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 201 to 225 of 679 results

201. I Kid You Not

2 Kings 4:8-37

Sermon

... a pregnancy without first consulting or asking the woman? Many women today would resent that. But this is certainly not a universal answer for every woman in every age. This is an unexpected promise given to one woman, in a particular circumstance, who evidently had a deep yearning for a child. 2. God proclaims the Unlikely It must have seemed unlikely that the woman of Shunem would ever bear a child, yet Elisha’s word to her came true. We do not know the name of her child, as we know the names of other ...

202. Honest to Goodness Religion

Hosea 4:1-19

Sermon

... like to be faithful, courageous, loving and forgiving." "If it does not cost too much ..." How true. For many of us, religion is conditional. People are always on the lookout for bargain-sale salvation, cheap commitment and discount discipleship. We have a wistful yearning to do better and to make some real changes in our lives, but fortunately (usually) the impulse does not last too long and we return to normal. God’s people instinctively know where to go for help and where to find answers. Even though ...

203. Is Repentance Necessary?

Acts 2:14-41

Sermon

... with the reality of their own self-negation. I am convinced the reason people do these things, play these games, and follow these schemes is not because these are the most important things in life for them. It is because everyone has, deep down inside of us, a longing or yearning to be able to stand tall and to be good in our own eyes and in the eyes of others. So, if we can play a game, and even if it works only momentarily, we at least get half-way toward that goal. The problem, however, is that the ...

204. Advent 2

Malachi 2:17--3:5, Philippians 1:1-11, Luke 3:1-20

Sermon Aid

... to him who is in prison. Popularly, love is an emotion or a feeling. Love is identified with sentimentalism. In this passage we learn what love really is and does. Outline: What love means - a. Being grateful for loved ones - v. 5 b. Having confidence in you - v. 6 c. Yearning to be together - v. 8 d. Praying for you - v. 9

205. The Resurrection of Our Lord

Acts 10:23b-48, Exodus 10:1-20, 1 Corinthians 15:12-34, John 20:1-9, John 20:10-18, Colossians 3:1-17

Sermon Aid

... 3:1-4 1. Death and Resurrection. Easter can mean nothing without the cross. How can there be a Resurrection without a death from which to rise again to life? The Easter celebration means little to those who do not experience Good Friday. People often talk about and yearn for new life, but they are unwilling to pay the price, death. "For you have died" (v. 3) is the basis for a Resurrection. It, of course, is not a physical death but a death of the old Adam - the proud, selfish, wicked self. Out of the ashes ...

206. Easter 2

Acts 5:17-42, Revelation 1:4-8, Revelation 1:9-20, John 20:19-23, John 20:24-31

Sermon Aid

... . Gospel: John 20:19-31 1. What Happens if You Miss Church (20:19-25). Need for this sermon: The sermon recognizes the problem of the decrease in church attendance on this Easter 2. Now it seems that we are back to "religion as usual." The preacher yearns, "O, if we could only have Easter every Sunday!" The truth is that every Sunday is an Easter, a celebration of the resurrection. The danger of this subject is the temptation of the preacher to scold the faithful for the lack of interest of the absentees ...

207. Lent 2

Lk 9:18-36; 13:31-35 · Php 3:17--4:1 · Jer 26:8-15 · Gen 15:1-12, 17-18

Sermon Aid

John R. Brokhoff

... we too much like the world to have enemies from the world? 2. How to Face Threats. 13:31-33 A. Confront your enemy: take a stand, don't flee - v. 32 B. Courage: tell your enemy off - v. 32 C. Continue your work for good - v. 32 3. The Yearning, Wooing, Longing, Pleading Heart of God. 13:34-35 A. How often he tries to get man back: "How often" - v. 34. From Noah to Jesus! B. "Gathered" -v. 34. Love gathers, unites, solidifies, reconciles, God's intention for Christ: to reconcile, to bring back man to God. C ...

208. Deliverance by a Dream

Matthew 2:13-18

Sermon

... God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased. Israel, Egypt and all nations must become friends who honestly respect one another. God wants us to promote peace all over the world, not simply talk about it or yearn for it. Christians are peacemakers by nature and by God’s design. We Christians need to be engaged in activities which will alter the life-styles of people in refugee camps, who desperately need relief and assistance. Someone has said Americans react generously when ...

209. Boundaries or Frontiers?

Leviticus 19:1-37

Sermon

... love ... we begin to feel free. Martin Luther struggled with boundaries all his life. God led him to the boundary of the monastery when he was twenty-one. Why? Did God want him to ache for freedom? Did he want this young peasant’s son to yearn for a world that included the use and ownership of property, relationships with women, and making decisions for himself? None of these were options in the monastery. After years of living in those enslaving monastic walls and thinking that he loved it (just as the ...

210. Prayer in a Pinch

Matthew 14:22-36

Sermon

... doing what we are supposed to be about. I would contend that Jesus' own prayers in a pinch often resulted from his very desire to do the will of God. The crowds for instance, pressured him because he was God's healer - with a genuine compassion. People yearned to hear him speak because he spoke with authority. And when he prayed that agonizing midnight prayer in Gethsemane, it was because he was struggling for God's will for him. Add all that up, and you sense that Jesus' life might have been much simpler ...

211. The Power and the Glory

Matthew 20:20-28

Sermon

... is to the east, this one to the Pacific Ocean. Here in this celebrated place movies are made, and so are stars. This is the workplace, if not the home, of countless glamorous people whose every move is ogled and adored by millions of Americans who yearn for the glamour and fame and riches they see here. Ah, if only they had this, they think, they would really live. This city is Hollywood, and it symbolizes glory. Wherever one lives in this land, these two cities symbolize attractions of great influence in ...

212. Harnessed Power

John 20:19-23

Sermon

Richard L. Thulin

... where it is not needed. Wherever people act out of arrogance, or resentment, or pride, or ideological fanaticism, there forgiveness is needed. Wherever people are separated from one another, from themselves and from God, there forgiveness is needed. Wherever people yearn for new beginnings, for liberation from guilt or fear, there forgiveness is needed. Wherever people long for reconciliation within family or community, there forgiveness is needed. The evangelist John points us to the fact that we have been ...

213. Walking the Streets

Matthew 10:1-42, Matthew 9:35-38

Sermon

Richard L. Thulin

... , but they reacted with something other than compassion. The "real people" they saw were human animals upon whom they could heap burden after burden, at the same time as they willfully ignored their rights (Matthew 23:4, 23). They saw them as people whose yearnings for better times were to be thwarted and blocked (Matthew 23; 13). They saw them as targets for their power lust and as audiences for their showy performances (Matthew 23:2, 5-7). It must be that compassion makes all the difference in what ...

214. And Then The End

Matthew 24:1-35

Sermon

... the gospel’s vision of the end itself. Nor should this surprise us. "Eschatologies have to start more from fears than from hopes; in our alienation, we hope mostly for what we lack."1 Precisely because we know the worst of times, we ache for and yearn for God’s Best of Times. Precisely because we know what it is to dread wars and be wearied by rumors of wars we can cherish the gospel’s vision of the peaceable kingdom. Precisely because we have experienced the horror of "nation rising against nation ...

215. The Love God Wants

Matthew 22:34-40

Sermon

... nouns out of adjectives as we express the need to "get back to the basics" in everything from education to economics. We long for clarity and understanding of the fundamental matters of living. As our lives become more and more complex, we yearn for simple, easy-to-cope with issues and ideas. But life seldom cooperates in our search for simplicity. To some extent the growth of religious fundamentalism in our society reflects that search for simple answers to complex questions, for a way of understanding ...

216. Why Jesus Came Back

Illustration

Staff

... two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them," he said. And he is. He is meeting with us as we are meeting here today. Our meeting together with him is, I think, important to him. It is something he wants, something he yearns for, something he chose to do on that first Lord's Day long ago, and something he chooses still. And I believe he is glad when we choose it too. Having died, he might have gone on from his grave, but he chose to come back from it. He chose ...

217. Managing Our Memories

1 Corinthians 11:17-34

Sermon

Leonard W. Mann

... is a benediction to you. Give large mind-space to what adds to the quality of your life, to what lifts you and boosts you along. In other words, arrange your memories in the order of their usefulness in achieving the higher aspirations and deeper yearnings of spirit and mind. Bury deep the recollections of all injuries, insults, and cruelties. As your parade of memories goes by, look lovingly and longingly at the beautiful ones, but avert your gaze and let the others pass. And to the extent you can organize ...

218. Away with the Stable

Luke 2:1-7

Sermon

... it all. We will experience his birth right in the midst of people who love each other. We will feel his birth not in the kataluma, but in the pain of the world where his influence still says, "be reconciled to God." (2 Corinthians 5:20) We will see his yearning to be born again in the Middle East where his voice still cries out for peace and good will on earth. We will find him, not in the side rooms of life, but with the poor, the imprisoned, and the hungry. If we listen closely, we can still hear his ...

219. Responding to Christ's Birth

Matthew 2:1-12

Sermon

... is precisely the nature of God. It is God's nature to come to us, to search us out, to meet us on the journey, and to make himself known to us. It is God's nature not to be known by a few people, but by the multitudes. God yearns to be known. God is an encountering God, and that is the reason the Wise Men found Jesus. They responded, and they were led where they were beckoned. They were willing to look for the king in unlikely places. What they found was a surprise. Expecting to find the future ...

220. The Primacy of Human Relationships

Matthew 5:33-37

Sermon

Joe Pennel

... the scoreboard when the final second of the game ticks away. For church officials, the bottom line is how much money has been raised and how many members have been received. In Pat Conroy's book, The Prince of Tides, there is a character who yearns to have one of her recipes printed in the most prominent cookbook in the city of Colleton, South Carolina. She does everything in her power to get her pet recipe in Colleton's premiere cookbook. She experiments with various food combinations. She presents herself ...

221. Getting Back To Work

Luke 17:1-10

Sermon

Brett Blair

... we feel that GOD the Father has human instead of divine attributes…when we think of God framed by the perspective of our puny experiences… then we forget that we are God’s creatures. What do we have as a claim upon God except to understand our duty to yearn for God’s love. What do we have ultimately without God’s grace? Religion, true religion that has Christ as our Lord and God as our father will tap us on the shoulder and say, “I am hungry, prepare my meal. I am thirsty, get my drink. We have ...

222. Three Arrows

1 Samuel 20:1-42

Sermon

... him before his execution by the Nazis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the young German pastor, wrote these words from his prison cell in Tegel: Who am I? restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage. struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat, yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds, thirsting for words of kindness, for neighbors.1 Jonathan was a friend to David in the shepherd’s dark night of the soul. A friend is someone who is at your doorstep when the rest of the ...

223. The Rest of the Christmas Story

Isaiah 40:1-31

Sermon

... as the Wise Men did of old. But more than that, I suspect that as a black South African, you’ll want to hear the larger message of Christmas, too. You’ll want to hear about valleys being lifted up, and rough places made smooth. Your soul will yearn to hear Isaiah say: "Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended." (Isaiah 40:2) You’ll also want to hear Mary: "He has shown strength with His arm, and scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts ... He has filled the ...

224. Advent 1

Romans 13:8-14

Bulletin Aid

... darkened by evil and sin. Point us toward his Light: that, our faces warmed and brightened by the dawn he brings, we may live redeemed lives of purity and love, even though we still can feel the cold darkness of the passing evil age on our backs. Yearning for the coming of your Light we pray. Amen Prayer of Confession God of Light, it saddens us deeply to realize how much and how often we succumb to the spiritual darkness that surrounds us, despair over the evil that assails us, and fail to look in hope ...

225. Advent 2

Romans 14:1--15:13

Bulletin Aid

... THE ONE WHO COMES BE AS LASTING AS THE MOON! Leader: May the Christ of God be like showers that water the earth! People: MAY THE CHRIST OF GOD BRING RIGHTEOUSNESS AND PEACE! Collect God of abundant promises, you fulfilled the hopes of Israel and the yearnings of the prophets for a Messiah in a surprising way that none of us could have anticipated. Give us at least the wisdom of hindsight: that, recognizing in Jesus the Christ, we may learn once again to place our trust in your promises and our confidence ...

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