...
733. Daily Homework
Matthew 28:16-20
Sermon
James Merritt
... test. Someone then asked the company spokesman why they didn't enforce their patent on the Mercedes Benz energy-absorbing car body, a design that was evidently copied by other companies, because of its successful safety record. The spokesman for Mercedes Benz gave a classic response. He said, "Because some things in life are too important not to share." How true that is. A pastor dressed in a comfortable pair of old blue jeans, boarded a plane to come home from a speaking engagement. He settled into the ...
Sermon
James Merritt
... people who voted against you receiving this property?" I said, "Yes sir it is." You know what he said to me? He said, "How could anybody vote against going to the Promised Land?" More importantly than opposition is how you respond to it and Nehemiah gives the classic way to do it: . So I answered them and said to them, "The God of heaven Himself will prosper us; therefore we His servants will arise and build, but you have no heritage or right or memorial in Jerusalem." (Nehemiah 2:20, NKJV) There are always ...
Sermon
James Merritt
The dark side - all you have to do is to simply say those words and in this day and age an image comes to your mind of a creature in all black, who breathes heavily through a mask - called Darth Vader. Star Wars – a classic battle between good and evil, has now filled the Hollywood screens and home theatres for 30 years. Teresa and I were newlyweds when it first hit the screens in 1977, and to this day, this saga is still one of the best sellers of all times. The final movie, Revenge ...
Sermon
James Merritt
... to study the facts for themselves to see whether or not God could exist. Objection 4: What about those who have never heard the Gospel? This is a fairly common objection (but one honestly that the objector usually doesn't take seriously). This is one of the classic "rabbit" objections that must be dealt with quickly. The best way to answer this is to focus, not on those who have never heard about God, but on the God about whom they claim they have never heard. You can point out several things: God is just ...
737. Misled By Beauty
1 Samuel 15:34-35, 16:1-13
Sermon
Stan Purdum
... between eight and twenty percent more than average-looking females. It also sometimes works the other way, too, in that very beautiful people are often assumed to be unfeeling or stuck on themselves. They sometimes have trouble being taken seriously.2 C. S. Lewis' classic book, The Screwtape Letters, gives us an example of how we can be misled by appearance. The book is written as if it were a series of correspondence between a master devil named Screwtape and his nephew Wormwood, who is only an apprentice ...
738. Eating in the Echoing Hall
2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33
Sermon
Stan Purdum
... 's likely how it is with many of our regrets — we might wish that a certain thing had turned out differently, but we have moved on, and we don't spend a lot of time moaning about it. There's a famous scene involving regret in the classic movie, Casablanca, in which Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman portray former lovers reunited by WW II events. Near the end of the movie, their characters, Rick and Ilsa, are standing in an airport. Ilsa's husband Victor is already on the plane, and Ilsa, who loves both ...
Sermon
Stan Purdum
... system in which God was addressed not by sacrifice in the temple, but by cooperation with the order God had built into life. As such, it was not a particularly Jewish view, but a knowledge considered as the common property of all humanity. Proverbs are classic wisdom writings, as are the biblical books of Job, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon. They do not contain references to the temple, the priests, or the covenant. In fact, there is nothing in them that would offend the non-Jew. They do not speak ...
Sermon
Gary L. Carver
... involvement. Who has not, like a little child, wanted to gather up all the broken things and take them to Daddy to fix? The impulse to let someone else come in and solve all our difficulties is very strong; in fact, it is the classic infantile reaction to any problem, and who can deny that speculating abstractly about the future is less demanding than trying to serve lovingly and sacrificially in the present? Here, in my judgment, is one of the subtlest temptations that faces any Christian in any ...
Sermon
Gary L. Carver
... dead hand of the past." Now, to be sure, the power of tradition is present here, but alongside this, I sense another force that is much more potent; namely, a simplicity that is rooted in bottomless profundity. What you have in the Christmas story is a classic example of a reality that is at once known and yet not fully known. Here is something that can be grasped immediately and concretely by the youngest and the most profound of minds. As I have suggested in the sermon title, Bethlehem is a place where ...
742. Fish and Sheep
John 21:15-25, John 21:1-14
Sermon
Donald Charles Lacy
... forever be imprinted in our Christian consciences. Peter was to love his Lord, tend his sheep, and feed his sheep. The recipient of the inquiries seemed to grow weary and, in impatience or hurt feelings, attempted to remind the Lord that he knew everything. It was a classic scene for all our spiritual ancestors and will remain so for all future generations, provided the Lord tarries. We may want to suggest to Jesus that he take it a little easier on the poor fellow. As a matter of fact, we may even begin to ...
Sermon
Richard Gribble
... , our negotiation of hurdles that are trials of faith. The image in the book of Revelation of those who have endured their trials of faith, washing their robes white in the blood of the lamb, is, like the events in the life of Jean Marie Barrette, a classic tale of a significant trial. The work that we do, the ministry in which we participate, is a significant part of the life that God gives us, a life that is often dotted with bumps, obstacles, road blocks, and detours. At times its seems that nothing goes ...
Sermon
Donna Schaper
... maximizers. A satisficer is the one who is willing to live with the good enough rather than insisting on the best. Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon developed "satisficers" as a realistic alternative to the notion of the utility maximization presupposed by classical economists. Schwartz argues strong for the satisficers being the ones who have the best lives. For example, if a supermarket chain attempted to calculate the very best alternative before deciding where to place a new store, the research costs would ...
Sermon
Mary S. Lautensleger
... a monogram such as C-O-W, D-U-D, or P-M-S. People make judgments about us by the names we have been given before they even meet us. Names have become stereotyped and may reveal our approximate age. Although many names are time-honored classics, your name may indicate that you are either a senior citizen or a youth. It may also reveal your nationality, ethnicity, or gender. Boys are teased for having girls' names, but girls can usually get away with having boys' names. Country singer, Johnny Cash, recorded a ...
Sermon
Lee Ann Dunlap
... , and justice and hope to humanity. It was time to redesign. "Am I not free to do with this vessel as I choose?" God asks. God's claim of eminent domain runs contrary to our twenty-first-century-American convictions. As others have pointed out, the Frank Sinatra classic "I Did It My Way" is popular sentiment in our culture, albeit poor theology. "It's my life" (or body), we say, "and I can do as I choose." Drugs and alcohol, sexual promiscuity, gluttony — "Don't tell me what to do. My destiny is in my own ...
747. Small Towns
Luke 2:1-14
Sermon
King Duncan
... . We have to maintain a constant vigil to ensure that the birth of the Messiah doesn’t degenerate into the worship of Mammon, or material possessions. Maybe your family will gather around the television this Christmas season to watch one more time the classic motion picture It’s a Wonderful Life. Actor Jimmy Stewart, who starred in the film, offered this reflection on its meaning, “The character I played was George Bailey, an ordinary kind of fella who thinks he’s never accomplished anything in life ...
Sermon
Maxie Dunnam
... by the women of our church last year. Another of these persons, Tildon Edwards, is an Episcopal priest, he’s recognized as one of the two or three most outstanding leaders in the renewal of spirituality in America, and his books are already becoming classics in that field. Do you see the point? These two persons, Basil Pennington and Tildon Edwards, touching tens of thousands of lives every year; touched and influenced by these anonymous nuns in their dark gray habits, moving about in the shadows at it ...
749. Growing Up Fast
Luke 2:41-52
Illustration
Sid Burgess
... we are, less than a week from Christmas, from the baby lying in a manger. Now Jesus is already an adolescent wandering off on his own. Last week Jesus was "prophecy miraculously fulfilled." This week he is questioning the teachers of that very tradition. The classical confessions of the church hold that Jesus is "fully human, fully God," and in today's familiar story from Luke, we can see both sides. Jesus, fully human, is growing up as all mortals must. In the process, Jesus has scared his parents half to ...
Sermon
Billy D. Strayhorn
... his head onto the only available candidate: a black man from death row. It starred Ray Miland and Rosie Greer. I remember watching it on TV. It was so bizarre that I couldn't stop watching. It was like a cheesy sci-fi version of the 1958 classic film by Stanley Kramer starring Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis, "The Defiant Ones" about two escaped convicts chained together who hate each other but have to depend on each other. The reason I chose the title is because it made me think of Peter. He was a ...
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