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 1651 to 1675 of 1838 results

1651. She Gave More than Bill Gates

Mark 12:38-44

Sermon

King Duncan

... with your heart and not just with your head. This lady was a widow. She had lost her husband. Some of you have experienced that event and you are wise enough to know not only of the hurt and loneliness that may bring, but also the temptation to bitterness and anger. Most of us are familiar with the sensitive work of a psychiatrist named Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, a pioneer in near-death studies who herself died just a few years back. In 1969 she was the author of a groundbreaking book titled On Death and Dying ...

1652. The Peace of Christmas

Philippians 4:4-7

Sermon

King Duncan

... whole family were killed in that terrible war. It was a tragic situation. He was now alone for his first Christmas Eve. He was very depressed. He came out and stood by the edge of a Norwegian fjord and in his frustration and bitterness, he shouted into the sky: “Glory to God in the highest” . . . and the fjord echoed back . . . HIGHEST Highest. Highest. He shouted again, “And on earth, PEACE,” and the fjord echoed back. . . Peace . . . peace . . . peace. The young man sat down and cried . . . There ...

1653. The Light Still Shines

Luke 2:8-20, Luke 2:1-7

Sermon

King Duncan

... come! I would like to begin our meditation for this Christmas Eve with a strange little story of a boy who tried to sabotage a nativity pageant. Can you imagine that? Who would want to spoil a nativity pageant? It seems that eleven-year-old Erwin was bitterly disappointed at not being cast as Joseph in the school Nativity play. He was given the minor role of the innkeeper instead. This was not what he wanted and throughout the weeks of rehearsal he brooded on how he could avenge himself on the classmate who ...

1654. Crisis Management

Luke 21:25-36

Sermon

Susan R. Andrews

... is down 12%, and our infant baptisms are down 24%. One cynic has predicted that at the rate we are going, the last Presbyterian church will close its doors in 2085. In many of your lives, there are personal crises — bitter marriages wounding and unraveling — bodies crippled by the relentless ravaging of cancer and disease — financial debts fed by the consumer seduction of our materialistic society and personal dreams shattered by the daily realities of boredom and responsibility. Yes, my friends ...

1655. Patterns of Possibility

Luke 2:41-52

Sermon

Susan R. Andrews

... came to get him at the synagogue trying to convince him to rest — Jesus turned on them and said: “Who are my mother, my brothers, my family? Not you. Oh, no. My family is everyone who hears the word of God and does it.” At the bitter end, when he was hanging on the cross, and his mother was weeping at his feet, Jesus gently pushed his mother away — giving her a new family — saying to Mary: “Mother, behold your new son.” And to John: “Son, behold your new mother.” Actually, my friends ...

1656. Light Living

John 1:(1-9) 10-18

Sermon

Susan R. Andrews

... First and foremost, there was the fanatical darkness of the Christian church that oppressed the poor, kept the peasants illiterate, and buried the light of knowledge far away in the bowels of the monasteries. This same fanatical darkness led to the bloody, bitter Crusades — an eruption of evil out of which religious intolerance has been gushing ever since. Many recent commentaries have suggested that now as we move into the third millennium, things are different. The darkness of our human infancy has been ...

1657. God’s Absurd Answer

Luke 6:27-38

Sermon

Susan R. Andrews

... speak to the Israeli soldier guarding the entrance to the synagogue in order to gain entry to the space. Soon an argument broke out between the two of them as the soldier resisted our visit, distrusting our Palestinian guide. As they shouted at each other with bitter anger in their voices, I couldn’t help notice that with their dark Semitic hair and skin, these two “enemies” looked like twins. In a modern twist on the Cain and Abel story, I began to understand how so much hatred had grown between two ...

1658. It's Not About Me

Luke 6:39-49

Sermon

Susan R. Andrews

... yearning for security in a land of their own, with freedom and prosperity and a future for their families. And yet the death toll just continues to grow. The vast majority of them are innocent civilians and a horrifying number of them children. The conflict is so bitter and the hatred is so deep that any chance of resolution seems impossible. And it is impossible as long as each side fixates on the speck in the other side’s eyes instead of taking the enormous logs out of their own. What the Middle East ...

1659. Three Men Changed by God

1 Corinthians 15:1-11, Isaiah 6:1-13, Luke 5:1-11

Sermon

King Duncan

... . But it got worse. He introduced her to drugs. And when she became completely dependent on him for her daily “high,” he began selling her body to several men per day. In moments of relative sanity she was horrified at what she was becoming. She was bitter with shame and shocked with fright. One day she stumbled into a Christian coffeehouse, where a group of Jesus people understood her plight. They took her with them to a house in which they lived as a community of faith. They stood by her as she dried ...

1660. The Journey of Salvation

Luke 22:39-46, 2 Corinthians 5:17-21

Sermon

King Duncan

... dangerous journey through the snowy mountains of northern Italy to meet with the Pope. They met in a small town called Canossa in the mountains of northern Italy. When Henry and his retinue arrived, the pope humiliated Henry further by making him wait in the bitter cold for three days before finally agreeing to see him. Reliable accounts state that when Henry was finally permitted to enter the gates, he walked barefoot through the snow and knelt at the feet of the pope to beg forgiveness. As a result, the ...

1661. Can I Get Some Help Over Here?

John 14:23-29

Sermon

R. Robert Cueni

... an admonition to keep the commandments. Dealing with the terror they experienced would even require more than a gentle reminder of the near presence of God. When they call out, “We need some help over here,” they are talking about a fear that has the bitter taste of bile at the back of their throats; a fear that takes their breath away. The apostles were dealing with a similar depth of anxiety on the night of the last supper. Jesus responded to their call for help with the promise of “the Advocate ...

1662. Living Between the Times

John 17:20-26

Sermon

R. Robert Cueni

... using a hammer to make big rocks into little rocks. Indignity upon indignity was heaped upon him — including being denied permission to attend the funerals of his mother and his eldest son. When Mr. Mandela was released from prison, he had reason to be angry and bitter about the way white South Africans had treated him. He had reason to say the time of white dominance was over; now it was time for black dominance. That did not happen. Instead of leading a bloody race war by calling for revenge of all past ...

God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume. It is Peter, weeping bitterly, who returns to greater power than ever.

Vance Havner

1664. Overcoming and Achieving

Illustration

Editor James S. Hewett

... and you have a Sir Walter Scott. Lock him in a prison cell, and you have a John Bunyan. Bury him in the snows of Valley Forge, and you have a George Washington. Raise him in abject poverty, and you have an Abraham Lincoln. Subject him to bitter religious prejudice, and you have a Benjamin Disraeli. Strike him down with infantile paralysis, and he becomes a Franklin D. Roosevelt. Burn him so severely in a schoolhouse fire that the doctors say he will never walk again, and you have a Glenn Cunningham, who set ...

1665. If You Want to See the Angels

Illustration

Editor James S. Hewett

... very tiring day he retired early, but he was awakened by a persistent knocking at the door. It was a little girl, poorly dressed and deeply upset. She told him that her mother was very sick and needed his help. Even though it was a bitterly told, snowy night and he was bone tired, Mitchell dressed and followed the girl. He found the mother desperately ill with pneumonia. After treating her, Dr. Mitchell complimented the sick woman on her daughter 's persistence and courage. The woman gave him a strange look ...

1666. The Good Hunter

Illustration

Editor James S. Hewett

During hard times in the darkness of winter in an Alaskan Eskimo village a young man of unequaled courage might go out into the bitter cold in search of food for his people. Armed only with a pointed stick and his compassion for his starving village, he would wander, anticipating the attack of a polar bear. Having no natural fear of humans, a polar bear will stalk and eat a man. In the attack the ...

1667. Christmas Bells

Illustration

Editor James S. Hewett

There are sounds in the sky when the year grows old, And the winds of the winter blow- When night and the moon are clear and cold, And the stars shine on the snow, Or wild is the blast and the bitter sleet That bleats on the window pane; But blest on the frosty hills are the feet Of the Christmas time again! Chiming sweet when the night wind swells, Blest is the sound of the Christmas bells! Dear are the sounds of the Christmas chimes In the land of the ivied ...

1668. A Novel Reaction to Criticism

Illustration

Jamie Buckingham

... lesser person would have responded with anger or passed it off as just another senseless remark. But she was not that sort of lesser person. She heard. She coped. She let it help her toward her goal of communicating. All of which was possible because there was no root of bitterness to give a bad taste to everything that came into her life which presented another viewpoint.

1669. Plutarch's Consolatory Letter to His Wife

Illustration

Editor James S. Hewett

... very well what a loss we have had; but, if you should grieve overmuch, it would trouble me still more. She was particularly dear to you; and when you call to mind how bright and innocent she was, how amiable and mild, then your grief must be particularly bitter. For not only was she kind and generous to other children, but even to her very playthings. But should the sweet remembrance of those things which so delighted us when she was alive only afflict us now, when she is dead? Or is there danger that, if ...

1670. One Step More

Illustration

Editor James S. Hewett

An explorer named Fridtjof Nansen was lost with one companion in the Arctic wastes. By miscalculation they ran out of all their supplies. They ate their dogs, the dog's harnesses, the whale oil for their lamps. Nansen's companion gave up and lay down to die. But Nansen did not give up. He told himself, "I can take one step more." As he plodded heavily through the bitter cold, step after step, suddenly across an ice hill he stumbled upon an American expedition that had been sent out to find him.

1671. My Son, My Son

Illustration

Editor James S. Hewett

... man with a clear conscience. And now those same shoulders were bowed low with sorrow and shame as he stood to receive, as though it were for himself, his son's sentence from the judge. At the sight of his father, bent and humiliated, the son finally began to weep bitterly and for the first time repented of his crime.

1672. Luther the Tender Father

Illustration

Editor James S. Hewett

... would gladly leave her with Thee." And he said to her: "Lena dear, my little daughter, thou wouldst love to remain here with thy father; art thou willing to go to that other Father?" "Yes, dear Father," Lena answered, "just as God wills." When she died he wept long and bitterly. As she was laid in the earth, he spoke to her as to a living soul: "Du liebes Lenichen, you will rise and shine like the stars and the sun. How strange it is to know that she is at peace and all is well, and yet be so sorrowful ...

1673. Forgiven and Gone

Illustration

Editor James S. Hewett

Corrie ten Boom, in her book Tramp for the Lord had these words to say regarding forgiveness: "It was 1947 .... I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives. It was the truth they needed most to hear in that bitter, bombed-out land, and I gave them my favorite mental picture. Maybe because the sea is never far from a Hollander's mind, I like to think that that’s where forgiven sins are thrown. 'When we confess our sins,' I said, ‘God casts them into the deepest ocean, ...

1674. Thank God

Illustration

Joyce Kilmer

The roar of the world in my ears, Thank God for the roar of the world! Thank God for the mighty tide of fears Against me always hurled! Thank God for the bitter and ceaseless strife, Thank God for the stress and the pain of life, And oh, thank God for God!

1675. Realistic Happiness

Illustration

Editor James S. Hewett

... the illusion of a yuppie value system than Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who suffered deprivation of all that money can buy. In "The Prison Chronicle" he says, as few of us can, "Don’t be afraid of misfortune and do not yearn after happiness. It is, after all, all the same. The bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. It is enough if you don't freeze in the cold and if hunger and thirst don't claw at your sides. If your back isn't broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms ...

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