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Home›Browse by Type›Stories & Illustrations

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Stories & Illustrations

6,717 illustrations — Vivid stories and real-world analogies for sermon use

Browse Stories & Illustrations by Book

Psalm (81)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)2 Corinthians (8)Proverbs (7)James (7)

Sermon Illustration

The Phone Call at 2 A.M.

When the phone rang at 2:14 on a Tuesday morning, Rachel Dominguez was grading seventh-grade essays at her kitchen table in Tulsa. The voice on...

Luke 1:26-38Universal

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Sermon Illustration

From the Ruins of Robben Island

In 1964, Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island, a windswept rock off the coast of Cape Town. The anti-apartheid movement appeared...

Isaiah 11:1-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Storm That Became a Doorway

On March 10, 1748, a violent storm nearly swallowed the slave trading ship Greyhound in the North Atlantic. John Newton, a twenty-two-year-old sailor who had...

1 Peter 3:18-22Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Silversmith on Jewelers' Row

In Philadelphia's historic Jewelers' Row, master silversmith David Huang sits hunched over a crucible no bigger than a coffee mug. Inside, a lump of tarnished...

Malachi 3:1-4Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Symphony He Could Not Hear

By the time Ludwig van Beethoven composed his Ninth Symphony — arguably the most celebrated piece of music in Western history — he was completely...

Universalpurpose

Sermon Illustration

The Wall That Came Down at Dawn

On the evening of November 9, 1989, Angelika Weiss stood in a crowd of East Berliners pressing toward the Bornholmer Strasse checkpoint. For twenty-eight years,...

Matthew 28:1-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

White Gowns in the Rubble

On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 earthquake leveled much of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. In the chaotic aftermath, medical teams set up field hospitals in parking lots...

Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Stradivarius in the Attic

In 2006, a music teacher in the Spokane, Washington area brought an old violin to an appraiser. It had been sitting in a closet for...

1 Corinthians 6:12-20Universal

Sermon Illustration

Gladys Aylward's One-Way Ticket

In 1932, a London parlor maid named Gladys Aylward counted out her meager savings — just enough for a one-way train ticket to China. She...

Luke 12:32-40Universal

Sermon Illustration

A Voice in the Stairwell

On August 14, 2003, Maria Gonzalez was climbing the stairs to her fourteenth-floor apartment in the Bronx when every light in the building went dark....

Genesis 1:1-3Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Hire That Changed Everything

In 2019, a restaurant owner in Richmond, Virginia named Marcus had every reason to say no. A young man named Derek walked into his café...

Philemon 1-21Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Doctor They Refused to Believe

In 1847, a young Hungarian physician named Ignaz Semmelweis made a discovery that should have changed medicine overnight. Working in Vienna General Hospital's maternity ward,...

Luke 4:21-30Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Search That Wouldn't Wait Until Morning

In 2019, a three-year-old boy named Christopher Ramirez wandered away from his family's home in Grimes County, Texas, following a neighbor's dog into dense woods....

Luke 15:3-7Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Watchmaker Who Lived to See the Hour Strike

In 1787, a young British parliamentarian named William Wilberforce first introduced a motion to abolish the slave trade. It failed. He introduced it again the...

Luke 2:22-40Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Amish Practice of Gelassenheit - Anabaptist (Isaiah 40:31)

The Amish practice "Gelassenheit"—a German word meaning surrender, yieldedness, letting go. It's waiting on God by releasing control. When technology offers faster solutions, they wait. When culture pushes individual achievement, they submit to community. When conflict arises, they wait for reconciliation rather than forcing resolution.

Isaiah 40:31Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Promise That Outlasted Three Generations

In 1943, a sharecropper named Hattie Mae Roberts in Kosciusko, Mississippi, made a quiet promise to God. She couldn't read, owned nothing, and picked cotton...

Acts 13:22-26Universal

Sermon Illustration

Eric Liddell and the Internment Camp Garden

In 1943, Olympic gold medalist Eric Liddell — the Scottish sprinter whose story inspired *Chariots of Fire* — found himself behind the walls of the...

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Promise Betsie Whispered in Ravensbrück

In December 1944, Betsie ten Boom lay dying on a thin mattress in Ravensbrück concentration camp, her body wasted by malnutrition and forced labor. Her...

Revelation 21:1-4Universal

Sermon Illustration

Joy Behind the Wire

In 1943, Japanese soldiers marched Eric Liddell through the gates of the Weihsien internment camp in Shandong, China. The Scottish Olympic champion who had electrified...

Romans 5:1-5Universal

Sermon Illustration

George Müller's Empty Plates

On the morning of October 15, 1844, George Müller sat at the head of a long table in his orphanage at Ashley Down, Bristol. Three...

Psalm 34:2-9Universal

Sermon Illustration

John Newton's Long Lesson in Grace

When John Newton stumbled off a slave ship in 1748, half-starved and desperate, he credited God's mercy for sparing his life during a violent Atlantic...

Titus 2:11-12Universal

Sermon Illustration

When Evan Roberts Wept in a Chapel

In the autumn of 1904, a twenty-six-year-old Welsh coal miner named Evan Roberts stood before seventeen people in a small chapel in Loughor, Wales. He...

Ezekiel 47:1-2, 8-9, 12Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Medic Who Carried No Weapon

When Desmond Doss enlisted in the United States Army in 1942, his commanding officers wanted him gone. A Seventh-day Adventist from Lynchburg, Virginia, Doss refused...

Matthew 5:13-20Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Storm Cellar on Maple Road

Margaret Shelton was hanging laundry in her backyard in Moore, Oklahoma, when the sky turned the color of a bruise. It was May 20, 2013,...

Psalm 91:1-2Universal