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353 illustrations — Vivid stories and real-world analogies for sermon use
Every Sunday morning, the congregation at Grace Point Church in Long Beach, California, sang worship songs with hands raised and voices strong. But pastor Chris...
SermonWise.ai generates complete sermon outlines for any passage across 17 theological traditions. Try it with Isaiah.
In 1813, Elizabeth Fry walked through the iron gates of London's Newgate Prison and into a scene that made seasoned guards look away. Three hundred...
In January 1736, the ship Simmonds pitched violently in the North Atlantic as a winter gale tore its mainsail to shreds. Seawater poured across the...
On New Year's Day, 1863, thousands of formerly enslaved men, women, and children gathered at Camp Saxton near Beaufort, South Carolina. Ancient live oaks trailed...
In the autumn of 1904, a twenty-six-year-old Welsh coal miner named Evan Roberts could barely sleep. For thirteen years he had prayed the same desperate...
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...
On Christmas Day, 1909, a twenty-one-year-old seminary student named Toyohiko Kagawa walked into the Shinkawa slums of Kobe, Japan — six square blocks where fifteen...
In 1813, Elizabeth Fry stepped through the iron gates of London's Newgate Prison and found three hundred women and children crammed into two wards. The...
In 2019, cross-country coach Brad Holloway of Shelbyville, Indiana, watched his runner Jenna collapse at mile two of the state qualifier. She had trained all...
In 735 BC, King Ahaz stood in Jerusalem trembling. Two enemy armies were marching toward his gates. God, through the prophet Isaiah, offered him a...
When Marcus Chen arrived at a rehabilitation center in Portland after his stroke, his left hand was curled into a tight fist. The neurologist warned...
In December 1909, a twenty-one-year-old Japanese seminary student named Toyohiko Kagawa walked into the Shinkawa slums of Kobe — a six-block stretch of open sewers,...
In January 1907, fifteen hundred Korean Christians gathered at Jangdaehyeon Church in Pyongyang for a week of Bible study. The meetings began quietly — hymns,...
Every Sunday morning, the congregation at Grace Fellowship in Sacramento sang about God's provision. They tithed faithfully, attended Wednesday night Bible study, and fasted during...
In downtown Asheville, North Carolina, a ceramics studio called Earth and Fire offers a class they call "Second Chances." Instructor Maria Gonzalez takes pieces that...
Every Sunday morning, Margaret Chen arrived early at Grace Community Church in Naperville, Illinois. She arranged the altar flowers just so, ironed the communion linens...
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...
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...
In the 1760s, Josiah Wedgwood walked the factory floors of his Etruria Works in Staffordshire, England, with a wooden cane in one hand and an...
In April 1935, Hugh Hammond Bennett stood before a skeptical United States Senate, pleading for a radical new approach to saving America's ravaged Great Plains....
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....
For fifteen years, Ruth Halloran poured herself into the community garden on Maple Street in southeast Portland. She hauled in twelve tons of composted soil...
In 1514, a Spanish priest named Bartolomé de las Casas sat in his study on the island of Cuba, preparing a Pentecost sermon for his...
The first time twelve-year-old Samuel Whitfield stepped into his grandfather's forge in rural Tennessee, the heat nearly drove him back through the door. The furnace...