Synonyms: replica, copy, representation, mock-up, dummy, imitation, double, duplicate, lookalike, reproduction, prototype, stereotype, archetype, type, version, style, ideal, paragon, perfect example, specimen, perfect specimen, fashion model, supermodel, mannequin, sitter, poser, subject, artist's model, photographic model, design, mark, configuration, variety, kind, sort, original, original design, exclusive, toy, miniature, facsimile, prototypical, prototypal, archetypal, illustrative, perfect, exemplary, classic, flawless, faultless, consummate, impeccable
Antonyms: deficient, imperfect
Showing 1276 to 1300 of 2962 results
Sermon
King Duncan
... MAKING A LIFE, MAKING A LIVING tells a fascinating story about a practice on the South Pacific island of Pentecost that is very similar to our sport of bungee jumping--except with religious significance. On this island men practice land diving, an ancient ritual designed to please the gods and ensure a good yam harvest. Each man builds his own diving platform. The diver chooses the site carefully. He and he alone is responsible for the construction. The diver also selects his own diving vines. He looks for ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... how mundane, with a sense of purpose. (6) Let's take this message from the apostle Peter and use it as our "day keeper," to remind us of how we should live holy and fruitful lives. The Christmas season, as most of us experience it, seems almost designed to distract us from God-centered living. There is so much pressure to shop, shop, shop and rush, rush, rush and spend, spend, spend. And all for what? How many of us remember the Christmas presents we got last year? The gifts of Christmas are temporary; the ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... my shadow loomed above the tank they dove for cover into the nearest shell. They showed me one emotion only: fear. Although I opened the lid and dropped in food on a regular schedule, three times a day, they responded to each visit as a sure sign of my designs to torture them. I could not convince them of my true concern. To my fish I was deity. I was too large for them, my actions too incomprehensible. My acts of mercy they saw as cruelty; my attempts at healing they viewed as destruction. "To change their ...
1279. Why He Came
Mark 1:29-34
Sermon
King Duncan
... dignity as human beings because Christ died for them and Christ's Spirit is available to them. We build our buildings and conduct our programs and utilize the best resources available for our worship services not out of some misguided sense of pride. These activities are designed to ensure that after you and I are long gone from this world, the church of Christ will still be shining a beacon in this world of darkness. That is our primary purpose. That is why you and I bring our tithes and offerings into ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... be because we looked into the face of evil for the first time on our soil. It was horrifying to see those jets crash into the towers of the World Trade Center. Did you know, however, that if they had used a grapefruit-sized nuclear bomb, whose basic design may be found on the Internet, it would have killed everyone within a radius of three miles? Rather than counting our dead in the thousands, we would have been counting them in the hundreds of thousands. It is truly a frightening thought. To say this is a ...
Sermon
Eric Ritz
... outraged. The beautiful vats had been in her family longer than she had. To the woman, family traditions were more important than the decline of her winery. She made desperate attempts to improve her wine. She tried different fertilizers, changed the acidity of the ground, designed new labels on the bottles, and even hired a new overseer of the grapes. But she continued to put the wine in the old wooden vats. And the finest grapes in the world continued to produce bitter wine. "The number of the winery's ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... feet with oil, and healed lepers. In fact, the first time Jesus announced his true identity as the Messiah, it was to a Samaritan woman with a bad reputation (John 4). Righteous Jews of Jesus' day avoided Gentiles. In fact, the Jewish temple was designed to demonstrate the Gentiles' distance from God. Gentiles were allowed to stand in the outer courts of the Temple, far away from the holy of holies in the inner sanctum. This arrangement mirrored the Jews' belief that Gentiles were created solely to be "fuel ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... be stored in it; the basement is still damp; the carpet still has stains of unmentionable origin. The young couples offer to spend their own money to decorate the nursery and pay a sitter, but the board replies that the church does not encourage designated giving. Two years and several thousand new couples in the area later, the church continues to decline and grow older, and the few young couples that had once been members moved on to a more friendly environment. William Easum writes, "A report came to ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... phrased it this way: "To live above with the saints I love, Oh, that will be glory! But to dwell below, with the saints I know--now that's a different story!" It's sad but true. It's like the pastor who wanted to implement a program designed to help his congregation be friendlier to visitors. He announced that they would start this new program the following Sunday. But one man was so enthusiastic about the idea that he grabbed the hand of a lady sitting behind him and greeted her. She gave him an icy ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... ; it actually has only 58 stories. William Poundstone, in his book Biggest Secrets, points out that prices of condos rise in proportion to height. Therefore, he suspects, someone in the Trump organization fudged by having the top floors of Trump Tower designated 66 through 68 on the elevator. As a result, many buildings in Manhattan are actually taller than Trump Tower, but many of these have fewer stories than Trump Tower supposedly does. The General Motors building, for example, located a few blocks ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... , because he has come and has redeemed his people . . ." Christmas brings warmth to our hearts, kindness to our lips, charity to our purses. Who can deny that the love of Christmas has the power to transform human society? In fact, that is exactly what Christmas was designed to do--transform human society. It does that by the power of hope. Whenever a baby is born in a family--a baby that is planned for and eagerly awaited--it comes with great promise. We stare into his or her beautiful eyes and see coming ...
1287. I Can Make It By Myself . . .
1 Corinthians 12:12-31, 1 Corinthians 12:1-11
Sermon
King Duncan
... us well? We are the most individualistic people on earth. We celebrate the loner and the non-conformist. But in our pursuit of self-reliance, we have ignored our need for belonging. We were made to be incomplete on our own. That was part of God's design for humanity. God made us with a profound need for communion with God and with other people. The songwriter of the 60s said, "People who need people are the luckiest people in the world . . ." He should have said, "People who admit they need people are the ...
1288. Taking Charge
Joshua 5:1-12
Sermon
King Duncan
... divide that separates the living and the dead, we make a smooth, uneventful transition. That's the way life is supposed to work. We watch our bodies waste away. Why? Because they're getting ready to put on a new spiritual body. That's the way life is designed to work. But it doesn't always work like that. Some people move away from God. It happens to some parents when their children leave home. We look around here at church and they are gone. It happens to some people when a marriage comes apart. Sometimes ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... , "Wherever two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am also." You may find this unsettling, but it is biblical faith. We touch God, first through Jesus, and then we touched God through the fellowship of saints. You and I were designed for worship and fellowship--and through the mingling of those two experiences we find God. There was an interesting tidbit in Time magazine recently about Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is one of America's biggest retailers, and its aim is to eventually conquer the world ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... 's doctors wanted him to try a new therapy that was still in the testing phase. It carried many risks. As Ron Mehl drove to the hospital in the early-morning hours, he heard God speak these reassuring words to his heart, "Son, remember this. My promises are designed for the darkness." Mehl held on to those words throughout his treatment. The new therapy is working so far, keeping his leukemia at bay. As Pastor Mehl writes, "Our hope is in God. He is awake; He is at work--and I would rather have His promises ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... the honor roll . . . Oops. Well, there are different kinds of peer pressure. Let's face it, though. It takes a lot of character on the part of a young person, sometimes, to say "No." Chuck Swindoll tells about a study of teenagers and peer pressure. The design of the study was simple. They brought groups of ten adolescents into a room for a test. Each group was instructed to raise their hands when the teacher pointed to the longest line on three separate charts. What one person in the groups of ten did not ...
1292. Who Are You?
Psalm 16:1-11
Sermon
King Duncan
... ? Is there something about each of us that is unique in all of creation? The answer is critically important. If there is only the world of the flesh, the world of animals"”eating, reproducing, and dying"”then there is no meaning, no rhyme or reason, no grand design to life. And there is certainly nothing to look forward to. One anonymous young scholar was asked to write a description of a human being. Here is what he wrote: "Your head is kind of round and hard and your brains are in it and your hair ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... had told him that he was amazed by how such a big and heavy object like the plane managed to stay in the air. But the pilot said that it really wasn't amazing at all, since it is an airplane's nature to stay in the air. They are designed that way. In fact, it is very hard for a plane not to stay up in the air. Dr. Peale says that God has put us together that way, too. We are meant to be healthy, energetic, creative, and dynamic people at every age, full of vitality and health. I ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... there by chance. The radio in your car was put together by a skilled hand, but the human voice, the grandest of all organs, was self-created. The figureheads on Mount Rushmore were carved; but the face of the carver became a face by chance, without design. We must accept all of this if we are to believe the atheist. Can you accept such absurdities? They not only destroy religion; they insult and dishonor reason itself. Were we to accept them as the foundations of life, we would lose all self-respect. Faith ...
1295. A Date With Destiny
Philippians 2:1-11
Sermon
King Duncan
... also had the lowest cholesterol count of anyone here." Then the announcer on the radio said, "Isn't it sad to live your whole life and never make a ripple and never rock a boat? Join the Peace Corps." (2) A grand sense of destiny--a sense of purpose, direction, design--we need it if we are to live out the best. As Billy Sunday once put it, "More men fail through lack of purpose than through lack of talent." In the second place we need a sense of destiny because of the world's great need. Visitors to Florida ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... upon her pupils. With approval from their parents, she told her class that "recent scientific reports had verified that children with blue eyes have greater natural learning abilities than children with brown eyes." She had them make up little signs designating themselves as "blue eyes" or "brown eyes," which were then hung around their necks. After a week or so, the achievement level of the brown-eyed group fell measurably, while the performance of the blueeyed section improved significantly. She then ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... love, which holds people together in families. "Above this level is a plane which Kagawa calls psychic love. Psychic love includes our association in friendships, in professional and social groups, and in all those relationships which rest on community of mental tastes." Kagawa then designates a still higher level of love based upon conscience. "If one is walking along the road with an enemy on his right hand, and a sinner on his left, and if he can walk with them without accusing them, or if he can halt ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... will they know that he is near. It's like the young man whose girlfriend lived in a distant city. He wanted to have an engagement ring on hand when he proposed to her, so he sought the help of a friend who was a jeweler. In due course, after designing the ring, he was shown the materials. The diamond looked like any other stone he might have seen in a garden or along a sidewalk. And the gold was a bright, garish color, not at all like the gold he had seen used in other jewelry. On questioning the jeweler ...
1299. Shepherding And Parenting
Psalm 23:1-6, 1 Peter 2:13-25
Sermon
King Duncan
... words in many American households. `I'm busy, so go watch television.' If not now, when? `Later.' But later rarely comes and the child and parent fail to communicate from the earliest age. Years go by and the child grows. We give her toys and clothes. We give her designer clothes and a stereo but we do not give her what she wants most, our time. She's fourteen, her eyes are glassy, she's into something. `Honey, what's happening? Talk to me, talk to me.' Too late. Love has passed us by." Those are the words ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... the epitome of all his dreams. He worked hard and saved his money and finally the day arrived when he was able to purchase his dream machine. It was a van--beautiful, loaded, and luxurious--as good as they come. It was the result of perfect engineering and design. The young man had every right to expect a great deal from this mechanical marvel, and he drove it off the lot with pride and the aura of a man who knows that destiny and determination have conspired to bring about the perfect union. The next day ...
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