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Home›Browse by Type›Stories & Illustrations

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Stories & Illustrations

7,545 illustrations — Vivid stories and real-world analogies for sermon use

Browse Stories & Illustrations by Book

Psalm (82)Luke (49)Matthew (42)John (36)1 Corinthians (31)Romans (29)Isaiah (29)Genesis (25)Acts (24)Hebrews (17)Ephesians (16)Revelation (14)Jeremiah (14)Galatians (10)Colossians (10)Mark (9)Philippians (8)Deuteronomy (8)2 Corinthians (8)Proverbs (8)

Sermon Illustration

Corrie ten Boom's New Address

When Corrie ten Boom was released from Ravensbrück concentration camp in December 1944, she carried nothing but the clothes on her back and memories of...

Psalm 45:10-12, 16Universal

239 words

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Sermon Illustration

George Washington Carver's Morning Prayer

Each day before dawn at Tuskegee Institute, George Washington Carver walked into the Alabama woods to pray. The formerly enslaved scientist, who could have pursued...

Proverbs 16:3Universal

244 words

Sermon Illustration

The Parking Lot Clinic

Every Sunday morning, the congregation of Grace Fellowship in Baton Rouge sang three hymns, bowed for a long pastoral prayer, and drove home past the...

Isaiah 58:1-12Universal

255 words

Sermon Illustration

The Porch Light on Maple Street

For eleven months, David Chen left the porch light on at his home in Portland, Oregon. His daughter Mei had walked out after a terrible...

Hosea 11:1, 3-4, 8c-9Universal

257 words

Sermon Illustration

The President Who Kept Pardoning His Own Assassin

In 1865, a Confederate sympathizer named Michael O'Laughlen was convicted of conspiring to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. But years earlier, Lincoln had already demonstrated the very...

Psalm 78:1-2, 34-38Universal

237 words

Sermon Illustration

The Philosopher Who Admired the Preacher but Missed the Point

In the autumn of 1739, Benjamin Franklin walked through the streets of Philadelphia to hear George Whitefield preach. Franklin was arguably the most brilliant mind...

1 Corinthians 2:1-16Universal

243 words

Sermon Illustration

The Bridge They Said Would Never Hold

In 2009, engineers in rural Rwanda faced an impossible problem. The Nyabarongo River had swallowed every bridge the government tried to build during rainy season....

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24Universal

252 words

Sermon Illustration

The Bishop Who Gathered the Scattered

In 1940, as Nazi forces swept across France, millions of refugees fled south in desperate chaos. Villages emptied. Families separated. The vulnerable — especially Jewish...

Jeremiah 23:1-6Universal

222 words

Sermon Illustration

The Hymn That Came as a Lullaby

On the evening of June 6, 1882, Scottish minister George Matheson sat alone in the manse at Innellan while his sister's wedding celebration carried on...

Zephaniah 3:17Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

The Ruin on the Rail Line

For decades, the rusted elevated tracks of the High Line cut through Manhattan's West Side like an iron scar. Built in the 1930s to carry...

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24Universal

240 words

Sermon Illustration

Coded for a Journey You've Never Taken

Every autumn, tens of millions of monarch butterflies lift off from meadows across North America and travel up to 3,000 miles to a cluster of...

Universalpurpose

235 words

Sermon Illustration

The River That Carved the Grand Canyon

For six million years, the Colorado River has done one thing with unwavering commitment — it has followed gravity downhill. It did not set out...

Proverbs 16:3Universal

244 words

Sermon Illustration

The Olive Tree on Masada

In 2021, archaeologists working near Masada in Israel discovered olive tree roots still alive in soil that hadn't seen steady rain in decades. The roots...

Psalm 52Universal

236 words

Sermon Illustration

The Priest Who Made a King Listen

In 1550, an elderly Dominican friar named Bartolome de las Casas stood before the Spanish court at Valladolid and did something almost unthinkable. He argued...

Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14Universal

244 words

Sermon Illustration

Nature Illustration: Ants and Small Wisdoms

As I stood in my backyard one afternoon, I was captivated by a small ant hill nestled near the edge of my flower bed. The ants were tirelessly moving to and fro, each one carrying bits of food, some too...

Genesis 1:1-5Universal

253 words

Sermon Illustration

Abraham Lincoln's Tears for a Broken Nation

In the spring of 1865, Abraham Lincoln visited the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, just days after its fall. Witnesses described a man who looked...

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1Universal

238 words

Sermon Illustration

The Exiles of Herrnhut

In 1722, a ragged band of Moravian refugees stumbled onto the estate of Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf in Saxony. They had been driven from their...

Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19Universal

237 words

Sermon Illustration

The North Star and the Conductor Who Never Looked Down

Harriet Tubman led nineteen missions through the Underground Railroad, guiding more than three hundred men, women, and children from the plantations of Maryland to freedom...

Psalm 121Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

The Pip That Breaks the Shell

Around day twenty-one inside a chicken egg, something extraordinary happens. The chick — heart beating, lungs ready, feathers formed — faces the most critical moment...

Romans 10:9Universal

224 words

Sermon Illustration

The Peanut Farmer God Knew Before Anyone Did

George Washington Carver was born into slavery in Diamond, Missouri, around 1864. Within weeks of his birth, Confederate raiders kidnapped him and his mother. His...

Psalm 139:1-3, 13-15Universal

246 words

Sermon Illustration

The Closed Bible and the Open Door

Every Sunday morning for thirty years, Margaret Chen arrived early at her church in Knoxville, Tennessee, polishing the communion table and arranging the hymnals with...

Isaiah 58:1-12Universal

265 words

Sermon Illustration

The Dawn Chorus

Every spring morning in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, something extraordinary happens in the hour before sunrise. Ornithologists call it the dawn chorus —...

Psalm 100Universal

257 words

Sermon Illustration

The Warehouse in Albuquerque

In 1975, a thirteen-year-old named Bill Gates convinced his high school to let him test software for a local company. Nobody paid much attention. But...

Micah 5:2Universal

236 words

Sermon Illustration

The Architect's Blueprint Nobody Believed

In 1857, Frederick Law Olmsted stood before New York's city commissioners with plans to transform 843 acres of swampland, pig farms, and squatter shanties into...

Habakkuk 1:5Universal

244 words