Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 2326 to 2350 of 2404 results

2326. Good Sex

Genesis 2:4-25

Sermon

Will Willimon

... so that the male and female, through sex, participate in the same act of creativity which formerly belonged only to God. They shall produce, in their union, other males and females. As gift, woman is not controlled by man. He must move toward her to achieve union. In their joy of sex, they shall, in the biblical words, cleave to one another and become, “one flesh.” Be careful. Walter Bruggeman, who preached here last fall, has remarked that “No text in Genesis (or likely in the entire Bible) has been ...

2327. No Partiality

Acts 10:34-43

Sermon

Will Willimon

... as if I had been immortal...I had the impression that I had my whole life before me...Now it isn't worth anything because it was finished...death had taken the charm out of everything." So why should we criticize those who get all they can, strive, achieve, eat, drink, and be merry? Perhaps they are the smart ones. Life has its limits so get what you can before it's over and your head hits solid against the dark wall. In criticizing the hedonism and self-centeredness of many of today's college campuses, one ...

2328. The Law of the Serpent

John 3:14-21

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... . And the dichotomy of the Living God/Living Human Jesus needed to be the kind of Messiah who could undo our current reality caused by our will to see, know, control, and be through His own descent into darkness and the chaos of death. We achieve life through death, as Jesus explained to Nicodemus about being “born again.” Want to be a true Christian? You must be willing to undergo “soul sacrifice,” to allow God to operate on your heart, jumpstart your spirit, and point it in a new trajectory. We ...

2329. Bringing Life to a Party

Luke 24:36b-48

Sermon

King Duncan

... had a marker sculpted for his grave that shows Verne breaking open his tombstone and coming out of the grave. The epitaph on the tombstone is in French. It is translated, “Towards Immortality and Eternal Youth.” (7) Maybe Jules Verne thought that he could achieve immortality on his own. Maybe he believed his writings would live on after him. But the Bible makes it clear that we cannot save ourselves from death. And no amount of avoiding the subject or worrying about it or fearing it will change that ...

2330. Happiness Full Stop

John 15:9-17

Sermon

King Duncan

... ’s not surprised by the things that I do for her. She knows I’ll go above and beyond.” That’s the example of love that Jesus gave us. Jesus had one priority in life: to restore our relationship with God. And when we couldn’t achieve that restoration through our own good works, Jesus gave up his life to secure our restoration through the sacrifice of his perfect, sinless life. In 1942, a man named Liu in Gaotan, China, fell in love with a woman named Xu. Some members of their community disapproved ...

2331. The Mighty Mustard Seed

Mark 4:26-34

Sermon

King Duncan

... is what this pastor did. He and his wife, Frances, start an international food ministry. As Larry would say later in an interview with author Jack Canfield, “I’ve seen it countless times in my life—when God asks you to do something, He also provides the means to achieve it. I used to try to figure out how He was going to make it all come about perfectly, but I quit doing that a long time ago . . . Frances and I have learned to simply trust that everything is exactly the way it should be. The result of ...

2332. When Storms Hit Home

Mark 4:35-41

Sermon

King Duncan

... with your parents. Pro golfer Bubba Watson listed his priorities in his Twitter description as “Christian. Husband. Daddy. Pro Golfer.” He and his wife Angie have two adopted children, and Watson says that joy of being a father far outweighs any professional success he has achieved. He took some time off from golf after the first adoption so he could bond with his son. As he said, “I had to be there for my son, so golf was the farthest thing from my mind . . . Trying to be a good husband, a ...

2333. I Doubt It!

John 20:19-31

Sermon

Timothy W. Ayers

... another perspective. Doubt can at times be the great catalyst that moves us forward. Remember, God is not afraid of your questions. In the weeks after Easter, after you have sought a deeper relationship with God for forty days, there may be a letdown or a satisfaction that you achieved a goal. That letdown leaves room for doubt. It leaves room for a desire to make a spiritual reversal. This is not the time to be a Doubting Thomas but the time to be the brave, faithful follower that Thomas truly was. Amen.

2334. The Transformative Power of God

1 John 1:1--2:2

Sermon

Richard Gribble

... . Yet, part of the challenge of being a Christian is to place our trust in God. The author of the book of Proverbs (3:5) poignantly puts it this way: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight.” If we are to achieve the conversion that the Bishop of the Cathedral at Notre Dame found in the story, the same one that John speaks of in our second lesson, moving from darkness to light, we must find trust in God. We must be patient and persistent in our trust, for God does not ...

2335. The Power of Belief

1 John 5:9-13

Sermon

Richard Gribble

... happen. And he did! All of these short vignettes describe stories of famous people who were committed to their beliefs; they were convinced that if they moved forward, disregarded the many naysayers around them, and had sufficient confidence and courage — they could achieve their goals. In a similar way, Saint John closes his first letter to the Christian community, and we close the Easter season, by hearing the message of our need for belief, confident that if we hold fast — we will be led to ...

2336. Walking in the Way of Love

Ephesians 4:25-5:2

Sermon

King Duncan

... ’ve got a pop quiz for you today: how many steps does it take to walk around the world? Since we aren’t Jesus and can’t walk on water, we are excluding oceans and major bodies of water. Well, there is a website that measures such achievements as walking around the world. According to their calculation, it takes the average person around 20 million steps to make that walk. Can your Fitbit register 20 million steps? Or would it melt down after about 10 million? Among the handful of people who have proof ...

2337. The Dean's Dilemma

Ephesians 5:15-20

Sermon

King Duncan

... He has received worldwide recognition and major sponsorship deals for his skateboarding skills. As a child, he set himself the goal of being the best skateboarder in the world. At 14, he turned pro in the sport. At age 16, he opened his own company. He achieved all his goals by his late teens. And none of it brought him fulfillment. So, like Eddie Elguera and many people who find worldly success at a young age, Christian Hosoi drifted into drugs and partying. In January 2000, he was arrested at the Honolulu ...

2338. Giving Our Best

Mark 7:24-37

Sermon

King Duncan

... awarded the Medal of Honor for “conspicuous gallantry and [fearlessness] in action above and beyond the call of duty.” (11) It matters a great deal how you define excellence. It matters a great deal who you pattern your life after. There is only one who achieved excellence in every area of life and that one was Jesus of Nazareth. He lived well, he taught well, he died well. Beyond that, he rose triumphantly and lives forever. He is our model. He is the one who calls us to set lofty goals, to ...

2339. Like a Phoenix

Mark 6:1-13

Sermon

Dean Feldmeyer

... things to help us let go of failure. Actually, probably more than four, but four will do for today. One, is grace. We are not saved by our success rate. We are not saved by our ability to meet our goals. We are not saved by our accomplishments or our achievements. We are saved by God’s grace, God’s unconditional love for us, and that is all. If we fail, we need not worry that our value as a human being is somehow going to be lessened, that God is going to love us less, that Jesus is going to ...

2340. The Power of the Staff

Mark 6:1-13

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... really trips us up, isn’t it? We are afraid to take risks, because we equate risk with success and success with results. But the beauty of our relationship with God is that our life and our salvation is a gift. It’s not contingent on something we do or achieve. It’s not equivalent to a results-based record or a numbers-based goal. In fact, we don’t need to worry about results at all. All we need to do is jump out of the nest and fly. Start living life in the wide world. And God will do ...

2341. Promises to Keep

Mark 6:14-29

Sermon

Dean Feldmeyer

... , in turn, gave it to her mother. Mark concluded the story by telling us that, when John’s disciples heard about his death they came, took his body, and laid it in a tomb. The Story, Then The story of the death of John the Baptist achieved several things for Mark and his immediate audience who were very probably dealing with a cult of John the Baptist who were still, even thirty years after his death, revering and even worshiping him as the messiah. First it shows us that Jesus was not the reincarnation ...

2342. Missional Discontinuity

Mark 6:30-44, Mark 6:45-56

Sermon

Dean Feldmeyer

... a cataclysmic sell-off that could rock the economy of the entire planet. (“Could” being the operative word, here.) The deadline for sealing a deal with Iran was creeping up and every time Secretary of State Kerry thought they were about to achieve an agreement, Iran wanted to change the rules — or something. I don’t really understand what’s going on over there. Meanwhile, in Hollywood, Bill Cosby was back in the spotlight after a recently revealed admission that he had purchased drugs he planned ...

2343. Never on Sunday

Mark 2:23-3:6

Sermon

Dean Feldmeyer

... , those kinds of things. Work that wasn’t allowed was called, in Hebrew, melachah, which generally refers to the kind of “work that is creative, or that exercises control or dominion over your environment.” Also prohibited would be any work that achieved the same purpose. Specifically, the early rabbis listed 39 tasks that were prohibited along with any other task which was undertaken for the same purpose. (see Appendix on p. 139) These tasks are, basically, the kinds of work that was undertaken to ...

2344. Seeing with Eyes Closed

John 6:35, 41-51

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... , what do we do? We train our muscles. We support our bones. We take supplements. We go to pilates and yoga. We work out on machines that build us up and improve our health. We eat better food. We cultivate practices that support the goals we want to achieve. So what can we do to train our spiritual inner eye? We can engage in practices that help us be more aware of the “invisible” around us. We can engage in prayer. We can engage in meditation time focusing on God. We can listen to meditative music or ...

2345. Perks for Following Jesus

Mark 10:35-45

Sermon

King Duncan

... no one else is willing to make. In the Old Testament, the book of Deuteronomy chapter 30, God said to the people of Israel, “I have set before you life and death. Therefore choose life.” Many of us have deluded ourselves into believing we can achieve our dreams without making hard decisions. And yet deciding is the most god-like characteristic which the Creator has bestowed upon us. If being created in His image means anything at all, it means we have the ability to choose. Not to choose means giving ...

2346. Divine Divestment

Mark 10:17-27

Sermon

Will Willimon

... but God, don't commit adultery, don't steal, don't lie, don't kill, don't be envious of anything anybody else has, keep the Sabbath, stuff like that." Now I expect that in invoking the anything-but-simple-to-follow Ten Commandments, Jesus expected this high achiever to recoil and say something like, ''Gosh, Jesus, when you put it like that, why in the world should I be going out looking for something else to do, when I have done such a lousy job of doing the things that I have already been commanded to ...

2347. Grace Under Pressure

Luke 4:1-13

Sermon

King Duncan

... painful prayer. But it’s freeing too. I learned something about the usefulness of pain from a woman named Amelia Boone. Boone is a corporate attorney for Apple and has won four world championships in obstacle endurance racing, an incredibly grueling sport. Her achievements have earned her the nickname “The Queen of Pain.” In an interview, Boone said, “Pain is your friend. Pain gives you cues. Pain tells you what you need to focus on . . . And if I make friends with (pain), then it is just something ...

2348. Winning the Grand Prize

Philippians 3:4b-14

Sermon

King Duncan

... hope he’d see his mother again, and that may very well have been a factor in his survival. It makes a real difference in your life when you know what your goal is and when you give yourself unreservedly to that goal. Not that you will always achieve your goals. Tony Campolo tells a humorous story about a friend of his who attended a prayer meeting where people shared with each other about how God could answer prayer. One elderly missionary told how she had gone to the mission field wanting very much to be ...

2349. The Hiddenness Of Life’s Truths: Christian Life As Surprise

2 Corinthians 5:20b—6:10

Sermon

Mark Ellingsen

... have done is filled with sin and so deserves death. All we do, even how we live as Christians, is marred by sin. Martin Luther nicely elaborated further on these points: You see the whole of Christian life has to be hidden and remain hidden in this way. It cannot achieve great fame or put on much of a display or show before the world. So let it go at that. Do not worry about the way it is hidden, covered up, and buried, and the way no one notices it. Be content with the fact that your Father up there ...

2350. Nobody’s Too Good To Repent

1 Corinthians 10:1-13

Sermon

Mark Ellingsen

... has been so deeply curved in upon itself because of the viciousness of original sin that it not only turns the finest gifts of God in upon itself and enjoys them (as is evident in the case of legalists and hypocrites), and indeed it even uses God Himself to achieve these aims, but it also seems to be ignorant of the very fact that in acting so iniquitously, so perversely, and in such a depraved way, it is even seeking God for its own sake.[2] We are always trying to get our own way in everything we do ...

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