Sermon and Worship Resources

Antonyms: keep, claim, continue, stick by, self-control, power through, achieve, defend, bear, hope, acquire, quick visit, adopt, continue along, adhere, remain, pursue, support, take up, keep up, reuse, advocate, stay, persevere, cherish, keep going, carry on

Showing 826 to 850 of 2665 results

826. God in a Glimpse

Acts 17:16-34

Sermon

... more elusive than that. Faith is trusting in a God we cannot see or prove. It's a trust of his love and power. Faith is like the confidence of children in their father who carries them precariously on his shoulders. He never tells them he won't drop them - they simply trust. A placard in my office says it well - FAITH IS TO BELIEVE WHAT WE DO NOT SEE; AND THE REWARD OF FAITH IS TO SEE WHAT WE BELIEVE. Believing without seeing is hard. Perhaps the most vexing problem of Christianity today is this one - how ...

827. The Preposterous Prescription

2 Kings 5:1-27

Sermon

... or the family that receives that kind of news. A few of you have been there yourselves, and have experienced it first hand. One man who was diagnosed as having a terminal illness, and was fortunate enough to recover, later said, "When you hear it, your heart drops through the floor. You think it can’t be true. You begin to think of all the things you have planned and still want to do. Even at first you begin to go through some of those stages of Denial, Anger, Bargaining and Depression. You demand to ...

828. A Place for You

John 14:1-4

Sermon

Dean Lueking

... and people very different from my little realm as a ten-year-old boy. I knew, of course, that all these professional-looking people in white were supposed to be there for my good. But that did not stop my heart from pounding. In fact, when the ether drops were being poured over the gauze covering my nose, I thought I was dying. But before losing consciousness under the anesthetic, I saw my father enter the room, come over to me, put his hand gently on my shoulder and say, "I’m here with you, son." Then ...

829. Who Has Believed?

Isaiah 52:13--53:12

Sermon

... the centurion who said, "Surely this was a Son of God?" In the great hymn of Isaac Watts Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed we read these words: Was it for crimes that I have done, He groaned upon the tree? Amazing pity! Grace unknown! And love beyond degree! But drops of grief can ne'er repay The debt of love I owe; Here, Lord, I give myself away; 'Tis all that I can do. The cross is not only the reminder of how far God would reach to us and for us in Jesus Christ to show God’s love ...

830. A Game for Followers

Luke 18:35-43

Children's Sermon

... ." Now here are the directions: you must do everything that I do as long as I say "Simon says"; but if I don't say "Simon says" and still do something, then you must not do it. If you do it, then you have made a mistake and you must drop out of the game. I am going to be the leader and you must be the followers. Simon says, touch your nose; Simon says, touch your toes; Simon says, touch your ears; touch your mouth. Oh, did I catch anyone? Did anyone make a mistake and touch his mouth without ...

831. Proper 10

Lk 10:25-37 · Col 1:1-20 · 2 Ki 2:1, 6-14 · Deut 30:9-14

Sermon Aid

John R. Brokhoff

... for a double portion of Elijah's spirit. 3. Mantle (v. 13). Elijah's mantle was a symbol of his spirit which gave him his authority and power as a prophet. When Elijah left the earth in a blaze of glory, a fiery chariot, to heaven, he dropped his mantle. Elisha picked it up and the power of the Spirit represented by the mantle repeated for Elisha what Elijah did - the parting of the Jordan waters. The mantle of the prophet was passed down to Elisha who carried on the work of Elijah. Lesson 2: Colossians ...

832. Proper 24

Lk 18:1-8 · 2 Tim 3:14--4:5 · Gen 32:22-30 · Ex 17:8-13 · Hab 1:1-3, 2:1-4

Sermon Aid

John R. Brokhoff

... As humans we are prone to give up what we believe and do. In Lesson 1 Habbakuk says God's people live by faithfulness to God. Jesus taught that we should be faithful unto death. We can lose our faith. We can stop praying and worshiping. We can drop out of church. In view of these possibilities we need Paul's admonition to continue in our faith. 2. Inspired (3:16). The Scriptures are "inspired." Most of us do not have any trouble accepting the claim. When we consider the beauty of the language and the depth ...

833. Proper 26

Lk 19:1-10 · 2 Thes 1:5-12 · Ex 34:5-9 · Hag 2:1-9

Sermon Aid

John R. Brokhoff

... kingdom and the call to be God's people? How can anyone be worthy? The secret is in verse 11 - Paul prays that God will make us worthy. 2. Destruction (v. 9). Is there a real hell? Will the wicked be punished? This is another subject we have dropped in our generation. Now we restrict our preaching to the love of God, and love and hell do not go together. Strange that Paul above all others stressed love of God in Christ, but in this pericope tells his people who are suffering persecution for their faith that ...

834. Ordinary 32

Lk 20:27-38 · Zech 7:1-10 · 2 Thess 2:13--3:5 · 1 Chron 29:10-13

Sermon Aid

John R. Brokhoff

... from death to life. Zechariah 7:1-10 1. Should (v. 3). The people of Bethel in Zechariah's time wanted to know "should" they mourn and fast as they did in the past. Today we need to ask the same question because fasting has largely been dropped during Lent, the traditional season for fasting. Today the emphasis is upon celebration - we want to celebrate Sunday after Sunday after Sunday, but for the most part we do not know what we are celebrating. Since we have minimized sin to the point that confession of ...

835. Beginning a Ministry

Matthew 4:18-22

Sermon

... Jesus. It was radically different from modern recruiting methods; Jesus was the catalyst in the procedure. His personality, his message, the personal dynamism of the Son of God, and the authoritative figure he must have been attracted people so completely they dropped everything and followed him. There was no involved interview, no presentation of qualifications, no job analysis by Jesus, but simply a "follow me" - and they did. Anyone who has applied for a job today knows such procedures would never work ...

836. Christians Trust in God

Matthew 6:25-34

Sermon

Joe Pennel

... ’s own trouble be sufficient for the day," when international terrorism may be taking the civilized world into a new era of danger from the nuclear bomb? The American military has perfected a fifty-eight pound nuclear mini-bomb that is almost as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Is it just a matter of time until terrorists obtain such a device and pose an even worse threat to our cities and our life? Isn’t this an age in which all of us are entitled to be anxious and to worry about the future ...

837. Pilgrimage of Faith John M. Cobb

Exodus 3:1-22

Sermon

... , singing Millenial hymns, until they reached the Black Sea ... Because of epidemics and various adverse conditions unforeseen, only a few ever reached their destination - less than 100 souls.7 (No, they did not all die along the way, many just dropped out; and, as well, others came later.) However, those who did make it found Central Russia a forbidding region of mountains and dry barren valleys ... [These] new villages undoubtedly experienced the most trying ordeals of all the German settlements in ...

838. Harnessed Power

John 20:19-23

Sermon

Richard L. Thulin

... whole world is our parish and that our cause is nothing less than the world's conversion by baptism. If not that, we would certainly like to be told that our job is to proclaim Jesus until our vocal cords sag from use, or to teach the tradition until we drop from exhaustion. To be told simply to forgive sins seems much too limited, much too passive, and much too lacking in power. John's story of Pentecost is not the one we are used to hearing or the one we have come to expect. It may be disappointing for us ...

839. Victory and Protest

John 6:25-59

Sermon

Richard L. Thulin

... of sins, life, and salvation are given to us in the sacrament, for where there is forgiveness of sins, there are also life and salvation."1 These words, and others like them, became so much a part of my speech that I could recite them at the "drop of a hat" (as, indeed, I had to do at a public examination before the congregation). But they were not simply words written by someone else; another's words that I had only to reproduce. They became my words. And they shaped my central understanding of the ...

840. The Promise of Light

Isaiah 60:1-22

Sermon

... and death and homelessness for thousands of people. The emrror and oppression of poverty and homelessness in our cities, of institutional "holding tanks" for the elderly and infirm, of drug and alcohol abuse, of child and spouse abuse shut out light and drop a curtain of impenetrable darkness that chokes and kills. In our well-manicured and security-tight suburban communities there is the darkness of exile rooted in our meaningless boredom and routine without knowing why we do it or what our lives are ...

841. Is God With You, Or Not?

Exodus 17:1-7

Sermon

A mortician tells of an incident on the way to a funeral one day. He pulled up to a curb, the rear wheel of his car dropped off the edge of the road and fell into a drain, and the car was stuck. Since he was already late for the funeral he rushed over to the trunk of the car, got out the jack, and started to raise the wheel of the car out of the drain. ...

842. The Trifocal Festival

Matthew 5:1-12

Sermon

... . (I Peter 3:14) I: The merciful, the pure in heart, peacemakers, and the persecuted: the saints of God! II: Frederick Buechner writes this delightfully serendipitous definition of the word "saint": "In his holy flirtation with the world, God occasionally drops a handkerchief. These handkerchiefs are called saints."2 I: Such a whimsical understanding allows us to see the saints in a new light: not the stodgy, circumspect, stained glass, haloed, religious types, but God’s winsome courtiers sent to do ...

843. God’s Safety Net

Matthew 25:31-46

Sermon

D. Wayne Burkette

... of its janitorial staff tried to support their families on the minimum wage! A second step toward becoming the safety net God wants us to be moves us beyond our small worlds of direct influence and into the big world of power and politics. Many folk choose to drop out of the march when this step is called for. It’s a step into the realm toward advocacy for the poor, the outcasts, the persecuted, the sick and homeless. It’s a step into the realm of power politics and populations of people we will never ...

844. Scrape Away the Barnacles

Illustration

... no better place to do this than at the altars of worship on the Lord's Day morning. When we go from here today, let us hope some barnacles will be left behind. Maybe our custodian will find it necessary to work overtime tomorrow, shoveling out the barnacles we have dropped on the floor and left among the pews!

845. Power

2 Corinthians 6:7

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... , not here, but elsewhere, who use their power in that manner. The very first class they throw out a mile a minute lecture and a reading list that would terrify all but the best students. It just knocks all the below-average students right off the wall. They drop the course and all that's left are good students. It's quite a power play. You can make certain your teaching is evaluated only by good students. But if your purpose is to reach all students in your class, it's quite another matter. If your purpose ...

846. Don't Give Up Too Soon!

Acts 15:36-41

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... 30 years. Nelson Mandela is free after 27 years of being in prison in South Africa. Perhaps it's hard for us to comprehend the faith and the hope which sustained these people for so long. Why didn't they give up sooner? Why not just accept failure, quit, drop out, transfer somewhere else, hang it up? One of my joys in life was visiting the famous Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. I had not anticipated that it would be a joy at all. I know little about art. Most of the art appreciation classes I took in college were ...

847. Is There No Balm in Gilead?

Jeremiah 8:4--9:26

Sermon

Brett Blair

... is a special nation, chosen by God above all others for unique blessing. That is idolatry. There is only one nation with which God ever had a special relationship and that is ancient Israel. In Isaiah 40, God says he views all nations as “a drop in a bucket,” “less than nothing” and “dust on the scales,” a statement that is cause for humility.” You see God no longer works through a nation. He works through his people--the church. Paul understood that God’s Kingdom was no longer confined to ...

848. The Master Has Come - To Proclaim God’s Kingdom

Mark 1:9-13

Sermon

... and not the things which should be priorities; by things which cause stress, and not the things we should be stressing. I read about a lady who suddenly decided she just had to have some rat poison that very day. Her husband was in town and she knew he would drop by the drug store. So, she called and said, "Please give my husband rat poison when he comes in for a coke." There is a sense of urgency about life for many of us these days. A man went to see the doctor. He said, "My work absorbs me. I ...

849. The Master Has Come - To Face Jerusalem

Mark 11:1-11

Sermon

Thomas A. Pilgrim

... what he was getting into. He came to face his fears. He had fears - just as we do. Jesus was a man of courage. But, a person of courage is simply one who faces his fears courageously. Jesus faced his fears in the garden when his sweat was as great drops of blood, and he prayed, "Let this cup pass from me; nevertheless ..." Nevertheless! He came to face the Cross. He knew it was there waiting. It had been there all along. He knew it was the culmination of who he was. I went up in the church attic to find ...

850. Eating at the King’s Table

2 Samuel 9:1-13

Sermon

Various Authors

... battle and there was a wholesale slaughter: the king and his sons were killed. When the news of the defeat got back to the capitol, the nurse of Jonathan’s five-year-old son took the boy and fled from the city. As she was running, she dropped the child and the fall permanently crippled him in both feet. David was made the next king of Israel, and since Saul had threatened David’s life and pushed him into exile, Mephibosheth’s nurse was fearful that the new king might destroy any remaining member of ...

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