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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 Uncovering of the Sistine Chapel

In 1980, restorer Gianluigi Colalucci climbed the scaffolding inside the Sistine Chapel and pressed a small solvent-soaked compress against a darkened section of Michelangelo's ceiling....

Malachi 3:1-4Universal

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Sermon Illustration

The Pipeline That Built Itself

In 1857, a Scottish minister named George Muller ran five orphanages in Bristol, England, housing over two thousand children. He never once asked for a...

Zechariah 4:6Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Question Before the Consequence

When Marcus Chen was sixteen, he took his father's car without permission and sideswiped a mailbox three blocks from home. He parked in the garage,...

Genesis 3:9-15, 20Universal

Sermon Illustration

From Caterpillar Soup to Cathedral Wings

In 2019, biologist Andrei Sourakov at the Florida Museum of Natural History placed a monarch caterpillar inside a CT scanner to watch what happens during...

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

Sermon Illustration

What the Rancher Knew About Coyotes

Tom Hernandez ran cattle on four hundred acres outside Marfa, Texas. He told his new ranch hand something on the first day that the young...

James 4:7Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Gym Nobody Wanted

In 2016, the city council of Brownsville, Brooklyn voted to demolish the old Brownsville Recreation Center on Linden Boulevard. The building was crumbling, its windows...

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Door at the End of the Hallway

Clara Gutierrez was eleven years old when her father took a job that kept him behind a closed office door most evenings. She would stand...

Matthew 7:7-8Universal

Sermon Illustration

The One Voice in Ten Thousand

In the Antarctic winter, an emperor penguin colony can number over ten thousand birds, all huddled together on the ice in a single dark mass...

Luke 15:3-7Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Signal Her Dog Had Been Giving All Along

When Kara Mullins began training as a search-and-rescue volunteer in the Cascades of Washington State, her biggest challenge was not the terrain or the cold...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Letter That Arrived Before They Ever Met

In 1896, George Washington Carver was finishing his master's degree at Iowa State Agricultural College — the first Black student to earn one there. He...

John 1:43-51Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Choir Director Who Heard Every Voice

When Roberto Muñoz retired after forty-one years directing the community choir in San Marcos, Texas, the members threw him a banquet. During the speeches, someone...

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Peanut Farmer Nobody Thought Worth Teaching

In 1885, a young Black man named George Washington Carver applied to Highland College in Kansas. He was accepted by mail, but when he arrived...

John 1:43-51Universal

Sermon Illustration

Where the Mississippi Begins

At Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, you can do something that feels almost impossible — walk across the Mississippi River. At its headwaters, the mightiest...

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

Sermon Illustration

The Sadhu Who Silenced the Oxford Dons

In 1920, Sadhu Sundar Singh — a former Sikh from Punjab who had converted to Christianity after a vision of Christ at age fifteen —...

1 Corinthians 2:1-16Universal

Sermon Illustration

George Washington Carver's 4 A.M. Appointment

Every morning at four o'clock, long before the Alabama sun touched the fields of Tuskegee Institute, George Washington Carver rose and walked into the woods....

1 Corinthians 6:12-20Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Window No One Noticed Was Dirty

On an overcast morning, the windows of a farmhouse kitchen look perfectly clean. The family eats breakfast, pours coffee, glances outside at the gray sky...

Isaiah 6:1-8Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Outlaw in the Castle

In April 1521, Martin Luther stood before Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms and refused to recant his writings. "My conscience is captive...

Mark 1:9-15Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Murmur Only Dr. Patel Could Hear

During her first clinical rotation at Johns Hopkins, medical student Anya Krishnan pressed her stethoscope to a patient's chest and heard nothing unusual — just...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Heartbeat Against Her Chest

In neonatal intensive care units across the country, nurses practice what they call "kangaroo care." When a premature infant — sometimes weighing barely two pounds...

Hebrews 13:5-6Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Reclaim Barrel

At a ceramics studio in Decatur, Georgia, potter Ellen Marsh keeps a five-gallon bucket by her wheel she calls "the reclaim barrel." It's where failed...

Isaiah 64:1-9Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Letter That Walked Through the Door

Margaret Chen had been writing letters to her grandson in Beijing for eleven years. Every month, she sat at her kitchen table in Portland, choosing...

John 1:1-14Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Boy Who Knew Where He Belonged

In 2019, eleven-year-old Gitanjali Rao was named TIME Magazine's first-ever Kid of the Year. Her parents, Bharathi and Ram, had driven her to a science...

Luke 2:41-51aUniversal

Sermon Illustration

His Voice Through the Smoke

When the fire alarm shrieked at 2:47 a.m., six-year-old Lily Chen couldn't see anything. Smoke filled the upstairs hallway of their Cedar Rapids bungalow, black...

Proverbs 18:10Universal

Sermon Illustration

TheQueue at Gate D7

In December 2022, a Southwest Airlines meltdown stranded thousands of passengers across the country. At Baltimore-Washington International, Gate D7 became a pressure cooker — canceled...

Matthew 5:1-12aUniversal