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 76 to 100 of 754 results

76. Failure Is Not Final

Hosea 2:2-23

Sermon

William L. Self

We are offered wonderful news from the Bible on this eighth Sunday of Epiphany. God has a way of bringing us the very personal lives of his chosen people. We are God's chosen whether we fit the profile of the clergy or as laity -- or, as my family would say, normal people. The story told in Hosea is one of great personal pain and suffering and brokenheartedness on the part of this prophet of God. His beloved wife Gomer leaves his home and hearth for a life of infidelity. She pursues other lovers but soon ...

77. The Sermon on the Level

Luke 6:17-26

Sermon

The word that Christ our Lord would like to have us hear this All Saints’ Sunday is a firm word, gently spoken, lovingly applied. Faintly we recall that he said something similar to this before, in a sermon everyone applauds, but few apply, The Sermon on the Mount. "Blessed are the poor in spirit," we remember, and we like that. It doesn’t touch our assets. "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness," and we could use a little righteousness like ours around the nation and the church today ...

78. On the Road with the Hemorrhaging Woman

Mark 5:21-43

Sermon

James W. Moore

Some years ago, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote these powerful words. Listen… “How do you measure success? To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty; To find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a redeemed social condition, or a job well done; To know that even one life has breathed because you lived… that is to ...

79. Transforming Love

Acts 9:1-19a

Sermon

Douglas J. Deuel

Edwin Markham's little poem has so much to say to us about the ability of love to transform. He drew a circle that shut me out -- Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle that took him in.1 One of the most amazing stories to come out of the Bible is the account of Saul's life. Through this story we see a leading opponent of the church being transformed into the church's greatest advocate. In today's passage of scripture, we encounter the conversion experience of ...

80. If I Only Had One Wish

2 Chronicles 1:1-12

Sermon

James Merritt

We have all thrilled to the story of "Aladdin and the Magic Lamp" in The Arabian Knights. As you remember, Aladdin finds a magic lamp that, when rubbed, produces a genie who has the power to grant his every wish. We have all imagined finding such a lamp and making certain wishes. So let me ask you a fun question: If you found such a lamp, and you could have one wish, what would you wish for? A humorous story I read illustrates that this requires a great deal of thought. There were three men marooned on a ...

81. Staying Alive All Your Ministry Life: Will You Finish Well?

Exodus 32:1-33:6

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

There are some experiences or encounters that are so solidly lodged in our memory they continue to invade our consciousness – to haunt us – to help us or to hinder our Christian walk, to call and challenge us to be more than we are. John Birkbeck is a person around whom for me a whole cluster of memories is gathered – memories that invade my immediate awareness now and then. John was a Scot Presbyterian preacher. During a part of my tenure as the World Editor of The Upper Room, he was the editor of the ...

82. Poem: Adonais

Eulogy

Percy Bysshe Shelley

I. I weep for Adonais – he is dead! O, weep for Adonais! though our tears Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head! And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers, And teach them thine own sorrow, say: “With me Died Adonais; till the Future dares Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be An echo and a light unto eternity!” II. Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay, When thy Son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies In darkness? where was lorn Urania ...

83. The Fellowship of Joy

Philippians 1:3-11

Sermon

James Merritt

Ten years: a decade, 520 weeks, 3,652 days, 87,600 hours. A lot can change in ten years: less hair, more weight, deeper wrinkles. As I stand here this day, ten years to the day when I became pastor of this church, my mind is literally boggled at where I am today, and where we are today, and the journey we have made together over the last ten years. As I struggled to discern the message I should bring this Sunday, I had several different texts and thrusts dancing in my head, when sitting at the Executive ...

84. Chapter II

Exodus 20:1-21

Sermon

Frank H. Seilhamer

"I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage; You will have no other gods before me. You will not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you will not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but ...

85. David Brings a Plague upon Israel

2 Samuel 24:1-25

Teach the Text

Robert B. Chisholm Jr.

Big Idea: When angered by sin, God may severely punish the sinners, but he is willing to relent from his judgment when sinners repent. Understanding the Text As noted above, this final episode in the book corresponds to 2 Samuel 21:1–14 in the concentric structure of the epilogue. In both episodes David successfully appeases God’s anger. In the first instance Saul’s sin against the Gibeonites prompts God’s judgment; in the second instance God’s anger at Israel, presumably due to some unidentified sin, is ...

86. On the Night when He Was Betrayed

1 Corinthians 11:17-34

Sermon

T. A. Kantonen

There is a unique beauty and tenderness about the hour of sunset. The sun impresses its memory upon a darkening world by tinting the western sky with its most original and harmonious colors. The last hour of the day is its most beautiful and memorable. So it is in human relations. The tender beauty of sunset glows from the hour of farewell. We say goodbye to those who are not so intimate but reserve the last precious moments to those nearest our hearts. And after all else is forgotten we remember the ...

87. The Four Sacred Chords of Home

Mark 13:24-37

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

Salmon do it. Hummingbirds do it. Butterflies do it. Turtles do it. All these creatures, and many more: they all . . . go home again. Salmon find their way from the vast ocean back to whatever tiny tributary in which they were hatched. Hummingbirds fly over 6000 miles to find their nesting sites. Butterflies congregate in the same trees, generation after generation. Migrating turtles closed down whole runways this past summer (2011) at JFK Airport as they made their way back to home ground. The instinct to ...

88. Ruth and Boaz on the Threshing Floor

Ruth 3:1-18

Understanding Series

Michael S. Moore

Naomi’s Strategy: Naomi is Ruth’s mother-in-law (khamot, 2:23). This feminine form of kham (“father-in-law”) is widely perceived by lexicographers to be a nominal derivative of the unattested verb *khamah. Cognates of this word appear in extrabiblical literature (Arabic khamay, “to protect, defend”; OSA ?mh, “sacred precinct, protective association”), and the root idea seems to be protection, shelter, or refuge. An Arabic attorney, for example, is a mu?amin (“protector”), while an Egyptian “protector” is a ...

89. The Warrior And The Shepherd Are One!

Isaiah 40:1-31

Sermon

Harold Warlick

A friend conveys the story of his childhood misconception about finding his vocational way in life. From his earliest remembrance his goal in life was to own a grocery store. The idea surfaced when he made his first lasting friendship, at the age of six, with a child named Larry. Larry's father owned the movie theater in their small hometown. Every Saturday, he and Larry would go to the children's matinee and they would not have to purchase a ticket. Larry's father allowed them to walk right in without ...

90. The Deeper Meanings of The Christian Faith by Dr. Bryant M. Kirkland

Romans 8:18-27

Sermon

Leonard Mann

I would like to talk with you about the meaning of Christianity. I took seriously the assignment that was given to me. I studied about Paul’s sermon at Mars Hill where he stood up in the great place of debate and spoke so eloquently that the people said, "Tell us what is the meaning of this Jesus and the resurrection that you proclaim." I have tried to work out this message mindful of what I imagine are your thoughts, my own thoughts, and the troubled thoughts that are characteristic in this modern period ...

91. Overcoming Loneliness

Sermon

Robert G. Tuttle

In the overcrowded conditions of our modern world loneliness has possessed us: "He’s a real Nowhere Man, Sitting in his Nowhere Land, Making all his Nowhere Plans for nobody." Such emptiness, such frustration, such loneliness depresses us. What’s to be done about it? This feeling of hopelessness has been around a long time. The ancient writer of Psalm 22 cried out: Dear God, right now I feel like a worm, not a person. I feel so used by other people. And to make it worse, I feel resented by the very same ...

92. From Tears To Triumph

John 20:10-18

Sermon

King Duncan

It was difficult for Jesus to watch people he loved experience such heartache. Never was there a heart more tender than his. When the crowds begged for healing, he complied. When Mary and Martha wept for their brother Lazarus, he called forth Lazarus from the tomb. When the multitude hungered, he gave them fishes and loaves. When they cursed and crucified him, he asked the Father to forgive them. Now his closest friends were grieving. They were grieving because he had been nailed to a cruel cross on a hill ...

93. A Life Hidden With Christ

Colossians 2:6-23

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

I've told you this story before, but it's been a long time. And even if it had not been, it's the most appropriate story I know to introduce our theme for today. It's the story of one of my most meaningful experiences. I have a friend who is a Benedictine monk. The way we live out our lives is vastly different, but I feel a real kinship, a oneness of spirit with Brother Sam. One of the most meaningful memories, to which I return often in my mind, is an evening he and I spent together alone, sharing our ...

94. Will We Enjoy Heaven?

Jonah 3:1-10

Sermon

Harold Warlick

Many characters in the Bible prove identifiable in our contemporary world. As we sit here today on the downhill side of winter and contemplate the meaning of our lives, one biblical character especially leaps out at us: the prophet Jonah. Most of us associate Jonah with being swallowed by a legendary whale or giant fish. The book of Jonah, however, is actually a poignant parable about the relation of Israel to other nations. The book skillfully and forcefully calls Israel back to her universal mission of ...

95. The Joy of Sorrow?

Matthew 5:4

Sermon

Wallace H. Kirby

As I walked down the hall of a hospital Thursday afternoon, I noticed coming toward me a young man maneuvering himself in a wheelchair. Because there was at least a minute before we passed each other, I saw that his left leg was missing, just below the knee. It was so heavily bandaged that I surmised he had recently had surgery. If I had stopped that young man and asked him if he knew what sorrow meant, he might have told me something of his grief over the loss of his leg. The telephone rang late the other ...

96. Comfort

Isaiah 40:1-31

Sermon

Frederick C. Edwards

"Comfort! Comfort my people, says your God." How wonderful those words sound to us. How many times we feel the need for comfort. How often we need an assuring and tender word to ease the hurt we feel. Every year about this time we hear those wonderful prophetic words sung in Handel’s Messiah, or read in our churches from the portion of scripture that biblical scholars call "Second Isaiah," to distinguish it from the writings of the eighth-century prophet. They were written for a people for whom things had ...

97. The Miracle

Luke 2:1-7

Sermon

Theodore L. Yewey

It had been a long difficult trip, one that they really hadn’t wanted to make, but when the government insists, and there are no loop holes, one has little choice. After days on the road, they were both dead tired. Their bodies ached from the strain of the road and the grime of travel ground away at them. A bone-chilling weariness crept over them till all they wanted to do was find some place to rest and spend the night. But now, even that did not look very promising, for every place where they sought ...

98. Comfort My People

Isaiah 40:1-31

Sermon

King Duncan

Have you ever noticed that people are funny? It makes no difference what time of the year, people are funny. Maybe you read the story in the newspapers this time last year about a young Romeo in France who was trying to woo his girlfriend Santa Claus-style. Attempting a surprise visit to his girlfriend while her parents were away, the youth climbed down the chimney of the girl's home. On his way down, he became trapped in the narrow flue and called for help. Firemen, alerted by the girlfriend, said they ...

99. Sermons

Sermon

John R. Bodo

Introductory Note "Thomas the Doubter" is obviously an Easter sermon. However, for Christians every Lord's Day is Easter, because ours is a Resurrection faith. Without the Resurrection, we have nothing distinctive -- for our own comfort and growth or for a world in pain. In "Thomas the Doubter" I hazard a hypothesis about Thomas' life prior to his meeting Jesus. The hypothesis seems fairly plausible. His nickname, Didymus, appears in the biblical record (John 11:16). "Thomas the Doubter" argues for the ...

100. Three Days To See

Mark 10:46-52

Sermon

Helen Keller

The following is an article written by Keller published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1933. I All of us have read thrilling stories in which the hero had only a limited and specified time to live. Sometimes it was as long as a year; sometimes as short as twenty-four hours. But always we were interested in discovering just how the doomed man chose to spend his last days or his last hours. I speak, of course, of free men who have a choice, not condemned criminals whose sphere of activities is strictly delimited ...

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