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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 First Shift After the Badge

When Marcus Powell graduated from the Denver Fire Academy in March 2019, his mother pinned the badge to his chest while his whole family cheered...

Mark 1:9-15Universal

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Sermon Illustration

The Love That Would Not Let Him Go

In the summer of 1882, a Scottish minister named George Matheson sat alone in his family home while his sister's wedding celebration filled the rooms...

Universallove

Sermon Illustration

Augustine and the Child's Voice in the Milan Garden

In the summer of 386 AD, a thirty-one-year-old rhetoric professor sat weeping beneath a fig tree in a Milan garden. Augustine of Hippo had been...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Intersection With No Traffic Light

In 2003, the city of Drachten in the Netherlands tried something radical. Traffic engineer Hans Monderman convinced officials to remove nearly all traffic signs, signals,...

Judges 21:25Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Dress She Never Looked Back For

When Amara Okafor left Lagos, Nigeria, in 2019 to marry David Chen in Vancouver, her mother wept at Murtala Muhammed Airport and pressed a small...

Psalm 45:10-12, 16Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Surgeon Who Waited

In 2010, a young mother named Clara Benitez sat in a hospital waiting room in Houston, clutching her phone, watching the minutes crawl by. Her...

John 11:1-45Universal

Sermon Illustration

From the Raft to the Runway

In the summer of 1943, Louis Zamperini drifted on a life raft in the Pacific Ocean, sunburned and starving, sharks circling beneath him. The former...

Psalm 30Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Firefighter's First Shift

In 2019, Maria Gonzalez graduated top of her class from the Houston Fire Academy. Her captain pinned the badge on her chest and said, "You...

Mark 1:9-15Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Bread Line at St. Gregory's

Every Saturday morning at 6 a.m., Maria Gonzalez unlocks the side door of St. Gregory's Church in the Bronx and begins slicing bread. By seven,...

Psalm 34:2-9Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Cellar on Peshtigo's Darkest Night

On the evening of October 8, 1871, while the nation's attention would later fix on the Great Chicago Fire, something far deadlier swept through Peshtigo,...

Nahum 1:7Universal

Sermon Illustration

Corrie ten Boom's Hidden Room and the God Who Hides Nothing

In 1944, Corrie ten Boom sat in a cell at Ravensbrück concentration camp, stripped of every comfort — her home, her watch shop, her beloved...

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Bible Burner of Punjab

In 1903, a fourteen-year-old Sikh boy named Sundar Singh tore a Bible apart page by page and burned it in his courtyard in Rampur, India....

Acts 9:1-6Universal

Sermon Illustration

When the Whole Stadium Forgot Themselves

On November 2, 2016, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series for the first time in 108 years. Fans who had inherited their loyalty from...

Psalm 98:1-4Universal

Sermon Illustration

The First Light Over Tromsø

In the Norwegian city of Tromsø, above the Arctic Circle, the sun disappears entirely in late November. For nearly two months, the residents live under...

Luke 2:10-11Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Courage to Swallow the Truth

In 1984, an Australian physician named Barry Marshall did something his colleagues considered reckless, perhaps absurd. He believed stomach ulcers — long blamed on stress,...

Universalcourage

Sermon Illustration

The Stranger at Table Nine

In 2019, a diner in Raleigh, North Carolina, called Clyde Cooper's BBQ had a regular they knew only as "the quiet man." He came in...

Luke 24:13-35Universal

Sermon Illustration

Evan Roberts and the Fire That Started with Confession

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, and...

Matthew 3:1-12Universal

Sermon Illustration

When a Village Heard Its Own Language for the First Time

In 2022, Bible translators with Wycliffe completed the New Testament in Kakchiquel, a Mayan language spoken by nearly half a million people in the highlands...

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Restored Brownstone on Halsey Street

In 2019, a young couple in Brooklyn purchased a neglected brownstone on Halsey Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant for a price that stretched every dollar they had....

1 Corinthians 6:12-20Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Speech That Silenced Every Other

On November 19, 1863, fifteen thousand people gathered at the Gettysburg battlefield cemetery. The featured orator, Edward Everett, was the most celebrated speaker in America...

Hebrews 1:1-4Universal

Sermon Illustration

The First Morning of Spring on the Holbrook Farm

In March of 1987, dairy farmer Ellen Holbrook of Addison County, Vermont, opened the barn doors after five months of bitter winter. Her twelve Holstein...

Malachi 4:2Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Doorway She Could Not Un-Enter

In 1943, Corrie ten Boom stood in the hallway of her family's narrow house on the Barteljorisstraat in Haarlem, Netherlands. Her father Casper had just...

Esther 4:16Universal

Sermon Illustration

Perpetua's Diary of Heaven

In March of 203 AD, a young noblewoman named Perpetua sat in a sweltering Carthaginian prison, nursing her infant son through the iron bars. She...

Colossians 3:1-4Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Blueberry Woman of Route 9

Every Saturday morning in July, Martha Guidry set up a folding table at the end of her gravel driveway outside Houma, Louisiana. On it she...

Luke 6:38Universal