WHEN ENOUGH IS ENOUGH A story is told about William Randolph Hearst, the late newspaper publisher. Hearst invested a fortune in collecting great works of art. One day he read about some valuable pieces of…
Sermon Illustrations
LISTEN-A-LOT DOLL While in a toy store, my husband and I overheard a mother and her small daughter discussing the doll. "What does it do?" the child would ask about each one. The mother would…
MATERIAL POSSESSIONS CAN BEAT YOU A ninety-year-old woman gave my father a piece of advice, and he passed it on to me. He said, "I want to tell you something, and I want you to…
HONEST AIRCRAFT Personal and corporate honesty often pays off in dramatic ways. Donald Douglas, for example, built such a reputation for his aircraft company and worked to preserve it. There was the time Douglas was…
HINDU MEAT Years ago I was preaching in India. Upon my return home, I was preaching in Stillwater, Oklahoma where a university is located. I noticed a young Hindu man eating meat. This seemed strange…
SUCCESSFUL COMPENSATION In a famous study by Victor and Mildred Goertzel entitled Cradles of Eminence, the home backgrounds of three hundred highly successful people were investigated. These three hundred subjects had made it to the…
DEAD LIGHTHOUSE Tillamook Lighthouse off the coast of Oregon is in dangerous seas and perched on a large rock with waves pounding around it all the time, is so hard to get to that it…
STUFF GOES TO COLLEGE It begins one night in early September. While watching TV, you decide to pop some corn, so you go into your kitchen to dig out the old popcorn machine. It's nowhere…
THE OLD FISHERMAN FRIEND Our house was directly across the street from the clinic entrance of John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. We lived downstairs and rented the upstairs rooms to out patients at the clinic.…
POSITIVE WITNESS No matter what else I did in life, I would be a Christian. I soon discovered that people were not content when I told them that I was a Christian; they wanted to…
SOLDIERS IN YOUR CUP A grandmother was surprised by her seven-year-old grandson one morning. He had made her coffee. She tasted what was the worst cup of coffee in her life, but because it had…
TWO FREEDOMS The two freedoms: freedom from need, and freedom from greed.:
GOD IS FUN! My two year old granddaughter was learning how to pray before dinner at the table with her family. One night she was asked to say her prayer and she humbly bowed her…
CHANGING SPOUSES It is presumptuous to expect to change your spouse after marriage. Once a woman complained, "My husband drinks and gambles!" Her husband, seated next to her, countered: "I love drinking and gambling, and…
WHAT WE LIKE Nothing is as good as: A good yawn, with a good stretch. Knowing the answer to a quiz-show question (and having somebody around to hear us answer it). Being a pound lighter…
BASIC NEEDS BREED FREEDOM True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt:
WHO ASKS FOR MONEY? Sometimes you hear people say, "The church is always asking for money." That statement is profoundly untrue. It is the world which is always asking for money, not the church. When…
TURKEYS CUT IN HALF A merchant ordered five hundred turkeys for the Thanksgiving season. A few weeks before the holiday, however, his sales dropped sharply. Afraid that he wouldn't be able to sell all of…
CHANGING MODELS A doctor is talking to his car mechanic, "Do you realize that your hourly rate is over twice what we get paid for medical care?" "Yeah, but think of it this way, Doc;…
YELLING IN CHURCH A three-year-old boy who was learning about opposites sat in church with his mother one day and began to talk loudly to her. "Ben," his mother said, "in church we whisper." He…
