Illustrations Archives

• Prodigal Son  (July 20, 2007)
  A Chinese artist was commissioned to portray the parable of the prodigal son. So he chose that part of the story where the wayward boy returns home after having wasted his resources in reckless living. He depicted the father standing by the gate waiting for his son, who could be seen appr
• Procrastination  (July 20, 2007)
  I spent a fortune On a trampoline, A stationary bike And a rowing machine Complete with gadgets To read my pulse, And gadgets to prove My progress results, And others to show The miles I've charted - But they left off the gadget To get me started! The gadget that can get you starte
• Pride  (July 20, 2007)
  Before the United States pulled its troops out of Lebanon, Anthony Lewis wrote a column titled, "The Longer We Stay, The Harder It Will Be to Get Out." He was concerned about the "no turning back" pressure that seemed to grow daily as the U.S. watched the marines become more and more invo
• Prayer  (July 20, 2007)
  A convention was called in 1787 in America to revise the Articles of Confederation. For weeks delegates reviewed ancient history and analyzed governments of modern Europe in search of insights. But nothing suited the circumstances of this infant nation. Finally, one of the distinguished g
• The Lord's Prayer  (July 20, 2007)
  One evening, a little girl was saying bedtime prayers with her mother. "Dear Harold, please bless Mother and Daddy and all my friends," she prayed.
• The Cup  (July 20, 2007)
  Edinburgh, Scotland has a new museum with objects depicting the land's long and varied history. There are ancient rock carvings and almost modern furniture as it might have been seen in a Glasgow tea room at the turn of the century. No object is more interesting than an ornamental drinking cup.
• The Bible  (July 20, 2007)
  As an illustration of "learned" scholars tampering with the Scriptures, I quote from a newspaper article: "An electronic computer figures that St. Paul is the author of only four of the 14 epistles attributed to him in the New Testament. Two researchers fed the computer a quarter of a million words of the Greek prose to reach this conclusion.
• The Bible  (July 20, 2007)
  Paul explicitly states that the sword of the Spirit is Scripture, the word of God. The Scottish pastor and writer Thomas Cuthrie said, "The Bible is an armory of heavenly weapons,
• The Bible  (July 20, 2007)
  Henry Ford is credited with saying, "Cut your own wood and you warm yourself twice." What he meant was that the man who chops his own firewood not only enjoys the heat form the logs burning in his fireplace, but he also gets physically warmed from the exercise involved in his labor.
• Young People  (July 20, 2007)
  In 10 minutes some very disturbing things will happen to America's youth:
• Worship of Christ  (July 20, 2007)
  I love what Corrie Ten Boom once taught me. She said, "Jill, people thank me so much, and it used to worry me because I didn't want to get a big head.
• Thankfulness  (July 20, 2007)
  Be grateful? ? for automatic dishwashers. They make it possible to get out of the kitchen before the family comes in for their after-dinner snacks.
• Thankfulness  (July 20, 2007)
  Corrie Ten Boom in The Hiding Place relates an incident which taught her this principle. She and her sister, Betsy, had just been transferred to the worst German prison camp they had seen yet, Ravensbruck.
• Worship  (July 20, 2007)
  The smallest Indian reservation in North America belongs to the Mattaponi tribe in eastern Virginia. The reservation consists of only 125 acres.
• Worry  (July 20, 2007)
  According to John MacArthur, some years ago, the Mayo Clinic stated that statistically 80 percent of their total case load were ill either in reality or artificially due directly to mental stress.
• Worldly Wisdom  (July 20, 2007)
  Dale Carnegie knew the techniques for "positive thinking" and "self-confidence." He could even teach people to overcome worry with his techniques, but in the end, peace eluded him and he committed suicide.
• Works  (July 20, 2007)
  When H.M. Stanley went to Africa in 1871 to find and report on David Livingstone, he spent several months in the missionary's company, carefully observing the man and his work.
• Work of Ministers  (July 20, 2007)
  Share this one at your next pastor's meeting: It's time to consider whether your ministry is finished when?
• Witnessing To The Truth  (July 20, 2007)
  Someone has defined tact as "dealing with others as we would have them deal with us." The word comes from the Latin term tactus and means "to touch."
• Virgins  (July 20, 2007)
  In a world searching for the latest and best ways to have sex, virginity has become an embarrassment. This is to be expected in a society that preaches pleasure, but not in the church where virtue is assumed but not taught. After all, people reason, what is there to write about abstaining?