Illustration results for Assurance of Salvation
Free Memorial Day Resources
Sermons & Illustrations: Top SermonsTop Illustrations
Sermon & Worship Packages: Time to Remember
There was a king who had all his world could afford. The thing he loved most, however, was to laugh.
Once while being entertained a jester came along wishing to join in the festival of activities and also wishing to perform for him. His opportunity came and he put the best comical show together he had ever done and the king never laughed so hard.
Once the activity was all over the king wanted to hire this jester to be his personal jester. Once hired the king in humor handed him a small stick and said, "You are the most foolish man alive. When you find someone more foolish than you, then you give them this stick," and the king laughed hartily.
After many years had passed by the king lay sick on his death bed ready to go at any moment. He called for his jester, for he wanted to laugh one more time before he died. When the jester was through he asked to speak to the king personally.
Once alone with the king the jester asked, "king where are you going?" The king responded, "on a far journey." The jester asked again, "and how do you plan to get there?" Again the king responded, "I don’t know." Then the jester pulled the stick from his back pocket and handed it to the king. The king was stunned and asked why he had given him the stick. The jester replied, "King today I have found a more foolish man than I. For you see, I only trifled with the things of life, but you have trifled with things of eternity!"
.V. McGee estimates that 75% of the members of the average church might not be genuinely saved.(religious club) Billy Graham states that 80% of those who make salvation decision in his crusades are already on a church roll somewhere.
The phone rang. Dad put down his garden tools, wiped the sweat from his face and rushed into the house to grab the phone before its final ring. With his mind on his Saturday morning chores, he didn’t notice the sliding glass patio door was closed.
Mom found him in a pool of blood with glass chards laying beside him. Frantically, Mom called 911. The dispatcher couldn’t send any help, it seems that my parent’s address was on the wrong side of an arbitrary bureaucratic line. Mom would have to call someone else.
Afraid there wasn’t enough time to make another phone call, Mom managed to get Dad in the front seat of the car to take him to the hospital herself. Instead of getting on the freeway and driving to downtown Ft. Worth, she took a side street to a hospital that was closer.
Traffic was heavy. Blood was pouring into the floorboard of the car. Time slowed down. Dad was bleeding to death. Mom was desperate.
My Dad was dying and Mom felt helpless. Traffic was at a standstill. Mom saw the looks on the driver’s faces as they pointed to the bleeding man, her husband in the car next to them. She honked the horn, but no one pulled over to let her by. No one offered to help. At that moment she would have done anything to get Dad the help he needed. It was surreal. The strong man who had always provided for her and always protected her was wilting away before her very eyes. He needed help. She had to get him some help.
I can only imagine my Mom’s relief as she turned into the entry way of the emergency room at the hospital. Attendants put Dad on a Gurney and wheeled him in. I was a freshman in college when this all happened. I can still remember the tremor in my Mother’s voice when she called to tell me about it.
Dad was pretty beat up. His face was scarred and the glass had cut a major blood vessel in his leg. In the early hours, it looked like he would live, but the doctors weren’t sure if they could save Dad’s leg.
Dad was confined to a wheel chair when he went home, but he kept serving the Lord. Each week, some men from the church would help him get up on stage and he would preach his sermon. One Sunday, he forgot about his leg and walked to the pulpit, stood and began preaching. The congregation gasped. God healed him. He never used the wheelchair again.
Dad doesn’t talk about his healing much. While acknowledging the fact that God performed a miracle in his life, saved his leg and healed his body, he prefers to talk about a greater miracle. The day God saved his soul and made him a new man.
GOING NO WHERE FAST
In his book "Growing Strong in the Seasons of Life", the author Charles Swindoll tells a story about the 19th Century agnostic Thomas Huxley (some of you might know that it was Huxley who promoted Darwinism and Humanism in his attacks on Christianity). Huxley was in Dublin and was rushing to catch a train. He climbed aboard one of Dublin’s famous horse drawn taxis and said to the driver -"Hurry, I’m almost late ... drive fast". Off they went at a furious pace and Huxley sat back in his seat and closed his eyes. After a while Huxley opened his eyes and glanced out the window to notice that they were going in the wrong direction. Realizing that he hadn’t told the driver where to take him he called out ‘do you know wher...
JOHN WOODEN: won many college basketball national championships in a row while at UCLA. Was asked, ‘What does it take to make a winning team? THREE THINGS
1) Get players in right condition (right with God/Salvation)
2) Team them the fundamentals (Discipleship)
3) Teach them to play together as a team (fellowship)
Back in 1830 George Wilson was convicted of robbing the U.S. Mail and was sentenced to be hanged. President Andrew Jackson issued a pardon for Wilson, but he refused to accept it. The matter went to Chief Justice Marshall, who concluded that Wilson would have to be executed. "A pardon is a slip of paper," wrote Marshall, "the value of which is determined by the acceptance of the person to be pardoned. If it is refused, it is no pardon. George Wilson must be hanged."
2,000 years ago God the Son – Jesus the Christ issues a pardon….
BUT just like in the case of George Wilson – the value of the pardon is determined by the acceptance of the person to be pardoned… If it is refused, it is no pardon….
Years ago, my youngest daughter, Marilyn, and I went shopping for Connie. It’s hard. You wives, it’s hard for a man to shop for his wife because we don’t know what you want, and we don’t want to get that for you, anyway.
But Marilyn and I thought we had found the perfect gift: a nightgown. You can always use a nightgown. It’s something that you use every day. This one was very special. It had a tag on it that said One Size Fits All. Connie opened it up, and you know what? That tag was right. It fits all! It would have fit me and her and Marilyn and the other two girls all at the same time!
My point is simply this: if there ever was a gift that was given that is so large, and so great, that one size truly fits all it’s the gift of eternal life; the gift of forgiveness of sins; the gift of salvation that comes through Jesus Christ our Lord.
It is dangerous to base our salvation experience entirely upon feeling. Knowing that, and acting upon it, are still sometimes strangers. Like the psychiatrist who took on a very disturbed man as a patient. The man thought he was dead. No matter what techniques the doctor tried, the man still thought he was dead. Finally the shrink tried one last desperate strategy. He asked the man if dead men bleed. "Of course not," said the patient, "they’re dead." With that the doctor pricked the ...
Illus.: “When Blind Eyes Were Opened”
D.L. Moody, the famed evangelist, told this story at one of his meetings: One evening just before Christmas, a man was walking through the streets of an Eastern city. The store windows were all beautifully decorated, and he observed three little girls intensely interested in one of them. He discovered that the girl in the center was blind, and the others were trying to describe the beautiful things in the window. “Why,” they said, “can’t you see that Teddy bear and that doll? Just look at that pretty pink bow!”
But the poor little girl stood with a blank expression on her face and could not appreciate the beautiful things before her. “Now,” said Moody, “this is an illustration of the effort we Christians are making to arouse the unconverted to an interest and delight in spiritual things. The reason we can’t do so is because the sinner is spiritually blind.” Moody had scarcely concluded when a reporter was on the platform asking him where he had heard that story. “Oh,” said Moody, “I read it in one of those daily papers. I have forgotten which one.” Then the reporter said, “I’m the one who wrote the story because I was there and saw the whole thing. I see now that I’m just like that little girl, spiritually blind.” That man was converted then and there.
Spurgen writes,
“ The sense is, it is the Lord alone that saves and blesses: and even though the whole mass of all evils should be gathered together in one against a man, still, it is the Lord who saves: salvation and blessing are in his hands.”
Pastor's MediaVault
