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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 Wall That Rose in Millbrook

In 2019, a tornado carved a quarter-mile scar through Millbrook, Alabama, peeling roofs off homes and snapping a century-old oak across the entrance of Millbrook...

Nehemiah 4:6Universal

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Sermon Illustration

The Manual on the Shelf

Margaret Chen kept her Red Cross first aid manual on the kitchen shelf between a cookbook and a potted basil plant. She had taken the...

James 1:22Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Forensic Report That Changed Everything

In 2004, forensic pathologist Dr. Frederick Zugibe published his decades-long study of crucifixion at Columbia University. He had spent years analyzing what happens to the...

John 19:31-37Universal

Sermon Illustration

Two Seas and the Secret of Living Water

In Israel, two bodies of water are fed by the same river, yet they could not be more different. The Sea of Galilee receives the...

James 1:22Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Search That Stopped a City

In March 2018, a three-year-old boy named Casey Hathaway wandered away from his grandmother's backyard in Craven County, North Carolina, and disappeared into dense, freezing...

Luke 15:3-7Universal

Sermon Illustration

Eight Thousand Songs of Forgiveness

When Fanny Crosby was six weeks old, a well-meaning country doctor made a devastating mistake. Treating her inflamed eyes with warm mustard poultices, he permanently...

Universalforgiveness

Sermon Illustration

Chosen Like Caesar's Son

In 45 BC, Julius Caesar did something that would reshape the Roman Empire forever. He adopted his eighteen-year-old grandnephew, Octavian — a sickly young man...

Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-12Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Plant Doctor of Diamond, Missouri

In the 1870s, a frail orphaned boy named George Washington Carver wandered the woods near Diamond, Missouri, cradling wilted plants in his small hands. Neighbors...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Novelist Who Wandered into a Pew

In the autumn of 1953, Frederick Buechner was a twenty-seven-year-old novelist living in Manhattan. He had published two well-received books, moved in literary circles, and...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Bee That Lost Its Sting

Margaret Chen had been terrified of bees since she was seven years old — the summer a yellow jacket crawled into her Kool-Aid and introduced...

1 Corinthians 15:55-57Universal

Sermon Illustration

Carved Into the Family Name

In 1865, Moses and Susan Carver sent a neighbor on horseback into the night to recover an infant stolen by raiders from their Missouri farm....

Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-12Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Rejected Translation That Became the Cornerstone

In October 1536, William Tyndale was strangled and burned at the stake near Brussels, his final words a prayer: "Lord, open the King of England's...

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Lunch Lady Who Kept a Running Tab

For fourteen years, Maria Gonzalez worked the register in a middle school cafeteria in San Antonio, Texas. She noticed what most adults missed — the...

Psalm 112:1-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Secret Gallery Beneath Rome

Beneath the streets of Rome, early Christians carved miles of tunnels — the catacombs — where they buried their dead and gathered in secret during...

Colossians 3:1-4Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Prescription on the Nightstand

Margaret Chen sat in her doctor's office in Portland last March, listening carefully as Dr. Patel explained her diagnosis. High blood pressure — manageable, but...

James 1:22Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Time That Is Given Us

In J.R.R. Tolkien's *The Fellowship of the Ring*, young Frodo Baggins sits in the shadows with Gandalf, overwhelmed by the weight of the Ring he's...

Universalpurpose

Sermon Illustration

Written in the Womb, Never Repeated

In 2015, a forensic scientist named Simon Cole at the University of California, Irvine, confirmed what researchers had suspected for over a century: no two...

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Piano Tuner's Ear

Margaret Kimball spent forty years tuning pianos in churches across rural Vermont. She once told a reporter from the Burlington Free Press that the hardest...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Lady with the Lamp

In November 1854, Florence Nightingale arrived at the British military hospital in Scutari, Turkey, and found hell masquerading as medicine. Wounded soldiers from the Crimean...

Ephesians 5:8-14Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Ring in the Garden

James Whitfield spent three days on his hands and knees in the backyard, sifting through mulch and overturning stepping stones. His wedding band had slipped...

Matthew 7:7-8Universal

Sermon Illustration

The River That Refused to Stay in Its Banks

In 1966, the Arno River in Florence, Italy, burst through every barrier the city had built over centuries. Floodwaters did not check credentials at the...

Joel 2:28-29Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Witness Who Could Not Stay Silent

On a February morning in 1974, Soviet authorities dragged Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn from his Moscow apartment and deported him from Russia. His crime was simple: he...

Acts 2:14a, 22-32Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Redwood's Canopy

In Northern California's Humboldt County, coastal redwoods tower over three hundred feet into the fog. But something remarkable happens beneath them. Dr. Emily Burns, a...

Psalm 91:1-2Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Conductor's Downbeat

In 1951, Leonard Bernstein stood before the New York Philharmonic, baton raised, the concert hall suspended in absolute silence. Every musician sat poised — fingers...

Genesis 1:1-3Universal