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 5000 results

1651. One Thing

Sermon

Raymond Gibson

... to an insane asylum, as friends urged him to do, Lamb gave up his position as an accountant in business and spent the next twenty-seven years caring for her tenderly. He supported both his sister and himself by writing, and they literally lived in poverty. During all of those long years, he refused to leave her alone. When she finally died, a friend asked Lamb how he managed under all of the strain. Lamb replied, "I could not have kept on for a year, or even a month, if I had thought of it as a year or a ...

1652. "Can Do" Christianity

Philippians 4:10-20

Sermon

Raymond Gibson

... play. I believe it and if you believe it, it will happen." So day after day, week after week, month after month, she massaged his scarred and useless legs for hours at a time. When she could not do it, she made Glenn do the massaging himself. It took a long time and progress was heartbreakingly slow, but there came a day when Glenn Cunningham began to walk and then to run. He kept at it until in 1934, he broke the world’s record for the mile run. In 1938, he did it again, breaking his own record. Glenn ...

1653. Manasseh

2 Kings 21:1-18

Sermon

Warren Thomas Smith

... judge. Who really wins in life? Manasseh, or Isaiah who was so brutally tortured? Who won: those early Christian martyrs, or the Romans who inflicted fire and wild beasts? Jesus, or those who put him to death? Speak, History! Who are Life’s victors? Unroll thy long annals and say; Are they those whom the world called the victors, Who won the success of a day? The martyrs, or Nero? The Spartans, Who fell at Thermopylae’s tryst, Or the Persians and Xerxes? His judges or Socrates, Pilate or Christ?2 1. E ...

1654. Easter Headlines

Matthew 28:1-10

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... plans to challenge the record this morning. That does remind me of a dear elderly lady who approached her pastor after an unusually long Sunday service. She extended her hand and said, "Pastor, I really must apologize for dozing just a little during your fine sermon. But ... . Once there was a man named George who was accustomed to driving his wife, Rosie, to church. They had a long and happy marriage; their love for each other was monumental. They did everything together; everything, that is, except one thing ...

1655. Holy Tares!

Matthew 13:24-30

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... to be the natural and sensible thing to do. If there is a rotten apple in the barrel, get rid of it as fast as you can to prevent the other apples from rotting. When a school board has convincing evidence that a teacher is a Communist, it is not long before that teacher’s resignation is demanded. When a laborer is loafing on the job, he is given two weeks’ notice before being fired. In a law office a secretary was required as part of her work to make coffee for the lawyers. She refused to do it and was ...

1656. Claudia Procula, Peter, and Centurion

Drama

Jon Joyce

... out here. This is ugly business. [PETER who, of course, has never seen CLAUDIA, shows his surprise by facial expression and gesture when the CENTURION reveals who she is. During this next interchange between CLAUDIA and the CENTURION, PETER forces himself to keep quiet as long as possible, and tries to keep his natural exhuberance and impulsiveness from giving him away to the CENTURiON] CLAUDIA: Yes, soldier, I am aware that it is an ugly business. I don’t approve of it at all, but what voice has a woman ...

1657. Incalculable Riches by Bishop Roy C. Nichols

Ephesians 3:1-13

Sermon

Leonard Mann

... a sign of progress when it really could be an indication of decadence, spoilage, and decay. For no civilization has lasted long without discipline, a sense of duty and devotion. We do not begin by asking the world for our agenda in the ... God’s love toward us. A little seven-year-old girl who had been playing with a little boy who had been berating her all day long knelt down wearily to say her prayers one night. She cupped her little hands and looked up toward Heaven: "Dear God," she said, "are little boys ...

1658. Running With Patience

Hebrews 12:1-13

Sermon

Allan J. Weenink

... experiment in search of radium had failed. He said, "It can’t be done; maybe in a hundred years, but not in our lifetime." Madame Curie answered, "If it takes a hundred years it will be a pity, but I dare not do less than work for it as long as I have life." And in the end success was theirs. Multiply such incidents from history and you see that those who learned to run with patience the course that was theirs, made vital discoveries for themselves and the welfare of mankind. When it comes to trials and ...

1659. To Be Perfectly One

John 17:20-26

Sermon

Allan J. Weenink

... Approached from a distance, with the terraced ponds in front and the tiered mountains in back, it is an incredible sight to long haunt the mind. Few outsiders have been in this area, except missionaries, because it is so remote and primitive. It had ... electricity in the village ... so I took a flashlight, such as it was, and set out. I shall never forget that walk as long as I live. Heavy rain continued to fall, shrouded by the most penetrating black darkness imaginable. Carefully, short step-by-step, I made ...

1660. A Good Deep Breath

Matthew 8:23-27

Children's Sermon

Wesley T. Runk

... after a while, doesn’t it? Sometimes I have done that until I think I am going to perish. have you ever done that so long that you thought that you were going to perish? The word "perish" means dying. Did you ever think that you were going to die if ... came up and the waves were so high taht they just swamped every person in the boat. Have you ever been under water for a very long time so that you were afraid you were going to drown? If you have, you know how frightening it can be. The disciples knew that ...

1661. Doing the Splits

Matthew 20:1-16

Children's Sermon

Wesley T. Runk

... time ago. his story was about God and how God takes care of people. I hope you will understand this. Some people think that because they have known God for a long time, since they were babies, that God should give them some special privileges that other people who have not known God for very long should not have. These people are very disappointed to know that God will allow both kinds of people in the same heaven. But God has an answer and I want you to know it. God is going to make a place in heaven for ...

1662. Is Jesus a Road Map?

Mark 8:1-13

Children's Sermon

Wesley T. Runk

... a vacation somewhere away from home? Do you like to visit an uncle or aunt, or go to a ballgame and stay overnight in some town a long way off? [Take out your map.] Here we are on the map, or at least here is the town that we live in, and we can see ... and you all need help. Suppose you have walked this far and it has taken you several days, and now you must think about the long walk back with the same conditions? What do you think would happen to you? [Let them answer.] Do you think that you might faint? Some ...

1663. In Which Direction Do You Travel?

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... time. Friends, if we as a church wait on young people and adults to find their own way into church from the suburban manors, the pool halls, the shanties, the bars, the family squabbles, and the hospitals, we will be waiting a long, long time! If we do nothing else, we must be there simply to relate to them. Notice also that the first thing this Samaritan woman did was try to get Jesus in a religious argument to keep from talking about her life-style. One of the first things a minister learns ...

1664. For Losers And Cowards

Judges 6:1-40

Sermon

Barbara Brokhoff

... ’s scared to be seen out in the open - so he’s doing the best job he can, in hiding. Then - one moment, probably when he stops long enough to wipe the dust out of his eyes and the sweat from his brow - he glances over the way, into the distance, and sees - of all ... sorrow for their sins, a return to God, a genuine repentance. They cried to the Lord, they repented, and he heard them. How long has it been since your sins bothered you so much that you wept before God about them? We handle sin so lightly, so ...

1665. God’s Generosity Resented

Matthew 20:1-16

Sermon

Jerry L. Schmalemberger

... Notice, too, you and I don’t even earn a reward from God. He gives us an undeserved gift. What God gives is not salary, then, but a generous gift, not a reward, but his wonderful grace. "Why did the earlier workers not rejoice that the man who had waited long in the marketplace was now at peace, with money to take home to his family? Why did not the older brother rejoice that the prodigal was now restored, set free from the rags and hunger of the far country? If only we had but a tincture of God’s love ...

1666. An Invitation to a Feast

Matthew 22:1-14

Sermon

Jerry L. Schmalemberger

... feast, we must come in all humility, with our profound faith, sorry for the kind of life we have lived, and with a deep sense of reverence as we come into his presence at the banquet. If we indeed come expecting great things to happen to us, and longing for the deep, warm fellowship of the believers at the banquet, that’s what we’ll find. If we come in the frame of mind which looks for dissatisfactions and complaints, we’ll find plenty of those as well. Jenny Lind always spent a few minutes alone in ...

1667. Christ the King

Matthew 25:31-46

Sermon

Jerry L. Schmalemberger

... there. Then one night during a storm, the throne fell down and hit the king on the head. The moral of the story is that people who live in grass houses shouldn’t stow thrones. We talk about kings and kingdoms today. I traveled to Izmir, Turkey, not long ago, and there I remembered again the town Smyrna mentioned by John in the Book of Revelation. I saw St. Polycarp’s church and recalled Harry Emerson Fosdick’s tale: "In A.D. 156, Polycarp, a Christian martyr, was put to death in Smyrna and the small ...

1668. The Hard-to-Believe Promise

John 14:5-14

Sermon

Louis H. Valbracht

... is more truthful than we would like to believe, when she asked her mother why they always said their prayers just before going to bed. Quite understandably, she inquired: "Is it because the rates for long distance are cheaper at night?" The objects of our prayers, and the answers to them do seem like a long, long distance away. Do you remember the incident in Huckleberry Finn where Mark Twain has Huck make a very human observation? "Miss Watson took me into a closet and prayed, but nothing came of it. She ...

1669. Grace, Salvation, and Redemption

Romans 8:18-27, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, Romans 5:1-11

Sermon Aid

T. A. Kantonen

... was deliverance from uncertainty and insecurity, from inexorable fate and the fear of death. For the Jews salvation meant deliverance from guilt, from sin which separates men from the holy and righteous God. Paul had a gospel which contained the answer to the longings of both the Jew and of the Gentile. It announced victory over sin and death through the redemptive act of Christ and freedom from fear and insecurity through the restoration of a confident personal relationship to God. It was both a remedy for ...

1670. Numbered Hairs

Matthew 10:1-42

Sermon

Herchel H. Sheets

... one point in War And Peace. Tolstoy writes, "Pierre felt himself to be an insignificant chip fallen among the wheels of a machine whose action he did not understand but which was working well."9 But none of us can be satisfied with this kind of feeling. We long to know that we matter, that we count, that we have value. Jesus says that we do count, because we are valued by God. We are not valuable just because of some knowledge we have acquired, or because of some virtue we have developed, or because of some ...

1671. To Receive or Worship?

Matthew 22:1-14

Sermon

Jon L. Joyce

... as King of kings and Lord of lords. 3. Some threw down their coats along the way [Matthew 21:8] Although not done today, it was long the custom of people to greet a hero by throwing a piece of one’s clothing in his path to walk upon. In ancient times ... our own. Henry van Dyke has some lines about our attempt to do this: "One day God said, ‘I’m tired of kings,’ But that was long ago, And man kept saying, No. I like their looks in robes and rings, So He crowned a few more. And the kings as before Kept ...

1672. Moving Fences

2 Corinthians 5:16-19

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... . We are bridge builders between persons, groups, and nations. Always, we try to enlarge the circle of understanding and concern. I had a sixth grade teacher who had an intense dislike for people from north of the Mason-Dixon line. She was an elderly lady with a long, seething memory of 19th century injustices. Truly, she was an unreconstructed rebel. When she talked about "the war," you did not ask which war. If on a test paper you referred to that war as "The Civil War", you got an “F." If you called it ...

1673. Thorns and Roses

2 Corinthians 12:1-10

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... toward the island, suddenly he stopped. He sat there in the boat the rest of the afternoon, fascinated by an idea. By the end of that afternoon, Clarence Evinrude had invented the outboard motor. And by the way, Clarence later married the girl who waited so long on the island. Clarence Evinrude illustrates a basic principle of Christian living: When life delivers a problem or pain, force it to pay dividends. If life gives you a thorn that you and God can't remove, make it produce a rose. The minister Bruce ...

1674. Decaffeinated Christianity

Mark 10:35-45

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... to get involved in controversy or other people's troubles, and will surround you with comfort. But by the way, this kind of religion is counterfeit. Sometimes the Lord sends me messages that sting. One came la week through a letter I received from a long-time member of our church, a person who loves this church deeply. She leveled the indictment against us: "We are bound by the demons of money, property, and prestige. Does anyone remember Jesus' words of validation for the poor widow who gave all she had ...

1675. Christ Shall Return

Acts 1:1-11

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... That little story reminds us all that we have to specify what kind of hereafter we're talking about. This morning I'm talking about the long-term future of our world. I'm not referring to where each of us is going after death. I'm dealing with what the Bible ... thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, or like a watch in the night." (Ps. 90:04) What seems a long time to us does not necessarily seem so to God. The second reason that Christ has not yet returned is in order to give more ...

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