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 1251 to 1275 of 1570 results

1251. Proper 8/ Pentecost 6/ Ordinary Time 13

Psalm 89:1-4, Jeremiah 28:5-9, Matthew 10:1-42, Romans 6:12-23

Bulletin Aid

Amy C. Schifrin

... sent me. Leader: May the peace of the Lord be with you always. All: And also with you. Intercessory Prayer After each petition: Leader: Rain down your justice, All: that we might be set free. Offertory Prayer Leader: Holy God, All: we consume and consume, and our hunger and thirst is not assuaged. Turn us around, O Lord, that instead of taking we would be set free to give for the sake of him who gave himself for us, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Sending Divide the congregation into two voices. Leader: Set us ...

1252. The Key to the Beatitudes

Matthew 5:1-12

Illustration

Owen Stepp

... to follow in the Beatitudes. I like the note in the Life Application Bible: You cannot mourn without appreciating how insufficient you are to handle life in your own strength. You cannot be meek unless you know you have needed gentleness yourself. You cannot hunger and thirst for righteousness if you proudly think of yourself as already righteous. You cannot be merciful without recognizing your own need for mercy. You cannot be pure in heart if your heart is full of pride. You cannot be a peacemaker if you ...

1253. A Light in the Darkness

Mt 5:13-20

Illustration

King Duncan

... frail. It was not until he lay in bed, dying of tuberculosis, that he heard that the first steps were being taken to popularize his system. Though he did not live to witness it, Louis Braille's alphabet became the universal method of reading for the blind. His courage and hunger for knowledge enabled him to triumph over disability and disease and open new worlds to future generations. He found a way to become light for those who lived in darkness.

1254. Forgiveness Is a New Life

Matthew 5:38-42

Illustration

Charles L. Aaron

... killed her parents, her brothers, and hundreds of her Tutsi friends. A Hutu pastor, who risked his life to save her, hid her and six other women. They lived in a small bathroom, a wooden wardrobe covering the door. For three months, they endured hunger, fear, and the sounds of soldiers in the house unsuccessfully searching for Tutsis. In those cramped quarters, she began to pray the Rosary. Always she stumbled over the Lord's Prayer: "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us ...

1255. Hear Him

Matthew 17:1-13

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... “Hear him” To dispel your doubt and find everything you need “Hear him” To calm the tumult of your soul “Hear him” All you who labor, and are heavy laden “Hear him" Say to all of you, “I am with you always, even to the end” “Hear him” You who hunger and thirst after righteousness, and be filled “Hear him.”

1256. Times Were Hard

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Illustration

Trace Haythorn

... could be referring to today in any town or city in America. The pervasive apathy of our age, the sense that nothing can improve and to bother trying to make things better is a fool's errand, the despair that makes us resign our hearts to a belief that poverty, hunger and homelessness have no real answers. Such matters are left to Sisyphus, sadly rolling that stone up the hill only to have it roll back down, generation after generation after generation.

1257. The Holy Grail

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-46

Illustration

J. Howard Olds

... searches high and low for that which lasts for eternity and gives ultimate meaning. He comes upon a singing brook, with deep meadows and wonderful fruit trees. But even as he ate the fruit, it turned to dust, for no feeding of the flesh could still his deepest hunger. Riding on, he saw a home, its opened door a promised welcome and in the door there was a beautiful woman, her eyes innocent and kind. Surely the love of a woman and the sweet shelter of home are my heart's desire, reasoned the knight; "But ...

1258. When the Caterers Weren’t Available

Matthew 14:13-21

Sermon

King Duncan

... Nothing new in that. Throughout the Gospels he shows compassion to the least and the lowest. Jesus came with one purpose and desire to seek and to save the lost. When he gazed out over Jerusalem, he wept. He knew the heartaches, the headaches, and the hungers that go with being human. Bring the masses from the ends of the earth. The compassionate Christ cares for each and every one. Someone tells of being in the bathroom at a popular coffee chain. Someone wrote on the bathroom wall, “What Would Jesus Do ...

1259. Cookies and Milk, a Sacramental Meal

Matthew 14:13-21

Illustration

Glenn L. Borreson

... . His mom gave us cookies and milk. It felt like a sacramental meal to me." ("Under the Double-Decker Bed," Tapestry, Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1985, pp. 123-124) Cookies and milk, a sacramental meal. Yes, indeed, a taste of God's tomorrow. Even in our greatest pain and deepest hunger, in the limits beyond which none of us can see or go in certain moments of our lives, there is God. Always for us in bread and wine, sometimes even in milk and cookies. Just as it satisfied the crowd fed by Jesus long ago, so it ...

1260. Cross-Bearing

Mark 8:31-38

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... had come to expect from her. "It is not enough for us to say, ‘I love God, but I do not love my neighbor,' " she said, since in dying on the cross, God had "[made] himself the hungry one, the naked one, the homeless one." Jesus' hunger, she said, is what "you and I must find" and alleviate. Finally, she suggested that the upcoming Christmas holiday should remind the world "that radiating joy is real" because Christ is everywhere — "Christ in our hearts, Christ in the poor we meet, Christ in the smile ...

1261. Living Upside Down

Mark 2:23-3:6

Sermon

Kristin Borsgard Wee

... wanted to kill him. How upside down is that? For Jesus, the sabbath is about life, not death. We need each other if we are going to resist conventional wisdom and live life according to Jesus' heart-wisdom. We need each other to resist our insatiable hunger for more things, more money, more time. God knows that people who rest together are also more likely to resist together. There was an incident on a playground when I was in elementary school. My friend dared me to hang upside down with her on the ...

1262. It’s Anybody’s Guess

Mark 4:30-34

Sermon

Kristin Borsgard Wee

... , and 5,000 people were fed. A poor woman put two pennies in the treasury and received the highest praise Jesus ever gave. God is still bringing in the kingdom through small things, through people like us. We get discouraged too. We think our small contribution to world hunger won't make a difference. We complain that the kids don't listen when we teach Sunday school. We wish we could find the eloquent words we want to say when we visit the sick or the shut-ins. "I haven't done much," we say. "Whether it ...

1263. Who Will Vouch for Me?

2 Corinthians 3:1-6

Sermon

Scott Suskovic

... . The man was the problem. He was the one needing someone to vouch for him. Who would have guessed it? There was once a contest to write an essay titled, "What is the Problem with the World?" And there were many submissions that wrote about hunger, war, pollution, greed, racism, and sexism. But the winning essay describing the problem with the world was actually the shortest. Just two words. "I am." It's true, you know. From the first chapters of Genesis, God reveals the problem with this world. It would ...

1264. The Vision of God

2 Corinthians 12:2-10

Sermon

Gibson “Nibs” Stroupe

... the followers of Christ. He was going to Damascus to arrest them, and this is precisely the question that Christ asks him on the road to Damascus after he has knocked Paul down: "Saul, why do you persecute me?" (9:4). Paul wasn't psychologically hungering for Christ on the road to Damascus — just the opposite! In his description of the vision in 2 Corinthians, Paul notes again his own lack of initiating activity, so much so that he uses the passive voice and begins the account in the third person ...

1265. Praying in Boldness and Faith

Hebrews 4:12-16

Sermon

Patrick J. Rooney

... but also fully human, Jesus knows our needs and wants expressed in prayer. He knows the frailty of our lives, the pain and hurt of our existence. This great high priest carries to the very throne of God itself our distress, our pain, our infirmities, our hunger for justice, and our cry for peace. While this high priest faces toward God on behalf of humanity, he also faces toward humanity on behalf of God. The priest represents God's holy presence among his people and since Jesus is the reflection of God's ...

1266. A Four Word Memoir

Philippians 1:12-30

Sermon

King Duncan

... .” And certainly our family is important. But here is the truth of the matter, there are many people with good jobs, nice families and fun hobbies, who when they come to the end of the day realize that none of it is enough to satisfy their deepest hunger. Maybe you remember the scene in the movie City Slickers in which the character played by comedian Billy Crystal is visiting his son’s school to tell about his work. He’s a salesman, but obviously he doesn’t find any fulfillment in it or in his life ...

1267. The Need for Transformation

Jonah 3:1-5, 10

Sermon

Richard Gribble

... to the ground. He picked it up but it was filled with dirt and other things; it was simply a dirty éclair. Before he discarded it, he caught sight of the homeless person he encountered earlier, walked up to him and said, "Here, my man, is some food for your hunger." The man continued to walk back to the office thinking he had done his good deed for the day. That night, while he was sleeping, he had a dream. In his dream he was in a restaurant that was very active with many patrons. It took some time, but ...

1268. The Last Compact

Jeremiah 31:31-34

Sermon

Ken Lentz

... patience," as a gift from God that enables the traveler in the world to persevere in the face of earthly travail. Spiritual patience drives one to trust in the passion and death of Jesus. Like Gerhardt, C. S. Lewis experienced the pain, isolation, injustice, hunger, thirst, and exposure of WWII. The memories of the war haunted his dreams for years and he believed that death would be better than to have to endure another war. For him, the Christian could only experience real happiness when one realizes that ...

1269. Enough Spirit to Go Around!

Acts 10:44-48

Sermon

Ken Lentz

... of inclusion in the kingdom. The unity that we believers feel in those precious moments standing at the altar to drink from the same cup of communion and when we pray together the Lord's Prayer is trumped by chaos in the Middle East, rampant genocide and hunger in Africa, and murder and mayhem in our urban ghettos. Early Christians believed that the bread of the Lord's table was gathered from the grain gathered from the fields. As the grain is gathered into one (loaf) so are we gathered into one people. We ...

1270. The Many Faces of God

Isaiah 6:1-8

Sermon

William J. Carl, III

... . In Christ, we see the human face of God, who saves and redeems. The only way for the world to see the heavenly face of God is to look at you and at me. I wonder what the world sees in your face and mine. Amen. 1. Frederick Buechner, The Hungering Dark (New York: Harper and Row, 1985), p. 19. 2. Ibid, p. 22.

1271. What Does It Mean to Be Blessed?

Matthew 5:1-12

Sermon

King Duncan

... him, and he began to teach them. He said: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who ...

1272. Beware Another's Treasures

Illustration

Bob James

... moving the opposite way away from the hill. Some smaller, non-stinging ants had found this "food" and were stealing it from their ant neighbors. Thinking they were getting the other ants' treasure, they unwittingly poisoned themselves. When we see someone with more than we have, we must beware. The hunger to beg, borrow, or steal our way into what is theirs may poison us spiritually.

1273. The Final Entry

Illustration

... said, "While God gives me strength, failure will not daunt me." In 1851, at the age of 57, he died of disease and starvation while serving on Picton Island at the southern tip of South America. When his body was found, his diary lay nearby. It bore the record of hunger, thirst, wounds, and loneliness. The last entry in his little book showed the struggle of his shaking hand as he tried to write legibly. It read, "I am overwhelmed with a sense of the goodness of God."

1274. You Can Go Home Again

Luke 15:11-32

Illustration

Max Lucado

... of herself. With her purse full of small black-and-white photos, she boarded the next bus to Rio de Janiero. Maria knew Christina had no way of earning money. She also knew that her daughter was too stubborn to give up. When pride meets hunger, a human will do things that were before unthinkable. Knowing this, Maria began her search. Bars, hotels, nightclubs, any place with the reputation for street walkers or prostitutes. She went to them all. And at each place she left her picture taped on a bathroom ...

1275. Monster Rehab

Matthew 23:1-39

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... to go on living. One easy way to end it all, he told me, was to throw yourself against the barbed wire fence as if trying to escape and be shot instantly by the guards. Johnny said that one night, deeply discouraged, depressed, and sick with despair and hunger, he slipped out of the barracks and walked toward the fence, not quite sure whether he ought simply to end it all. He sat down on the bare ground thinking. He sensed movement in the dark on the other side of the barbed wire. It was a Polish farmer ...

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