Sermon and Worship Resources

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Sermon

John N. Brittain

... to know more of God, partly because we recognize how much there is that we don't know. And that brings us back to Moses' request to see God's glory and his chance to see the back side of God. In his Life of Moses, the early church father, Gregory of Nyssa, says that the reason Moses was permitted only to see God's back is that that is the proper view of one who follows, of a disciple. Seeing the back side of God is, thus, not only not a slight, it is a beautiful metaphor of the wonderful privilege ...

2. At War with Myself

Romans 7:15-25a

Sermon

William G. Carter

... who understood human beings to be part of the creation that God called good, special in that they are made in the image of God. Sin is an aberration, not natural for us at all. This is why Gregory of Nyssa speaks so often of "returning to the grace of that image what was established in you from the beginning." Gregory saw it as our lifelong task to find out what part of the divine image God has chosen to reveal in us ... We can best do this by realistically determining how God has made us - what our primary ...

3. Revitalizing the Lo-cal Church

Acts 1:12-26

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... , watching films, even composing on a computer can be forms of prayer. In fact, there is an ancient Jewish proverb that "An hour of study is in the eyes of God as an hour of prayer." Another proverb has "Those who sing pray twice." For Gregory, the fourth-century bishop of Nyssa in Cappadocia, the life of the mind is to know God. The first approach to God is the marinating of our lives in the Word of God as it interacts with the world in which we live. Meditation: Meditation is communicating with God. It is ...

4. Holiness of Heart and Life

Romans 2:21-23

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... the human spirit and the spirit of God which even the tragic effects of the Fall could not destroy. Salvation was still possible, but only by God’s grace, because sin put, men and women under such bondage that they could never freely turn to God. Like Gregory of Nyssa and other early teachers of the Eastern Church, Wesley sought the will as essential to the image of God. God had given men and women a will, either to serve Him or to rebel. Now, because of sin, the will was under bondage. People chose to do ...

5. God's Laughter

Genesis 18:1-15, 21:1-7

Sermon

Stan Purdum

... parties and picnics to celebrate Jesus' resurrection. Sometimes parishioners and pastors even played practical jokes on each other. People told jokes and had fun. The custom of Bright Sunday got its start in the writings of early church theologians like Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, and John Chrysostom. They noted that on Easter, God played a practical joke on the devil by raising Jesus from the dead. Easter was "God's supreme joke played on death." Risus paschalis — "the Easter laugh," is what the early ...

6. He Loves You Anyway

Luke 19:1-10

Sermon

King Duncan

... said, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” That’s what he said. That’s what he meant. That’s what he did. And that’s what he wants his followers to do also. A few years ago, the folks at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco decided they would follow Jesus’ lead and go look for people who wanted to meet Jesus but would never walk in the church doors. The church’s Rector, Paul Fromberg and the former Director of Ministry, Sara Miles, went to the busy San ...

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