Charismatic Illustrations

Show Don't Tell: Mark 14:1-11

Vivid sensory description for preaching Mark 14:1-11

222 words

The Altarpiece Nobody Was Meant to Enjoy

In a small monastery hospital in Isenheim, France, the sick and dying were carried past a painting that would change how they understood suffering. Matthias...

Universalsacrifice

237 words

Show Don't Tell: Psalm 18:20-50

Vivid sensory description for preaching Psalm 18:20-50

252 words

The Farmer's Almanac on Margaret's Kitchen Table

Every March, Margaret Calloway of Boone County, Kentucky, set her worn Farmer's Almanac on the kitchen windowsill and planned her garden by the sun. She...

James 1:17Universal

241 words

The Invisible Shield Four Hundred Miles Above Your Head

Every second of every day, a violent stream of charged particles races from the sun toward Earth at over a million miles per hour. This...

Psalm 121Universal

237 words

Vivid Retelling

Work Out What God Works In: Philippians 2:12-18

Experiential vignette showing Philippians 2:12-18 - working out salvation

603 words

Show Don't Tell: John 19:38-42

Vivid sensory description for preaching John 19:38-42

165 words

Show Don't Tell: Luke 3:7-18

Vivid sensory description for preaching Luke 3:7-18

250 words

1 Corinthians 6:12-20Universal

The Heart That Beat Twice

In 2018, a nineteen-year-old college student named Jordan Rice received a new heart after three years on the transplant waiting list at Emory University Hospital...

233 words

The Courage of One Sleepless Night

In Victor Hugo's *Les Misérables*, there is a chapter sometimes called "A Tempest in a Skull" that remains one of literature's most powerful portraits of...

Universalcourage

247 words

Psalm 139:1-3, 13-15Universal

Written Into the Fiber

In 1979, Jim Lewis and Jim Springer met for the first time at age thirty-nine. They were identical twins, separated at birth and raised by...

247 words

Show Don't Tell: Psalm 47

Vivid sensory description for preaching Psalm 47

191 words

The College President Who Saw the Fifteen-Year-Old Preacher

When Martin Luther King Jr. arrived at Morehouse College in 1944, he was just fifteen years old — a skinny kid from Atlanta who had...

John 1:43-51Universal

249 words

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

229 words

Show Don't Tell: John 4:31-38

Vivid sensory description for preaching John 4:31-38

158 words

The Missionary Who Became Chinese

In 1855, twenty-two-year-old Hudson Taylor arrived in Shanghai wearing a black English suit and speaking not a word of Mandarin. The Chinese people regarded him...

John 1:1-14Universal

231 words

1 Corinthians 15:55-57Universal

The Cure Made from the Venom

At the Australian Reptile Park north of Sydney, handlers milk eastern brown snakes — the second most venomous land snake on earth — by pressing...

207 words

The Skin You Cannot Shed

In C.S. Lewis's *The Voyage of the Dawn Treader*, a selfish boy named Eustace Scrubb falls asleep on a dragon's treasure hoard, nursing greedy thoughts....

Universalidentity

245 words

Show Don't Tell: Psalm 48

Vivid sensory description for preaching Psalm 48

237 words

Show Don't Tell: Luke 22:7-23

Vivid sensory description for preaching Luke 22:7-23

265 words

The Quiet Repair

In 2015, Swedish scientist Tomas Lindahl shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for a discovery that had puzzled researchers for decades. He proved that every...

Universalperseverance

232 words