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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 Garden on Magnolia Street

In 2019, a vacant lot on Magnolia Street in Newark, New Jersey, was nothing but cracked concrete, broken glass, and waist-high weeds. Neighbors walked past...

Isaiah 35:1-10Universal

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Sermon Illustration

The Prisoner Who Carried No Bible

When Romanian pastor Richard Wurmbrand was dragged into a Communist prison cell in 1948, his captors stripped him of everything — his coat, his shoes,...

Jeremiah 31:27-34Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Artesian Wells of the Great Basin

In 1882, settlers in South Dakota's James River Valley were desperate for water. The surface creeks ran dry each summer, and shallow wells produced only...

Matthew 7:7-8Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Orchard After the Drought

In 1988, a peach farmer named Harold Gentry in Chilton County, Alabama, watched his orchard wither through the worst drought in forty years. Every tree...

Hosea 14:4Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Chained Bible at St. Paul's

In 1539, when the Great Bible was placed in St. Paul's Cathedral in London, something remarkable happened. For the first time, common English men and...

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

Sermon Illustration

The Mental Health and Spirituality Challenge - Contemporary Example

In a small community on the outskirts of a bustling city, there was a vibrant church that became a refuge for those wrestling with their mental health. One day, a young woman named Sarah stepped through its doors, her heart...

Luke 4:18-19Traditional

Sermon Illustration

The Help She Refused to Ask For

When Hurricane Harvey stalled over Houston in August 2017, Marcus Rivera watched the water creep up his elderly mother's front steps from a live camera...

Isaiah 7:10-16Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Keystone Nobody Sees

When the old limestone bridge on Route 7 in Millbrook started showing cracks, the county called in a structural engineer named Carol Reeves. She spent...

Colossians 1:15-17Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Rider Into Galveston

On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger rode into Galveston, Texas, carrying news that was already two and a half years old. The Emancipation...

Isaiah 52:7-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Furniture Store on the Floodwaters

When Hurricane Harvey stalled over Houston in August 2017, dumping more than fifty inches of rain in four days, the city became an inland sea....

Psalm 46:2-3, 5-6, 8-9Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Last Words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

On April 9, 1945, at Flossenbürg concentration camp, Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer knelt in prayer before his executioners. He had been arrested two years earlier...

Luke 22:14-23:56Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Graduation Speech Nobody Expected

In 2019, a high school in Birmingham, Alabama invited two commencement speakers. The first was a hedge fund manager who flew in on a private...

Matthew 5:1-12aUniversal

Sermon Illustration

The Night Sewn Into His Coat

On the evening of November 23, 1654, Blaise Pascal — mathematician, physicist, one of the sharpest minds in France — encountered something his equations could...

Luke 9:28-36Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Father Who Caught Her Every Time

In 2011, a four-year-old named Ellie Farmer stood at the edge of the community pool in Bend, Oregon, trembling. Her father, waist-deep in the water,...

Jude 1:24-25Universal

Sermon Illustration

Buying the House on Flood Street

In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina swallowed the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans whole. When the waters finally receded, Robert Green came back to find...

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Father Who Stayed

In 2018, a courtroom in Dallas became the setting for something no parent should endure. Botham Jean had been shot and killed in his own...

Matthew 26:14-27:66Universal

Sermon Illustration

The First Song Before Sunrise

Ornithologists call it the dawn chorus. In the hours before sunrise, while darkness still blankets the landscape, a single bird begins to sing. It cannot...

Luke 2:10-11Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Lighthouse at Punta de Teno

On the western tip of Tenerife, where the Atlantic crashes against volcanic cliffs, stands the Faro de Teno — a lighthouse that has guided sailors...

Isaiah 60:1-6Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Old Bishop Who Knew the Eyewitness

In 155 AD, the elderly bishop Polycarp of Smyrna stood before a Roman proconsul who demanded he renounce Christ. Polycarp replied, "Eighty-six years I have...

2 Peter 1:16-21Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Burial and Resurrection of Bach's Music

When Johann Sebastian Bach died in Leipzig on July 28, 1750, the world barely noticed. The city council's official response was to complain about the...

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

Sermon Illustration

Bonhoeffer's Straight Line

In 1933, as Adolf Hitler consolidated power, most German churches bent to accommodate the new regime. They draped swastikas beside crosses and rewrote liturgies to...

Amos 7:7-17Universal

Sermon Illustration

Florence Nightingale and the Voice She Heard at Embley Park

On February 7, 1837, sixteen-year-old Florence Nightingale sat in the garden of her family's estate at Embley Park in Hampshire, England. In her diary that...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Heirloom That Couldn't Be Bought

In 2019, a house fire swept through the Martinez family home in Sacramento, California. Insurance covered the structure, the furniture, the electronics — everything with...

1 Peter 1:17-23Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Night Notre-Dame Refused to Fall

On April 15, 2019, the world watched Notre-Dame de Paris burn. Flames devoured the 850-year-old roof. The iconic spire collapsed in a shower of sparks....

Isaiah 52:7-10Universal