EXHAUSTION BRINGS FREEDOM In his book Rebuild Your Life, Dale E. Galloway tells about an experience when he was custodian of a large church while he was a student at Olivet College in Illinois. He…
Sermon Illustrations
FREE FROM THE MATTERS OF OTHERS A lady once made a complaint to Frederick the Great, King of Russia: "Your Majesty," she said, "my husband treats me badly." "That is not my business," replied the…
SPELL OR SELL A newly-hired traveling salesman wrote his first report to the home office. It stunned the executives in the sales department because it was obvious that the "new help" was a very poor…
NOT JOHNNY'S FAULT The new pastor dropped in on the first grade Sunday School Class. "Tell me, he said, who was responsible for the walls of Jericho falling?" After a minute of silence one boy…
UNMARKED AND UNCLAIMED In January 1985, a large suitcase, unmarked and unclaimed, was discovered at the customs office at Los Angeles International Airport. When customs agents opened the suitcase, they found the curled-up body of…
THOUGHTS ON FREEDOM The following are a few collected thoughts on freedom: Men fight for freedom and then start making laws to get rid of it. If all men are born free, why doesn't somebody…
SET OF THE SOUL One ship turns east and another west With the selfsame winds that blow /'Tis the set of the sail and not the gale Which tells us the way to go. Like…
FREE TO EXPAND The following letter was sent by Martin Van Buren, governor of New York, to President Andrew Jackson on January 31, 1829. "The canal system of this country is being threatened by the…
AIDS COMES TO CHURCH What about soul-winning with PWAs (prisoners with aids)? "Ministry that is offered with sensitivity and love speaks for itself and invites the trust of the patient in what is potentially a…
MILD CASE OF CHRISTIANITY Chad Walsh wrote an intriguing book entitled Early Christians of the Twenty-first Century, in which he placed a burr in my mental saddle with these words: "Millions of Christians live in…
BOUND TO TRADITIONS In a recent issue of U.S. News and World Report there was an interesting story about a British military team trying to cut down on the manpower used in handling a field…
LEE ATWATER'S MORAL REBIRTH Fighting bravely and feeling deeply, former Bush campaign manager Lee Atwater declares in a recent Life Magazine article: "I acquired more wealth, power and prestige than most. But you can acquire…
FREEDOM FROM POSSESSIONS The genius of Christian spirituality is to integrate the spirit of possession with the spirit of dispossession. The spirit of dispossession implies that all true good and delightful things of this world…
FREE TO SERVE Someone asked Fanny in Binghamton how long she was going to continue her vigorous activity. "How long," she replied, "am I going to travel and lecture? Always!" "There is nothing that could…
Perfectionism/Expectation/Failure/Success Mistake/Missed/Perserverance: PERFECTIONISM CAN HURT Figure skater Debi Thomas' performance in the 1988 Olympics is cited by several experts as an example of the all- or-nothing syndrome. Thomas made a slight error in a difficult…
CAN'T FINISH When I first started my residency in psychiatry at Duke University, I still had a lot of extreme obsessive-compulsive traits, but I had no idea that I was obsessive-compulsive. When I began reading…
STAND FOR FREEDOM Governor Jay S. Hammond of Alaska declared May 23, 1982 as Rosa Parks Day, in honor of this courageous woman who dared to sit in the front of the bus during the…
SPONTANEOUS DISTRACTION "Discipline" has become a dirty word in our culture... I know I am speaking heresy in many circles, but spontaneity is greatly overvalued. The "spontaneous" person who shrugs off the need for discipline…
THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT I never tolerate someone saying, "The devil made me do it" No, he didn't make you do it; you did it. Somewhere along the line you chose to give…
LIKE MAN, LIKE DOG A man lived in a two-story house with a dog. Every night when he went upstairs to bed, the dog would curl up on the landing to sleep. Each morning, groping…
