Sermon Illustrations

There’s a movie called “The Guardian” about training in the Coast Guard Academy. There’s one guy in the story who’s trying again after failing the program 2X before. There was a phase of the training that stopped him every time – practicing saving a drowning victim who’s panicked. The instructor comes up behind the trainee in the water and begins to grab him and take him under, because that’s what a drowning person often does. Every time this was happening, the trainee would panic. He’s in danger of flunking out again because of the way he fails to handle helping a panicked drowning person. Until, finally, he gets some encouragement, and some boldness, that helps him to respond differently.

The Guardian – scene where the guy nails the chief in order to “save him.”

Now, I don’t think we should nail lost people in the nose to calm them down so we can help them! But I do think it’s high time we quit failing because we’re timid, because we’re afraid to go after lost people, because they’re scary or complicated. We need to be bold, even rough at times, to save the lost, rather than allowing drowning people to take us under with them.