Illustrations

Former college and pro basketball star Ed Macauley use to conduct summer basketball camps. At these camps he would stress the importance of giving your all by telling the campers: “Just remember that if you’re not working at your game to the utmost of your ability, there will be someone out there somewhere with equal ability who will be working to the utmost of his ability. And one day you’ll play each other, and he’ll have the advantage.” 

Source: Beyond Talent, John Maxwell

Submitted by the homiletics class of West Coast Baptist College

George Stott, a one-legged school teacher from Scotland, volunteered for missionary service in China. When asked why he with only one leg thought of going to China, he said, “I do not see those with two legs going, so I must.” Thus began his more than twenty years of missionary work in China.

Source: Twenty-six Years of Missionary Work in China, Grace Stott

“I’m against sin. I’ll kick it as long as I’ve got a foot, and I’ll fight it as long as I’ve got a fist. I’ll butt it as long as I’ve got a head. I’ll bite it as long as I’ve got a tooth. When I’m old and fistless and footless and toothless, I’ll gum it till I go home to Glory and it goes home to perdition.”—Billy Sunday

Source: Great Preaching on the Deity of Christ, Curtis Hutson

I am home in Heaven, dear ones;
Oh, so happy and so bright!
There is perfect joy and beauty
In this everlasting light.

All pain and grief is over,
Every restless tossing passed;
I am now at peace forever,
Safely home in Heaven at last.

Did you wonder I so calmly
Trod the valley of the shade?
Oh! But Jesus’ love illumined
Every dark and fearful glade.

Dr. Paul Brand was speaking to a medical college in India on Matthew 5:16: “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” In front of the lectern was an oil lamp, with its cotton wick burning from the shallow dish of oil. As he preached, the lamp ran out of oil, the wick burned dry, and the smoke made him cough. He immediately used the opportunity.

Arabian horses are trained rigorously in the  middle eastern deserts. The horses must learn to fully obey their master. This obedience is tested by depriving the horses of water for many days and then turning them loose near water. As the horses get to the edge of the water, and just before they drink of the much needed water. The trainer blows his whistle. If the horses have learned to obey they turn around and come back to the trainer who then gives them as much water as they need.

Someone asked an elderly Christian lady, “Does the devil ever trouble you about your past sins?” She answered, “Yes.” When the inquirer asked what she did then, she replied, “Oh, I just tell him to go east.”

“What do you do if he comes back?”

“I tell him to go west.”

“And when he comes back from the west, what do you do then?”

She said, “I just keep him going from the east to the west.”

“As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.” Psalm 103:12

When native converts of the island of Madagascar used to present themselves for baptism, it was often asked of them, “What first led you to think of becoming Christians?” The answer usually was that the changed conduct of others who had become Christians was what first arrested their attention.

The average cost of a heart transplant including the need for immunosuppressant drugs after the surgery is $864,700. Yet, the best heart transplant a man can receive costs him nothing and the new heart will never fail.

“A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.” Ezekiel 36:26

Source: The New York Times, May 16, 2010

Submitted by the homiletics class of West Coast Baptist College

Charles McCarry wrote several books, served as assistant to the Secretary of Labor in the Eisenhower cabinet, and did two stints in the CIA. What makes him remarkable? He almost wasn’t born.