Illustrations

Tancredo Neves ran for the presidency of Brazil in the 1980s. He boldly declared that if he got 500,000 votes from his own party, not even God could keep him from being president. He won the election, but one day later he got sick and died. There is no way to know if God accepted his challenge, but what we can know for sure is that human beings should not make such bold, arrogant statements.

Source: Unknown

Submitted by the homiletics class of West Coast Baptist College

Mike listened to a lecture on the importance of showing appreciation to the important people in his life. Mike decided to start with his wife, so after work that night, he went to the shopping mall where he bought a dozen long-stemmed roses, a box of chocolates, and a pair of earrings. He smiled with self-satisfaction as he contemplated surprising his wife and showing her how much he appreciated her.

A young couple moved into a new neighborhood. The next morning while they are eating breakfast, the young woman saw her neighbor hanging her wash to dry. “That laundry is not very clean,” she said. “She doesn’t know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better laundry soap.” Her husband looked on, but remained silent. Every time her neighbor hung her wash to dry, the young woman repeated her observations about the dirty laundry.

When Hudson Taylor sailed to China, he heard an urgent knock on his stateroom door. He opened it, and there stood the captain of the ship. “Mr. Taylor,” he said, “we have no wind. We are drifting toward an island where the people are heathen, and I fear they are cannibals.”

“What can I do?” asked Taylor.

“I understand that you believe in God. I want you to pray for wind.”

“All right, Captain, I will, but you must set the sail.”

Thomas Obediah Chisholm was born in a log cabin in Franklin, Kentucky in 1866. He received his education in a little country schoolhouse, and at age 16 began teaching there. He was saved at age 27, and with no college or seminary training was ordained to the Methodist ministry at age 36. He served as a Methodist minister for a year, but ill health made it impossible for him to continue. He moved to Vineland, New Jersey, where he opened an insurance office.

When a flock of crows invades a field of corn, the birds customarily station two sentries in a nearby tree to keep watch and warn the rest of any danger. Once, two people succeeded in sneaking up on a flock of crows and scaring them before the sentries had given warning. The birds burst into flight, immediately attacked and killed the two sentries, and then flew off. The irresponsibility of those sentries could have cost the entire flock their life.

When Christian Herter was governor of Massachusetts, he was running hard for a second term in office. One day, after a busy morning chasing votes he arrived at a church barbecue. It was late afternoon and Herter was famished. As Herter moved down the serving line, he held out his plate to the woman serving chicken. She put a piece on his plate and turned to the next person in line.

“Excuse me,” Governor Herter said, “do you mind if I have another piece of chicken?”

“Sorry,” the woman told him. “I’m supposed to give one piece of chicken to each person.”

Dr. George Wald (co Nobel Prize winner in Biology and professor of Biology at Harvard) said:

Normally the flight from Nassau to Miami took Walter Wyatt, Jr., only sixty-five minutes. But on December 5, 1986, he attempted it after thieves had looted the navigational equipment in his Beechcraft. With only a compass and a hand-held radio, Walter flew into skies blackened by storm clouds.

There was a long line at the supermarket check-out stand, and the harried clerk had just finished bagging a long order. As the clerk lifted the final bag for the customer, the bottom gave way, sending the contents crashing to the floor.

“They just don’t make these bags like they used to,” the clerk told the customer. “That was supposed to happen in your driveway!”

Source: Unknown

Submitted by the homiletics class of West Coast Baptist College