EVEN WHEN IT'S PAINFUL As two men were walking through a field one day, they spotted an enraged bull. Instantly, they darted toward the nearest fence. The storming bull followed in hot pursuit, and it…
Sermon Illustrations
AN EMERGENCY CALL The story of David and Goliath was being taught in a five year old Sunday School class one Sunday. In explaining the story to the children, the teacher asked, "What would YOU…
SERMONIC HONESTY REFRESHING There is one church here, so I go to it. On Sunday mornings I leave the house and wander down the hill to the white frame church in the firs. On a…
DIAL 911 We are told that the 911 emergency system is state of the art. All you need to do is dial those numbers, and you will almost instantly be connected to a dispatcher. In…
27 PRAYERS A missionary and his helpers were forced to camp on a hill. They carried money and were fearful of an attack. After prayer, they went to sleep. Months later, a brigand chief was…
NO ONE LISTENING The story is told of a little country boy who wore a thin, ragged coat and worn-out shoes. He was struggling through deep snow on his way to school one bitter cold…
KEEP IT SIMPLE STRATEGY A lot of communities have Little League Football programs in the fall of the year. In one such community, two weeks into the season, an armchair coach with a big gut…
ON HOLD WITH GOD A mother and daughter walk out of church one Sunday morning and the mother says, "That was a nice service. I really liked the soft piano music during the prayer." The…
JOE GIRARD'S RECORD SALES Norman V. Peale tells a beautiful story of a man who was raised in deep poverty. His mother died at a time when her son was still very young, and the…
BUSIER THAN ISAIAH One minister remarked sorrowfully: "The prophet Isaiah wrote, 'In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord.' If he were a modern minister, he would write, 'In the year that…
MINISTRY IS Ministry is giving when you feel like keeping, praying for others when you need to be prayed for, feeding others when your own soul is hungry, living truth... even when you can't see…
GOD'S DELAYS ARE NOT DENIALS Never think that God's delays are God's denials. A lone shipwreck survivor on an uninhabited island managed to build a rude hut in which he placed all that he had…
THE SECRET I met God in the morning When the day was at its best, And His presence came like sunrise, Like a glory in my breast. All day long the Presence lingered, All day…
THE STRONG CHURCH The marks of a strong church are wet eyes, bent knees and a broken heart. From Pastor to Pastor, by Erwin Lutzer, pg. 113
LANGUAGE TOO FAMILIAR I was in the U.S. Coast Guard and I remember an incident that happened while I was serving a tour of duty in Japan. Most of us there were struggling to learn…
SPIRITUAL IMAGINATIONS In one of his letters to Arthur Greeves, C. S. Lewis remarked about the danger in thinking about spiritual things, particularly for imaginative people: "We read of spiritual efforts, and our imagination makes…
PRAY FOR THE SICK After Sunday School class members had noted the numerous members of the church that were ill, the teacher bowed his head and began, "Lord, we pray for all those who are…
DRY PERIODS OF PRAYERS We all go through periods of dryness in our prayers, don't we? I doubt... whether they are necessarily a bad symptom. I sometimes suspect that what we feel to be our…
PRAYER AS COMMUNION What if he knows prayer to be the thing we need first and most? What if the main object in God's idea of prayer be the supplying of our great, our endless…
FORTY YEARS BEHIND IN RELEVANCE At a church conference I attended in March 1992, I heard Lyle Schaller say: "If next year is 1953, American churches are going to be in good shape. However, if…
