Sermon and Worship Resources

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Jeremiah 18:1--19:15

Sermon

Richard L. Sheffield

... that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor" (Psalm 8:1, 3-5). Lew Smedes puts it this way: "Common clods of clay we are, (yet) God invests his gift to humankind with us."1 God's doing his thing with us ... will' " (Jeremiah 18:12). The potter is at his wheel. The wheel is life. It's turning. What do you say? 1. Lew Smedes. How Can It Be Alright When Everything's All Wrong? (Harper and Row, 1992) p. 71. 2. The Hymnbook, 500 (Presbyterian Church ...

2. The Power to Change the Past

Matthew 18:21-35

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... that balance-sheet view. By letting go of our sense of being wronged, we can also let go of bitterness and resentment and open ourselves to much more healthy and wholesome emotions. We take control of how we feel about the past. Lew Smedes is a teacher of Theology and Ethics. He describes three stages in every act of forgiveness - suffering, spiritual surgery, and starting over.(3) The first stage, suffering, creates the conditions that require forgiveness. At the second stage, we do the essential business ...

3. Only the Neighbors’ Kid

John 6:25-59

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... his excellent little book, How Can It be All Right When Everything Is All Wrong?, Professor Lew Smedes says that one source of our salvation is to cultivate a sense of wonder. He reminds us ... the Judean hills to the Wise Men from the East who came and laid their gifts at Jesus’ feet and wondered. All His life Jesus made people wonder. Smedes says: As a boy, (Jesus) engaged in dialogue with learned men, all ripe with scholarly “ifs” and “buts”; but, we are told, they wondered at him. He boggled ...

4. Is Suffering Punishment for Sin?

John 9:1-12

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... of the world would break my heart.” Goethe replied, “It did.” In his excellent little book Rabbi Kushner writes, “Christianity introduced to the world the idea of a God who suffers, alongside the image of a God who creates and commands.” (Ibid., p. 85) Prof. Lew Smedes says in his book “How Can It Be All Right When Everything Is All Wrong”: God’s own answer to suffering is to join it, feel it, hurt with it. A sufferer screams to God in the all-wrongness of his life, “Why have you abandoned ...

5. Daniel: The Problem of Power

Daniel 6:10-16

Sermon

J. Howard Olds

... Often it is all right. The kid will bat again. The linens will be washed. The child will fall asleep, but not always! Lewis Smedes writes about traveling from Los Angeles to Michigan to visit his college friend of 30 years who was dying of cancer. “For three ... only good friends should and do. When time came for me to go, Cal looked deep into my eyes and said, ‘It's all right, Lew, it's all right. Everything is going to be all right.' As I embraced his wife in the hallway, and bid his four children good ...

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