BUILD THE DREAM From the movie Fields of Dreams comes the basis of a vision: "If you build it, he will come. Likewise the church is given the basis of a greater vision: "If he…
Sermon Illustrations
ONLY NEED TO BAT A Little Leaguer was playing the outfield in the first game of the season. After chasing a long hit and hustling the ball back into the infield, someone asked him how…
RIGHTS OR RESPONSIBILITY Do we have a single main underlying moral ill that one can identify? Besides cowardice, selfishness. We hear a constant clamor for rights, rights, always rights, but so very little about responsibility.…
THE REAL POWER Edward Bennett Williams was dying. Someone was teasing him about all the power and influence he had in Washington. And he said, "Power? I'm about to meet real power."
DRAW GOD Barry Johnson tells of a technique used by a certain Philosophy of Religion Professor. It was a technique that always baffled the students. Yet it provided insight into their bias, an insight not…
TRUTH, SENSE & JUSTICE I simply take the side of truth against any lie or sense against no-sense, justice against injustice. -- Vaclav Havel
POWER & CHARACTER Adversity can be a test of character, but most people can stand adversity. If you really want to test their characters, give them power.
GOOD SAMARITAN LAWSUITS Writing in Newsweek magazine, a new physician tells of an experience he had in witnessing an auto accident while he was still in his residency program. He had to think about whether…
HOSTILE TOWARD GOD The problem is not that there is insufficient evidence to convince rational beings that there is a God, but that rational beings have a natural hostility to the being of God. In…
DEAD MEN BLEED Once upon a time (note the mystical cast) there was a man who thought he was dead. His concerned wife and friends sent him to the friendly neighborhood psychiatrist. The psychiatrist determined…
ACADEMIA & CHRISTIANITY Popular education once recognized Christianity as its mother, yet the academic world has somehow come to treat supernatural religion as a disaffected mother-in-law and finally as an outlaw. By Carl F. H.…
BIBLE & LIFE Wisdom is seeing the relationships between the problems of life and the principles of Scripture which have been violated. -- Deuteronomy 28
OTHER THAN OUR INTENDED USE Paul Achtemeier speaks about idolatry: "...the human predicament in Paul's view results from idolatry, from rejecting the lordship of The Creator, and from putting in its place the lordship of…
TOO MUCH REVIVAL J. Edwin Orr, a professor of Church History at Fuller Theological Seminary, described the great outpouring of the Holy Spirit during the Welsh revivals of the nineteenth century. As people sought the…
CHRISTIANS ARE LOVING LETTERS A Christian is a loving letter. Love is basic to being Christian. If we love not, we are not. This is not sentimentality or effusive feelings, but good old basic love…
POWERFUL PRAYER There was a legendary preacher named Brother Jackson who was called to minister in the Ozarks of southwest Missouri some years ago. The church had been terrorized by a local thug who would…
FUZZY GOD "Professor, what's your idea of God?" The seminary professor made a fuzzy cloud-like spot on the chalkboard. "That's my idea of God," he bluntly replied. Few words in the English language are as…
MOTIVES OF TREASON The last temptation is the greatest treason to do the right thing for the wrong reason. -- Beckett/T.S. Eliot
HEAVENLY ACTIVITY The former slave preacher, John Jasper in answering what he would do in heaven, said: "What will I do if I gets there? First of all, I'd go down and see the river…
FIGHT FOR KINDNESS The Sunday School Teacher asked her small pupils to tell about their acts of kindness to helpless animals. After several heart-stirring stories, the teacher asked Tommy if he had anything to add.…
