Sermon and Worship Resources

Synonyms: captured, trapped, catch, took, arrested, grabbed, taken, seized, stuck, apprehended, picked up, entangled, nabbed, jammed, abducted, acquired, got, bagged, gotten, netted, cornered, appropriated, tangled, snared, ensnared

Antonyms: free, freed, unconfined, loose, unrestrained, set free, uncuffed, emancipated, enfranchised, released, ambiguous, flaccid, let go, discharged, unbound, uncaged, unchained, unfettered, unleashed, unshackled, untied, avoided, discounted, disregarded, missed

Showing 1 to 25 of 4958 results

1. Letting Go

Sermon

Gregory J. Johanson

... from our own, afraid to risk having to lose ourselves and our way of being in the world. Is not the pain of letting go the fear of death, death of ourselves and the world of ourselves? So we guard ourselves. We attack and counterattack; we bluster and ... move into the void between the old life and the new life without the guarantee of continuity. This means living in the present, willing to let go of the past in order to answer the call of the future. We do battle with the past in order to answer the call of ...

2. Let Go of the Stone

Mark 16:1-8

Sermon

J. Howard Olds

... for hope, fear for faith, bewilderment for belief, and duty for delight." He paused a minute and said, “All that sounds nice, but how can people do it?" I said, “If God has the power to raise Jesus Christ from the dead, can He not also empower us to let go of the stones that are weighing us down?" A delightful thing you could do today is to say with Paul, I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection (Philippians 3:10). Christ still moves stones He breaks the power of sin And makes a way for ...

3. Letting Go

Acts 7:55-60

Sermon

Bill Mosley

... the feet of the person in charge and then cast the first stones. Then anyone who wants to join in can take part in the stoning. A good deterrent for criminals, but when a mob gets going, some mistakes can happen. Now, I want you to look at how Stephen lets go. He sees into heaven; sees the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and he says so. As Luke reports it, this is the statement that angers the mob and turns a routine execution into a near lynching. And the last thing he says is ...

4. Letting Go of Our Nets

Matthew 4:18-22

Sermon

Charles L. Aaron

... party or been tucked into bed. Perhaps alluding to the passage, the founder of the boys' ranch said that the couple would "bring light to children long accustomed to darkness."1 We are not all called to that, but we are called to let go of our nets and follow Jesus. Sometimes the nets we let go of are our jobs and careers, but we hold on tightly to other nets. I'm not sure what to say about James and John leaving their father in the boat. They left him to carry on the family business while they followed ...

5. Letting Go and New Beginnings

Mark 9:2-9

Sermon

Richard Gribble

... ; the past will not release us. The end result is that we become prisoners of the past. We are chained and stifled, but this is by our own choice. No one has imprisoned us, save ourselves. Thus, the only release is when we let go of the past. When the climber was able to "let go" of the past -- that is to his memories, his beauties, and his causes and concerns -- then he was free to play music and move into the future. Similarly, the prophets of old and the woman caught in adultery were able to move forward ...

6. A Mother Who Could Let Go

1 Samuel 9:1--10:8

Sermon

Bill Bouknight

In a labor room on the obstetrics wing of a hospital, a doctor found a crumpled paper on which an expectant father had done some scribbling. Obviously, during the pauses in the long labor process, he had been thinking about the child about to be born. This is what he wrote: John Peter Jones, John P. Jones, J.P. Jones, John Jones, Governor John Jones, President John P. Jones, All the Way with JPJ!" Maybe the baby turned out to be Juanita Paulene Jones! I can tell you one thing that father and mother ...

7. Let It Go

John 3:1-21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... relationships, and of true beauty. In many ways, the “Let it Go” theme of Frozen is the story of Nicodemus. Jesus is encouraging Nicodemus and the Nicodemus in all of us to “Let It Go.” We must let go of our control, let go of our fear, let go of our cold certainty and yield to God’s Spirit. First, let go of our fear. Why does Nicodemus come in the dead of night? He’s afraid. Nicodemus was a ruler of the Jews, a member of the great Sanhedrin, a senator, a privy-counsellor, a man of authority in ...

8. The Lamb

Luke 19:28-44, Matthew 21:1-11, Mark 11:1-11, John 12:12-19

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... ’t make your lamb your pet, if you did not grow to love the warm, furry, sweet animal who has become part of your family, if you’ve not treated your lamb as one of your own children, you will not be making a sacrifice. You would not be “letting go” of anything but money. A sacrifice is only a sacrifice if you are giving up something so dear to you that it breaks your heart to let it go. A true sacrifice has to be given “from the heart.” This was the willingness of Abraham. And the necessity for ...

9. Staying Alive All Your Ministry Life: Will You Finish Well?

Exodus 32:1-33:6

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... went to my study for my morning time of prayer after that dream, having received a message from God, a message to surrender, to let go. In retrospect, I knew why I had had that dream. I was the Chair of the Committee on Evangelism for the World Methodist ... at irreverence, I would say, “The word became flesh.” “Let not your will road, when thy power can but whisper.” I yielded to him, I let go and I let God. I canceled my trip to Russia. I said to the Lord that I was going to do my best and be a ...

10. Fido’s Dilemma

Romans 6:1-11

Sermon

Steven E. Albertin

... life? Does Fido believe that he must hold on to the old, dry bone no matter what or does he believe that he can afford to let go of the bone in order to take hold of the meat? Does Fido believe that he belongs to his master who always cares for him no ... . It was as if God offered us the USDA prime-cut ground sirloin, and to make this gift our own all we need do is to let go of the old, dead, dry lifeless bone of this world and its empty promises. In the waters of baptism, God gave us a new last chapter. ...

11. This Is a Test

Genesis 22:1-14

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... to whether or not we believe that, that all things come from God. Can we live in the faith that the God upon whom we depend is in fact trustworthy? That's the test. That is the ultimate test for any one of us. Are you able to let go of everything in the trust that the Lord will deliver on the promise? That is the meaning of the sacrifice of Isaac. Do you trust God, who gives the gift in the first place, can give it again? Martin Luther rediscovered this radical, biblical understanding of faith, and coined ...

12. "...Yet"

Jeremiah 4:5-31

Sermon

John W. Wurster

... to deal with it. It may be chaos, darkness, nothingness, tohu wabohu, yet God knows how to bring life from it. It may be chaos, darkness, nothingness, tohu wabohu, yet God will not completely let go of these people, God will not let go of us. The project may have failed, yet God will not let go. The relationship may be broken, yet God will not give up. The hurt still lingers, yet God will not let go. The road may be long and hard, yet God will not give up. You may not be sure what to do, yet God will not ...

13. Missing the Mark

1 Samuel 8:1-22

Sermon

Charles Allo

... brought up arguably the three single events that rocked our nation in the past 100 years. But today I brought these up to conjure our relation to the things in our lives that make us react and respond. This morning, as we mull over these events, lets go deeper and more personal to look at your own unique pearl harbors, JFK assassinations or 9-11 in your lives. What's troubling you? Shaking at your foundational core. Making you question all that make sense? Just for a moment, let the personal struggles come ...

14. Getting Off the Merry-Go-Round

Romans 8:1-11

Sermon

Steven E. Albertin

... And round and round the merry-go-round goes. When it stops, nobody knows. You are stuck, caught between wanting to get off and unwilling to let go. This experience of being stuck on a merry-go-round often seems to be the way we live our lives. We are stuck, unable to ... 't really want to. It is like being stuck on the merry-go-round, spinning round and round. We could get off if we would only let go. But we are too afraid and still hold on for dear life. "For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do ...

15. The Giver Becomes The Receiver

2 Samuel 7:1-17

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... as humans with a mind of their own, Adam and Eve had to separate from the Garden of Eden. In the book of Exodus, God told Israel: "I have separated you from all the people that are on the face of the earth" (33:16). David was told to let go of the idea that he controlled God's housing needs. Jesus himself was separated from his family and his family's business. In order for the early church to be more than four little families meeting together in upper rooms to remember Jesus, those people had to separate ...

16. Avoiding the “F” Word

Matthew 18:21-35

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... harm that was caused to us requires us not to continue to harbor anger toward the person who hurt us but to let go of those powerful, detrimental, brain-eating emotions that are causing us so much harm. Forgiveness is not about freeing someone else, but ... anxiety. When anger and hurt bind us up in chains, we need to be freed. We need faith in God. And we need to let go. How do we let go? We need to use the “F” word. We need to forgive. In our culture, we have a saying: FOMO Fear of Missing Out. FOMO ...

17. I Love My Church

1 Chronicles 29:3

Sermon

James Merritt

... ; do it because you love Jesus. II. Blessed Is the Believer Who Gives His Church His Loyal Allegiance There is a statement I want you to read with me from Neh. 10:39, "We will not neglect the house of our God." The word "neglect" literally means "to let go" or "to let loose." It is a word that describes how a man, after twenty-five years of faithful marriage, would leave his wife for a younger woman. It literally means to forsake or desert. Now just as it is unconscionable for a man to forsake his wife ...

18. Getting Out Of Our Own Way

Matthew 16:21-28

Sermon

Roger G. Talbott

... anymore. Maybe she is going to get a job or go back to school or become an artist. She wants to find out who she is by letting go of thinking of herself as only a wife and a mother. Her family starts to argue with her. "You can't do that. We need you." They ... way of knowing who we are today and knowing what we are called to do today. To take up our cross means that we are willing to let go of everything that was true of us yesterday and let God show us who we are today. We need to die to yesterday in order to ...

19. Count the Cost

Luke 14:25-33

Sermon

Will Willimon

... pay it to Jesus or not. Because, in the end, it will be the end for each of us when, in the end, we must let go of mother, father, brother, sister, everything we've got, Calvin Klein and the ballpoint pen, in short, life itself, in the end. We're ... other cheap lies about success and eternal life substitutes which pollute the world already. I told you last week: Jesus is determined for us to let go, cut loose and party. He is a high roller and won't quit the game until he's taken everything you've got. I don ...

20. Dying to Become

2 Corinthians 5:17

Sermon

Gregory J. Johanson

... upon whom he can be dependent and the cycle is repeated. He has made a first-order change. He has changed wives, but he has not made any significant changes that will break up the repeating cycle of dependency. Second-order change only occurs when the man lets go of his dependency needs and "dies" to his usual needs and behavior and experiences a new level of consciousness that allows him to become what he was intended to be. Then, if he marries again, he will be an adult marrying another adult and not a ...

21. Knitted Together from the Womb

Exodus 2:1-10

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... lived before and the one to which you’re heading. Weave your heart with that of Jesus, soak it in the pitch of the Holy Spirit’s living presence, and you can float through any toil or danger. Time to fold your hands in prayer….and time to let go and walk into the new space that God has created for you. Sometimes your faith is like a basket that shelters you and propels you, shields you or helps you through difficult passages in your life. Sometimes your faith is that first braid that you keep in your ...

22. Faith is a River That Flows

Genesis 19:1-29

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... , sometimes raced through the watery canyons. The second rafter however panicked. He felt out of control, like things were going faster than he could do. All he thought about was getting back to the shore, stopping the course of the raft, so he could slow things down. He let go of the sides and tried to grab hold of one of the rocks jutting from the river. As he did, his raft overturned, and he was swept into the current, and his body battered upon the rocks. Not every story ends so badly. Not all times we ...

23. Mary: The Handmaiden of the Lord

Luke 1:38-45

Sermon

Charley Reeb

... said.” And the angel left her. –Luke 1:38 (CEV) Let. Let! Mary got it. She believed in God and got out of the way. The moment Gabriel knew she understood, he left her. “Yep, she gets it.” Let is one of the most important words in the Christians faith. Let go and let God. It is a cliché but it is true! And I know there are many of you here today who need to hear this. All Mary did was believe! She did not create the baby. She carried the baby and the delivered the baby. She let it happen ...

24. The Light that Shines Within

John 1:1-18

Sermon

Leonard Mann

... to become and are not becoming. Tragic and pathetic is the waste of powers not used, of resources untapped. Do you remember the story of the rich young ruler who came to Jesus seeking light for his way? Do you remember that, unwilling to turn loose and let go in response to the invitation of Christ, he went away sorrowfully? Phillips Brooks said of this young man: "His soul was like a tall, strong ship, but tied fast with a long rope. It was able to struggle up channel past headland and light and buoy that ...

25. Let Not Thy Will Roar, When Thy Power Can But Whisper

2 Corinthians 12:1-10

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... pants and running shoes. And five thousand people broke out into laughter. And the dream ended. That’s serious. I went to my study that morning and to my time of prayer after that dream having received a message from the Lord – a message to surrender. To let go. Let me tell you what was going on in my life when I dreamed it and you would know why I dreamed it, perhaps. I was chair of World Evangelism for the World Methodist Council. The wall had fallen, the Soviet Union was crumbling, eastern Europe was ...

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