PRIORITIZING PRAYER We live in a day characterized by the multiplication of man's machinery and the diminution of God's power. The great cry of our day is work, work, work, organize, organize, organize. Give us…
Sermon Illustrations
KEEP PRAYING During his many appearances in summer stock in the role of Tevye in "Fiddler on the Roof," Robert Merrill had learned to expect the unexpected. "One night on stage," he says, "as I…
GOD LOVES STORIES When the great Rabbi Israel Baal Shem- Tov saw misfortune threatening the Jews, it was his custom to go into a certain part of the forest to meditate. There he would light…
GOD LEAVES MESSAGES The Actual Account: Since I am the pastor of three Lutheran churches, I have to make the use of an answering machine both at my home office and at a second office.…
WINDOW OF OUR SPIRITS Open wide the window of our spirits, O Lord, and fill us full of light; open wide the door of our hearts that we may receive and entertain you with all…
EXPAND GOD'S PRESENCE To pray is to bring God back into the world... to expand God's presence. Talking about God is idle chatter unless we first learn to talk to God. By Rabbi Abraham Heschel,…
FULL-TIME PRAYER You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace…
HOME AT LAST or MOVING WITH GOD Straight from the pages of Romans 8:28 comes a real-life story of faith, prayer and God's provision: When our family returned to the United States after several years…
THE PRAYER OF ST FRANCIS God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. St. Francis of Assisi
HALLOWED BE FOOTBALL Our football, which art on television, hallowed be thy game. The fullback run, the passes be flung, in Miami as it is in Dallas. Give us this day our four quarters and…
BASIC ACTIONS AND ATTITUDES One of the excuses that so many people give for not praying is "I'm just too busy. I don't have time to pray." We all know what being busy is like.…
ACTIVE PRAYER LIFE The pious, but cranky, old lady was put out because her neighbors had not invited her to a picnic. On the morning of the picnic one of the neighbors finally called to…
ASSISI & HUMILITY Dom Helder Camara tells an apocryphal tale about a conversation between St. Francis of Assisi and another monk: St. Francis and Brother Leo were walking together. Brother Leo cried out, "Brother Francis!"…
CHURCHES & PRAYERS Intercessory prayers have become ceremonial vestiges in our churches -- rituals which baptize meetings as they begin and bury them when they end. Such prayers ignore the whole panorama of God's work…
GET HIM READY, LORD! A prayer for preachers: Oh, Lord, give Brother Jones the eye of an eagle, so that he may see sin from afar; luminate his brow with a brightness that will make…
“. . . unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 18:3). A little girl had a problem. She was very much worried because her brother…
“The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed, and will bring me safely to His Heavenly Kingdom…” (II Timothy 4:18). A woman who was a very faithful Church-goer had just received her driver ’s…
“Keep watching and praying” (Matthew 26:41). “In our quest for God we think too much, reflect too much, talk too much,” says the celebrated mystic, Anthony de Mello... “Be silent and contemplate the dance. Just…
“They were all astonished and praised God, and were filled with awe, saying ’we have seen strange things today’” (Luke 5:26). A pastor went to the hospital to visit one of his parishioners — a…
“For I am not ashamed of the Good News: it is the power of God saving all who have faith” (Romans 1:16). “Lord, give us a miracle,” we pray. But that’s not usually what we…
