Sermon and Worship Resources

Synonyms: thirstiness, dryness, parched, craving, strong desire, longing, yearning, avidity, hunger, voracity, keenness, eagerness, lust, appetite, passion, love, crave, want, covet, desire, hunger for/after, lust for/after, hanker for/after, have one's heart set on

Antonyms: aversion, distaste, apathy, dislike, hatred, antipathy, disgust, disregard, abhorrence, acrimony, wet, animosity, animus, antagonism, bad feeling, bitterness, be averse to, detestation

Showing 1051 to 1075 of 1838 results

1051. Epiphany: The Tragedy of Rejection

Luke 4:14-30

Sermon

J. Ellsworth Kalas

... can sit through a superb rendition of Bach or Beethoven and be bored. The people of Capernaum listened to Jesus with open, unprejudiced minds, and were filled with awe; while the people of Nazareth found it necessary to discredit him, and then, in bitterness, to seek to destroy him. The Nazareth tragedy is compounded by the fact that the people were at first inclined to hear Jesus appreciatively. But then something in them made them want to cut Jesus down to size. Specifically, their size. They wanted ...

1052. The Best Advice He Could Give

Luke 3:1-20

Sermon

King Duncan

... part in the refugee rescue. Four years later, Captain LaRue left the military to join a Benedictine monastery, where he spent the rest of his life. In his journals, he once wrote, “The clear, unmistakable message comes to me that on that Christmastide in the bleak and bitter waters off the shore of Korea, God’s hand was at the helm of my ship.” (3) And indeed it was. John’s first word is repent. His second word is get into a right relationship with others. John’s third and most important word is ...

1053. Passover and The Lord's Supper

Exodus 12:1-30

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

... with a neighbor. The food that is eaten is the food of travelers in a hurry: the unblemished lamb of a sheep or goat, roasted on an open fire, instead of in a cooking pot; bread without leaven, because leavened bread takes too long to rise; bitter herbs that are some kind of uncultivated vegetable, pulled up from the ground. Moreover, the participants are to be prepared for flight, with their long robes pulled up and girded, their sandals on their feet, and their staffs in their hands. The whole lamb is to ...

1054. Unworthy or Not?

Luke 5:1-11

Sermon

King Duncan

... but she had not been successful. She weighed about 85 pounds and was a physical wreck from head to toe. She sat down without raising her eyes. He didn’t need to ask what was troubling her. Life had dealt her a devastating blow, and she was bitter, angry, broken, and deeply hurt. The teenager who reaches this point of despair, says Dr. Dobson, can see no tomorrow. There is no hope. She can’t think of anything else. Such an adolescent feels repulsive and disgusting and would like to crawl into a hole, but ...

1055. Some Healing Is Up To You

John 5:1-15

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... second truth, the stance of faith is to accept any miracle Jesus wants to give. Now what’s the connection? You ask. And that’s the right question. Because if we don’t make this connection, it may very well be that we’ll end up in bitterness or cynicism, maybe end up without faith, because we may find ourselves praying for the healing of persons, but those persons die. So what’s the connection? The connection is in the fact that not only are the miracles that Jesus gives us always to instantaneous ...

1056. How May We Come to God?

Psalm 24:1-10

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... He who has clean hands and a pure heart.” Let’s look at our hearts. Can our hearts be called pure when they are full of fear and hostility-- when they are harboring a grudge -- when unforgiveness is there -- when resentment is seething. when bitterness flavors our thinking and feeling -- when our need for security overshadows our willingness to trust? The big question that enables us to discover whether our hearts are pure is this: Do we love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength? III Move ...

1057. A Prophet Among Them

Ezekiel 2:1-3:15

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... which we are called? It was rather dramatic with Ezekiel If he allowed the wicked to die unwarned, Yahweh threatened to require their lives at the prophet’s own hands. So, Yahweh says to him, “And you, son of man groan! with trembling loins and bitterness shall you groan before their eyes!” (Ezekiel 21:11) Are you groaning before the eyes of your people? Do they see that kind of passion and compassion flowing from your life? Who are the people in your congregation, who, though they may be members, don ...

1058. The Prize of the High Calling of God

Philippians 3:12-4:1

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... munch…”And I can’t recite the Scriptures in the original Greek…” crunch, munch…”I don’t know nothin’ about Neihbur and Heidegger…” crunch, munch…he finished the apple. “All I want to know is: this apple I just ate – was it bitter or sweet?” Dr. Tillick paused for a moment and answered in exemplary scholarly fashion: “I cannot possibly answer that question, for I haven’t tasted your apple.” The white-haired preacher dropped the core of his apple into his crumpled paper bag ...

1059. The Gospel

Colossians 1:3-6

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... . (1:3-6) There it is – the gospel that has come to you. Arthur Gordon tells of finding a bundle of letters in an attic – letters written by a grandmother to members of her family and friends shortly after the Civil War. Those were hard and bitter days, filled with a great deal of alienation and animosity, making the lives of many dark and depressing. Yet Gordon discovered that every one of those letters ended with the phrase: “Have I told you lately what a wonderful person you really are!” Think of ...

1060. The Vocation of Leadership: A Prophet Among Them

Ephesians 4:1-16

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

1061. People With Shining Faces

Luke 9:28-36

Sermon

King Duncan

... everyone over 40 is responsible for his (or her) own face. This is to say that whatever is in our hearts will gradually reveal itself in our outward appearance. Spend a great deal of time worrying? Some day it will show up on your face. Have bitterness and envy in your heart? Beware. You are chiseling in flesh what you harbor in your most private emotions. When Moses came down from the mountain after his encounter with God, his face shone. Rather than spending a fortune on plastic surgery, it sounds to me ...

1062. In the Wilderness With Moses

1 Corinthians 10:1-13

Sermon

King Duncan

... strengths as an engineer. A few minutes before midnight on March 12, 1928, Saint Francis Dam in San Francisquito Canyon, CA gave way and some five hundred people lost their lives. Water that reached a height of eighty feet destroyed everything in its path. The bitterly sad part of the story was that the dam had begun leaking the day before and Mulholland and others knew it, but they didn’t think it mattered. Mulholland meant no harm. The Department of Water and Power valued life as much as anyone. They ...

1063. Loving Like God Loves

Matthew 5:43-48

Sermon

Phil Thrailkill

... new me with a new heart, and so he raises the bar to the highest notch, way beyond my abilities. I could never jump that high.3 What does he demand? No only no killing but a heart free from the acids of chronic anger and the cold calculation of bitterness. Not only no adultery but no lust that sees people as objects of pleasure only, and no throwing away of spouses. Not only no false swearing with God’s name but no swearing at all because your words are to be simple and true. Not only no revenge, the ...

1064. Get off the Throne and Learn Wisdom

Matthew 7:1-6

Sermon

Phil Thrailkill

... comes up from hell rather than down from heaven. A judgmental attitude is acid that eats away at love and the kind of help that actually helps people grow past their sins and out of bad habits. A critical spirit is the mother of gossip, and its bitter offspring is a divided church where everyone is complaining about others. So if you are one of those people who is always making mental notes of what is wrong with others and marking what they could do better if only they followed your shining example, listen ...

1065. Resurrection

Acts 10:34-43

Sermon

King Duncan

... a little southern Illinois town. One of the stories he tells is that of Buster Toland’s funeral. Buster was a mechanic at the local garage. His wife, Beulah, drank too much and was high on drugs most of the time. They argued loudly and profanely and bitterly. One day they were in the middle of a huge shouting match when Buster dropped dead. “Dead before he hit the floor,” Beulah said, at least a hundred times to anyone who would listen. Now, Buster was a rascal, and his death made the whole community ...

1066. To Live Is to Dance

John 10:1-21

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... in the midst of every baffling contradiction a person could know, held high every embarrassment this life affords within his own heart. The height of Heaven and the depth of hell, the joy of the Kingdom and the pain of death, the freedom of faith and the bitterness of hate, the spirit and the flesh, angels and devils. Hope and despair - were all in the experience of Jesus, and yet look what he made of them: a new dimension of consciousness for person, new order of society, a new philosophy of history, a new ...

1067. Oh, God!

Revelation 7:9-17

Sermon

King Duncan

... darkness. The mystery of Godness was present. I was given help. No ecstasy. No great energy. Just the gift of endurance-- that was all that met me in the depths of darkness. By the grace of God, somehow I stayed on my feet! I did not blow up in presumptive bitterness; neither did I give up in hopeless despair. I was given the gift just to stand and hold on.’” (6) This is not a Pollyanna faith we are espousing. It does not say that we will avoid tears. Far from it. What it says is this, there is One who ...

1068. When Jesus Comes to Church

Mark 11:27-33

Sermon

Michael Milton

... a place in which a million black sins live and are breeding in the darkness. The human heart is often a place of greed, of lust, of hatred. There are true believers who yet harbor in the cabinets of their lives, dark secrets, untold stories of bitterness and refusal to forgive. You would not expect that in a temple. You would not expect that in the church. But there are unbelievers in the church today just as there were unbelievers in the temple in Jesus’ day. They know of Him. They know the details ...

1069. Fire Falling from Heaven

Luke 12:49-53

Sermon

R. Robert Cueni

... up two flights of steps to give a quarter to the church treasurer that he found in the coin return of the soda pop machine. He was indeed an honest man. Loren was never shy about giving his testimonial. When he came home from Vietnam, he was angry and bitter. He didn't believe in anyone or anything. He knew he was traveling the road to self-destruction and that was fine with him. Loren had chosen the hard way to commit suicide. Then his life was turned around. It was no revival preacher who issued an altar ...

1070. Pass the Pigweed

Exodus 17:1-7

Sermon

Bill Mosley

... to let a little thing like the Red Sea stop him, so he sent his chariots after them, and that's when the waters came back together, drowning the army. The Israelites celebrate, then plunge into the Wilderness of Shur. They find water at Marah, but it is bitter. God shows Moses how to sweeten the water. Then at Elim they find twelve springs of water and palm trees. Between Elim and Sinai lies the Wilderness of Sin. The people complain there is no food, and God sends manna and quail. Now we find Israel holed ...

1071. Out of Conflict

Genesis 25:19-34

Sermon

James L. Killen

... today tells the story of a really terrible conflict. It tells of the sibling rivalry between two brothers, Jacob and Esau. Jacob and Esau were twins. But they were so different and so in conflict with one another that it is hard to imagine their bitterness. Their struggle began even before they were born. Jacob's name actually means "supplanter," one who pushes others out in order to push himself in. The story of Esau selling his birthright is an example of how Esau could let himself be taken advantage of ...

1072. An Incredible Encounter

Genesis 32:22-31

Sermon

Arley K. Fadness

... have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing" (James 1:2-4). Some folks flunk the test while others pass. For many, adversity produces character while adversity leads others to loss of faith. Adversity makes people bitter or better. Stories abound of folks who rise above adversity. Demosthenes, the greatest orator of the ancient world, stuttered! The first time he tried to make a public speech, he was laughed off the rostrum. Julius Caesar was an epileptic. Beethoven was ...

1073. A Deliverer Is Born

Exodus 1:1-22, 2:1-10

Sermon

Arley K. Fadness

... faith to be secured? The new king has a solution to the "Apiru" problem ("Apiru" refers to the Hebrews and all landless folks). Pharaoh oppresses them with hard slave labor. He is ruthless in imposing tasks that makes their lives bitter and miserable. Forced labor, the new king reasons, will sap the vitality and productivity of the Hebrews while constructing public buildings, canals, irrigation, and other public works. They would build the great storehouses at Pithom and Rameses, which archaeologists today ...

1074. The Greatest

Deuteronomy 34:1-12

Bulletin Aid

Frank Ramirez

... From one whose office would be greater far, Supplanting he who'd led them past the door Of Egypt: Pharaoh's the son and Jacob's star. But acquiesce, at least attest the will Of he who called, and calls at last to home. For moments it might seem a bitter pill But when at last appears the starry dome Of heaven let thy servant take his rest. So Moses dies, of mortals he the best. Collect God of Sinai, God of the burning bush, we praise you in our gathering for your light that shines through your servants, and ...

1075. A Gift for You

Romans 1:1-7

Sermon

James L. Killen

... messing up our lives, like the guilt that keeps us from being able to like ourselves, or the anxieties that make us afraid to venture out into life and relationships, or the selfish ambitions that make slaves of us and drive us mercilessly, or the bitterness that makes all of life taste bad, or the hatreds that could make us do destructive things. To get free from those things can make a big difference in our lives. But the freedom that we gain through the Christian faith is not primarily freedom from ...

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