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Home›Browse by Type›Stories & Illustrations

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Stories & Illustrations

7,545 illustrations — Vivid stories and real-world analogies for sermon use

Browse Stories & Illustrations by Book

Psalm (82)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)Deuteronomy (8)2 Corinthians (8)Proverbs (8)

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

236 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Mutiny on the Bounty

In April 1789, HMS Bounty sailed through the South Pacific under Captain William Bligh. The crew had spent five months in Tahiti, living in paradise...

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7Universal

245 words

Sermon Illustration

Glory and the Internment Camp

In 1924, Eric Liddell stood on the Olympic podium in Paris, a gold medal around his neck, the world cheering his name. The moment shimmered...

Mark 1:9-15Universal

252 words

Sermon Illustration

Hallelujah from the Ruins

In 1741, George Frideric Handel was a broken man. Four years earlier, a stroke had left his right hand partially paralyzed. His London operas were...

Universalhope

254 words

Sermon Illustration

The Bare Tree That Spoke to a Soldier

In the winter of 1632, an eighteen-year-old French soldier named Nicholas Herman stood staring at a leafless tree in the frozen countryside of Lorraine. The...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

228 words

Sermon Illustration

The Hands That Stayed on the Keys

Margaret Ellington taught piano in her living room in Savannah for forty-one years. She never once slapped a student's hand for hitting a wrong note....

Titus 2:11-12Universal

213 words

Sermon Illustration

The Nets Left Behind on Lake Victoria

In 2014, a young fisherman named David Ochieng worked the pre-dawn waters of Lake Victoria near Kisumu, Kenya. Fishing was all he knew — his...

Matthew 4:12-23Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

The Lawyer Who Stood Alone

In 1963, a young civil rights attorney named Constance Baker Motley walked into a Mississippi courtroom to argue for the admission of James Meredith to...

Romans 8:31Universal

220 words

Sermon Illustration

The Stockbroker Who Became a Father to 669

In December 1938, a twenty-nine-year-old London stockbroker named Nicholas Winton canceled his skiing holiday and traveled to Prague instead. What he found in the refugee...

Matthew 1:16, 18-21, 24aUniversal

245 words

Sermon Illustration

Buying a House in Detroit

In 2009, Detroit was a city the world had written off. Factories stood hollow. Entire neighborhoods lay abandoned, with houses selling for a dollar. Financial...

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

228 words

Sermon Illustration

The Habitat House on Millbrook Lane

In 2019, Maria Gonzalez and her three children moved into a Habitat for Humanity home on Millbrook Lane in Charlotte, North Carolina. Over four hundred...

1 Corinthians 6:12-20Universal

230 words

Sermon Illustration

George Müller's Morning Secret

In 1841, George Müller made a discovery that transformed the remaining fifty-seven years of his life. The German-born pastor in Bristol, England, had spent years...

Psalm 1Universal

236 words

Sermon Illustration

The Surgeon Who Showed His Scars

In 2018, a young woman named Maria sat in a consultation room at Johns Hopkins, terrified. She'd been diagnosed with a rare heart condition requiring...

John 20:19-31Universal

253 words

Sermon Illustration

Augustine's Garden

In the summer of 386 AD, a thirty-one-year-old rhetoric professor sat weeping beneath a fig tree in a Milan garden. Augustine of Hippo had spent...

Colossians 3:1-11Universal

245 words

Sermon Illustration

Eighty-Six Years of One Confession

In the year 155 AD, the Roman proconsul in Smyrna dragged an elderly bishop named Polycarp into a packed arena. The crowd howled for blood....

Romans 10:9Universal

236 words

Sermon Illustration

Shackleton's Men and the City They Could Not Find

In August 1916, Ernest Shackleton stood on the deck of the Chilean tug *Yelcho*, scanning the frozen horizon of Elephant Island. Somewhere on that barren...

Psalm 107:1-9, 43Universal

218 words

Sermon Illustration

The Coach's Whistle

When legendary basketball coach Dean Smith retired from the University of North Carolina in 1997, he left behind more than a record book. He left...

2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14Universal

223 words

Sermon Illustration

The Planet They Knew Before They Saw

In 1821, French astronomer Alexis Bouvard noticed something strange. Uranus wasn't following its predicted orbit. Something unseen was pulling at it — something massive and...

Hebrews 1:1-4Universal

244 words

Sermon Illustration

The Heir Caesar Chose in Advance

In 45 BC, a sickly eighteen-year-old named Gaius Octavius was studying rhetoric in Apollonia, a small coastal town in modern-day Albania. He had no army,...

Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-12Universal

266 words

Sermon Illustration

The Night the Codes Fell Silent

For four years, the French Resistance survived on fragments. Coded messages crackled through BBC radio broadcasts — instructions hidden inside poetry readings, weather reports laced...

Hebrews 1:1-4Universal

224 words

Sermon Illustration

The Bishop Who Barred an Emperor

In December of 390 AD, Emperor Theodosius rode toward the cathedral in Milan, expecting to enter as he always had — unchallenged, unchecked, draped in...

John 2:13-22Universal

225 words

Sermon Illustration

The Upside-Down Trophy Case

In 2018, a high school in San Antonio made national news — not for winning a championship, but for what happened during a basketball game...

Matthew 5:1-12aUniversal

228 words

Sermon Illustration

The Parlor Maid Who Crossed Mountains

In 1930, Gladys Aylward was a parlor maid in London earning barely enough to survive. The China Inland Mission had rejected her — too old...

Ephesians 3:20Universal

238 words

Sermon Illustration

The Archbishop Who Would Not Be Silent

On February 16, 1977, Anglican Archbishop Janani Luwum walked into Ugandan President Idi Amin's conference hall in Kampala, knowing he might not walk out. For...

Isaiah 50:4-9aUniversal

217 words