Sermon and Worship Resources

Antonyms: keep, claim, continue, stick by, self-control, power through, achieve, defend, bear, hope, acquire, quick visit, adopt, continue along, adhere, remain, pursue, support, take up, keep up, reuse, advocate, stay, persevere, cherish, keep going, carry on

Showing 1926 to 1950 of 4943 results

1926. Jesus Destroys the Power of Sin

Mark 2:1-12

Sermon

Richard Gribble

There is a story of a Vermont farmer who was sitting with his wife one evening on the porch, looking at the beautiful valley laid out before them. Everything about the moment was filled with peace. At last the farmer spoke quietly, as if reluctant to break the spell. “Sarah,” he said, “we’ve had a lot of ups and downs together during these forty years, and when I’ve thought of all you’ve meant to me, sometimes it’s been almost more than I could do to keep from telling you.” Sometimes things just “leak” out ...

1927. Saturday Night And Sunday Morning

Drama

Pamela Urfer

(Maria, Salome, Magdalena and Joanna are sitting together, talking. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is sitting quietly in a corner, praying.) Maria: (Jumping up and beginning to pace up and down.) Where is Peter? I don’t understand it. Shouldn’t he have been here by now? Magdalena: Don’t fuss so! You’re making me nervous. Joanna: Maria’s right. I’m worried too. Do you think they might have caught him? Maria: They could have, Joanna. They’re all over Jerusalem looking for any followers of Jesus who are still in ...

1928. The Ten Commandments #5: Honoring Parents

Exodus 20:12

Sermon

David E. Leininger

The family. "The basic building block of society," they call it. We are born into families, cared for by family until we can begin to take care of ourselves. We share the same roof, the same table, even the same faith. Nothing unusual there. It is expected...despite the differences of individual personalities, interests and abilities that are gathered into the family unit, it is a unit. The basic building block of society. The joy I have in living with my wife and children I would not have were it not for ...

1929. The Kindness of Strangers

1 Kings 17:8-24

Sermon

Stan Purdum

In 1994, a 37-year-old man by the name of Mike McIntyre decided to confront his fears and the shaky path his life was taking. Living in San Francisco at the time, he left his job, his girlfriend, his apartment — all the trappings of his life, and decided to hitchhike across America, heading for Cape Fear, North Carolina, a location he selected for its name, which symbolized his fear of many things in life. He put a few things in a backpack, but to help him with this confrontation with his fears, he left ...

1930. If, Because, Regardless

2 Thessalonians 3:6-13

Sermon

Billy D. Strayhorn

There's a silly story going around about two factory workers, Joe and Lester, who were talking. "I know how to get some time off from work," said Joe. "How do you think you'll do that?" asked Lester. Joe proceeded to climb up to the rafters of the factory and hang upside down by his knees. The boss walked in, saw Joe hanging from the ceiling, and asked him what on earth he was doing. "I'm a light bulb," Joe answered. "I think you need to take some time off," said the boss. So, Joe jumped down and walked ...

1931. Sometimes You Have to Do Something

Matthew 14:22-36

Sermon

King Duncan

Dr. Robert Sims tells about a retired man in California who made quite a splash awhile back. It seems he decided to tie helium filled balloons to his lawn chair. He wanted to take a ride. After he tied a few balloons to his chair it started to lift off the ground. So he called his neighbors to hold the chair down. He tied on more balloons forty, fifty, sixty of them. While the neighbors were still holding the chair the man strapped himself in. Finally, he told them, “Let go.” He expected to float up in the ...

1932. A Fig Tree Sprouts Leaves

Luke 21:25-36

Sermon

King Duncan

In one of his books, motivational speaker Zig Ziglar tells the story of NFL quarterback Jeff Hostetler, formerly with the New York Giants. At the beginning of his career, Jeff was a back-up quarterback. By the end of his seventh season, he had thrown less than two hundred passes, and none of them had any bearing on the outcome of a game. Then Phil Simms, the starting quarterback of the Giants, went down with an injury, and coach Bill Parcels looked to his back-up quarterback on the bench and said, “Okay, ...

1933. The Lame Truth

John 5:1-15

Sermon

Lori Wagner

“Get out there! Get in the game!” I would hear my father shout from the living room chair on a Sunday afternoon. “He’s an armchair coach!” my mother would point and whisper. It’s baseball season! Any armchair coaches in here? All through growing up, I always heard my mother say that about my father, as he yelled at the team to do this or that and growled under his breath when they messed up a play. “I wonder how they’ve gotten along without you!” she would quip. Our town neighborhood alone had about 20 ...

1934. Climbing Rainbows Through The Rain

Genesis 6:1-8:22

Sermon

R. Robert Cueni

The scripture lesson for this morning trips its way through the sixth, seventh and eighth chapters of the book of Genesis. This includes most of the account of Noah and the Great Flood. For reasons you might or might not consider obvious, this part of the Bible generates considerable debate. From time to time, the controversy spills into the public arena. In February 1993, CBS had a two-hour prime time program titled, The Incredible Discovery Of Noah's Ark. The program, hosted by Darren McGavin, featured ...

1935. Do It For the Joy of It!

Matthew 22:34-40

Sermon

In the text for last week we saw how impossible it becomes to try to limit a description of appropriate Christian behavior to a rigid, inflexible code. There is a danger on the other extreme as well: The Christian can come to the (erroneous) conclusion that everything is relative, in constant flux, and totally dependent on the situation, one’s own feelings, and the individual’s point of view. Not so. Christianity is flexible enough to address a changing world. But Christian faith is also rooted. There is a ...

1936. Getting Our Lives Out Of Hock

Psalm 105:1-45

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

Many of you know my struggle between like-dislike, appreciation-confusion, with Gary Larson's "Far Side" cartoons. I vacillate between like-dislike, appreciation-confusion. I keep on reading them, and I'm not quite sure why. Maybe it's because he gives me something now and then to flavor a sermon. Such is the case with this one. It depicts a bug resting on a leaf which gently sways over a lovely pond. The bug is on his back in the crook of the leaf, his ankles are crossed, and two of his six arms are ...

1937. Aha! I See It Now!

John 1:29-42

Sermon

King Duncan

Series: Seeing God More Clearly in 2020 When was the last time you had an “Aha!” moment? A revelation? An epiphany? I don’t know what you might call it, but we’ve all had a before-and-after moment when a sudden insight, a moment of truth, changed our life. Simon Lovell was one man who had his life changed in such an Aha! moment. Simon was a professional con man. His most successful con was to convince some innocent person that he had a get-rich-quick scheme that couldn’t fail. Once his victim handed over a ...

1938. The Good Yoke

Matthew 11:25-30, 1 Kings 19:1-8, 1 Kings 19:9-18, 1 Kings 19:19-21

Sermon

Lori Wagner

What kind of yoke are you wearing today? Not this kind you say! Are you sure? Indeed, we may not get up in the morning and fit ourselves into a wooden harness like the one you see here –although sometimes our clothing may feel like that if we’ve gained a few pounds, no? But we all do bear a yoke. We yoke ourselves to ideas, concepts, issues, material things, relationships, belief systems. Our yokes in a sense bear the markings of those identities that we are willing to take on as our own identity, the ...

1939. Matthew

Sermon

Jerry Eckert

Comment: Somewhere in my reading, I came across the notion that "executive diseases" like ulcers and headaches were common in Jesus' time among the bureaucrats. With a lead like that, a dimension was added to a story sermon. Again, the pastor and a lay person speaking from the other side of the sanctuary (at a lectern, perhaps) could conduct the following verbal "correspondence." Or, maybe the pastor could stay out of this completely and turn it over to the laity. Matthew 9:9-13 Jerusalem, March 18, 13th ...

1940. Perhaps Next Summer...

Acts 24:1-27

Sermon

Louis H. Valbracht

The poet said it: "The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year." And suddenly, it came to us this past week that summer was over. Unbelievably, it was the first day of autumn. Actually, we don’t regret the passing of any other season, but, somehow, it is different with the summer. We all look sadly at each other and ask: "Where did it go to?" We all have the frightening feeling that something precious has slipped through our fingers. Somehow, the days went by and we didn’t savor them like we ...

1941. THE NEIGHBORHOOD GAP

Sermon

William McKee Aber

In this pre-Lenten period we are thinking about the gaps in life - gaps between generations, between sexes, between races - in short, all of the separations that exist in our world, pulling us apart and rupturing relationships that were meant to be vital. Our thesis has been that there is in fact a God who is cncerned about gaps - who meets us in the midst of our separation, and who may enable us to bridge the gaps that exist. Today we come to one of the most difficult of all - the neighborhood gap. When, ...

1942. Anything Better Than the Golden Rule?

Luke 6:27-36

Sermon

William G. Carter

A few years ago, I accepted an invitation to preach in a church in upstate New York. The sermon was based on Matthew’s version of what we have just heard from the Gospel of Luke: “Turn the other cheek. Give to everyone who begs from you. Pray for those who curse you. And love your enemies.” These are nearly impossible words to put into practice, much less hear, and I said as much in my sermon. Jesus is instructing us to take the initiative for making peace, to move beyond revenge and retaliation. We cannot ...

1943. Trouble Brewing In The Kitchen

Luke 10:38-42

Sermon

Graham M. Bingham

A distraught woman tried many times to contact her minister only to discover that it was his day off. She made contact with him the next day and scolded him severely. "Pastor, I needed you yesterday," she said, "and you were not there for me. You have let me down. I cannot believe you would take a day off when so many people like me need you." Then she added, "The devil never takes a day off." The minister, a little irritated and with tongue in cheek, responded, "And if I didn't take a day off I would be ...

1944. At War with Myself

Romans 7:15-25a

Sermon

William G. Carter

In a certain church, a woman was leading the congregation in the prayer of confession. She called the people to confess, reminding them of the sin within their hearts, and then all joined in reading the prayer of confession. She paused for the silent confession, and she kept pausing for a good long while. So long, in fact, that the people began to rustle as they waited for the next part of the service. It was awkward, and more than a few worshipers thought she had lost her place or mislaid the piece of ...

1945. Learning the Three Step Faith Walk

Luke 5:1-11

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

The January 2004 edition of Trail magazine has got some 'splaining to do. Trail is a British publication that provides maps and suggests particularly beautiful or challenging hiking trials to the growing number of devoted hill-walkers throughout Great Britain. Unfortunately if anyone had followed the seemingly precise, detailed directions given by the magazine to reach the summit of Britain's largest mountain, Ben Nevis, they would have hiked straight off a sheer cliff and ended up in a broken heap at the ...

1946. The Door Is Always Open

Luke 15:11-32

Sermon

James Merritt

He was a rebel, a college drop-out, a carouser, and a partier. He smoked, he drank Johnnie-Walker, he was a brawler, and had more run-ins with the law than you would care to count. By his own admission, he was the quintessential prodigal son. But now he stands to succeed the most respected, admired, and perhaps famous American of the Twentieth Century Billy Graham. His name is Franklin Graham. Today Franklin Graham not only has a tremendous benevolent ministry called The Samaritan Purse, and has met needs ...

1947. The Spirit of Cross Pointe

1 Corinthians 9:19-23

Sermon

James Merritt

At a riding stable where horses could be rented, the following sign was posted: "We have fast horses for folks who like to ride fast. We have slow horses for folks who like to ride slow. We have big horses for big folks and little horses for little folks and for those who have never ridden horses before we have horses that have never been ridden." That sign reminded me of something that I did many years ago that I am going to confess to today. There is a side of me that many of you do not know about and ...

1948. The Place beyond Punishment

Sermon

Donna Schaper

You can tell a lot about a family by finding out what happens if a child spills something. In some families, spilling your milk is a capital offense. A child can get in a lot of trouble if the milk is spilled. In other kinds of families, spilling your milk is understood as an accident, a thing that happened, and a form of chance or luck. In these families, there is no additional pain or punishment on top of the original pain of spilling. If you are in a poor family, you may not get anymore milk. There may ...

1949. When We Are Uncertain about The Future

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

Sermon

King Duncan

A young man tells of visiting a college, which had a series of security call boxes every few hundred feet or so. If you were wandering around the campus at night and felt uneasy about somebody following you, for instance, you could hit the button and have a security officer come investigate immediately. On one of these phones hung a sign that said, “Out of Order.” Underneath it someone had scrawled. . . “Keep Running!” (1) Fear is a powerful emotion, isn’t it? It’s like the story of the Bishop who had an ...

1950. Joseph: The Righteous Carpenter

Matthew 1:18-25

Sermon

Charley Reeb

I have learned that there is one thing you should never ask God for unless you have really thought through it. And that is patience. I asked God for patience several years ago and God has never forgotten it. I am getting really impatient about it! I am reminded of this whenever I am in traffic. Did you hear about the woman's car that stalled in traffic? She looked in vain under the hood to identify the cause, while the driver behind her leaned relentlessly on his horn. Finally she had enough. She walked ...

Showing results