Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 1951 to 1975 of 4997 results

1951. Life After Life

Sermon

Robert G. Tuttle

... loved. They glimpse dimensions of life and love they had never dreamed of. One person, who had attempted to commit suicide, found himself in a place of darkness. He knew that he had missed life and wanted to come back. All these persons could see some kind of barrier, a stream, a shore, a fence, a canyon. On the other side they saw loved ones who had died. They recognized them and were recognized by them. Their loved ones were beckoning them to come on. At this time these persons were turned back. They ...

1952. Anger

Ephesians 4:17--5:21

Drama

Robert F. Crowley

... Go. Just go. (BILL EXITS) SAM: That kid. I don't know. Everything that comes out of his mouth is some kind of smart answer. Some kind of backtalk. Where do they learn that stuff? RENA: He learned it from you. You wanted a son just like you. Well, you got him. SAM: That's ... cute. That's real cute. RENA: You've always got some kind of smart comeback for everything I say. SAM: Ya think so, huh? Well, that's your opinion and it's the wrong opinion. RENA ...

1953. No Room for Bitterness

Ephesians 4:17--5:21

Bulletin Aid

Dallas A. Brauninger

... sin. Women: Resolve your anger before sunset. Leader: Do not make room for the devil. Men: Give up stealing. Leader: Let only talk useful for building up come out of your mouth. Men: Put away all bitterness, wrath, wrangling, slander, and malice. People: Be kind to one another. Leader: Be tenderhearted. People: Forgive one another. All: Live in love as Christ loved us. Collect We are here, O God, because we want to lead better lives, engage in clean, right relationships, and draw one another toward greater ...

1954. The Priesthood of All Believers

1 Peter 2:4-12

Sermon

T. A. Kantonen

... ?" And he does have something for each of us to do. Phillips Brooks said to young preachers, "The gospel has never been preached by anyone just like you before." This applies to all of us. The light of God’s truth has never shined through just the kind of prism that your personality and your life-situation constitute. Without you there is a discord in the divine harmony, a gap in the divine plan. Your heart and your head form a combination which is utterly unique and without which God cannot do a certain ...

1955. The Struggle of Faith

Matthew 11:1-19

Sermon

Gregory J. Johanson

... in our lives when trouble comes we are able to work our way through it. Illness strikes us, and we are well. Our loved ones go to the hospital, the things that are done are appropriate, and they return. And yet, for all of us, the time comes when these kinds of deliverance will not occur, at least not on their own terms. The grip of pain will not be broken, the tragedy will not be set aside; the death will not be thwarted. How is it possible to have faith when the release does not come? In 1964 my boyhood ...

1956. The Flow of Life

Ecclesiastes 3:1-22

Sermon

Gregory J. Johanson

... one of the most common and generally accepted superstitions to attribute some particular leading quality to every man - to say of him that he is kind, wicked, wise, foolish, energetic, or dull. This is wrong. We may say of a man that he is more frequently kind than cruel, wise than foolish, energetic than apathetic, or vice versa - but it could never be true to say of one man that he is kind or wise, and of another that he is wicked or foolish. Yet this is our method of classifying mankind, and a very false ...

1957. Conflict and Hope: One in the Spirit

Philippians 1:12-30

Sermon

Gregory J. Johanson

... fact that faith would bring conflict. How much better, they surely thought, to have relief from stress, tension, and discord. And of course such an expectation is not confined to the early church. All of us know it well, and all of us long for some kind of deliverance from the vicissitudes of life and particularly from the conflicts with which we have to strive. When I was a boy growing up in southwest Arkansas, I can recall in Sunday school singing a hymn titled, "Beulah Land." The verse started, "Far away ...

1958. All Is Calm, All Is Bright

Luke 2:1-7

Sermon

William G. Carter

... God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors.” At the center of the Christmas story is the announcement that God has given peace to the earth. Peace is not a vain dream or a vague hope. Peace is already here. But what kind of peace are we talking about? If peace means the ability to get along with others, we are anxious for it. An editorial in a local newspaper asked, “Why can’t we stop all the mudslinging in our town?” The writer was referring to borough council meetings ...

1959. What a Star Can't Tell You

Matthew 2:1-12

Sermon

William G. Carter

... someone announces that she prefers to worship God on the ski slopes. Out there in nature, there is no doubt the heavens are telling the glory of God. “Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge.” Yet if you listen, you cannot tell what kind of God has made the world and the skies above. From nature alone, you cannot know much about the God who made the mountain and covered it with snow. If you fall down the slope and break your legs, you have no clue about the presence of the ...

1960. Splashed with the Spirit

Luke 3:21-38, Luke 3:1-20

Sermon

William G. Carter

... get whatever my driver and others had gotten from him. I don’t remember what we talked about. But I do remember, at one point, this old gnome telling me to kneel. Then he hobbled over, put his hairy hands on my forehead, and began to speak in a kind of mumble-jumble. This, it was later explained to me, was the gift of tongues. Suddenly he switched back to English and said in a loud voice, “God, I want you to baptize this dear boy with the Holy Spirit.” And I tell you the truth: nothing happened. I ...

1961. Beyond Our Sight, Within Our Hearing

Luke 9:28-36

Sermon

William G. Carter

... God so holy that my eyebrows get singed during the sermon. I want to know about a Jesus for whom it is no big deal to bust down the divisions of time and space, so that he can talk with Moses and Elijah whenever he wishes. I hunger for a kind of worship that knocks me off my feet, precisely because it points to the Presence which we cannot manage, control, or even count on with any predictability. Is that too much to ask? Another preacher said it best when he asked: What if the church serves people, not as ...

1962. A Vision of Freedom

Isaiah 65:17-25

Sermon

Mark Ellingsen

... . Again Martin Luther, when lecturing on our First Lesson, said it so well: In the Presence of God our prayers are regarded in such a way that they are answered before we call. I wish that this promise were made use of to its utmost extent by all in all kinds of dangers ... In this state of despair we must cry to God, if not with our voice, then at least with our mouth. The prayer of the righteous man is answered before it is finished.5 Before your prayer is finished, God has an answer. God has a plan for ...

1963. God Notices

Amos 8:1-14

Sermon

John W. Wurster

... eye of God. God knows the truth about who we are and what we’ve done. It all matters to God. What kind of life we live as individuals, what kind of life we live collectively as a society, how we treat the last and the least and the lost among us. It ... to God. As the title suggests, it is simply a book of actual letters that actual kids wrote to God about all kinds of things. Their letters say much about how children experience God. Sensing that thanksgiving is pleasing to God, these children are quick to ...

1964. Make Up Your Mind!

1 Kings 18:16-46

Sermon

Robert Leslie Holmes

... to decide resolutely now for Jesus Christ, the Son of God who took away our sins on Calvary’s cross. Make your decision for Christ and ask him in the Holy Spirit’s power to help you to serve the true God alone for this day and forever more. What kind of God will you believe in? Which one will you serve? In the name Almighty God, I urge you today to meet the only God who died for you and who alone can make you promises that are good for you and will never be broken. Let this be your ...

1965. Obeying God Rather Than Men

Acts 5:17-42

Sermon

Carlyle Fielding Stewart

... man whom we saw laid in the grave is now alive and living? What is this Peter? To say that he is risen to us is an act of treasonous revenge. How can you say that a man that we are responsible for killing now lives? Is this some kind of threat? Are you mocking the powers that be? For if you say he is risen, we take this to mean that he is coming back for those of us who were responsible for killing him! Your resurrection pronouncements are really, Peter, not innocent spiritual verbiage, but a declaration ...

1966. Blind Man's Bluff

Acts 9:1-19a

Sermon

Carlyle Fielding Stewart

... his persecution. Nothing would deter him from annihilating the followers of Jesus. But as he was traveling to Damascus, he met up with Jesus who asked him why he was persecuting his followers. He met a man greater than himself. He had a close encounter of the first kind that knocked him down to the ground. Jesus knew that of the gang of men who went with Saul to kill Christians, he had to waylay the head gangster. Jesus had to get the attention of the others, and he did this by waylaying the baddest and ...

1967. Out of the Box

Acts 11:1-18

Sermon

Carlyle Fielding Stewart

... members posted a notice in the obituary column which read: Dead. Forty-five-year-old, middle-class church that once had 200 members. Address: 1888 Temple Street. Cause of death: unfriendliness towards strangers, for-members-only attitude, disdain for all people who weren’t our kind of people. God forgive us for the sin of selfishness. Peter and the apostles believed that what they had was too good to keep and that Christ did not call them to keep the Good News to themselves but to share a message of joy ...

1968. A Messenger of Promise

Malachi 2:17--3:5

Sermon

Harry N. Huxhold

... could also be bound to a forgiving God who wanted to give them hope. The Faith In The Change In these Advent days we are called to make the confession for which John called. We cannot hope to celebrate the Birth of our Lord at Bethlehem with any kind of meaning unless we understand that at our birth we were destined to be the children of wrath and condemnation. The days of Advent are designed to be days of contemplation of why God was willing to take the drastic action of making his only Son incarnate in ...

1969. The Promising Child

1 Samuel 2:12-26

Sermon

Harry N. Huxhold

... the feelings of Hannah and the mothers like her who dramatized the separation of their sons from their sides when they offered them for service to the Lord. While we can imagine the farewell of Hannah for the boy Samuel may have been a bittersweet kind of experience, the writer who gives us the account of that moment does not describe Hannah’s feelings. Instead the writer simply states, “She left him there for the Lord.” Then the writer includes a beautiful psalmody we know as “The Song of Hannah ...

1970. The Children of Promise

Jeremiah 30:1--31:40

Sermon

Harry N. Huxhold

... with an appetite for the drugs that had eased their struggle with an awful war. All of them returned shocked by the kind of inhumanity that war introduced to history. Like the scars of war, Jeremiah knew his people would bring deep wounds from ... on the fact that the Christ is destined to be nailed on the cross for our sakes. Yet in this Christmastide we are called to that kind of repentant faith that rejoices and exults in the fact that the Holy Child is the most holy and dearest sign of God’s grace and ...

1971. Light for Beauty

Isaiah 62:1-12

Sermon

Harry N. Huxhold

... as then. God worked just as hard then as now. The prophet demonstrates that by using an analogy that Jesus used frequently during his ministry. Jesus referred to himself often as a bridegroom coming to take his followers as his bride. The prophet uses the same kind of language. God calls Israel “Married.” The prophet goes on, “For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your builder marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.” We know how the ...

1972. Light to Serve

Isaiah 6:1-13

Sermon

Harry N. Huxhold

... There was no mistaking the presence of God at this moment. Isaiah was fully aware of the fact that God had taken away any excuse he could make to dodge the impact God had made upon his life. This was a dramatic experience for him. It is the kind of experience we would all like to have to assure us that God is in our lives. However, no angel, with its holy smoke and a passel of angels calling to one another, does appear to duplicate this extraordinary event. For Isaiah there is no escape from this arresting ...

1973. The Armor of What?!

Ephesians 6:10-20

Drama

Dave Marsh

... 6…. "Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes." Yeah baby! I like this stuff. Let’s put on that armor! That sounds pretty cool! Okay, what kind of armor? Do they give it out here or do I have to go someplace special to get it? I wonder if they give out donuts with it….mmmm…. donuts… Dave: Anyway, "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities ...

1974. The Healing Of Simon's Mother-in-Law

Mark 1:29-34

Sermon

James W. Moore

... back in my room now and I’m just doing fine,” Jackie answered. The man said, “Jackie, my family and I will be there to join the church next Sunday in the 11:00 service. If anybody loves the church that much the way you do… it must be some kind of church!” The life of Jackie Greer is even more remarkable when we realize that life has not been a “bed of roses” for Jackie. She has experienced a lot of tragedy and heartache in her lifetime. She lost her dad tragically when she was quite young. Her ...

1975. The Healing of the Gerasene Demoniac

Mark 5:1-20

Sermon

James W. Moore

... their war is of God, that their military crusade is divinely ordained and divinely inspired. The Holy War Crusaders are absolutely certain that their convictions are right because they believe firmly that they are fighting for God. Many wars in history have started with this kind of religious fervor. One of the most tragic examples of the Holy War mind-set occurred in the Middle Ages when a group of 20,000 children (some of them no more than 12 years of age) became convinced that God wanted them to wage ...

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