Showing 1 to 25 of 32 results

Sermon
James Garrett
Here is the good news for today from Luke 5:1-11. This is the Word of God! A word of great encouragement and hope. Hope is the unique signature of the Christian gospel. What makes a Christian a Christian is this inability to quit hoping. A new gift from God is at work on our behalf, at all times in all circumstances. The crowds had pressed Jesus right up to the edge of the water at the Sea of Gali...

Luke 5:1-11
Sermon
Richard F. Bansemer
The sermon is from the fifth chapter of St. Luke, verses 4 and 5: "... (Jesus) said to Simon, ‘Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.’ And Simon answered, ‘Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.’ " Unless someone here is extremely wealthy, and very lucky, and easily contented, each of us has wanted something in our lives, but cou...

Sermon
Bill Bouknight
Conventional wisdom has it that Billy Graham got his big push toward success from newspaperman William Randolph Hearst. In 1949 Graham's first major crusade was being launched in Los Angeles, and Hearst owned both major newspapers there. Supposedly, Hearst sent a brief message to his editors, saying, “Puff Graham.” But Billy Graham has a different understanding of his launching. In his autobiogra...

Sermon
Leonard Sweet
The hundred miles of open water separates the most southern tip of Florida from the most northern coast of Cuba. It’s a stretch of water that has claimed hundreds of lives since the Cuban revolution. Flotillas of “boat people” seeking freedom and family in the US have created desperate “boats” out of anything that might possibly float long enough to reach US soil. The goal of these “boat people” ...

Sermon
Billy D. Strayhorn
How many of you like to fish? It's a great sport isn't it? It's a great way to relax and if you like to eat fish like I do, it's a great way to get really fresh fish. But sometimes fishing has some different kinds of results. I'll never forget the time a friend and I went fishing. He was the former pastor of the church I was serving. We were in seminary and car pooled to classes when possible. He...

Sermon
Susan R. Andrews
Since her death, Maya Angelou has been greatly celebrated around the world and that is an appropriate response in my mind. Maya was a poet, a prophet, a celebrity, and a grand dame. She was also a lifelong follower of Jesus. Raised in Stamps, Arkansas, by her grandmother, Maya spent much of her childhood within the warm embrace of a small African Methodist Episcopal Church — at least six hours eac...

Sermon
David E. Leininger
Two guys go on a fishing trip. They rent all the equipment: the reels, the rods, the wading suits, the rowboat, the car, and even a cabin in the woods. They spend a fortune. The first day they go fishing they don't catch a thing. The same thing happens on the second day and on the third day. It goes on like this until finally, on the last day of their vacation, one of the men finally catches a fi...

Sermon
Brett Blair
Many years ago the great explorer, Sir Francis Drake, was attempting to recruit a number of young men for an upcoming exploration. He gathered them around and told the group that if they came with him they would see some of the most marvelous things their eyes could ever behold. Sandy white beaches, juicy fruits, foreign peoples, priceless treasures, and gorgeous landscapes. And he told them that ...

1 Corinthians 15:1-11, Isaiah 6:1-13, Luke 5:1-11
Sermon
King Duncan
CNN carried a dramatic story about a pastor in South Korea who used to be a trained killer. That’s right--I said a trained killer. His name is Kim Shin Jo. We have been reading much the past couple of years about North Korea. This is a state that has caused the world many headaches over the years. Kim Shin Jo was originally a North Korean assassin. In January of 1968, Jo and a team of other assa...

Sermon
Gary L. Carver
John and Mary have been married for about twenty years. These are good days for Mary as she looks at her life with a sense of satisfaction and joy. She worked long and hard to help put John through medical school. Now that the schooling debts are almost paid off, they have a nice home, a savings account, and she has been able to quit work. Johnny and Susie, sixteen and fourteen, are happy in their...

Sermon
Leonard Sweet
There are times when it's necessary and important to state the obvious. Such a time is now. Question: What do Smokey the Bear, Winnie the Pooh and John the Baptist have in common? Answer: The same middle name. Why is the obvious so oblivious, so hard for us to see? Dr. Samuel Johnson once observed: "Never be afraid to state the obvious. It is what most people have forgotten." As a pastor, out...

Sermon
Leonard Sweet
The January 2004 edition of Trail magazine has got some 'splaining to do. Trail is a British publication that provides maps and suggests particularly beautiful or challenging hiking trials to the growing number of devoted hill-walkers throughout Great Britain. Unfortunately if anyone had followed the seemingly precise, detailed directions given by the magazine to reach the summit of Britain's lar...

Sermon
Maxie Dunnam
A Sunday School teacher was checking with her students one day to see if they knew the people with whom Jesus lived. "How many of you know who Matthew was?", she asked. Not one kid raised a hand. "Well, then," she said, "what about Luke? How many of you know who Luke was?", she asked. And again, the class just sat there and no one said a thing. She tried again. "How about John? Do you know who St...

Sermon
King Duncan
I heard recently about a man who took great pride in being a former Navy Seal. And why not? This is an elite group. It takes a special sailor to qualify as a Navy Seal. This man tells about sharing his military exploits with his grandson’s kindergarten class. This former Seal regaled the children with his war stories. After he finished, hands shot up into the air all over the classroom. The kids ...

Sermon
Charles H. Bayer
May the good Lord save me from perpetual whiners; people who can be counted on to tell you how bad everything is. You don't dare ask how they feel or how they sense the world is going unless you have an afternoon to spend listening to a catalogue of human miseries. I once knew a woman who called me if she happened to feel good, because she always felt bad the day after she felt good and wanted me ...

Sermon
J. Ellsworth Kalas
It's funny what experiences and phrases will stay with you from childhood. I still remember a line from a song which apparently was popular, for at least a short period of time, in my early childhood. It was a half-funny, half-pathetic little lament from someone who felt rejected and unsuccessful. As I recall, each verse ended with the phrase, "I guess I'll go eat worms."  Most of us can understan...

Sermon
J. Howard Olds
Did you hear the story about the toddler who fell out of bed one night? Hearing the fall, the father rushed to the room, picked up the kid, dried his tears, and put him back to bed. When things calmed down a bit, the Dad asked his son, “What happened, what caused you to fall out of bed?” Still sobbing, the toddler said, “I don’t know, I guess I went to sleep too close to where I got in.” Living o...

Sermon
James Merritt
If I told you that God would send His son to this earth, that He would only live about 33 years and only the last three of those years would be how His life would be measured, what do you think He would do with those three years? Let’s make it personal. Suppose from the day you were born you knew you would only live 33 years and that your life would be measured by only the last three. What would y...

Sermon
Cynthia Cowen
When she was a teenager, Cindy worked for her father. She and her sister and three other girls were hookers. Don't get excited now. They were paid to put a fishing hook and red flipper on a split ring, then attach it to fishing lure. She was often teased about her after school job, as well as about the job her father had. It wasn't until she was a freshman in college that she learned to say that h...

Sermon
Clement E. Lewis
Though it was early in Jesus' ministry, crowds were already beginning to gather and to follow him wherever he went. They were eager for his personal interest and ministry to their particular needs. Jesus knew that there was more to ministering to people than the acts of pastoral care and compassion. Without basic learning through teaching and preaching, spiritual foundations are hard to lay and co...

Sermon
Maxie Dunnam
A Sunday School teacher was checking with her students one day to see if they knew the people with whom Jesus lived. "How many of you know who Matthew was?", she asked. Not one kid raised a hand. "Well, then," she said, "what about Luke? How many of you know who Luke was?", she asked. And again, the class just sat there and no one said a thing. She tried again. "How about John? Do you know who St...

Sermon
Frank Lyman
You may have read about a man in California who has to be the worst bank robber in history. He went into a Bank of America in San Francisco and wrote out a stick up note on the back of a deposit slip. He got in line to present his note to the teller, but while he was in line he started thinking that maybe somebody saw him writing the stick up note. Maybe they were calling the police right now. So ...

Sermon
Bill Bouknight
If fishing is one of your passions, you will love our scripture lesson for today. Though I prefer hunting to fishing, I have a soft spot in my heart for fishing because of a childhood experience. I was about 10 or 11 years old. One Wednesday afternoon Papa took me with him to a nearby pond to do a little fishing. I was just learning to use a rod and reel. Papa caught a little bass weighing about h...

Sermon
King Duncan
In August 1989 then President George Bush took his family to their summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine, for a nineteen-day summer vacation. No sooner had he arrived than he hopped into his twenty-eight-foot fishing boat, FIDELITY, confident he'd catch some bluefish as he had so many other times before. He didn't mind that a flotilla of press boats was following him to record every moment of his ex...

Sermon
William G. Carter
There are many stories in the New Testament about people who are called to serve God and follow Jesus. Of all those stories, this story makes the most sense. Remember the story about Paul? He was persecuting the church, dragging Christians out of their houses and condemning them to death. One day, he saw the Light, and it knocked him off his horse. It’s hard to relate to such a dramatic conversion...

Showing 1 to 25 of 32 results