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 1051 to 1075 of 1964 results

1051. Born Again? When?

John 3:1-21

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... fashion, Bunyan said that the newborn Christian will cry to God -that is prayer. Second, a newborn cannot live without nourishment. So also the Christian will seek to be nourished from the Word of God. Finally, he said, a newborn must be kept warm. And Christians will seek the warmth of fellowship with other Christians in worship together. I recall that a man named John Wesley once said that “The New Testament knows of no such thing as solitary Christianity,” and that “We must either find Christian ...

1052. One Commandment, Slightly Used

John 13:31-38

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... a monopoly on love. But the New Testament does claim uniqueness when it points to the love of Jesus. “Ideas,” wrote George Eliot, “are often poor ghosts; our sun-filled eyes cannot discern them. But sometimes they are made flesh. They breathe upon us with warm breath. They are clothed in a living human soul. Then their presence is a power.” The ideas of Jesus have originality and power not because no one else ever spoke them before or since; but because He spoke them, and because in His own person ...

1053. Who Counted the Fish?

John 21:1-14, John 21:15-25

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... a mountain, is the cave to which the Saviour climbed and spoke the Beatitudes.” Just north of this area is a place which is called in the Greek “Heptapegon,” or the “Seven Springs,” usually known in its Arabic shortened form as “Tabgha.” Here seven warm springs empty into the sea, thereby attracting large schools of fish. Even today one can see boats surrounding the area, as it is a great place in which to fish. The author of this account in the Fourth Gospel knew the geography of the Galilee ...

1054. That Would Be Some Miracle!

John 6:1-15

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... with loaves and fishes. This reminds us of what the church was originally built to commemorate: Jesus’ feeding of the multitude with such a small amount of food. Well, what are we going to do with this miracle? What happened back there on that warm spring day when five thousand (and more) were fed? When we ask that question, of course, we are asking a question which the author of the Fourth gospel would never ask. We are betraying our Hellenic (Greek) background. For the Greeks, the question was always ...

1055. On Panicking Close to Shore

John 6:16-24

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... are the major water source for the lake, via the Jordan River. The level of the sea varies, depending upon the time of year, but is generally about 600-700 feet below sea level. This fact causes some interesting and unpredictable changes in climate. As the sun warms the air on the surface of the sea, it rises rapidly, and strong winds come howling down the canyons around the sea so fast that they can change the Galilee from a smooth little lake to a turbulent, churning sea with twelve-foot waves in an hour ...

1056. Slippery Rock

Matthew 16:21-28

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... ’ arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, Peter pulled himself together enough to follow from a safe distance...about the way most of us choose to follow Christ. Somehow he worked his way into the high priest’s courtyard. You remember the story; while Peter was warming himself at a charcoal fire and trying to look nonchalant about the whole thing, a servant girl pointed her finger at him and said, “This man is also with Jesus.” “I am not!” said Peter. But the girl said, “Yes, you are, for your ...

1057. Philip the First

John 1:43-51

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... like saying, “Bah! Humbug!” instead. But somehow it always comes in, and we pay our bills, and sometimes we even have a little left over to help us get started with the New Year. But every year, like Philip, I am fearful. Barclay says that Philip had “a warm heart and pessimistic head; he was one of those many people who would very much like to do something for others, but who do not see how it can possibly be done.” (THE MASTER’S MEN, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1959, p. 89-90) I can relate to ...

1058. The Thirteenth Apostle

Acts 9:1-19a

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... as careful as they ought to have been. Perhaps the hour was getting late, and they were getting tired. Perhaps they had been sitting through meetings all day.....and by the end of the day they would have settled for almost anybody. “Let’s just get a warm body so that we can get the meeting over with.” Matthias’ election was done so quickly, one gets the impression that he became an apostle almost by accident. At any rate, it seems that at this point the early Church was not as sensitive as it might ...

1059. A Sign for a Sign

Mark 8:11-13

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... in the process. A better way is for the mother hen to sit patiently on the egg, surrounding it with warmth, until it is time to hatch. There are two ways to command faith, one is by hammering us over the head, the other is with warming our hearts with love. God has chosen the second, less spectacular, way. About a century and a half before the birth of Christ, a celebrated Greek mathematician named Philon of Byzantium, wrote a little treatise called De Septem Orbis Spectaculis - “The Seven Wonders of the ...

1060. Are We Able?

Mark 10:35-45

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... Yes, James and John did desert Jesus just a few days after they made their brash promise. Peter did the same thing: “Lord, even though they all fall away, I will not!” (Mark 14:29) We know how that came out, don’t we, as we remember Peter warming himself before the fires of Jesus’ enemies, swearing that he did not know the man! But that wasn’t the end of the story, was it? Something happened at Easter, and then again fifty days later, at Pentecost. Peter, James, and John were gathered up into that ...

1061. The Lord's Prayer: A Surplus of Meaning

Matthew 6:5-15

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... deepest part of your soul and spirit. Sing it, shout it, say it--just pray it. If you feel the sun has gone down and it is dark out there and the wolves are biting, just pray this prayer over and over, and soon you will be basking in the warm light of the presence of God. Could you expect anything less from such a powerful prayer as this?

1062. Don't Let Your Tongue Bite You

James 3:1-12

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... that can equal in intensity of decibels the noise and explosive force of a wine cruet falling on the marble floor of a cathedral in the presence of a bishop. I was frightened to death." The celebrant at Mass that morning was Bishop John Spalding. With a warm twinkle in his eye, the bishop gently whispered: "Someday you will be just what I am." That boy grew up to become Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, one of the Church''s most eloquent spokesmen for Christ. He wrote more than fifty books. During the 1950s, he ...

1063. The Triumph of the Cross

Galatians 6:11-18, Acts 1:1-11

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... bury another parishioner, perform another wedding, make another hospital call, attend another meeting, and pretty soon it is easy to get a cold spirit and a cold heart. The only way a cold heart and a cold spirit can be transformed is moving close to the warming altar of Almighty God. I share this because I believe the same thing happens regardless of the life''s work we do. Let me close today with this illustration which so ably describes what I think happened on the Day of Pentecost. The REA was launched ...

1064. Someday - Today

Luke 4:14-30

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... a gathering of United Methodists in Eastern Pennsylvania, shared a story about a church in Tennessee that he served as a student. His first impressions upon arriving as pastor were basically good ones. It was a picturesque white frame building. He felt them to be a warm, loving church family. After he had been on the job awhile, he noticed a pattern developing in the church and the community. It puzzled him why no one attended the church from all the new workers that had arrived in town for a big government ...

1065. Whose Servant Are You? (Part II)

Philippians 1:1-11

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... than any source of despair. His being a servant was the result of his orientation to life, not the operating emotion of the day. Last year Kevin Osborne shared with me an excerpt that will be my closing words today: "Father, Where shall I work today? And my Love flowed warm and free. Then He pointed me out a tiny spot, And said, `Tend that for Me.'' I answered quickly, `Oh no! not that, why no one would ever see no matter how well my work was done. Not that little place for me!'' And the word He spoke, it ...

1066. Are You Praying or Pouting? (Part IV)

Philippians 1:1-11

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... camera was freezing--the oil had thickened in the cold, and the film was dragging. Instead of a moving minute or so of prayer and softly falling snow, we would have had Charlie Chaplin-type funny, stiff-legged walking, and screechy sound. Finally, I got the oil warmed by literally holding the camera against my body. I went back to the preacher. It was 2:30 in the morning, and I was finally the personification of CBS television. I had the camera, the film, and I was the only network there. "`Reverend, I''m ...

1067. Blank Walls or Filled Lives (Part V)

Philippians 1:1-11

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... the landscape, and a fine view of the city skyline could be seen in the distance. As the man by the window described all this in exquisite detail, the man on the other side of the room would close his eyes and imagine the picturesque scene. One warm afternoon, the man by the window described a parade passing by. Although the other man couldn't hear the band, he could see it in his mind''s eye as the gentleman by the window portrayed it with descriptive words. Unexpectedly, an alien thought entered his head ...

1068. The Power of Encouragement (Part VIII)

Philippians 2:1-11

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... all their time building each other up rather than tearing each other down. Paul wanted them to focus on encouragement rather than envy or enmity. A distinguished Scottish preacher tells of passing a young lad on a street in Glasgow during the winter. He speaks warmly to the poverty stricken lad and inquires: "Are you cold, my lad?" The lad replies: "I was sir, until you spoke to me." A tourist wandered along the ocean shore and came upon a crowd of people standing near the water''s edge. An adventurous ...

1069. A New You in a New Year (Part X)

Philippians 3:1-11

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... and progress. LASTLY, PAUL TELLS US THAT A NEW YEAR IS POSSIBLE BECAUSE JESUS CHRIST HAS MADE EACH OF US HIS OWN. Most of you know that there is a big difference between religion and faith. Religion is cold, lifeless academic facts and figures. However, faith is warm, it is alive, it points to something greater than ourselves. I have never asked any of you to be more "religious," but I have asked God to make me and you more "faithful in Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour." Recently, I talked with a man in ...

1070. Titles, Credentials, or Resurrection Power

Philippians 3:1-11

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... old ladies were showing up saying, `We understand there is supposed to be a dance here tonight.'' By 6:30 p.m. the place was filled with old ladies. They had to go out and tell the football team, `Don''t go home, shower, come in. We need your warm bodies to dance with these old ladies.'' They had to call the junior class and get more guys because they were running out of them. Evidently, the old men were too tired! "The place was packed with old ladies dancing with these kids. They danced, danced and danced ...

1071. Secrets Shared for the Journey of Life

Philippians 4:10-20

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... us remember from our health classes the reassuring fact that on the hottest day our internal temperature remains a steady 98.6 degrees. We are no hotter than usual--we just feel that way. It is also reassuring that in the coldest weather we are as warm as usual. Paul learned from life''s many experiences that regardless of the environment surrounding him, he could be strong from the inside out because of the faith he had in Jesus Christ. I recently read a story about a foot bridge which spans Welland River ...

1072. The Powerful Fragrance of Sharing and Caring

Philippians 4:10-20

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... Henry Ford, the great inventor and car maker. Realizing this might be a once in a lifetime opportunity, Dr. Peale approached him and said, "Mr. Ford, I admire you very much and would like the privilege of shaking your hand." Henry Ford did a unique thing. He warmly extended his hand and asked, "Who is your best friend?" Dr. Peale remarked that for one of the few times in his life he was speechless and motionless. Then Henry Ford pulled out a piece of paper and pencil and wrote, "Your best friend is the one ...

1073. The Temptation to Talk Transformation

James 2:14-26

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... in the real world--it is not invisible. He gives us an example of the wrong attitude in verses 15-16 when he writes, "Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, ''Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,'' but does nothing about his physical needs--what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself--if not accompanied by action--is dead or idle." James would agree with this statement written in the late 1970''s by an anonymous Christian: I was hungry ...

1074. God's Timing or Our Timing -The Tension of Time

James 4:13-17

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next-door neighbor . . . Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God''s kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile, kindness in your warm greeting. What would you say to your spouse or children if you only had five minutes left to live? Now, don''t waste time--say it to them today. As James instructs in verse 17, "Not only is it sinful to do that which is wrong--but also ...

1075. Feasting and Fasting for Lent (Part IV)

2 Corinthians 5:11--6:2

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... minister caught him by the arm and held on tight. "Who are you, son?" the preacher asked. "Whose boy are you?" The lad froze, fearing that he was about to be handed his biggest rejection. And then, before he could open his mouth to answer, the preacher said, with a warm smile on his face, "Wait a minute. I know who you are. I see the family resemblance. You are a child of God." And with that he patted him on the shoulder, "Boy, you''ve got a great inheritance; go and claim it now." And the man shared how ...

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