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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 Codebreaker Who Couldn't Explain How She Knew

During World War II, a young clerk named Mavis Lever arrived at Bletchley Park with no formal training in cryptography. The seasoned mathematicians around her...

1 Corinthians 2:1-16Universal

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Sermon Illustration

The Force That Holds Everything Together

In 1932, physicist James Chadwick discovered the neutron, and with it came a baffling question that kept nuclear scientists awake at night. Protons packed tightly...

Colossians 1:15-17Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Moravians Who Took Him at His Word

In 1732, two young men from a tiny Christian community in Herrnhut, Germany, did something the established church considered insane. Johann Leonhard Dober and David...

Matthew 28:16-20Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Carpenter Who Didn't Know What He Was Building

In 1987, a retired carpenter named Harold Meeks in Tupelo, Mississippi, started showing up at his church every Tuesday morning with his tool belt and...

Philemon 1:6Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Question That Changed Everything

In 2018, a journalism student named Marcus Chen sat in a Chicago diner across from his grandfather, a man who had survived China's Cultural Revolution...

Matthew 16:13-19Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Quakers Who Fed a Starving Nation

In 1846, as the Irish Potato Famine tightened its grip, Parliament debated policy and churches held solemn days of prayer and fasting. Meanwhile, a tiny...

Isaiah 58:1-12Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Stream Beneath the Highway

In 2003, Seoul, South Korea, made a decision that baffled the world. Mayor Lee Myung-bak ordered the demolition of a six-lane elevated highway to uncover...

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

Sermon Illustration

The Lighthouse Keeper Who Improved the Light

In 1916, a lighthouse keeper named Amos Holbrook at Point Reyes, California, grew dissatisfied with the old Fresnel lens that had guided ships safely through...

2 John 1:9Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Cup She Raised

When Maria Santos stood up at her church in San Antonio last fall, her hands were shaking. Six months earlier, doctors had found a tumor...

Psalm 116:12-13, 15-18Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Beekeeper's Lesson

Marcus Chen was seven the summer his grandfather kept bees in the backyard of their home in Asheville, North Carolina. One August afternoon, a honeybee...

1 Corinthians 15:55-57Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Teacher Who Knew Her Before She Had Words

In 1887, Anne Sullivan arrived at a farmhouse in Tuscumbia, Alabama, to meet a child the world had given up on. Seven-year-old Helen Keller —...

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Heartbeat in the NICU

In neonatal intensive care units, nurses have long observed a phenomenon they call kangaroo care. When a premature infant — tiny, struggling, hooked to monitors...

Zephaniah 3:17Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Beekeeper of Appalachia

In the misty hollows of eastern Kentucky, a third-generation beekeeper named Earl Combs tends forty-seven hives scattered across his family's land. Ask him about any...

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Sunday School Teacher Who Found Him in the Shoe Store

In April 1855, Edward Kimball paced the sidewalk outside Holton's Shoe Store in Boston, nearly talking himself out of going inside. His Sunday school student,...

John 1:43-51Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Sunday School Lesson That Changed Everything

In March 1841, a young Boston schoolteacher named Dorothea Dix agreed to teach a Sunday school class at the East Cambridge jail. What she found...

Isaiah 42:1-9Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Prescription That Never Left the Counter

Every morning, the slip of paper sat next to the coffee maker. Dr. Sarah Chen at the Cleveland Clinic had written it out carefully —...

James 1:22Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Composer God Refused to Let Stay Silent

George Frideric Handel's father despised music. A respected barber-surgeon in Halle, Germany, he forbade instruments in the house and insisted his son would become a...

Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-12Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Luthier on Elm Street

In a cluttered workshop on Elm Street in Portland, Oregon, a luthier named Marco Benedetti spends his days with instruments other repair shops would refuse....

Isaiah 42:1-9Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Preacher Who Chose His Cell

For twelve years, John Bunyan sat in Bedford Jail. His crime was preaching without a license. The authorities offered him freedom repeatedly — all he...

1 Peter 3:18-22Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Heart That Never Hoards

Your heart pumps roughly 2,000 gallons of blood every single day — enough to fill a backyard swimming pool every week. And here is what...

Luke 6:38Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Orphan Father Who Never Sent a Single Appeal

In 1836, George Müller opened an orphanage in Bristol, England, with exactly two shillings in his pocket and no fundraising plan whatsoever. Over the next...

Psalm 112:1-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Moravian Lots

In 1732, two young Moravian men — Leonard Dober and David Nitschmann — stood on a dock in Copenhagen with almost nothing. They had volunteered...

Luke 10:1-11, 16-20Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Bridge Builder Who Never Abandons a Project

In 2011, engineer Linda Figg stood before skeptics in St. Petersburg, Florida, as construction began on the new Sunshine Skyway Bridge approach. Midway through the...

1 Corinthians 1:3-9Universal

Sermon Illustration

George Washington Carver and the Laboratory of Devotion

George Washington Carver was born into slavery in Missouri around 1864, his infant body literally valued at three hundred dollars — the price Moses Carver...

1 Corinthians 6:12-20Universal