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 1276 to 1300 of 3108 results

1276. The Sunday of the Passion

Matthew 26:14--27:66

Sermon

Kendall McCabe

The Sunday of the Passion!? It was a lot simpler in the good old days when it was Palm Sunday. That was easy to understand. You had a straightforward story about the entry into Jerusalem, and because of all those children shouting "Hosanna," there was a good excuse to do the baptism of infants or confirmation of youth. We could all sing "The Palms," and it was very clear what the day was about. Sort of a practice run for Easter when we would pull out all the stops. But now the Sunday of the Passion! No ...

1277. The Sixth Sunday of Easter

John 14:15-31

Sermon

Kendall McCabe

"Sometimes I feel like a motherless chile," the weary black slave would sing to the hot southern night, giving expression to the condition of having been taken from home and family and subjected to the power of death. Although none of us has known the bitterness of that dehumanizing experience, the sung lament has surely expressed our own agony of soul from time to time, as we confront isolation and alienation and the world becomes too much with us. "The dark night of the soul" is a fact of the religious ...

1278. God in a Glimpse

Acts 17:16-34

Sermon

Two nuns were returning to the hospital where they worked when they ran out of gas. They hailed a passing driver who said he would be happy to give them some - he could siphon it from his tank. The only problem was he had nothing to put the gas in. The nuns looked in their car but they found no container except a bedpan. This will have to do, they decided. So they filled it with gas from the man's car and waved goodbye as he drove away. As the nuns were emptying the bedpan into their gas tank, a trucker ...

1279. The Focus of Fitness

Jeremiah 18:1--19:15

Sermon

"Return, every one from his evil way, and amend your ways and your doings." (v. 11) Prayer: Lord, you have made it plain that you care what we do with our lives. You are pleased when we seek to do your will, and you grieve for us when we ignore it. Speak to us in this time of worship and enable us to re-discover the joy and the blessing of doing it your way. Amen Has there been a more popular pastime in recent years, than that of "getting in shape"? One magazine called it "America’s Health and Fitness ...

1280. Proper 28

Lk 21:5-19 · 2 Thes 3:6-13 · Mal 3:19-20, 4:1-6

Sermon Aid

John R. Brokhoff

COMMENTARY Malachi 4:1-6 For the wicked the coming Day of the Lord will be doom but for the righteous there will be healing and joy. The writer of Malachi is unknown. The name means "my messenger." Scholars believe he wrote in the latter part of the fifth century, the post-exilic period. Malachi contains the only reference in the Old Testament to the forerunner of the Day of the Lord, Elijah. In verses 1-3, we are told that the coming Day of the Lord will solve all of Israel's moral and religious problems ...

1281. R.S.V.P.

Matthew 22:1-14

Sermon

August 11 Dear Susan, It was good to hear from you again. We miss you around here, but it sounds like you’re settling in well in your new home and congregation. God’s blessings to you in your life and work there. Congratulations on being selected to serve as a youth advisor. The young people of that church are fortunate: I know you’ll do a good job with them. Let me know how it goes! Peace in Christ, Mark September 7 Dear Sue, Yes, as you mentioned, the "crush of Autumnal Activity" in the parish is upon us ...

1282. For Those On The Outside

Luke 8:40-56

Sermon

Let us pray: O Lord, as I seek to preach the word, and as your people struggle to know who you are, let our minds in these moments be illuminated with understanding from your Holy Spirit. Now may my words be thy words, as I seek to preach the gospel. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen. The New Testament lesson this morning is about a woman on the periphery; it is the story of one who stood on the outside of the life and ministry of Jesus. She plays only a minor role in the New Testament and preachers do not ...

1283. Repairing Your Broken Dreams

Luke 24:13-35

Sermon

Harold Warlick

Dreams and visions are important in life. Every action we take in life was designed by someone. Every piece of clothing, every building, every hymn book, every chair, every light fixture, and every automobile existed first in someone's vision. Someone had to have the idea or the dream to turn out the product. The same holds true for the way we act. As Jesus said, "The eye is the seat of the body." If you cannot dream it, cannot envision it, then you simply cannot do it. Dreams and visions can also be very ...

1284. Away with the Stable

Luke 2:1-7

Sermon

If we could change some of our images of the Christmas story, it would mean more to us. If we could get the birth narrative straight, it would not be diminished but enriched. Luke records the incident of Christ's birth in a very simple and a very beautiful way: "[Mary] gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn." Regardless of the stories that we have been told and hear about the little Bethlehem hotel being ...

1285. He treated me with dignity

Matthew 11:1-19

Illustration

William B. Kincaid, III

Eugene Peterson, a Presbyterian minister who teaches at Regent College in Vancouver, tells the story of wanting to discuss some feelings and energies he was having that he believed had to do with God. It was the summer after Peterson's second year of college. His first two attempts at finding someone who would listen to him didn't work out very well. Peterson tried talking to his pastor, but after about five minutes his pastor diagnosed Peterson's problem as having to do with sex and began a lengthy ...

1286. Reach Out and Touch Someone

Acts 2:1-13

Sermon

Peter Rudowski

I doubt there is a person in this sanctuary who doesn’t know the AT&T ad which says, "Reach out and touch someone." Cincinnati Bell plays it for us all the time. It is on the television and on our car radios. We are bound to run into it at one of the commercial breaks. If we do not watch television or listen to the radio but we go to the ballgame, there it is on the big scoreboard in centerfield between the innings. In great big letters comes this great big sign, "Reach out and touch someone." The music ...

1287. On Being a Beautiful Christian

Mark 14:1-11

Sermon

Robert G. Tuttle

To have courage without pugnacity, To have conviction without bigotry, To have charity without condescension, To have faith without credulity, To have meekness with power, and emotion with sanity, To have love for humanity without mere sentimentality - that is Christianity. (Charles Evans Hughes) Being a "beautiful Christian" is that second mile that a true experience of Christ produces in us. There are no "ugly Christians" not really. When I was a student at the Duke Divinity School the bells were just ...

1288. Forever His

Romans 14:1--15:13

Sermon

Raymond Gibson

Do you remember the first time you fell in love? I do, and it was a wonderful experience, both exhilarating and painful. I was fourteen years old and a high school freshman when it happened. The young lady’s name was Joyce. She had long brown hair and dark brown eyes, and I was quite certain she was one of God’s own angels. I fell in love with Joyce the first time she let me carry her books home from school. I bought her a Pepsi Cola that day, and when she accepted it, I felt like a knight of the Round ...

1289. A LITURGICAL DRAMA FOR ALL SAINTS’

Drama

Tom Eberle

A LITURGICAL DRAMA FOR ALL SAINTS’ [Placed in the chancel area of the sanctuary is a large cardboard box, about two to three feet high, with a chair setting in it. At the end of the prelude "Box" takes his place on the chair. Immediately in front of the pews, on both sides of the center aisle, is an arrangement of candles. Five candles are necessary for the chancel drama, plus a candle for each member of the congregation who died in the past 12 months.] Prelude Box: Before we go any further, let’s lay all ...

1290. Lively Bones

Ezekiel 37:1-14

Children's Sermon

Tim Carpenter

Exegetical Aim: God's Spirit brings true life. Props: A couple of animal bones, or a model or picture of a skeleton. Lesson: You will need to adapt the lesson as is appropriate for your prop. Do you know what these are? Hold up the bones. (response) These are the Names of the bones from an animal. What do you suppose happened to the animal that I was able to find these bones? (response) That's right. The animal that used to use these bones died. That's kind of sad to think about the animal dying, isn't it ...

1291. Virtue Won’t Hurt You

Sermon

Harold Warlick

The teenage years are exciting and confusing times. That lovable character too old to be a child and not yet old enough to be an adult rumbles through life forming values and fighting acne. I suppose that I rumbled and stumbled with the best of them during my teenage existence. An especially vivid memory revolves around our junior high school science fair. Now, science fairs were a great deal of fun to us wide-eyed ninth-graders. Every person who visualized himself as a potential scientific genius entered ...

1292. The Perfect Gift

Galatians 3:26--4:7

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

Someone told me about a man who got tired of the Christmas hoopla. All the frantic haste and the crass commercialism disgusted him. So, he decided not to go along with the crowd. Among other things, he decided not to send Christmas cards, feeling that the expense and effort were non-productive. For the first ten days of December he felt good about his decision. But then, as the mail brought him greetings from friends near and far, he began to feel more and more guilty about sending no cards. Finally, four ...

1293. Turn On The Lights!

Matthew 5:13-16

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

Wauconda is a small village in the state of Illinois. For over 40 years the town had placed two large illuminated crosses on the city water towers during the Christmas season. Until one year when the town council received a threat of legal suit if the crosses were continued, based on the separation of church and state. The town council grudgingly took them down. But that's when the citizens of Wauconda took matters into their own hands. They decided to place lighted reminders of Christ on their own ...

1294. God Is a Giver

Sermon

James Bjorge

In the beginning when God created all things he seemed to pause occasionally after sequences of creation and stand off and look it all over and then say, "That is good." Yes, it certainly was. But then God gave it to man. That was and is his nature ... to give. "For God so loved the world that he gave ... his only begotten Son ..." (John 3:16). And Paul says, "Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift" (2 Corinthians 9:15). God is a giver of gifts. Any man who has gotten to know God is very aware of this ...

1295. Molehills and Mountains

Matthew 6:25-34, Mark 8:31--9:1

Sermon

Louis H. Valbracht

The story is told of George Bernard Shaw that he was once seated beside a Duchess at a dinner party. In the course of their conversation, he asked: "Tell me, Duchess, would you live with a man for a million pounds?" "Well," replied the Duchess, "I suppose I would" Then Shaw asked her: "Would you live with a man for five pounds?" The Duchess was insuited: "What do you think I am?" "We’ve already established that," said Shaw, "now we are just determining the price." Long before the coming of Christ, the ...

1296. A Time to Dance

Psalm 30:1-12

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

My maternal grandfather was a railroad engineer and a Presbyterian elder. During the 1930s he had three teenaged children. It was his custom on many Saturday nights to invite all the local teenagers into his large living room for a dance. He would hire a little three-piece band and roll back the rugs. Grandfather was thrilled that the teenaged girls would invite him to dance and then would break in on each other. Some of the other elders at the church did not share Grandfather's enthusiasm for those dances ...

1297. Wade In The Water

2 Kings 5:1-27

Sermon

Frederick C. Edwards

The lives of the rich and famous hold a strange fascination for those of us who do not find ourselves in that category. From a very surface view it is easy to envy their glamorous and opulent lifestyles. How we’d like to be like them. We could really enjoy having their money, or their influence, or the adulation of the people who crowd around them. How nice it would be to have the athletic prowess of Michael Jordan, or the good looks and acting talent of a Tom Cruise or Geena Davis, the voice of Luciano ...

1298. Barabbas - People’s Choice or Chance of Providence?

John 18:28-40

Sermon

Carl E. Zahrte

Were you there? Is that what you were singing? Yes, I was there, all right. I had no choice in the matter. I was locked up in that lousy, stinking hole that they called a prison. I didn’t think that there was any chance that I would ever get out of there alive. The Romans had been after me for some time. Once they got their hands on me and threw me down into that dungeon, I thought for sure that my days were numbered. Those stone walls were mighty thick, and the guards kept a close watch on me. They liked ...

1299. Free to Live as Victors

1 John 5:1-12

Sermon

Charles L. Koester

Several years ago, McCalls magazine featured a portrait painted by the famous artist, Norman Rockwell. Perhaps you recall this one. Rockwell here protrayed, in striking terms, a truth about ourselves, a truth about our impersonal society and relationships today. Shown in his painting is the magnificent entrance to an urban cathedral. Vaulted high above its magnificently carved Gothic doors are statues of the prophets, apostles, and martyrs. On the sidewalk, below the cathedral steps, move the busy throngs ...

1300. Simon of Cyrene

Luke 23:26-43

Children's Sermon

Wesley T. Runk

Object: A black mask to represent the man Simon from Cyrene. Today, we are going to look at Jesus from behind another mask. You will remember that while we cannot really bring back the people who lived at the time of Jesus, we can remember what they did or what they said. We never hear about the man that we are going to talk about tonight until the time that Jesus was carrying his cross up the hill toward Calvary. Jesus did not look very handsome now. He had been beaten bloody by the soldiers who were ...

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