Sermon Illustrations

With today's constant media barrage of bad news, people feel bad enough already and don't want anything that makes them feel worse, says anthropologist-turned-brand-strategist Cheryl Swanson. With all the info coming at us 24/7, "We are processing information at 400 times the rate of our Renaissance ancestors." This is a new human task that we haven't had time to adapt to yet - physically or mentally. That's why we're getting tech-related health problems, like carpal tunnel, and maybe even mental and neurological problems like attention-deficit disorder. Naturally our attention is fraying - we are whipsawed by stimuli!

After the U.S.S. Pueblo was captured in 1968 by the North Koreans, the 82 surviving crew members were thrown into brutal captivity. In one particular instance 13 of the men were required to sit in a rigid manner around a table for hours at a time.

Love is love's food. There is a power in Christ's love which conquers, captivates, and overpowers the man, so that he cannot but love Christ in return.

My daughter Katelynn has always been as sharp as a whip. She loves to learn. At church, people used to get kicks out of her understanding of theological issues. When she was six she came to me and saw that I was reading the Greek New Testament and asked if she could learn.

John Wade used to tell the story of a man who lost his sense of being close to God. He made a pilgrimage to Mt Sinai and stood on the mountainside, while asking God to send him a sign. He was waiting for something spectacular like lightning, smoke or a mighty voice. He waited for hours on his knees and nothing happened.

In a recent Middleton's comic strip, Mr. and Mrs. Middleton are taking a walk. Mrs. Middleton says, "There's no two ways about it. TV is nothing but violence and sleaze."

In 1945 General Douglas MacArthur asked for ten thousand missionaries to carry the Gospel to the Orient. What an opportunity. Yet we refused to accept the challenge. Why? Simply because money was our idol and we refused to tithe our income.

Carol Burnett tells a story about a time when she was a college actor and a man came up after a performance and asked what she wanted to do with her life. She said that she wanted to go to New York and be in musical theater.

County music star Josh Turner tells a story of how he came to meet Johnny Cash. He told USA Weekend that he had been reading about Cash's illness and wanted to meet him and encourage him. He found out where Cash lived and went to drop in and hoped he would not be seen as a stalker.

The Ripley's Believe It Or Not column tells of a woman in England who received a heart transplant in June of 2007. She decided to go and visit her old heart when it was placed on display in London.