BUSY LIVING Man always knows his life will shortly cease, Yet madly lives as if he knew it not. Richard Baxter in Hypocrisy
Sermon Illustrations
NO HUMAN LIMITS There are no limits to human ambitions or securities. From The Self & The Dramas of History, by R. Niebuhr, pg. 21
HUMANS CAN CHANGE "No man need live a minute longer as he is because the creator endowed him with the ability to change himself." -- J. C. Penney
SIN IS A FALL UP In his Where God Meets Man, G. Forde presents original sin as not a fall down, but a fall up. Sin then is depicted as not a movement against religion,…
HIMMLER'S VANITY There is a fascinating story that comes from the days following World War II. Once Hitler was known to be dead, no architect of Nazism was hunted more doggedly by Allied Intelligence than…
WITHOUT MORAL PASSION Art is a moral passion married to entertainment. Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is television. -- Rita Mae Brown
CANNOT AVOID SIN From the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, on March 7, 1992: Calvin is playing and jumping in the mud. When he finishes his frolicking, he comes into the house and explains his…
BEHIND THE TIMES G.K. Chesterton on his rediscovery of religious faith: "I freely confess all the idiotic ambitions of the end of the 19th century. I did, like all other solemn little boys, try to…
INNER TURBULENCE Gordon McDonald writes in his book, Renewing Your Spiritual Passion, pgs. 47 - 48: "How can one describe the dried-out condition? It is action without heart, oratory without power, doctrine without love. People…
HOW SIN FEELS To err is human, but it feels divine. -- Mae West
STERILIZED JARS Let's say you are going to preserve some peaches. What is the first thing you have to do? Sterilize the jars. Why the process of sterilization? So that the contents of the jars…
GOD GIVES ALL Having given us the package, do you think God will deny us the ribbon? -- O. Hoffman
THE LITTLE CHAP WHO FOLLOWS ME author unknown A careful man I want to be, A little fellow follows me; I do not dare to go astray For fear he'll go the self-same way. I…
MISSIONS & SOCIETIES People protest that missionaries have no right to force their religion down another's throat. On the other hand, when someone is willing to dedicate his life to spreading ideas in whose worth…
CHURCH RELATIONSHIPS The secret of our relationships with one another in the Christian Church, especially when we have our differences, is "Jesus Christ is Lord." To despise or stand in judgment on a fellow Christian…
CHURCH STANDARDS The church knows it must not violate this world's comfort standards and expect to have attendees. See our fabrics, settle into our cushions, and feel our conditioned air: Even in church we want…
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…
CHURCH BUILDERS There is a game that is occasionally played in business management and quality control seminars to emphasize the way we may think and what changes in thought would serve us well. The game…
EFFECTIVE EVANGELISM If effective evangelism happens, it has to begin and end with the local church. -- C. Peter Wagner
WHEN CHRIST RETURNS When Christ returns, how awful to know that all of it was true, and that it is too late to do anything about it. -- C.S. Lewis
