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 2351 to 2375 of 2415 results

2351. The Most Important Question

Acts 10:34-43

Sermon

Charley Reeb

... him anymore. He decided to throw away his notes and ask those in the workshop to talk about how Jesus was active in their lives. He said that for the next two hours, the room was electric with the presence of Jesus. He had never felt more passionate about a workshop before. After the workshop, Lawrence attended other workshops and became depressed again. He felt terrible and could not put his finger on it. He found a big comfy chair in the middle of the conference arena; and as he sat there watching people ...

2352. Transformed

John 4:5-42

Sermon

April Yamasaki

In the Orthodox Christian Church, the woman at the well in John’s gospel is remembered as Saint Photini, which means “the enlightened one.” Apparently her passion for sharing Jesus as the Messiah sent from God did not end with the people of her own town. Instead, church tradition recounts her travels as an evangelist to the city of Carthage in northern Africa and then to the city of Rome where she sought an audience with the ...

2353. The Ear of the Heart

Philippians 2:5-11

Sermon

Dr. Ronald Love

... . But the earliest creed of the church is simply four words in which the entire doctrine of the church is confessed--“Jesus Christ is Lord.” It is appropriate that we read and even sing, if we had the music, the Philippian hymn today. Today is Passion Sunday, the first Sunday of Holy week. In the days ahead we will celebrate Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter. In the weeks following we will celebrate the Ascension. These weeks contain acts of loyalty and acts of betray- al. We will read of doubts ...

2354. Mandatum

1 Corinthians 11:23-26

Sermon

Dr. Ronald Love

... it, is a corporate act experienced by everyone. Remembering would mean attending your class reunion, which is a corporate experience shared with other graduates. Through corporate ritual performed in a worship service, the Lord’s Super allows us to remember the passion of our Lord as a Christian community. Every time the church, together, as one body in unity, practices the Lord’s Supper, we are remembering together the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. This is why the Christians in Corinth are ...

2355. Sharing God's Vision

Acts 2:1-21

Sermon

King Duncan & Angela Akers

... a big God.” (5) That’s what the Holy Spirit did for the believers at Pentecost. The Holy Spirit reminded them that they have a big God, a God that would equip them for any challenge. It filled them with the mind of God, with God’s passion and vision for filling the world with His grace and truth. And from that point on, no matter what challenges they faced, the believers at Pentecost lived as people of great hope. And the second great gift we receive from Pentecost is that the Holy Spirit enables us ...

2356. Equipped for Our Calling

Matthew 9:35-10:8, (9-23)

Sermon

King Duncan & Angela Akers

... for his glory, but he doesn’t need them. He needs only our obedience to him. Jesus equips the faithful to do his work, especially work that seems impossible under our own power. In 1955, a young man from Holland developed a passion for sharing God’s word in countries where Christians were being persecuted. The young man, who went by the name “Brother Andrew” began smuggling Bibles into Communist countries in Eastern Europe, such as Yugoslavia and Poland. Brother Andrew founded Open Doors, “the ...

2357. Living the FIRE Life

John 17:1-11

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... he is not physically with us. That connection with him, with God through the Holy Spirit that fires us up and gives us “life” for the journey –it’s ours always. This sense of “life” will give us energy, purpose, drive, and passion in everything we do. Life. If you look up the definition of “life” you will find that it’s the capacity for growth, reproduction, activity, and continual change preceding death. In the Old English, the etymological definition also notes that life is spiritual ...

2358. Rest

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Sermon

William G. Carter

... is the part of us that’s alive. It’s the intersection of thought, feeling, and breath. It is the gift breathed into us by God’s Spirit that makes us human. The soul is the wellspring of our dreams, the anchor for our imagination, the seat of all passion and hope. The soul is the part of us that can be traumatized, anxious, and fearful. When the soul is wounded, one of the typical responses is to keep pushing on, persisting through, often in the vain hope that if we just add another inch to the span of ...

2359. The Human Predicament

Illustration

Maxie Dunnam

... there is no bread, but that we have convinced ourselves that we are not hungry.” Is she right? How many people do you know who are operating out of a conviction that if we have an abundance of things, take good care of our bodies, satisfy our physical drives and passions, then life is all that it was meant to be. But then you come across a person who has a peace and a joy that you don’t understand. There’s nothing frantic about him. He’s not into what everybody else is in to. As you come to know ...

2360. A Violent Week

Mark 14:1-2 · Luke 22:14-23:56

Sermon

Will Willimon

... you will remind me at the end of today's service, I am no politician or strategist. I am a preacher, someone paid to tell the story. And that's all we have, you know, this story, and our pledge to live in the light of it. So this Palm/Passion Sunday it is traditional to have the longest Gospel lesson of the whole year, a long story of what they did to Jesus in his last week and how he responded. And at Baptism you pledged to bet your life on this story. "The rulers of this world like to ...

2361. Be Near, Ye Faithful

1 Thessalonians 5:16-24

Sermon

Ronald Love

... at the church in Corinth with these words, “Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.” We need to understand that Paul was not opposed to marriage, he just thought that it was unnecessary with the immediate return of Christ. He just felt that the time devoted to a spouse would be better spent serving the evangelical mission of the church. The ...

2362. Template for Reconciliation

Matthew 18:15-20

Sermon

Steve Molin

... , a new parking lot! As the council met earlier in the week to finalize the presentation, one vocal council member announced that he would be voting “no” on Sunday. Short story: on Sunday, the motion was made and seconded, and “Tom” stood to speak passionately against the motion, especially the process used by the council. After some debate, the question was called, the motion passed, and we all went and had coffee. I was in the sanctuary, preparing for the second service when Tom came in and began ...

2363. No Other Gods

Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25

Sermon

King Duncan & Angela Akers

... (5) Meditate on those statements for a moment: Our actions reveal our real values. Our actions reveal the truth. That’s why our service reveals our true gods. What is it that commands most of your attention, your energy, your time, your skills and your passion? We cannot serve the Lord with all faithfulness until we throw away the lesser gods that compete for our service. And the lesser god that distracts us the most is our self. It is our own happiness, comfort, pride, security, and ego. That’s why ...

2364. Going and Doing

Matthew 25:31-46

Sermon

Steve Molin

... never intended to be a closed circle where we sit around, singing “Kum Ba Yah,” and care only for ourselves. The church has always been about others. About one hundred fifty years ago, a young minister by the name of William Booth was captured by a passion for the lost and poorest in London, England. The organization he formed is known to us today as The Salvation Army. When Booth died at the age of 83, surrounded by his family, that last word that he spoke was “others.” One word - others. In our ...

2365. Ready for Change

Mark 13:24-37

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... them growing in their communities and culture, the division among friends and family members, the discrepancy of power between those of status and those rejected by the power-hungry. The vibe around Jerusalem, and even beyond, was high-strung, and the passions of Jesus’ opposers grew daily. They knew that Jesus was making people angry and that the authorities were nearly at tipping point with what they would endure going forward. Some already plotted his demise by any means they could conjure. Something ...

2366. Never Really Alone

Mark 14:1-15:47

Sermon

Mary Austin

... that no one can understand, or when you’re afraid of people judging you. As Jesus comes into what we now call Holy Week, the last week of his life, he is profoundly, deeply alone. As we picture Palm Sunday, we know that it’s also Passion Sunday, the Sunday that leads to Jesus’ death. How do you imagine Jesus’ friends and followers, welcoming him into Jerusalem? How do you picture the crowd in your mind? One thing I never thought about until recently was the expression on Jesus’ face. A Lent book ...

2367. Come and See

John 1:43-51

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... ? Because in his presence men and women felt their inner, better selves revived within them. Jesus lifted their hearts. He saw all their dormant possibilities, and he made the people see their true potential. What is more, he made them desire, with a deep and passionate longing, that those possibilities should become real and his dreams for them come true; he made folks believe they could come true, and that life could be full and warm and beautiful. The friendship of Jesus. How can we get it? There are no ...

2368. Hell: Ocean of Oatmeal

John 10:10

Illustration

Maxie Dunnam

... a large bowl of oatmeal. Cold oatmeal. With lots of lumps. Now picture the atlantic as an ocean of oatmeal. Put yourself in the middle of the oatmeal ocean a mile below the surface. Get the picture? That's hell. "Hell is cold oatmeal. It is life without passion or desire. Hell is numbness, not pain. Hell is believing there is nothing worth getting excited about. Hell is a swamp of blandness." Does that speak to you? It does to me. Hell: the deadness of a huge ocean of oatmeal in which we are caught. It may ...

2369. Marketplace Christianity

John 2:13-22

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... (options or expendables) but as subjects, as valued people of God. God’s economy is different than our economy. God’s economy is one of love, openness, inclusion, and grace. This was Jesus’ mission the entire time on earth, and it was the same passion that drove Paul in his own gentile mission. After his encounter with Jesus, Paul understood God’s love for all people, no matter who they are or from where they herald, and he demonstrated that love throughout his lifetime. To understand and follow ...

2370. Free to Forgive

John 20:19-31

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... threats. Those who act unkindly will still likely receive the consequences of their actions all on their own. But Jesus also knows that those he has healed have become his most ardent disciples. To those he has shown unexpected grace, they have become his most passionate followers. When we bestow forgiveness and grace upon others, no matter what they’ve done or not done to us, we act out our own version of “measure for measure.” As Jesus has forgiven us –for we all fall short of the glory of God ...

2371. Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf?

John 10:11-18

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... and protect the fold. Hence the stories of David. God chooses a shepherd to lead Israel for a reason! And even he, at times, nearly succumbs to the lure of a wolfish hunger. Yet in the end, he prevails. Against Goliath, and against his own inner passions. Jesus would be the ultimate in Shepherd excellence. He even instructed his own disciples in “how to handle wolf attacks!” in Matthew 10:16: “I am sending you out among wolves!” When Jesus was surrounded and “attacked” in the dark of night by a ...

2372. When It’s Good, It’s Really Good

John 15:9-17

Sermon

Mary Austin

... always. We abide in God’s embrace from the beginning of our days to the very end. Jesus invites us to make our home in him, and to grow from that root to love one another. We are always in the heart of the God who loves us with the passion and wisdom and fire of a mother, as of a father. We are always and forever at home in the God who loves us. Amen.

2373. To Us a Child is Born

Isaiah 9:1-7

Understanding Series

John Goldingay

... NIV). It resembles a song of thanksgiving for what Yahweh has already done (cf. Isa. 12), until the promise in verse 7b makes explicit that in real time the whole lies in the future. Its reference to Yahweh’s zeal further illustrates the importance of Yahweh’s passion to Israel’s reaching its destiny (see on 5:25–30). The birth of another son, explicitly David’s rather than Isaiah’s, is the key to the move from death to life. The words in verse 6a are the words used to announce a child’s ...

2374. New Life Goes On

Mark 5:21-43

Sermon

David Coffin

... secrecy of this miracle. We already see a glimpse of resurrection teachings here in Mark’s gospel. Scholars have often pointed to the abrupt ending in Mark 16:8, where the women are simply frightened but nobody has yet seen the risen Christ. This text and the passion prediction in Mark 9:31 (RSV) (“The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him; and when he is killed, after three days he will rise”) are signs that the gospel writer did intend to show the reader that ...

2375. Which Kingdom Do We Serve?

Mark 6:14-29

Sermon

David Coffin

... we fall into a self-guilt response, let us consider Jesus’ disciples in Mark. Besides following Jesus and carrying out this mission in Mark 6, the disciple grows worse and worse in Mark’s gospel. They do not want to believe Jesus when he makes his passion predictions about dying on the cross and rising from the grave three days later (Mark 9:30-32). They really prefer a Messiah of glory, if truth be told. When Jesus was arrested and crucified, all of his disciples abandoned him! Nobody stayed at the ...

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