Sermon and Worship Resources

Synonyms: take action, take steps, take measures, take the initiative, move, make a move, react, do something, proceed, go ahead, behave, function, perform, operate, work, take effect, serve, be efficacious, play, play a part, take part, be an actor, be an actress, be one of the cast, appear, pretend, play-act, sham, fake, feign, put it on, bluff, pose, posture, masquerade, dissemble, dissimulate, deed, action, gesture, feat, exploit, performance, undertaking, maneuver, stunt, operation, venture, effort, enterprise, achievement, accomplishment, law, decree, statute, bill, Act of Parliament, edict, fiat, dictum, dictate, enactment, resolution, ruling, rule, judgement, canon, ordinance, proclamation, command, commandment, mandate, measure, stipulation, direction, requirement, division, section, subsection, portion, part, segment, component, bit, turn, routine, number, item, piece, sketch, skit, playlet, dance, song, pretense, false display, show, front, facade, charade, guise, affectation, appearance

Antonyms: do nothing

Showing 1 to 25 of 617 results

1. Anger - Eleven Ways To Blow Up, Seven Ways To Cool Off

Matthew 5:21-26

Sermon

R. Curtis Fussell

... first stage of anger: you expect to be made angry. You are looking for something bad to happen; you are looking for the negative. Now then, you approach the express line. And there in front of you is a guy with more than twelve items. It's obvious he has more than twelve items; his basket is full. Will your pulse rate start to rise? Will you feel that your territory has been violated? Will you feel yourself wanting to say, "Hey, he's taking advantage of the system?" If so, then you have entered stage two of ...

2. A Thanksgiving Checklist

Luke 12:48

Sermon

Robert Noblett

... several young people. It happened that a cousin of mine was helped by this man. I never heard the professor’s story, but I suspect that if I had, it would have been along lines of the biblical mandate that having received, we are asked to give. Checklist item #5: Do I see myself as a child of God to whom my wonder is a sacrifice of thanksgiving? Clearly there is wonderment in David’s prayer of thanksgiving when he speaks of God having “made this wonderful promise to me.” (2 Samuel 7:28 TEV) Not that ...

3. Your Life as a Provenance of the Jesus Story

Luke 3:1-20

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... pawnshop owners, the savvy collectors, winnow out the junk from the jewels in large part because of the “provenance” of the item. If you watch Antiques Roadshow, you know that word “provenance.” It’s what can turn a $50 item into a $50,000 treasure. The “provenance” is the provable, itemized, recorded history of any item that brings the story of the antique to life. Whether the item is a lovely nineteenth century desk that is accompanied by a letter written upon that desk and a photograph of ...

4. Good News, Release, and Comfort

Isaiah 61:1-11

Sermon

Richard L. Eslinger

... that unites us with our Lord, who announced that he was coming to proclaim release to the captives. There can be a Christmas present from us to those living in bondage. It may start with an anointing to that holy purpose of liberation. One final item is on the list of Christmas preparations from the book of Isaiah. We are to comfort those who mourn. More than anything else, this comforting of the mourners is a sign of restoration, or redemption. The vision is giving that is fulfilled in Messiah’s birth ...

5. Have We Kept Our Contract with God?

Genesis 17:1-27

Sermon

Richard Gribble

... of the home or the apartment owner is to provide a residence. We use contracts when we purchase most high-priced items, including cars and electronic equipment. Most of us have a contract or two with certain credit card companies. There is ... the ones that might slip because the ramifications of our failures in such contracts will not result in the repossession of a material item or the loss of our job. Yet, our verbal contracts, especially those made to God, are the most important, because they are signed ...

6. Hear Him

Matthew 17:1-13

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... museum, stealing some objects, stupidly destroying others. The youthful crowds of protestors responded by rushing to protect the building and the priceless items it housed. Why did they do this? It is doubtful there were very many worshipers of Amon Ra or any of the ... they were as a people, of where they had been, and what they had done. They were guarding their historic identity. Every item in that museum had its own special “provenance,” its own place in the story of their world. That provenance was the ...

7. Christmas Grass and Easter Tinsel

Luke 2:1-14 (15-20)

Sermon

Cynthia Cowen

... these signs from a secular view. Christmas tinsel is a sign of tree decoration, of sending cards, and of buying presents. Easter grass is a sign to stock up on candy, to search for a new Easter outfit, and to dye those hard-boiled eggs. Though these items are commercial, they are also signs with spiritual meaning. They are signs of birth and rebirth. They are signs pointing to the moving of the Spirit on earth but also in the spiritual world. They are signs that reveal God taking the ordinary and making ...

8. Talented People

Matthew 25:14-30

Sermon

David G. Rogne

... been based on just such an event. A man had to go away for a while and he entrusted his goods to his servants. To one he entrusted five talents, to another two talents, and to another one talent. A talent was a measurement of weight and if the item measured were, for example, silver, the value of the talent might be $1,000. That may not sound like an enormous sum to us in our inflationary times, but consider that as recently as 2005 the average worker in India earned 91 cents an hour. One thousand dollars ...

9. About Unclaimed Luggage

Luke 15:1-7, Luke 15:8-10, Luke 15:11-32

Sermon

King Duncan

Have you ever been on a flight where the airline lost your luggage? It’s a helpless feeling. In most cases, the lost piece of luggage is returned . . . eventually. But every year, thousands of items are lost or left behind on America’s airlines and never claimed. Eventually, all those lost items end up in the small town of Scottsboro, Alabama, at a store called the Unclaimed Baggage Center. This store, which takes up an entire city block, has arrangements with nearly every airline to buy luggage that ...

10. Seeds

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Sermon

William G. Carter

... matter if the soil was rough or welcoming. There was always fertile seed which carried its own promise within its own shell. Third item on the list: the sower was not interested in controlling the outcome. All he wanted to do was spread the seed around as ... for now, it was the season for seeding, and he was doing a marvelous job. The seed was all over. Fourth, and maybe the most important item on the list: the sower knew if that seed was going to grow, it was going to grow. It was good quality seed, the best ...

11. Mission Ready!

Mark 6:7-13

Sermon

Charles R. Leary

... , spacious home into a significantly smaller home. You who have made such a move know how painful it is to discard favorite pieces that have taken on the character of personal collector’s items’ for you. And the problem is bigger when two of you have your own favorite items. But the fact remains, you have to jettison all items that the smaller space cannot contain. One of my toughest decisions involved my books. When I no longer had an office, I had hundreds of books I could not take home. Having no ...

12. Giving with Open Hands

Mark 12:41-44

Sermon

Thomas Peterson

... . Bill never needed to think about such mundane concerns. When I knew him he and his wife had just had a child. No sooner was the child born than the mother came forth with a long, itemized bill, listing every item she had purchased for him. This so angered the couple that they dedicated themselves to paying her off as soon as possible. A loving gesture turned out to be a closed-hands service. 3. Open hands. When we give with open hands we neither shove a gift at another nor ...

13. Creative Preaching

Sermon

Michael Rogness

... needed an object which had value not in itself but given to it. First I held up a piece of high-quality carpet about a foot square. It was high-priced carpet, superbly made from fine wool. Then I held up a piece of brand new bond stationery paper. Both items had value in themselves. Next I held up a $20 bill. It was old and crumpled, so the paper wasn't worth anything. Since it was all covered with letters, numbers and designs, one couldn't even use it for note paper. By itself it was worth nothing. Yet it ...

14. It's Performance That Counts

Matthew 7:15-23, Matthew 7:24-29

Sermon

Larry Goodpaster

... of age, race and denomination, shared God’s love. And you could see it in the faces of the children who soon would have a room of their own -- they knew they had been loved and cared for. Our loving may take other shapes. It may mean recycling items so that God’s good creation is not destroyed by our own wastefulness. Loving God may mean spending two hours a week helping someone learn to read and function in this communication-oriented world. It may mean investing time in a world of a child who has no ...

15. For Your Part

Matt 5:17-37

Sermon

John Jamison

... the annual holidays all Jews had to clean their homes, and throw away any foods that did not fit within the old, very rigid, dietary laws. This included any prepared foods, many spices and items the "modern" Jewish family used the rest of the year. When the holiday passed, everyone had to go to the market and repurchase items they had thrown away. It was becoming an expensive law. The Pharisees had found that with a little creative thinking it could be made cheaper. The law actually said that Jews could not ...

16. A Brass Cross and a Barometer

Luke 6:1-11

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

... that his family has always displayed on the walls of their living room. First, a brass cross given to them by friends in their first parish. The second item is a round barometer that Bruce bought in Germany after World War II. Those two items hang side by side to remind the family that life is both absolute and variable. The cross is a reminder of the changeless. Certain things are forever, like the grace of God and the redemption of our souls. The barometer, on the other hand, going up and down, heralding ...

17. The Testing Law Man

Sermon

Leonard H. Budd

... it was right that he be put away. My case is to set before you evidence that will show him to be the revolutionary that he was. Item number one: The Nazarene was most unorthodox in the way he did things. Such must be the sign of the devil’s presence. He healed persons ... such a man is not to be trusted - and when put with other actions and words, spelled his just doom! Item number two: The Nazarene surrounds himself with most questionable associates. They often dress differently, and look differently. It is ...

18. Fighting Over Daddy's Will

Luke 12:13-21

Sermon

King Duncan

... Passover, Jews are prohibited from eating, using or even owning anything leavened. Each year many religious Jews symbolically sell the leavened foods in their homes to a rabbi, who then sells it to a gentile. Since their warehouse is filled with nonkosherforPassover items, the Jacobs family temporarily turns over all 1.2 million of their shares to longtime employee Ramon Montes, executive vice president in charge of sales, a Roman Catholic. Says Montes: "Each year I go with them to the rabbi, who hands me ...

19. On "supersizing" Our Vision

Mark 12:41-44

Sermon

Siegfried S. Johnson

... suspect today's kids would have a hard time believing Coke was once marketed in those tiny bottles. "A MERE SIP. WHY WASTE YOUR TIME?" It's true. America has a love affair with SUPERSIZING. Consider the grocery store checkout line. You've carefully filled your cart with all the items on your list. You pull your buggy up to the checkout line and settle in for the wait. But before it's all said and done, your cart bulges with pack of gum, a box of Tic-Tacs, a new TV Guide. "THINK I MIGHT NEED THAT FOUR PACK ...

20. Sleeping Through A Revolution

Ephesians 2:13-14

Sermon

King Duncan

... Baggage Center is located in a huge warehouse. Any piece of luggage that is left behind on an airplane ends up here, where it is sold to the general public. Laptop computers, cell phones, CD players, clothes, jewelry"” those are some of the more common items at the Center. But absentminded passengers have also left behind such things as a bag of live rattlesnakes and a trunk of rare Egyptian artifacts. (5) You know what the church ought to be? We ought to be an Unclaimed Persons Center. We ought to be ...

21. Bearing The Right Fruit

1 Thessalonians 1:1-10

Sermon

King Duncan

... marriages, cheating in school, and on the job. And the startling thing about all this is that the conduct of the average church member is no better than the general population. We've got scars on our hands from playing video games. Both of these news items relate to the lesson that Isaiah is trying to get across to the people of Israel and Judah in a little parable he tells about a vineyard. Now this vineyard has been very carefully planted and cultivated: All the rocks have been removed, and the choicest ...

22. Tackling the Tough Tasks

James 2:1-13

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... story about two young vandals in London who wanted to bring confusion to a very famous store. The vandals broke in during the night, but didn''t steal or damage anything. Instead, they simply rearranged the price tags--putting a $50 price tag by a $5,000 item and $1,000 price tag next to a $50 item. Then they watched the next morning with a kind of sinister delight as shoppers became ever more confused. The God of the universe created the world exactly as God wanted it to be, putting the highest value on ...

23. A Full House

Romans 5:12-21

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... --not a house full of junk like the Collyer brothers. When the spirit of God possesses the house, its treasures and values will not rust or rot but will carry us to the throne room of God. It was said of Ernest Hemingway that each January he gave away certain items of value to him to prove that they did not possess him. If he could not give them away, then he knew they held a crippling power over him. As we enter this Lenten season that is exactly the spirit in which we are called to examine our lives. I ...

24. Don't Forget What You Look Like

James 1:19-27

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... done."3 The wider implications of the ethic run throughout Judaism and Christianity. After the children of Israel had completed the construction of the tabernacle in the wilderness, the Bible records that Moses made a complete record of how every item had been used. The gold and the silver, the brass and every precious item were accounted for, to the very last piece. Why did he do this?4 Moses did this for the sake of appearances so the image of himself that he saw in the mirror of God would match the image ...

25. The Good Life vs. The God Life

Isaiah 55:1-13

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... seafoods. [You can have some fun here and demonstrate exactly what you're talking about with items you mentioned priced and compared with real food.] Even if we buy some items in regular packaging we end up paying for boxes and boxes of zip-locking bags in ... possible sizes and shapes. It's an ugly reality that junk food and convenience packaging are always the most expensive food items in the store. It's as if their price is inversely proportional to their flavor, quality, and nutritional value. On the other ...

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