Sermon and Worship Resources

Synonyms: touch, feel, sense of touch, tactile sense, tactility, contact, using one's hands, sensation, sense, suspicion, sneaking suspicion, notion, inkling, hunch, fancy, apprehension, presentiment, premonition, foreboding, love, care, affection, fondness, tenderness, warmth, warmness, emotion, sentiment, emotional state, compassion, sympathy, empathy, fellow feeling, understanding, concern, solicitude, solicitousness, tender-heartedness, brotherly love, sensibilities, sensitivities, self-esteem, ego, pride, opinion, belief, view, impression, intuition, instinct, estimation, guess, theory, hypothesis, thought, way of thinking, point of view, atmosphere, ambience, aura, air, mood, climate, character, overtone, undertone, tenor, spirit, quality, flavour, colour, aptitude, knack, flair, bent, talent, gift, skill, art, trick, faculty, ability, propensity, inclination, sensitive, warm, warm-hearted, tender, tender-hearted, caring, soft-hearted, sympathetic, compassionate, empathetic, responsive, receptive, intuitive, thoughtful

Antonyms: bad feeling, acrimony, animosity, animus, antagonism, antipathy, aversion, bitterness, detestation, disgust, dislike, disrelish, enmity, friction, grievances, grudges, hatred, hostility, loathing, malevolence, malice

Showing 1 to 25 of 253 results

1. In the Darkness of Suspicion, There Is the Light of Devotion

Matthew 2:1-12

Sermon

Thomas A. Pilgrim

... in this story that I love. We read these words: “And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.” This means they did not go back to Jerusalem, through Herod’s town. They avoided him and his suspicion. Maybe it also means they lived another way. Maybe that could happen to us as we begin to move away from Christmas into the new year. Maybe we could return by another way. Perhaps, this is the real test of Christmas, whether or not we have found ...

2. Get a Life!

2 Timothy 1:1-14

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... these traits necessarily nurture in us the kind of life God is calling us to live? Is this the peace that passes all understanding? What happens when we consider each one of these peace-inducing traits in the light of the gospel? Absence of suspicion: On the face of it nothing could seem more reflective of a Christian consciousness than the ability to let go of all those painful, paranoidal perceptions we pin on people, relationships and institutions. If we are not suspicious of others and their motives, it ...

3. Sole Brother

Luke 10:25-37

Sermon

... -eight residents were known to be watching, and none of them sought either to help or to call the police. Had the Good Samaritan in us died, or was this a special kind of situation? The incident triggered both concern and research, confirming some of the suspicions you and I might have had for some time - that the more of us there are watching a critical need situation, the lower the likelihood that any one of us will render help. Our individual responsibility somehow seems to fade into the crowd. But there ...

4. If Only -- In Spite Of

2 Corinthians 12:1-10

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... a feelings of envy and jealousy for those who seem to have a better lot in life than we do. The "If only" response to life as it relates to envy and jealousy for those who we think have it better than we always results in suspicion and mistrust -- it even becomes paranoia. One of Aesop's fables makes the point. You may remember the one. Four bulls were great friends. They went everywhere together. They ate together, rested together, stayed together constantly -- so that if any danger were near, they could ...

5. What’s Going on at Your House?

Mark 3:31-35

Sermon

Charles R. Leary

... this: The church is your best target. Just keep the people in turmoil over money, theology and liturgy, details of administration, organization, personal hurts and misunderstandings. I am sure you have heard that. And we have all felt the pain when attitudes of suspicion and opinions that are uncompromising lower the morale and create barriers of distrust in a congregation. What’s going on at your house? Finally comes the clean-up time, time to work through a shakeup and turn it completely around into an ...

6. No Particular Place To Go

2 Samuel 11:1-27

Sermon

Timothy J. Smith

... as soon as possible. As Uriah slept David paced the floor above him devising one more sure-fire plan. Before morning David wrote a letter to General Joab. The letter contained the order to have Uriah killed, but to do it in such a way as not to raise suspicion. "Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him," David wrote, "so that he may be struck down and die." You have to feel sorry for Uriah since he carried the letter with the order for his own death. Uriah, the dutiful ...

7. Spirit Full Or Foul?

Isaiah 44:1-5

Sermon

Justin Tull

... that I have not obtained spiritual maturity. But how grateful I am that my God does not approach me as though trying to catch me being inadequate! My God approaches me as a loving Father ready to share his Spirit and power. My suspicion is that you are somewhere between Spirit full and Spirit foul. My suspicion is that we all could use a strong dose of God’s Spirit blowing among us. Am I right? May I suggest we believe the words of Isaiah, that God does empower us and help us? May I suggest that we wait ...

8. Mi Casa, Su Casa

Matthew 21:33-46

Sermon

Mark Radecke

... over the years. They’ve ranged from the deft to the daft, from the efficient to the effete. And, as a group, tenants are an even more mixed lot. Given human nature and this sort of relationship, the potential for mutual mistrust, fear, suspicion and resentment runs exceptionally high. States have had to enact lengthy legislation to govern the relationship, protecting the rights of both parties. And so the setting for St. Matthew’s parable or allegory of the Wicked Tenants: God is landlord of a vineyard ...

9. Journey To The Cross II: Jesus And The Hemorrhaging Woman

Mark 5:21-43

Sermon

James W. Moore

... dollar bill I left here?” “No, I didn’t,” answered the brother. “Surely, you took it,” he said, “There was nobody else in the store.” The brother became angry: “I’m telling you, I did not take the dollar bill.” From that point, mistrust and suspicion grew until finally the two brothers could not work together. They put a partition right down the middle of the building and made it into two stores. In anger, they refused to speak for the next 20 years. One day a stranger pulled up in a ...

10. The Evangelism Of Emphasis - 1946

Matthew 5:1-12

Sermon

Kent Moorehead

... 5:17). That is, a person may surrender himself so completely to the personal influence of Jesus Christ that his life will be both revolutionized and empowered. Delivered from self-centeredness and inner conflict, he is given a new sense of adequacy. Enmity, suspicion, and fear which corrupt his social contacts give way to good will, trust, and courage. He begins to realize what it is to live - more abundantly. He becomes aware of an ability to tap spiritual resources with which evil social situations may be ...

11. We Do Not Have To Stay The Way We Are!

Joel 2:1-11

Sermon

Durwood L. Buchheim

... with death. But finally the second shaft was finished and the little girl was saved - cold and hurt - but alive. And the nation, with parents and rescuers wept with joy. However, a few months later much of this good will and joy changed into envy, hate, greed and suspicion. Movie people came to the little Texas town and groups began to fight among themselves as to how the story should be told and who was to get the credit and receive the profits. Such is the power of sin. That sin is original in us is not ...

12. Jesus, the Suffering Messiah

Mark 14:1-11

Sermon

Richard A. Jensen

... who is eating with me!" They began to be sorrowful, and to say to him one after another, "Is it I?" (Mark 14:18-19). Not one of them was above suspicion! After the supper, Jesus went with his disciples to the Mount of Olives. "And Jesus said to them, ‘You will all fall away ...’ " (Mark 14:27). The disciples were not above suspicion for a simple reason. Jesus knew that they would all betray him. Peter, of course, the leader, denied it with vigor. " ‘Even though they all fall away, I will not.’ And ...

13. Job - A Probe Into the Shadow World of Despair

Job 6:1-7:21

Sermon

... leprosy or the cancerous lesions that are physically eating him away, choking off life. Nor is it the loss of his loved ones that has cast him into the depths of despair, nor the suspicion backed by observation and experience that the wicked are the ones who often seem to capture the "good life." It is rather the suspicion that God exists and yet ignores him and others like him. Perhaps God does not really care. Or as some process theologians speculate, perhaps it is that this so-called God is powerless to ...

14. Your Sins Are Remembered No More! You Are Free!

Jeremiah 30:1--31:40

Sermon

Mark Ellingsen

... for God anymore. They do not exist, because they were not made by God, and so we might say that they and all sin are “non-being,” nothingness.2 Why, then, do you keep on clinging to the bad memories of the past, to the regrets, to the suspicions, to the bad habits? God has forgotten them; you can too! Are you concerned about what other people or what society says about you, what your image in the community is? That does not matter either. God does not count such views. He has forgotten them along with ...

15. The Bible: The Book No Other Can Match!

2 Timothy 3:16

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... her to go to the Tzeltals with Bill. Now, even without him she would go back. After spending six years there alone learning the language, Marianna was joined by Florence, a missionary nurse. For the first eight years their work met with suspicion, rejection, and hostility from the Tzeltals; the missionaries were unwanted and misunderstood. But they stuck it out. "By 1965, after more than twenty years, they had completed the translation of the New Testament into two dialects. Then a miracle took place. More ...

16. Don't Forget What You Look Like

James 1:19-27

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... of the Garmu family never ate pure bread loaves in case anyone would suspect them of eating Temple loaves or using the baking material for their own use. Similarly the women members of the Abtinos family never wore perfume so that there would never be any suspicion that they were taking some Temple incense ingredients for their private use. Indeed, they were so firm in this matter that before one of their men married a lady from another family, they stipulated to the bride that perfume was not to be used by ...

17. Family Matters

1 Corinthians 1:10-17

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... 's a matter of course. Or Africa, where the lifting of colonial tyranny revealed centuries-old divisions between tribal peoples that are still unhealed today. That's the way it was. And I would say that's the way it's always been--violence and hatred, suspicion, distrust, separation, ostracism. It's just expected in this world. Just as some of us in this country can remember the day when segregation and discrimination were the law of the land. It was just expected that we would be separated from one another ...

18. Ten Commandments of Trust

Matthew 14:13-21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... life. A young man walked into a recruiting station and asked to re-enlist. When asked why he was returning to the Marine Corps, the man replied: "There's no one in charge on the outside." In the dialectic between trust and suspicion, suspicion is winning. High-trust communities operate not on the basis of explicit rules and regulations which everyone follows, but out of a set of ethical habits and moral attitudes which the members of the community have internalized. The United States, historically a ...

19. Mary Magdalene’s Day

John 20:1-18

Sermon

Donald Charles Lacy

... must be all alone with none of the other disciples present. Others mentioned earlier have gone to their homes. What they are talking about we do not know but what we do know is Mary is alone with two angels in white. She must not have been afraid. Our suspicions are that she is not going to give up on finding the Man who must have meant more to her than life itself. She may have been the most dogged of the disciples who believed defeat was not defensible! She recognized him by his voice. Not knowing who he ...

20. How to Deal with Demons

Matthew 12:38-50

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... spirit almost without knowing it. We thing we’ve successfully buried some deep-set resentment or hated, only to have it come back in some form of mental or physical ailment. We subdue our passions but find them coming to the fore again in our suspicions, jealousies, and ill-temper. We outgrow the sensuality of our youth and discover the materialism of old age.”[4] The presence and persistence of evil, of the demonic in our life, is very real. Captured dramatically in verse 44 of our text when the demon ...

21. Who Cares?

Matthew 25:31-46

Sermon

David G. Rogne

... the slow and heavy-breathing Adam (a resident of Daybreak), I start seeing how violent that journey was. So filled with desires to be better than others, so marked by rivalry and competition, so pervaded with compulsions and obsessions, and so spotted with moments of suspicion, jealousy, resentment, and revenge.[4] In serving those who cannot help themselves, Nouwen heard the voice of Christ: "Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me" (v. 40). The final ...

22. The King On A Cross

Luke 23:26-43

Sermon

J. Will Ormond

... of the Jews." Here is an official government proclamation and indictment. Is this some kind of cruel joke? Is this the governor's way of humiliating the Jews? How can such a powerless, pitiful figure be a king? What brings this man to the cross is the recurring suspicion that he is a king. His enemies bring him before the governor and one of their accusations is that he has been "saying that he himself is the Messiah, a king" (Luke 23:2). The governor asks him, "Are you the king of the Jews?" (Luke 23:3 ...

23. God's Most Unmistakable Message

John 20:1-9

Sermon

Don M. Aycock

... of God's joy and peace. "This is my Father's world," as an old hymn puts it. He shares it with us. So live! And remember that Easter promises that even this is not the end for one who loves Christ. Jesus' life ended as it had begun -- with suspicion of impropriety. But it really has not ended, has it? It is transformed and transforming. That is why this is a day of celebration! Easter is a string tied around the finger of the world to remind us of God's most unmistakable message -- God loves us all. And ...

24. When It Is Dark Enough

Luke 21:5-38

Sermon

Charles H. Bayer

... faced tragedy in your life, or are sure you never will, I suppose you can tune out about now, go over your Christmas shopping list, or let visions of sugar-plums dance in your heads. But if you carry the scars of grief or trouble, or have the sneaking suspicion you may walk through some mighty dark valleys before you die, you may want to listen. The point of the text is this. When there is nothing you can do -- nothing -- God will act on your behalf. When you are without resources of any kind, when you see ...

25. Baptism And Self-Esteem

Mark 12:28-34

Sermon

Steven E. Albertin

... . There can be "hell on earth" right now. When we confess our sins, we are not just acknowledging that we have done something "naughty." We are not just talking about having eaten some forbidden fruit. Living in sin means that we can never seem to shed the suspicion that we are not good enough. Living in sin means that we always find the lie of the serpent making sense: "God doesn't care about you, so you had better take things into your own hands!" Living in sin means that we are eternally in search ...

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