Sermon Illustrations

Great Christian leaders have known the necessity of coming to repentance and spending some time in intercession for those in harm’s way.

President Abraham Lincoln, in a National Proclamation of Prayer and Repentance in 1863 wrote, “We have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.” (The Presidential Prayer Team Website)

He also wrote, “I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom, and all that is about me, seemed insufficient… One stormy night I tossed on my bed, unable to sleep as I thought of the terrible sufferings of our soldiers... I spent an hour in agonizing prayer.” (The Presidential Prayer Team Website)

Tomorrow is “Memorial Day,” a national holiday set aside to honor American Servicemen and women who gave their lives in our country’s defense. They allowed themselves to be in harm’s way.

The losses in World War 1 numbered 116, 500 brave sons, in World War ll a total of 405,400 and the number of boys lost in our bloodiest war, the Civil War far exceeded that.

The most moving story about the observance of remembering those who gave their lives in war is about a woman in the south who was putting some flowers on the grave of a soldier from the North. This young soldier lost his life in the Civil War. When the other southern ladies...

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