Illustration results for hebrews 12
Free Memorial Day Resources
Sermons & Illustrations: Top SermonsTop Illustrations
Sermon & Worship Packages: Time to Remember
Vance Havner says, “God is faithful, and He expects His people to be faithful. God’s Word
speaks of faithful servants, faithful in a few things, faithful in the least, faithful in the Lord, faithful
ministers. And all points up that day when He will say, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”
“What terrible times we have in our churches trying to keep people faithful in attendance and
loyalty! How we reward and picnic and coax and tantalize church members into doing things they don’t
want to do but which they would do if they loved God! The only service that counts is faithful service..
“True faith shows up in faithfulness. Not everyone can sing or preach, but all can be faithful.”
STEERING YOUR SHIP IN A STORM
An old seaman once said, "During the fiercest storms the only way a ship can survive is to keep its nose pointed straight into the wind. If you try to turn to the left or the right, the ship may capsize. If you try to run from the wind, the waves can surge over the stern."
That's good advice for us. Whenever you're in a storm, don't turn away from God. Don't run from Him. Instead, turn straight toward Him and seek His face. When you're in the sunshine, you MAY have faith, but when you're in the storm you MUST have faith.
(From a sermon by Fred Markes, God Questions, 8/30/2011)
RUNNING WITH A STOPWATCH
Long-distance runner Paavo Nurmi of Finland was an Olympic champion, winning twelve medals (nine of them gold) in the 1920, 1924, and 1928 Games. Nurmi was famous not only for his achievements, but also for running with a stopwatch in his hand to check his performance. It’s good to know how you’re doing along the way if you want to win a long-distance race.
How’s your performance, your spiritual performance, that is? And what’s your spiritual stopwatch? It’s your Bible. We must check it often to see how well we are doing. And you won’t perform well if you don’t train well.
What is spiritual training? Bible study, prayer, worship, church, etc. And what are we pursuing in these? Righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. The Bible can change you if you’ll let it, because it’s the living, breathing Word of God! The Bible will keep you from sin or sin will keep you from the Bible.
(From a sermon by Steve Shepherd, The Pursuit of Holiness, 9/16/2011)
“Healed But Not Cured!” Hebrews 12: 5-12: Key verse(s): 6 “...because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son.”
Sickness! There isn’t a life that hasn’t been touched by it. And, when we count our blessings at the end of the day, we aren’t likely to include sickness as one of them. Being sick, whether that be the flu or Lou Gehrig’s disease, is never fun. Anyone who can link fun and feeling bad together would certainly have to be a bit of an illusionist. But, I have always been struck by a story that in many ways sheds a different light on what we normally ascribe to be bad fortune as illness and disease creep into our lives.
Many years ago down in Alabama the locals were looking forward to their annual cotton harvest. Cotton had been king in the south for decades and this year as in countless years past all hopes for profit and the good life were banking on cotton. Unfortunately, a little bug called a boll weevil had different plans. Migrating into an Alabama port from Mexico, the little black bug took aim on the thousands and thousands of acres of fields of cotton just coming into bloom. In the space of just a few months it had eaten its way across one county and started into another. It wasn’t long before pretty much most of Alabama was feeling the pinch. In the space of just a few years, 60% of the cotton harvest in the state was ruined. The cotton industry was sick unto death in Alabama and because in those days there was little in the way of pesticides to control the pest, many farmers just gave up farming altogether. Until one innovative farmer down in the southwest corner of the state where the weevil first attacked came up with a bold idea. What about peanuts? And, sure enough, within a decade a good deal of the prime cotton land was planted with peanuts. It wasn’t long before Alabama, especially the southwestern corner of the state, became prosperous again. In fact farmers soon found out that it was less expensive to plant, grow, maintain and harvest peanuts than it was cotton. Many marginal farming efforts were suddenly becoming quite profitable. A sickness that threatened to wipe out prosperity in Alabama suddenly became the catalyst for agricultural growth and unprecedented prosperity. The people of Alabama who at first greeted the boll weevil with dread and great despair were so overjoyed that they put up a monument to the little bug thanking it; for it had as an instrument of suffering become the means of great blessings.
Can sickness, even sickness unto death, be such a blessing for a Christian? On the surface it would seem not. How can a Christian do God’s will if he is lying in bed, flat on his back? How can pain, discomfort, medical treatment and surgery as well as the compounding effects of medication be in any way a blessed state? Tony Campolo tells a story about being in a church in Oregon where he was asked to pray for a man who had cancer. Campolo prayed boldly for the man’s healing. That next week he got a telephone call from the man’s wife. She said, “You prayed for my husband. He had cancer.” Campolo thought when he heard her use the past tense verb that his cancer had been eradicated! But before he could think much about it she said, “He died.” Campolo felt terrible. But she continued, “Don’t feel bad. When he came into that church that Sunday he was filled with anger. He knew he was going to be dead in a short period of time, and he hated God. He was 58 years old, and he wanted to see his children and grandchildren grow up. He was angry that this all-powerful God didn’t take away his sickness and heal him. He would lie in bed and curse God. The more his anger grew towards God, the more miserable he was to everybody a...
DO YOU KNOW YOUR BUSINESS?
There was once a sign on a door that read: "Gone out of business. Didn’t know what our business was."
Do you know what your business is in this world? More than anything it should be the pursuit of holiness by pursuing God.
(From a sermon by Steve Shepherd, The Pursuit of Holiness, 9/16/2011)
MICHAEL JORDAN: PERSEVERE
In the fall of 1978, fifteen-year-old Michael Jordan tried out for the varsity basketball team at Emsley A. Laney High School in Wilmington, North Carolina. The sophomore was 5 feet 11 inches and with his skills, the coach told him that he was not good enough, and Michael was cut from the team.
The following summer, however, Michael grew four inches and he trained rigorously. Upon earning a spot on the varsity roster, he averaged about 25 points per game over his final two seasons of high school play. As a senior, he was selected to the McDonald’s All-American Team.
"When I got cut from the varsity team as a sophomore in high school, I learned something. I knew I never wanted to feel that bad again. I never wanted to have that taste in my mouth, that hole in my stomach. So I set a goal of becoming a starter on the varsity," said Michael Jordan. He went on to play professionally in the National Basketball Association, and is arguably the finest player in basketball history.
If the Lord is calling you to do a work, persevere! He who called you will provide the means to succeed.
(Aquilla Webb, One Thousand Evangelistic Illustrations, Database © 2006 WORDsearch Corp. From a sermon by Donnie Martin, Parting Words from Paul, 9/21/2011)
It is a narrow way. It is a difficult road. We have to leave much behind: our wants, our needs, our baggage, and our misconceptions. One time when we were first married, Kendra and I planned a trip to Cedar Point. I like to save money so we stayed in a hotel about twenty minutes from the point. It was a Best Western so I thought it was pretty safe (this was before the Internet where you can now see the hotel before you stay). This was not a hotel. It was a motel. I will never understand how they had managed to get the Best Western name. It was one of those places that all the room entrances are on the outside like the city motel downtown on 6th St. As I brought in our luggage for the stay, I tried to make one trip and load three or four bags. But I could not get through the door. The doorway was so small and narrow there was no way to get through the door with all that baggage. I had to set down the bags and take them one at a time.
There are a lot of people that have grown comfortable with their baggage. Whether it is emotional baggage from their childhood or from messy relationships or the baggage of bad theological belief systems that they were taught (and perhaps misunderstood) but never closely examined. Sometimes we even carry baggage of emotional immaturity that weighs us down and causes us incredible discomfort and pain as well as becomes stumbling blocks for others. But we are used to them and don’t want to go through the trouble and pain of discarding them. It is easier to stay stuck in the past. It is a road well-traveled and familiar.
Imagine a group of people coming to your home and interrupting your Twinkie-eating, TV-watching routine with an urgent message: “Good News! We’re from the United States Olympic Committee. We have been looking for someone to run the marathon in the next Olympics. We have statistics on every person in the entire nation on computer. We have checked everybody’s records – their performance in the president’s fitness test in grade school, body type, bone structure, right down to their current percentage of body fat. We have determined that out of two hundred million people, you are the one person in America with a chance to bring home the gold medal in the marathon. So you are on the squad. You will run the race. This is the chance of a lifetime.”
You are surprised by this because the farthest you have ever run is from the couch to the refrigerator. But after the first shock passes, you are gripped by the realization of what’s happening in your life. You picture yourself mingling with the elite athletes of the world. You allow yourself to imagine that maybe you do have what it takes. At night you dream about standing on the podium after the race and hearing the national anthem, seeing the flag raised, and bending low to receive the gold medal.
You begin to feel a sense of urgency. It will be your body wearing those little racing togs, with a billion people watching on television. But greater than any external pressure is the internal drive that says, “This is the race I was created to run. This is my destiny. This is why I was born. Here’s my chance!”
This race becomes the great passion of your life. It dominates your mind. It occupies every waking moment. To run the race – to win if you can – become the central focus of your existence. It is what gets you out of bed in the mor...
MELIORISM
Have you ever heard of Meliorism? Here is what one person said about it. "I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist. I am a Meliorist. Meliorism cancels out optimism as being too bright, too airy; and rejects pessimism as being too dull, too heavy. Take life as it is, says the meliorist, with much that is dark, evil and undesirable: Life may be difficult but it can be changed."
At first glance, this sounds pretty good, however, the meliorist doesn’t consider God. God is not included in the picture of change. And this is where we come in. And this is what we believe in very strongly! Christ is the author of change in our lives!
(Steve Shepherd "In This You Greatly Rejoice" 1/19/2009)
WHAT HOLINESS IS NOT
John Charles Ryle, Anglican bishop of Liverpool in the 19th century speaks of holiness. He says, "It is not knowledge...nor great profession...nor doing many things...nor zeal for certain matters in religion..." He continues that holiness is not "morality and outward respectability of conduct, nor taking pleasure in hearing preachers, nor keeping company with godly people. These things alone are not holiness. A man may have any one of them, and yet never see the Lord."
(From a sermon by Dale Pilgrim, "Service - Pit Stops Along the Way" 1/19/2009)
Pastor's MediaVault
