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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 GPS That Required Trust

In 2019, journalist Sarah Marquis spent three months hiking alone across remote stretches of Tasmania's wilderness. She carried a GPS device but quickly discovered something...

Psalm 25:1-10Universal

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Sermon Illustration

The Refugees Who Became a Movement

In 1722, a ragged band of Protestant refugees from Moravia arrived on the estate of Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf in Saxony. They had nothing —...

1 Corinthians 1:1-9Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Compass That Points Two Directions

In 1943, a Norwegian fisherman named Arne Kvalvik discovered that his boat compass had been sabotaged by the German occupation forces. They had placed a...

1 Kings 18:21Universal

Sermon Illustration

Known Before He Had a Name

George Washington Carver was born into slavery in Diamond, Missouri, around 1864. Raiders kidnapped him and his mother when he was an infant. His mother...

Psalm 139:1-3, 13-15Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Table That Held a Nation Together

During the darkest days of the London Blitz in 1940, King George VI made a quiet decision that spoke louder than any wartime speech. Each...

Mark 14:12-16, 22-26Universal

Sermon Illustration

George Müller's Ten Thousand

In 1836, George Müller opened a rented house on Wilson Street in Bristol, England, with room for thirty orphans. He had no salary, no fundraising...

Ephesians 3:20Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Old Slave Trader Who Saw a Young Man's Destiny

In 1785, a twenty-five-year-old member of Parliament named William Wilberforce sat in the parlor of John Newton, the aging rector of St. Mary Woolnoth in...

John 1:43-51Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Bulbs of Haarlem

In 1637, the Dutch city of Haarlem was gripped by tulip fever. Fortunes changed hands over small, wrinkled bulbs that looked like dried onions. A...

1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Passport That Changed Everything

In 2015, a young woman named Farah arrived at a refugee processing center in Berlin, clutching a worn Syrian passport. She had walked across four...

Philippians 3:17-4:1Universal

Sermon Illustration

When the Whole Room Couldn't Help but Sing

On a Tuesday evening in March 2019, cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason stepped onto the stage at London's Royal Festival Hall and began playing Elgar's Cello Concerto....

Psalm 98Universal

Sermon Illustration

O Love That Will Not Let Me Go

In June of 1882, a Scottish minister named George Matheson sat alone in his family home while the rest of the household celebrated his sister's...

Universallove

Sermon Illustration

The Young Parliamentarian Who Changed a Nation

In 1780, William Wilberforce won his seat in the British Parliament at just twenty-one years old. By his own admission, he was a lightweight —...

Jeremiah 1:4-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

A Communion That Changed the World

In the summer of 1727, the small village of Herrnhut in Saxony was tearing itself apart. Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf had opened his estate to...

Acts 2:1-31Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Price of Thirty Pieces

In 2018, a photograph surfaced of a former bodyguard testifying against the very person he had sworn to protect. Reporters noted how he avoided eye...

Matthew 26:14-27:66Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Spring That Never Stopped

In 1888, a cholera outbreak swept through Hamburg, Germany, killing over eight thousand people in ten weeks. The city's water supply had been drawn from...

Zechariah 13:1Universal

Sermon Illustration

Wilberforce and the Forty-Six Year Calling

In 1787, a twenty-seven-year-old member of Parliament named William Wilberforce sat at an oak desk in his London home and scribbled five words in his...

1 Corinthians 1:3-9Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Library That Locked Its Doors

In 1986, the coal town of Centralia, Pennsylvania had a problem far worse than its famous underground mine fire. As toxic gases seeped through basement...

Amos 8:11Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Breakwater at Plymouth

In 1812, engineer John Rennie began constructing a massive breakwater across Plymouth Sound in southwest England. For centuries, ships anchoring in that harbor had been...

Nahum 1:7Universal

Sermon Illustration

Conducting in Silence

By 1824, Ludwig van Beethoven had been profoundly deaf for years. He hadn't heard music, conversation, or the sound of his own playing in nearly...

Universalpatience

Sermon Illustration

The Casserole on the Doorstep

In 2018, a family in Greenville, South Carolina found their mailbox smashed and racial slurs spray-painted across their garage door. The Hendersons had moved into...

Luke 6:27-38Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Nurse Who Worked by Candlelight

In 2010, after the earthquake leveled Port-au-Prince, a American nurse named Sarah Collins arrived at a makeshift clinic built from tarps and scrap wood. Generators...

Isaiah 42:1-9Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Slave Who Could Finally Read

In 1834, when the British Emancipation Act took effect across the Caribbean, a formerly enslaved man named James Williams in Jamaica reportedly wept not because...

Jeremiah 31:27-34Universal

Sermon Illustration

Every Tongue, Every Flag, One Song

On June 2, 2022, over a million people gathered along the Mall in London for Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee concert. Camera crews captured something...

Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Archbishop Who Read the Room

On March 12, 1977, Father Rutilio Grande was gunned down on a dirt road in El Salvador for daring to tell sugarcane workers that God...

Luke 4:14-21Universal