Sermon and Worship Resources

Synonyms: touch, feel, sense of touch, tactile sense, tactility, contact, using one's hands, sensation, sense, suspicion, sneaking suspicion, notion, inkling, hunch, fancy, apprehension, presentiment, premonition, foreboding, love, care, affection, fondness, tenderness, warmth, warmness, emotion, sentiment, emotional state, compassion, sympathy, empathy, fellow feeling, understanding, concern, solicitude, solicitousness, tender-heartedness, brotherly love, sensibilities, sensitivities, self-esteem, ego, pride, opinion, belief, view, impression, intuition, instinct, estimation, guess, theory, hypothesis, thought, way of thinking, point of view, atmosphere, ambience, aura, air, mood, climate, character, overtone, undertone, tenor, spirit, quality, flavour, colour, aptitude, knack, flair, bent, talent, gift, skill, art, trick, faculty, ability, propensity, inclination, sensitive, warm, warm-hearted, tender, tender-hearted, caring, soft-hearted, sympathetic, compassionate, empathetic, responsive, receptive, intuitive, thoughtful

Antonyms: bad feeling, acrimony, animosity, animus, antagonism, antipathy, aversion, bitterness, detestation, disgust, dislike, disrelish, enmity, friction, grievances, grudges, hatred, hostility, loathing, malevolence, malice

Showing 151 to 175 of 223 results

151. A Widow at the End of Her Rope

1 Kings 17:7-24

Sermon

King Duncan

... ’s home town. It was an unlikely place for Elijah to hide from Ahab and his henchmen. Then God said something else to Elijah that was equally as unlikely: “I have directed a widow there to supply you with food.” This sounds counter-intuitive because nobody struggled more mightily during a time of drought and famine than widows--unless they had grown children to provide for them. The government certainly didn’t do it. Their neighbors probably didn’t do it either. They could barely provide for ...

152. Abraham Tested

Genesis 22:1-19

Understanding Series

John E. Hartley

... in the compositional stratum of the biblical text and may be entitled the expressive order of presentation.” About Abraham’s chopping wood last, Mazor says, “Since Abraham suspends this emotionally-loaded act to the very end, he displays his natural intuitive recoil from his shocking obligation to his Lord and demonstrates the pestering psychological struggle within his bisected consciousness” (p. 85). 22:12 The Heb. term na’ar means “a boy, a youth, or a young adult,” who, being unmarried, is ...

153. The Lord’s First Commission to Jonah and Jonah’s Disobedience

Jonah 1:1-17

One Volume

Gary M. Burge

... the berth where he is sleeping deeply. Jonah’s obvious lack of concern for the ship’s predicament troubles the sailors, who roust Jonah from below deck and beseech him to call on his God for rescue (1:6). The writer contrasts the Gentiles’ intuitional response to crisis by appealing to divine power with Jonah’s failure to respond appropriately. The man of God seems oblivious to the consequences of his disobedience, nor does he appear to feel any responsibility for the sailors he has endangered. 1:7 ...

154. Abraham Justified by Faith

Romans 4:1-25

Understanding Series

James R. Edwards

... Wherever God’s sovereign purpose prevails over mortal circumstances, there “is a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17). Additional Notes 4:13 Str-B cites a large number of rabbinic sources arguing that Abraham had knowledge of Torah through personal intuition, scriptural tradition, and divine revelation before its revelation at Sinai (vol. 3, pp. 204–6). The artificiality of such argumentation is for the historical critic evidence of the need of the ancient synagogue to ground Abrahamic righteousness in Torah ...

155. Life Through the Spirit

Romans 8:1-17

Understanding Series

James R. Edwards

... sent his Son” means that God—not humanity or the world—is the source and center of reality; it means that where there was no help within creation, God intervened from outside it; and it means that God’s help is not a pious intuition, but a historical manifestation in first-century Palestine. “God sent his Son” is salvation in four words: enacted from the fullness of divine love, evoked by the fallenness of the world, and effected by the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Of special importance is the ...

156. Elihu

Job 32:1--37:24

Understanding Series

Gerald H. Wilson

... extensive relocations of material seem unwarranted since they are not based on any textual evidence, and no one has offered a persuasive explanation for how the book might have become so confused. Such wholesale readjustments rely entirely on the emender’s intuitive (but completely hypothetical) sense of what the book must have said. For this reason especially, I will consider the Elihu speeches in their present location between the final speech of Job and the theophanic appearance of God. While I do not ...

157. God's Chosen Servant

Matthew 12:15-21

Understanding Series

Robert H. Mounce

... –16 When Jesus learned that the Pharisees were plotting to take his life, he moved on to another area. Matthew’s use of ginōskō rather than oida (as in v. 25) suggests that he received a report of their intentions rather than knowing it by intuition. Many followed him, and he healed all their sick. There is no particular reason to conclude that since he healed them all, the many who followed him were all sick people needing help (see Filson, p. 148). Why Jesus would warn his followers not to make him ...

158. Jeremiah Thrown Into a Cistern

Jeremiah 38:1-13

Understanding Series

Tremper Longman III

... to the king; the latter indicates that he was Ethiopian by birth or descent. The text at this point does not present any motivation for Ebed-Melech’s actions on Jeremiah’s behalf, but we immediately assume that he is sympathetic toward his message. This intuition is encouraged by the divine oracle that appears in 39:15–18, where God explains why Ebed-Melech will survive the devastation by stating to him, “because you trust in me.” In other words, Ebed-Melech was a true worshiper of Yahweh and must ...

159. Who Is This Man?

Matthew 16:13-20

Sermon

King Duncan

... is the best picture God ever had taken.” I like that. Author and former Divinity School professor John Killinger explained Christ’s role in another way. “Jesus,” he said, “is God’s way of getting rid of a bad reputation.” Humanity had many ideas and intuitions about the nature of God prior to the coming of Jesus. But even the most brilliant theologian was a blind man trying to describe an elephant. How could any mortal capture the essence of the Divine Other? It was beyond the capacity of the ...

160. Crisis Management

Luke 21:25-36

Sermon

Susan R. Andrews

... expecting God to be God and opening up his own life as a channel of God’s blessing. This leads us to Crisis Management Step 3: Give up control and then take control. Yes, my friends, the best way to manage a crisis is to let God be God — intuitively trusting that everything depends on God — a God who tosses stars of life and death into our lap. Letting God be God also means to claim the God inside each of our souls. We must keep on working, keep on dreaming, keep on hoping, and keep on loving — just ...

161. God with Skin On

Luke 2:1-14 (15-20)

Sermon

Susan R. Andrews

... God is here — swaddling us with grace that holds us tight and keeps us safe — so that we can become the presence of God for others. Our God is a God with skin on — in all the people and all the experiences and all the intuitions — that lead us to a place of peace and wholeness. May it be so, for you and for me. Amen. 1. John Killinger, Lectionary Homiletics, December 1992, p. 25. 2. Leonard A. Griffith, Lectionary Homiletics, December 1989, p. 36, adapted. 3. Don Wardlaw, Lectionary Homiletics ...

162. Love Adds the Chocolate

Illustration

Editor James S. Hewett

A house is a house is a house—until love comes through the door, that is. And love intuitively goes around sprinkling that special brand of angel dust that transforms a house into a very special home for very special people: your family. Money, of course, can build a charming house, but only love can furnish it with a feeling of home. Duty can pack an adequate sack lunch, ...

163. An Absolute Cure for Boredom

Philippians 3:7-4:1

Sermon

King Duncan

... time it took the chandelier to swing from one side to the other was the same whether the chandelier was a large or small one. “He used his own pulse beat--as a medical student he knew that under normal conditions our pulse beats regularly--to test his intuition. Later on he experimented with a metal ball suspended by a string--what’s now know as a simple pendulum--and found that he was correct. Every swing of the ball, large or small, took the same time. In 1602 he used the principle of the pendulum to ...

164. God's Most Welcome Gift

Isaiah 9:6-7

Sermon

King Duncan

... he is working and stretching his arms out to relax them. As he does this, he casts on the wall behind him the shadow of a cross. His mother, Mary, is standing nearby, and her face is filled with terror as she perceives that shadow. Hunt imagines her intuitively aware that her son will meet a tragic end. It was an enormous obstacle to first century Jews to believe that the Messiah who was to deliver Israel from her enemies could die like a common criminal on a cross. In I Corinthians 1, St. Paul calls it ...

165. The Call of the Wild Within

Genesis 12:10-20, Genesis 12:1-8, Luke 2:41-52

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... by the kind John Thornton, who fights to remove him from abusive masters. The two become close, but as Buck continues to live and journey in the Canadian wilds, he must leave behind his former life and become more and more reliant on his “wilder,” more intuitive nature. Eventually, Thornton is killed, and Buck becomes the leader of a pack of undomesticated wolves. From then on, he is known as the “ghost.” This is a story about a journey, but not just a journey over distance and time, but a quest of ...

166. Revised and Revisioned

John 8:48-59, John 9:1-12, John 9:13-34, John 9:35-41, John 10:1-21

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... have a high IQ, but she has a low EQ. She doesn’t have a clue what “love” means, except to define it. She finds love, not in the heart or in people, but she finds it in a pool of information. She is missing the ability to love, to intuit, to feel, to discern. So, what will happen if Siri’s intelligence increases but her ability to love is still missing? What if Siri becomes so intelligent that she doesn’t need us anymore? These are questions we are asking now in our culture. We are at a point in ...

167. God's GPS

Genesis 28:10-22

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... to repentance. Like John the Baptizer, Jesus calls unlikely disciples –fishermen first. It’s an interesting image thinking of God’s staircase of light, God’s immanent presence, the “way” to heaven traveled by seafarers, used to using a kind of intuitive GPS. As the watery deep is filled with fish, primal creatures, representing God’s ur-creation, that place is where fishermen spend their time. It seems unsurprising then that Jesus would call several to himself as disciples. But Nathaniel is ...

168. Let 'Er Rip

Mark 13:1-31, Mark 13:32-37, 1 Thessalonians 5:12-28

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... 1980s was too poor to buy costumes for her singing acts. She instead threw together some different things she had in her closet cheap, and a new “style” was born.* If you want to “predict” what styles will turn into trends, you have to “read” or intuit the trends of the times, read the signs that indicate something is catching on fire, or about to. That requires a good eye and a mind that “pays attention!” Or as Jesus would say, you need to have “eyes to see” and “ears to hear.” For ...

169. Dangerous

John 12:12-19, Zechariah 9:9-13, Zechariah 9:14-17

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... the Holy Spirit cannot be pinned down, nailed down, encased in an institution. Faith is driven by trust, love, loyalty, hope. Faith is not grounded in reason or data but leaps beyond the concrete into the realm of the extraordinary, miraculous, intuitive, revelatory, and relational. Above all, relational. Faith is relational with a kind of “wild card” we call the Holy Spirit –the wind that blows in directions we cannot predict and infects in ways we cannot imagine. Whereas religion may “stand” for ...

170. Dusted

Mark 6:7-13, Matthew 10:1-42, Luke 9:1-9, Luke 10:1-24

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... than our own big toes, and to see and hear God’s presence among, around, within us. For when we are willing to allow Jesus into our lives and hearts, we allow him to lift us up into a place of greater insight, greater understanding, greater intuition, greater knowledge of God, greater peace, greater, more abundant life. With Jesus, we get a glimpse of the “heavenly kingdom” here in this life as well as beyond. We get a glimpse of the truth of resurrection. Jesus is about resurrection. Jesus is in the ...

171. A Spooky Kind of Love

1 Samuel 28:1-25, Matthew 28:11-15

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... into it safely and soundly. God will “rest” the Holy Spirit upon an open spirit of a faithful people. God sees into our hearts and minds, as we know from the story of Job. And God discerns our level of faith. Some might say, women have a kind of spooky intuition. They often seem to know things and feel things that the rest of us somehow miss. This is the kind of spooky thing about Jesus. Jesus knows what’s in our hearts and in our minds before we say it. Jesus knows the faith of the woman who touches ...

172. The Physician

Isaiah 38:1-22, Matthew 8:14-17

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... us is joy, worship, praise, and service! For Jesus’ healing is not just physical healing, but a healing of mind, body, and spirit. It is a “restoration” into covenant with God, a restoration of relationship, in which we understand intrinsically and intuitively, instinctively and undeniably, that Jesus is our Savior, the Healer of our EVERY ill, as the famous hymn goes. Illness, pain, doubt, death are all states of separation from the wholeness that God promises us, not just physically, but spiritually ...

173. Dream Weaver

Luke 2:1-7

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... of protrusion of God into the created world through human consciousness. When our minds are less “awake” we are more impressionable, less guarded, less bound by the parameters of our own logic and our own boxes, more apt to trust in our intuitive side, our visions and signs, non-verbal communication, our ability to break free of our physical limitations. Paul Ricoeur calls our dream state a state of teleology, in which we anticipate what we may become and have the ability to choose alternative futures ...

174. The Power of the Unseen

John 3:1-21

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... , is there a Spirit of Christ in this place? Or a spirit of envy? Or a spirit of fear? Or a spirit of gossip? Or a spirit of judgment? Or a spirit of love? We all have a kind of internal “spirit meter” inside of us. It’s like an intuitive force we have as human beings. The same way we can “sense” danger, we can sense the spirit around us. The spirit we allow into our hearts is the spirit that we pass on to others. Anyone who has lived in any kind of family or community knows that if ...

Be brave enough to live creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You cannot get there by bus, only by hard work, risking and by not quite knowing what you are doing. What you will discover will be wonderful: yourself.

Alan Alda

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