Sermon Illustrations

Wilma Rudolph, Stricken as a Child with Polio, Achieves Olympic Gold

Wilma didn’t get much of a head start in life. A bout with polio left her left leg crooked and her foot twisted inward so she had to wear leg braces. After seven years of painful therapy, she could walk without her braces. At age 12 Wilma tried out for a girls basketball team, but didn’t make it. Determined, she practiced with a girlfriend and two boys every day. The next year she made the team. When a college track coach saw her during a game, he talked her into letting him train her as a runner. By age 14 she had outrun the fastest sprinters in the U.S. In 1956 Wilma made the U.S. Olympic team, but showed poorly. That bitter disappointment motivated her to work harder for the 1960 Olympics in Rome--and there Wilma Rudolph won three gold medals, the most a woman had ever won. Today in the Word, Moody Bible Institute, Jan, 1992, p.10.

How many times have you felt like quitting? Quitting your family, your job, your church, how about the Lord? I know, we don’t like to admit it do we? But when we look at Jeremiah we find a man that wanted to quit and couldn’t. Let’s learn from him today.

From a sermon by Donnie De Loney, Where do you turn when the bottom falls out, 1/15/2010

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