God needs to speak louder!

My five-year-old daughter, Barbara, had disobeyed me and had been sent to her room. After a few minutes, I went in to talk with her about what she had done. Teary-eyed, she asked, "Why do we do wrong things, Mommy?"

"Sometimes the devil tells us to do something wrong," I replied, "and we listen to him. We need to listen to God instead."

To which she sobbed, "But God doesn't talk loud enough!"

Citation: Jo M. Guerrero, Christian Reader (September/October 1996)

Illustrations for Every Topic and Occasion - – Perfect Illustrations: For Every Topic and Occasion.

Everything I touch hurts!

A man went to see his doctor in an acute state of anxiety. "Doctor," he said, "you have to help me. I'm dying. Everywhere I touch it hurts. I touch my head and it hurts. I touch my leg and it hurts. I touch my stomach and it hurts. I touch my chest and it hurts. You have to help me, Doc, everything hurts."

The doctor gave him a complete examination. "Mr. Smith," he said, "I have good news and bad news for you. The good news is you are not dying. The bad news is you have a broken finger."

Citation: David Holdaway; Stonehaven, Kincardinshire, Scotland

Illustrations for Every Topic and Occasion - . – More Perfect Illustrations: For Every Topic and Occasion.

One Solitary Life

He was born in an obscure village
The child of a peasant woman
He grew up in another obscure village
Where he worked in a carpenter shop
Until he was thirty

He never wrote a book
He never held an office
He never went to college
He never visited a big city
He never travelled more than two hundred miles
From the place where he was born
He did none of the things
Usually associated with greatness
He had no credentials but himself

He was only thirty three

His friends ran away
One of them denied him
He was turned over to his enemies
And went through the mockery of a trial
He was nailed to a cross between two thieves
While dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing
The only property he had on earth

When he was dead
He was laid in a borrowed grave
Through the pity of a friend

Nineteen centuries have come and gone
And today Jesus is the central figure of the human race
And the leader of mankind's progress
All the armies that have ever marched
All the navies that have ever sailed
All the parliaments that have ever sat
All the kings that ever reigned put together
Have not affected the life of mankind on earth
As powerfully as that one solitary life

That man and the birds in the snow

Now the man to whom I'm going to introduce you was not a scrooge, he was a kind, decent, mostly good man. Generous to his family, upright in his dealings with other men. But he just didn't believe all that incarnation stuff which the churches proclaim at Christmas Time. It just didn't make sense and he was too honest to pretend otherwise. He just couldn't swallow the Jesus Story, about God coming to Earth as a man. "I'm truly sorry to distress you," he told his wife, "but I'm not going with you to church this Christmas Eve." He said he'd feel like a hypocrite. That he'd much rather just stay at home, but that he would wait up for them. And so he stayed and they went to the midnight service.

Shortly after the family drove away in the car, snow began to fall. He went to the window to watch the flurries getting heavier and heavier and then went back to his fireside chair and began to read his newspaper. Minutes later he was startled by a thudding sound. Then another, and then another. Sort of a thump or a thud. At first he thought someone must be throwing snowballs against his living room window. But when he went to the front door to investigate he found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They'd been caught in the storm and, in a desperate search for shelter, had tried to fly through his large landscape window.

Well, he couldn't let the poor creatures lie there and freeze, so he remembered the barn where his children stabled their pony. That would provide a warm shelter, if he could direct the birds to it. Quickly he put on a coat, galoshes, tramped through the deepening snow to the barn. He opened the doors wide and turned on a light, but the birds did not come in. He figured food would entice them in. So he hurried back to the house, fetched bread crumbs, sprinkled them on the snow, making a trail to the yellow-lighted wide open doorway of the stable. But to his dismay, the birds ignored the bread crumbs, and continued to flap around helplessly in the snow. He tried catching them. He tried shooing them into the barn by walking around them waving his arms. Instead, they scattered in every direction, except into the warm, lighted barn.

And then, he realized, that they were afraid of him. To them, he reasoned, I am a strange and terrifying creature. If only I could think of some way to let them know that they can trust me. That I am not trying to hurt them, but to help them. But how? Because any move he made tended to frighten them, confuse them. They just would not follow. They would not be led or shooed because they feared him. "If only I could be a bird," he thought to himself, "and mingle with them and speak their language. Then I could tell them not to be afraid. Then I could show them the way to safety ... to the safe warm barn. But I would have to be one of them so they could see, and hear and understand."

At that moment the church bells began to ring. The sound reached his ears above the sounds of the wind. And he stood there listening to the bells - Adeste Fidelis - listening to the bells pealing the glad tidings of Christmas. And he sank to his knees in the snow.

-- Author Unknown --
(Shared by Paul Harvey on his radio show)

Is following Jesus easy or hard?

Following Jesus seemed easy enough at first, but that was because they had not followed him very far. It soon became apparent that being a disciple of Christ involved far more than a joyful acceptance of the Messianic promise: it meant the surrender of one's whole life to the Master in absolute submission to his sovereignty. There could be no compromise. "No servant can serve two masters," Jesus said, "for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon" (Luke 16:13). There had to be a complete forsaking of sin. The old thought patterns, habits, and pleasures of the world had to be conformed to the new disciplines of the kingdom of God (Matt. 5:1-7:29; Luke 6:20-49). Perfection of love was now the only standard of conduct (Matt. 5:48), and this love was to manifest itself in obedience to Christ (John 14:21, 23) expressed in devotion to those whom he died to save (Matt. 25:31-36). There was a cross in it—the willing denial of self for others (Mark 8:34-38; 10:32-45; Matt. 16:24-26; 20:17-28; Luke 9:23-25; John 12:25-26; 13:1-20).The Master Plan of Evangelism.

Fishing for men

Jens Oveson was fishing for salmon in central Norway's Gaula River when he was swept away by a strong current. Kjell Wilhelmsen, 55, spotted the man's struggle. Wilhelmsen had fished the river for 25 years and knew where the current would carry Oveson. Wilhelmsen ran across a bridge, waiting for Oveson as the current carried him downriver.

Wilhelmsen later told a newspaper, "He seemed paralyzed. Only his face and the tips of his boots were above water. I decided to start casting."

His homemade lure hooked Oveson's rubber waders on the first cast of about ten yards. But Oveson weighed nearly 250 pounds. Wilhelmsen used every trick he knew to reel in the big man without breaking his light line. He landed the half-conscious Dane and hauled him onto the shore. Oveson survived the ordeal.

Citation: "Fisherman Hooks Drowning Dane to Save His Life," The Wenatchee World (7-20-01); submitted by Jay Caron; Wenatchee, Washington

Illustrations for Every Topic and Occasion - . – More Perfect Illustrations: For Every Topic and Occasion.

The high cost of laziness.

"If a man will not work, he shall not eat." That may sound hard, but the wisdom of that Scripture is seen in the story of one New York man.

According to the Associated Press, this thirty-six-year-old resident of New York was quoted as saying, "I like to live decent. I like to be clean." Nothing wrong with that; the only problem was he didn't like to work. So he found other ways to satisfy his cultured tastes.

He would walk into a fine restaurant, order top cuisine and choice liquor, and then when the check arrived, shrug his shoulders and wait for the police. The sometimes homeless man actually wanted to end up in the slammer, where he would get three meals a day and a clean bed. He has pled guilty to stealing a restaurant meal thirty-one times. In 1994 he served ninety days at the Rikers Island jail for filching a meal from a cafe in Rockefeller Center.

New York taxpayers have paid more than a quarter of a million dollars over five years to feed, clothe, and house one lazy man.

750 Engaging Illustrations.

Happiness -- John Piper.

Well, that was one.Now here I am a teenager, knowing, perhaps not as clearly from Scripture, but from my own soul,that I had another passion. I wanted to be happy. I couldn't get rid of it. As much as I heard certain spokesmen in my church talk about the denial of my own desires in order to do God's desires, that paradigmnever ended it. I wanted to be happy.

Call it what you will: joy, satisfaction, contentment. It doesn't matter, they are all in the Bible. The Bible is indiscriminate in its pleasure language. If you have nice little categories for "joy is what Christians have" and "happiness is what the world has," you can scrap those when you go to the Bible, becausethe Bible is indiscriminate in its uses of the language of happiness and joy and contentment and satisfaction. It is lavish in all of them, and none of them is chosen above the other.

So, I was torn in those days. I cast about as I finished Wheaton College and went out to Fuller Seminary, looking desperately for some unifying thing. "Let Your Passion Be Single" is my topic tonight. And that's been the passion of my life for all these years. I must have a single passion. I can't have a divided heart.

"Unite my heart O God to fear thy name" is the great goal of our lives. (Psalm 86:11) To have a united, not a divided heart. I couldn't deny the one from Scripture. I couldn't deny the other from experience. I also couldn't deny it from reading. I was looking around to see whether I was the only one in the world who felt this way.

All Men Seek Happiness

In reading Pascal, I read,

All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.¹

Well, that seems to be what I think, too. To find it in the Pensées gave me encouragement that this other passion to be happy was universal, undeniable and just as unavoidable as hunger in the stomach. How does it fit with this tremendously central, biblical passion for the glory of God?

Well I got help. First, from C.S. Lewis and then from Jonathan Edwards, and then the Bible broke open to me. So I want to tell you how Lewis helped me, then how Edwards helped me, and then spend some time showing that the Bible undergirds these things profoundly.

C.S. Lewis: Praise Is Joy's Consummation

Lewis had an awful time accepting God's centrality in the Bible. He called the demands for praise in the Psalms, when he was still an atheist, the soundings of an old woman seeking compliments for herself. That's the way God sounded to him when the Psalms said, "Praise the Lord." But this is God's word, and it says over and over again, "Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!" So, you have God up there saying, "Praise me! Praise me! Praise me!" which sounded very vain to Lewis.

Then in this life-changing page in Reflections on the Psalms, I read this:

But the most obvious fact about praise—whether of God or anything—strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise...

The world rings with praise—lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game...My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can't help doing, about everything else we value.I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.²

That was almost the solution. Very close. That set my feet to dancing. That praise giving glory to God was described by Lewis as not something different from joy but joy in consummation—O, that's so close to having them be one passion.

Whose cell phone is this?

MATERIALISM

IMPOSTOR HUSBAND SPENDS THOUSANDS

Proverbs 11:24-25; Ecclesiastes 5:8-15; Ephesians 5:25

Deception; Family; Generosity; Golden Rule; Marriage; Materialism; Money; Responsibility

Several men in the locker room of a private exercise club were talking when a cell phone lying on the bench rang. One man picked it up without hesitation, and the following conversation ensued:

"Hello?"

"Honey, It's me."

"Sugar!"

"I'm at the mall two blocks from the club. I saw a beautiful mink coat. It is absolutely gorgeous! Can I buy it? It's only $1,500."

"Well, okay, if you like it that much."

"Thanks! Oh, and I also stopped by the Mercedes dealership and saw the new models. I saw one I really liked. I spoke with the salesman, and he gave me a great price."

"How much?"

"Only $60,000!"

"Okay, but for that price I want it with all the options."

"Great! Before we hang up, there's something else. It might seem like a lot, but, well, I stopped by to see the real estate agent this morning, and I saw the house we had looked at last year. It's on sale! Remember? The beachfront property with the pool and the English garden?"

"How much are they asking?"

"Only $450,000, a magnificent price, and we have that much in the bank to cover it."

"Well then, go ahead and buy it, but put in a bid for only $420,000, okay?"

"Okay, sweetie. Thanks! I'll see you later! I love you!" "I love you, too."

The man hung up, closed the phone's flap, and raised it aloft, asking, "Does anyone know who this cell phone belongs to?"

Citation: John Fehlen; Stanwood, Washington

Illustrations for Every Topic and Occasion - . – More Perfect Illustrations: For Every Topic and Occasion.

Christian Hedonism

When I was in college, I had a vague, pervasive notion that if I did something good because it would make me happy, I would ruin its goodness.

I figured that the goodness of my moral action was lessened to the degree that I was motivated by a desire for my own pleasure. At the time, buying ice cream in the student center just for pleasure didn't bother me, because the moral consequences of that action seemed so insignificant. But to be motivated by a desire for happiness or pleasure when I volunteered for Christian service or went to church—that seemed selfish, utilitarian, mercenary.

This was a problem for me because I couldn't formulate an alternative motive that worked. I found in myself an overwhelming longing to be happy, a tremendously powerful impulse to seek pleasure, yet at every point of moral decision I said to myself that this impulse should have no influence.

One of the most frustrating areas was that of worship and praise. My vague notion that the higher the activity, the less there must be of self-interest in it caused me to think of worship almost solely in terms of duty. And that cuts the heart out of it.

Then I was converted to Christian Hedonism. In a matter of weeks I came to see that it is unbiblical and arrogant to try to worship God for any other reason than the pleasure to be had in Him. (Don't miss those last two words: in Him. Not His gifts, but Him. Not ourselves, but Him.) Let me describe the series of insights that made me a Christian Hedonist. Along the way, I hope it will become clear what I mean by this strange phrase.

1. During my first quarter in seminary, I was introduced to the argument for Christian Hedonism and one of its great exponents, Blaise Pascal. He wrote:

All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.

This statement so fit with my own deep longings, and all that I had ever seen in others, that I accepted it and have never found any reason to doubt it. What struck me especially was that Pascal was not making any moral judgment about this fact. As far as he was concerned, seeking one's own happiness is not a sin; it is a simple given in human nature. It is a law of the human heart, as gravity is a law of nature.

This thought made great sense to me and opened the way for the second discovery.

2. I had grown to love the works of C. S. Lewis in college. But not until later did I buy the sermon called "The Weight of Glory." The first page of that sermon is one of the most influential pages of literature I have ever read. It goes like this:

If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.

If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

There it was in black and white, and to my mind it was totally compelling: It is not a bad thing to desire our own good. In fact, the great problem of human beings is that they are far too easily pleased. They don't seek pleasure with nearly the resolve and passion that they should. And so they settle for mud pies of appetite instead of infinite delight.

I had never in my whole life heard any Christian, let alone a Christian of Lewis's stature, say that all of us not only seek (as Pascal said), but also ought to seek, our own happiness. Our mistake lies not in the intensity of our desire for happiness, but in the weakness of it.

3. The third insight was there in Lewis's sermon, but Pascal made it more explicit. He goes on to say:

There once was in man a true happiness of which now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present. But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself.

As I look back on it now, it seems so patently obvious that I don't know how I could have missed it. All those years I had been trying to suppress my tremendous longing for happiness so I could honestly praise God out of some "higher," less selfish motive. But now it started to dawn on me that this persistent and undeniable yearning for happiness was not to be suppressed, but to be glutted—on God! The growing conviction that praise should be motivated solely by the happiness we find in God seemed less and less strange.

Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist.

The future

André-François Raffray, a retired lawyer in Aries, France, made what any reasonable businessman would say was a sound financial decision. According to the Chicago Tribune, for a five-hundred-dollar-a-month annuity, he bought the rights to take over an apartment in Aries, France, on the death of its current resident. The woman living in the apartment was Jeanne Calment, age ninety. Actuarial tables predicting the mathematical probabilities of Jeanne Calment's life span were clearly on the lawyer's side.

Thirty years later and $180,000 poorer, Raffray had still not moved into the apartment. On Tuesday, February 21, 1995, Jeanne Calment celebrated her 120th birthday. She was verifiably the oldest person in the world. Each year on her birthday she sends Raffray a card that jokingly says, "Sorry I am still alive."

How little control we humans have of the future!

750 Engaging Illustrations.

A clean glass

Two Jewish men, Mr Cohen and Mr Abrahams sit down in a smart kosher restaurant and a snooty waiter comes over to take their order.
"Sirs what can I get you?" enquires the waiter.
"A glass of orange juice," says Mr Cohen.
"A glass of orange juice for me too" says Mr Abrahams, "but please make sure the glass is clean."
The waiter stalks off in a disagreeable manner, and eventually comes back with two glasses of orange juice.
"So," he then inquires, "which one of you wanted the clean glass?"

http://www.jewishpath.org/rs2page1.html

Parrot With An Attitude

David received a parrot for his birthday. This parrot was fully grown with a bad attitude and worse vocabulary. Every other word was an expletive. Those that weren't expletives were, to say the least, rude.

David tried hard to change the bird's attitude and was constantly saying polite words, playing soft music, anything that came to mind. Nothing worked. He yelled at the bird, the bird got worse. He shook the bird and the bird got madder and ruder.

Finally, in a moment of desperation, David put the parrot in the freezer. For a few moments he heard the bird squawking, kicking and screaming and then, suddenly, all was quiet.

David was frightened that he might have actually hurt the bird and quickly opened the freezer door.

The parrot calmly stepped out onto David's extended arm and said: "I'm sorry that I offended you with my language and actions. I ask for your forgiveness. I will try to check my behavior..."

David was astounded at the bird's change in attitude and was about to ask what changed him when the parrot continued, "May I ask what the chicken did?"

http://www.jewishpath.org/rs2page1.html

Bad news, bad news and more bad news.

A man had a checkup and then went in to see his doctor to get the results. The doctor said he had bad news and worse news for him, which did he want to hear first? The man was a bit nonplussed and said he'd rather hear the bad news first. The doctor said, "The bad news is that you only have twenty-four hours to live."

At this the man jumped up, totally flabbergasted and distraught. He paced the doctor's office and complained, "Twenty-four hours to live? I can't possibly get my affairs in order that quickly. I can't believe this, it is incredible! What could be worse news than this?"

The doctor said, "The worse news is that I was supposed to tell you this yesterday but I forgot."
Illustrations Unlimited.

To give or to get

The pursuit of joy in God is not optional. It is our highest duty. Millions of Christians have absorbed a popular ethic that comes more from Immanuel Kant than from the Bible. Their assumption is that it is morally defective to seek happiness—to pursue joy, to crave satisfaction, and to devote ourselves to seeking it. This is absolutely deadly for authentic worship. The degree to which this Kantian ethic flourishes is the degree to which worship dies, for the essence of worship is satisfaction in God. To be indifferent to or even fearful of the pursuit of what is essential to worship is to oppose worship—and the authenticity of worship services (in any culture or any form).

Not a few pastors foster this very thing by saying things such as, "The problem is that our people don't come on Sunday morning to give; they only come to get. If they came to give, we would have life." That is probably not a good diagnosis. People ought to come to get. They ought to come starved for God. They ought to come saying, "As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God" (Ps. 42:1). God is mightily honored when a people know that they will die of hunger and thirst unless they have God. It is the job of pastors to spread a banquet for them. Recovering the rightness and indispensability of pursuing our satisfaction in God will go a long way toward restoring the authenticity and power of worship—whether in solitude, in a group of six elders in Uzbekistan, in a rented garage in Liberia, in a megachurch in America, or on the scaffold in the last moment just before "gain."

Let the Nations Be Glad: The Supremacy of God in Missions. Piper

A day is like a thousand years.

The apostle Peter writes: "But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day" (2 Peter 3:8 NRSV).
An economist who read this passage was quite amazed and talked to God about it. "Lord, is it true that a thousand years for us is like one minute to you?"
The Lord said yes.
The economist said, "Then a million dollars to us must be like one penny to you."
The Lord said, "Well, yes."
The economist said, "Will you give me one of those pennies?"
The Lord said, "All right, I will. Wait here a minute."
Citation: John Ortberg, "Waiting on God," Preaching Today #199
Illustrations for Every Topic and Occasion - – Perfect Illustrations: For Every Topic and Occasion.

Principle of the Path

George O. Wood writes that on October 31, 1983, Korean Airlines flight 007 departed from Anchorage, Alaska, for a direct flight to Seoul, Korea. Unknown to the crew, however, the computer engaging the flight navigation system contained a one-and-a-half-degree routing error. At the point of departure, the mistake was unnoticeable. One hundred miles out, the deviation was still so small as to be undetectable. But as the giant 747 continued through the Aleutians and out over the Pacific, the plane strayed increasingly from its proper course. Eventually it was flying over Soviet air space.

Soviet radar picked up the error, and fighter jets scrambled into the air to intercept. Over mainland Russia the jets shot flight 007 out of the sky, and all aboard lost their lives.

Choose your direction well. Although poor choices may hurt you in only minor ways for a while, the longer you go, the more harm they bring.

750 Engaging Illustrations.

Winning a child

Winning a child to Christ is, of course, infinitely valuable in itself, but sometimes we are winning even more, as the following story shows:

Edward Kimball, a shoe-shop assistant and a Sunday school teacher in Chicago, loved boys. He spent hours of his free time visiting the young street urchins in Chicago's inner city, trying to win them for Christ. Through him, a young boy named D. L. Moody got saved in 1858. Moody grew up to be a preacher.

In 1879, Moody won to the Lord a young man by the name of F. B. Meyer, who also grew up to be a preacher. Meyer won a young man by the name of J. W. Chapman to Christ. Chapman, in turn, grew up to be a preacher and brought the message of Christ to a baseball player named Billy Sunday.

As an athlete/evangelist, Sunday held a revival in Charlotte, North Carolina, that was so successful that another evangelist by the name of Mordecai Ham was invited to Charlotte to preach. It was while Ham was preaching that a teenager named Billy Graham gave his life to Jesus.

It all started with winning a child to Jesus.

Citation: Bill Wilson, Streets of Pain (Word, 1992), pp. 123-24; submitted by Cora Reimer; Milton Keynes, England

Just another day

Like large doors, great life-changing events can swing on very small hinges. It was just another day when Moses went out to care for his sheep, but on that day he heard the Lord's call and became a prophet (Ex. 3). It was an ordinary day when David was called home from shepherding his flock; but on that day, he was anointed king (1 Sam. 16). It was an ordinary day when Peter, Andrew, James, and John were mending their nets after a night of failure; but that was the day Jesus called them to become fishers of men (Luke 5:1-11). You never know what God has in store, even in a commonplace conversation with a friend or relative; so keep your heart open to God's providential leading. I attended a birthday party one evening when I was nineteen years old, and a statement made to me there by a friend helped direct my life into the plans God had for me; and I will be forever grateful.Bible Exposition Commentary - Old Testament - The Bible Exposition Commentary – History.

Anticipating the worst

>When you fear that the worst will happen, your own thoughts may help to bring it about. Someone once wrote, "Fear is the wrong use of imagination. It is anticipating the worst, not the best that can happen." A salesman, driving on a lonely country road one dark and rainy night, had a flat. He opened the trunk—no lug wrench. The light from a farmhouse could be seen dimly up the road. He set out on foot through the driving rain. Surely the farmer would have a lug wrench he could borrow, he thought. Of course, it was late at night—the farmer would be asleep in his warm, dry bed. Maybe he wouldn't answer the door. And even if he did, he'd be angry at being awakened in the middle of the night. The salesman, picking his way blindly in the dark, stumbled on. By now his shoes and clothing were soaked. Even if the farmer did answer his knock, he would probably shout something like, "What's the big idea waking me up at this hour?" This thought made the salesman angry. What right did that farmer have to refuse him the loan of a lug wrench? After all, here he was stranded in the middle of nowhere, soaked to the skin. The farmer was a selfish clod—no doubt about that! The salesman finally reached the house and banged loudly on the door. A light went on inside, and a window opened above. A voice called out, "Who is it?" His face white with anger, the salesman called out, "You know darn well who it is. It's me! And you can keep your blasted lug wrench. I wouldn't borrow it now if you had the last one on earth!"

Illustrations Unlimited.

Tigers in the Dark

Several years ago there was a well-known television circus show that developed a Bengal tiger act. Like the rest of the show, it was done "live" before a large audience. One evening, the tiger trainer went into the cage with several tigers to do a routine performance. The door was locked behind him. The spotlights highlighted the cage, the television cameras moved in close, and the audience watched in suspense as the trainer skillfully put the tigers through their paces. In the middle of the performance, the worst possible fate befell the act: the lights went out! For twenty or thirty long, dark seconds the trainer was locked in with the tigers. In the darkness they could see him, but he could not see them. A whip and a small kitchen chair seemed meager protection under the circumstances, but he survived, and when the lights came on, he calmly finished the performance. In an interview afterward, he was asked how he felt knowing that the tigers could see him but that he could not see them. He first admitted the chilling fear of the situation, but pointed out that the tigers did not know that he could not see them. He said, "I just kept cracking my whip and talking to them until the lights came on. And they never knew I could not see them as well as they could see me."

This experience gives us a vivid parable of human life. At some point in our lives, all of us face the terrifying task of fighting tigers in the dark. Some face it constantly. Many people cope daily with internal problems that are capable of destroying them. They cannot visualize their problems or understand them, but their problems seem to have them zeroed in. Thomas Lane Butts, Tigers in the Dark

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Don't play it safe.

One day in July, a farmer sat in front of his shack, smoking his corncob pipe. Along came a stranger who asked, "How's your cotton coming?"

"Ain't got none," was the answer. "Didn't plant none. 'Fraid of the boll weevil."

"Well, how's your corn?"

"Didn't plant none. 'Fraid o' drouth."

"How about your potatoes?"

"Ain't got none. Scairt o' tater bugs."

The stranger finally asked, "Well, what did you plant?"

"Nothin'," answered the farmer. "I just played it safe."

Illustrations Unlimited.

What does fear cost us?

During the Gulf War of 1991, Iraq launched a series of Scud missile attacks against Israel. Many Israeli citizens died as a result of these attacks. After the war was over, Israeli scientists analyzed the official mortality statistics and found something remarkable. Although the death rate had jumped among Israeli citizens on the first day of the Iraqi attacks, the vast majority of them did not die from any direct physical effects of the missiles. They died from heart failure brought on by fear and stress associated with the bombardment.

Psychological studies conducted on Israelis at the time showed that the most stressful time was the first few days leading up to the outbreak of war on January 17 and peaking on the first day of the Scud missile attacks. There was enormous and well-founded concern about possible Iraqi use of chemical and biological weapons. The government had issued to the entire Israeli population gas masks and automatic atropine syringes in case of chemical attack, and every household had been told to prepare a sealed room.

After the first Iraqi strike turned out to be less cataclysmic than feared, levels of stress declined markedly. As in other wars, the people adapted to the situation with surprising speed. Then as the fear and anxiety subsided, the death rate also declined. There were 17 further Iraqi missile attacks over the following weeks, but Israeli mortality figures over this period were no higher than average.

It was fear and the psychological impact of the missiles, not the physical impact, that claimed the majority of victims.

Citation: Paul Martin, The Sickening Mind (HarperCollins, 1997), pp. 3-4; submitted by David Holdaway; Stonehaven, Kincardinshire, Scotland

Illustrations for Every Topic and Occasion - . – More Perfect Illustrations: For Every Topic and Occasion.

What difference does Christianity make?

Wherever Christianity comes it brings purification.

That happens to be capable of factual demonstration. Bruce Barton tells how the first important journalistic assignment that fell to him was to write a series of articles designed to expose Billy Sunday, the evangelist. Three towns were chosen. "I talked to the merchants," Bruce Barton writes, "and they told me that during the meetings and afterward people walked up to the counter and paid bills which were so old that they had long since been written off the books." He went to visit the president of the chamber of commerce of a town that Billy Sunday had visited three years before. "I am not a member of any church," he said. "I never attend but I'll tell you one thing. If it was proposed now to bring Billy Sunday to this town, and if we knew as much about the results of his work in advance as we do now, and if the churches would not raise the necessary funds to bring him, I could raise the money in half a day from men who never go to church. He took eleven thousand dollars out of here, but a circus comes here and takes out that amount in one day and leaves nothing. He left a different moral atmosphere." The exposure that Bruce Barton meant to write became a tribute to the cleansing power of the Christian message.

When Billy Graham preached in Shreveport, Louisiana, liquor sales dropped by 40 per cent and the sale of Bibles increased 300 per cent. During a mission in Seattle, amongst the results there is stated quite simply, "Several impending divorce actions were cancelled." In Greensboro, North Carolina, the report was that "the entire social structure of the city was affected."

One of the great stories of what Christianity can do came out of the mutiny on the Bounty. The mutineers were put ashore on Pitcairn Island. There were nine mutineers, six native men, ten native women and a girl, fifteen years old. One of them succeeded in making crude alcohol. A terrible situation ensued. They all died except Alexander Smith. Smith chanced upon a Bible. He read it and he made up his mind to build up a state with the natives of that island based directly on the Bible. It was twenty years before an American sloop called at the island. They found a completely Christian community. There was no gaol because there was no crime. There was no hospital because there was no disease. There was no asylum because there was no insanity. There was no illiteracy; and nowhere in the world was human life and property so safe. Christianity had cleansed that society.

Where Christ is allowed to come the antiseptic of the Christian faith cleanses the moral poison of society and leaves it pure and clean.
Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT).

What are we to delight in?

But there is a different way of looking at the relationship of joy and faith. In Hebrews 11:6 the writer says, "Without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him." In other words, the faith that pleases God is a confidence that God will reward us when we come to Him. But surely this does not mean that we are to be motivated by material things. Surely the reward we long for is the glory of God Himself and the perfected companionship of Christ (Hebrews 2:10; 3:6; 10:34; 11:26; 12:22-24; 13:5). We will sell everything to have the treasure of Christ Himself.

So the faith that pleases God is the assurance that when we turn to Him, we will find the all-satisfying Treasure. We will find our hearts eternal delight. But do you see what this implies? It implies that something has happened in our hearts before the act of faith. It implies that beneath and behind the act of faith that pleases God, a new taste has been created—a taste for the glory of God and the beauty of Christ. Behold, a joy has been born!

Once we had no delight in God, and Christ was just a vague historical figure. What we enjoyed was food and friendships and productivity and investments and vacations and hobbies and games and reading and shopping and sex and sports and art and TV and travel...but not God. He was an idea—even a good one—and a topic for discussion; but He was not a treasure of delight.

Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist.

Do we want joy too much?

Before I saw these things in the Bible, C. S. Lewis snagged me when I wasn't looking. I was standing in Vroman's Bookstore on Colorado Avenue in Pasadena, California, in the fall of 1968. I picked up a thin blue copy of Lewis's book The Weight of Glory. The first page changed my life.

If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are halfhearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

Never in my life had I heard anyone say that the problem with the world was not the intensity of our pursuit of happiness, but the weakness of it. Everything in me shouted, Yes! That's it! There it was in black and white, and to my mind it was totally compelling: The great problem with human beings is that we are far too easily pleased. We don't seek pleasure with nearly the resolve and passion that we should. And so we settle for mud pies of appetite instead of infinite delight.[16]

The Dangerous Duty of Delight.

Christ abides.

When the first missionaries went to St. Thomas, they could not get near the suffering and degraded slaves until they took part in their bondage and asked the masters to make them slaves also. Then they were received with perfect confidence and were able to bring multitudes of the poor suffering ones to Christ. They trusted them when they saw that they had become identified with their very own lives and lot. "Praise be to the Lord the God of Israel, because He has come and has redeemed His people" (Luke 1:68).

But He comes closer. These missionaries could work by the side of the slave, but they could not come into their hearts.

You have not asked me to help you

Minister Bob Russell wrote about a father who watched through the kitchen window as his small son attempted to lift a large stone out of his sandbox. The boy was frustrated as he wrestled with the heavy object because he just couldn't get enough leverage to lift it over the side. Finally the boy gave up and sat down dejectedly on the edge of the sandbox with his head in his hands.

The father went outside and asked, "What's wrong, Son? Can't you lift that rock out?"

"No, sir," the boy said, "I can't do it."

"Have you used all the strength that's available to you?" the father asked.

"Yes, sir," the boy replied.

"No, you haven't," the father said. "You haven't asked me to help you."

Citation: Bob Russell, author and preaching minister, Southeast Christian Church; Louisville, Kentucky; submitted by Van Morris; Washington, Kentucky

Lesson from the turtle.

In seminary I was impressed with the way Jesus used unusual means to make powerful points—for instance, riding into Jerusalem on a donkey.

I tried taking my cue from Jesus in my first church after seminary. I figured communication would be enhanced by working with live animals.

Like a turtle. A turtle makes progress only if it dares stick out its neck. That's a pretty good posture for Jesus' disciples, too, I thought.

So, my first week there, I asked the kids to find me a turtle. That week, some girls found a turtle and brought it to church, and an elderly couple, while taking a drive in the country, had to slam on the brakes as a turtle ambled across the road.
Eureka! I had two turtles!

The next Sunday I stood before the congregation, trying to exude proper Princeton decorum. In my black Geneva gown accented by red piping, I called the small fries forward and began my talk.

As I held up one turtle, I tapped on its shell. He ducked into it, obviously not going anywhere. "That's like a person acting as if Jesus weren't walking beside him," I observed.

The turtle, meanwhile, got a bad case of nerves and in front of the whole congregation, urinated all over my new robe.

The congregation howled. I acted as though I were not drenched and quickly returned the turtle to his box, commenting that strange faces do funny things to shy turtles.

Picking up the second turtle, I started again. I tapped on the shell, this time holding it well away from my robe. The turtle ducked inside and... held its composure. Relieved, I asked, "What happens to a turtle that refuses to stick out its neck?"

A tyke shot up his hand, exclaiming, "It goes tinkle-tinkle!"

That brought the house down again. I thought my ministry had been destroyed in its second week. But the nervous turtle made people see that their new preacher was all too human. And they accepted me, stains and all—though they did tend to shy away from my new robe.

Jack R. Van Ens
1001 Quotes, Illustrations, and Humorous Stories: For Preachers, Teachers, and Writers.

What is God like?

As I begin I feel a little bit like the late Art Linkletter, who saw a little boy drawing a picture and asked, "What are you doing?"

The boy replied, "I'm drawing a picture of God."

Mr. Linkletter said, "Well, I thought that no one knew what God looked like."

The boy looked up confidently and said, "They will when I get through."

http://www.wordsearchbible.com/catalog/sample.php?prodid=2172

Does it matter how we feel?

The virtue of slogans is brevity. Their vice is ambiguity. So they are risky ways of communicating. They are powerful and perilous. So we should exploit the power and explain the peril. I would like to venture a corrective explanation to the slogan "Fact! Faith! Feeling!"

It's an old and common evangelical slogan. F. B. Meyer, A. T. Pearson, and L. E. Maxwell all preached sermons by this title. Today a Campus Crusade booklet uses it powerfully. The point of the slogan is the order. First, the facts about Christ. Second, the response of faith. Third, the feelings that may or may not follow.

So what's the ambiguity? There are two: Changed "feelings" may be essential to true Christian conversion, not incidental; and "faith" may not be completely distinct from feeling.

In one well-known booklet the slogan appears as a train: The locomotive is "fact." The coal car is "faith." The caboose is "feeling." The explanation reads: "The train will run with or without the caboose. However, it would be futile to attempt to pull the train by the caboose." But what are the "feelings" the train of Christian living can run without? Do "feelings" refer merely to physical experiences like sweaty palms, knocking knees, racing heart, trembling lips, tearful eyes? If so, the slogan is clear and accurate.

But most people don't think of feelings that way. Feelings include things like gratitude, hope, joy, contentment, peacefulness, desire, compassion, fear, hate, anger, grief. None of these is merely physical. Angels, demons, and departed saints without bodies can have these "feelings."

I think that apart from the Bible, Jonathan Edwards has written the most important book on feelings in the Christian life. It's called The Religious Affections. The definition of these "affections" (or what most people today mean by feelings) is: "the more vigorous and sensible exercises of the inclination and will of the soul." In other words, the feelings that really matter are not mere physical sensations. They are the stirring up of the soul with some perceived treasure or threat.

There is a connection between the feelings of the soul and the sensations of the body. This is owing, Edwards says, to "the laws of union which the Creator has fixed between the soul and the body. " In other words, heartfelt gratitude can make you cry. Fear of God can make you tremble. The crying and the trembling are in themselves spiritually insignificant. The train can run without them. That's the truth in the slogan. But the gratitude and the fear are not optional in the Christian life. Yet these are what most people call feelings. That is the peril of the slogan. It seems to make optional what the Bible makes essential.

Minimizing the importance of transformed feelings makes Christian conversion less supernatural and less radical. It is humanly manageable to make decisions of the will for Christ. No supernatural power is required to pray prayers, sign cards, walk aisles, or even stop sleeping around. Those are good. They just don't prove that anything spiritual has happened. Christian conversion, on the other hand, is a supernatural, radical thing. The heart is changed. And the evidence of it is not just new decisions, but new affections, new feelings.

Negatively, the apostle Paul says that those who go on in the same, old way of "hostility," "jealousy," "rage," and "envy" "will not inherit the kingdom of God" (see Galatians 5:20-21). These are all feelings. They must change. The train won't get to heaven unless they do. Positively, Christians are commanded to have God-honoring feelings. We are commanded to feel joy (Philippians 4:4), hope (Psalm 42:5), fear (Luke 12:5), peace (Colossians 3:15), zeal (Romans 12:11), grief (Romans 12:15), desire (1 Peter 2:2), tenderheartedness (Ephesians 4:32), and brokenness and contrition (James 4:9).

Moreover, faith itself has in it something that most people would call feeling. Saving faith means "receiving Christ": "To all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God" (John 1:12). But receive as what? We usually say, "as Lord and Savior." That's right. But something more needs to be said. Saving faith also receives Christ as our Treasure. A non-treasured Christ is a nonsaving Christ. Faith has in it this element of valuing, embracing, prizing, relishing Christ. It is like a man who finds a treasure hidden in a field and "from joy" sells all his treasures to have that field (Matthew 13:44).

Therefore, let us affirm the slogan when it means that physical sensations are not essential. But let us also make clear that the locomotive of fact is not headed for heaven if it is not followed by a faith that treasures Christ and if it is not pulling a caboose-load of new, though imperfect, affections.

Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist.

What do you have an appetite for?

Frenchman Michel Lotito has an iron gut.

For some reason Lotito likes to eat metal. In the past twenty-five years, says writer Rosie Mestel, Lotito has eaten eleven bicycles, seven shopping carts, a metal coffin, a cash register, a washing machine, a television, and 660 feet of fine chain.

Lotito says it wasn't easy eating his first bicycle: "I started with the metal and moved on to the tires," he recalls. "It was really difficult to stay that extra day to finish off the rubber. Metal's tasteless, but rubber is horrible." Now Lotito swallows pieces of tire and frame together.

But none of that can compare with his biggest meal: a Cessna. That's right, Lotito has eaten an entire light airplane, 2,500 pounds of aluminum, steel, vinyl, Plexiglas, and rubber.

With a meal like that he cuts the metal into pieces about the size of his fingernail and consumes about two pounds a day.

Most people would agree that Michel Lotito has an unhealthy appetite.

When we first come to Christ, we have appetites just as unhealthy. New believers need to change their appetites from what is not food at all to what is true food for the soul.

750 Engaging Illustrations.

All that I need

In The Cure for a Troubled Heart author and pastor Ron Mehl writes:293 I heard once about a dear, saintly old woman who was gradually losing her memory. Details began to blur.... Throughout her life, however, this woman had cherished and depended on the Word of God, committing to memory many verses from her worn King James Bible.

Her favorite verse had always been 2 Timothy 1:12: "For I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."

She was finally confined to bed in a nursing home, and her family knew she would never leave alive. As they visited with her, she would still quote verses of Scripture on occasion—especially 2 Timothy 1:12. But with the passing of time, even parts of this well-loved verse began to slip away.

"I know whom I have believed," she would say. "He is able to keep... what I have committed... to him."

Her voice grew weaker. And the verse became even shorter. "What I have committed... to him."

As she was dying, her voice became so faint family members had to bend over to listen to the few whispered words on her lips. And at the end, there was only one word of her life verse left.

"Him."

She whispered it again and again as she stood on the threshold of heaven. "Him... Him... Him."

It was all that was left. It was all that was needed.

All that I need

In The Cure for a Troubled Heart author and pastor Ron Mehl writes:293 I heard once about a dear, saintly old woman who was gradually losing her memory. Details began to blur.... Throughout her life, however, this woman had cherished and depended on the Word of God, committing to memory many verses from her worn King James Bible.

Her favorite verse had always been 2 Timothy 1:12: "For I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."

She was finally confined to bed in a nursing home, and her family knew she would never leave alive. As they visited with her, she would still quote verses of Scripture on occasion—especially 2 Timothy 1:12. But with the passing of time, even parts of this well-loved verse began to slip away.

"I know whom I have believed," she would say. "He is able to keep... what I have committed... to him."

Her voice grew weaker. And the verse became even shorter. "What I have committed... to him."

As she was dying, her voice became so faint family members had to bend over to listen to the few whispered words on her lips. And at the end, there was only one word of her life verse left.

"Him."

She whispered it again and again as she stood on the threshold of heaven. "Him... Him... Him."

It was all that was left. It was all that was needed.

The Power of the Word

A great testimony to the power of the Word to beget and sustain faith is found in the story of the conversion and execution of Tokichi Ichii—a man who was hanged for murder in Tokyo in 1918. He had been sent to prison more than twenty times and was known for being as cruel as a tiger. On one occasion, after attacking a prison official, he was gagged and bound, and his body was suspended in such a way that his toes barely reached the ground. But he stubbornly refused to say he was sorry for what he had done.

Just before being sentenced to death, Tokichi was sent a New Testament by two Christian missionaries, Miss West and Miss McDonald. After a visit from Miss West, he began to read the story of Jesus' trial and execution. His attention was riveted by the sentence "Jesus said, 'Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.'" This sentence transformed his life.

I stopped: I was stabbed to the heart, as if by a five-inch nail. What did the verse reveal to me? Shall I call it the love of the heart of Christ? Shall I call it His compassion? I do not know what to call it. I only know that with an unspeakably grateful heart I believed.

Tokichi was sentenced to death and accepted it as "the fair, impartial judgment of God." Now the Word that had brought him to faith also sustained his faith in an amazing way. Near the end, Miss West directed him to the words of 2 Corinthians 6:8-10 concerning the suffering of the righteous. The words moved him very deeply, and he wrote:

"As sorrowing, yet always rejoicing." People will say that I must have a very sorrowful heart because I am daily awaiting the execution of the death sentence. This is not the case. I feel neither sorrow nor distress nor any pain. Locked up in a prison cell six feet by nine in size I am infinitely happier than I was in the days of my sinning when I did not know God. Day and night...I am talking with Jesus Christ.

"As poor, yet making many rich." This certainly does not apply to the evil life I led before I repented. But perhaps in the future, someone in the world may hear that the most desperate villain that ever lived repented of his sins and was saved by the power of Christ, and so may come to repent also. Then it may be that though I am poor myself, I shall be able to make many rich.

The Word sustained him to the end, and on the scaffold, with great humility and earnestness, he uttered his last words, "My soul, purified, today returns to the City of God."

Faith is born and sustained by the Word of God, and out of faith grows the flower of joy.

Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist.

You cannot please God if you do not come to him for reward

Every Sunday at 11 A.M., Hebrews 11:6 enters combat with popular conceptions of selfless virtue. "And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him." You cannot please God if you do not come to Him for reward! Therefore, worship that pleases God is the hedonistic pursuit of God. He is our exceedingly great reward! In His presence is fullness of joy, and at His right hand are pleasures forevermore. Being satisfied with all God is for us in Jesus is the essence of the authentic experience of worship. Worship is the feast of Christian Hedonism.The Dangerous Duty of Delight. John Piper.

John Ortberg's Embarassing moment.

The church where I work videotapes pretty much all of our services, so I have hundreds of messages on tape. Only one of them gets shown repeatedly.

It’s a clip from the beginning of one of our services. A high school worship dance team had just brought the house down to get things started, and I was supposed to transition into some high-energy worship by reading Psalm 150. This was a last-second decision, so I had to read it cold, but with great passion: “Praise the Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary! Praise him in his mighty firmament!” The psalm consists of one command after another to praise, working its way through each instrument of the orchestra. My voice is building in a steady crescendo; by the end of the psalm I practically shout the final line, only mispronouncing one word slightly: “Let everything that has breasts, praise the Lord.”

A moment of silence. The same thought passes through 4,000 brains—did he just say what I think he did? In church? Is this some exciting new translation I can get at the bookstore?

Then everybody in the place just lost it. They laughed so hard for so long I couldn’t say a thing. I finally just walked off the stage, and we went on with the next part of the service.

I want it fast

Dominos became the number one seller of pizzas in America because they guaranteed they would deliver a pizza to your house in 30 minutes or less. And we loved that. The CEO of Dominos said, "We don't sell pizzas, we sell delivery." And if you've ever had a Dominos pizza…

The L.A. Times had an interview a while ago with a Dominos Pizza driver. This was a kid that drives Dominos pizzas to people's homes. And he says when he puts the Dominos sign on his car and drives, other drivers pull over to the side of the road to let him go past, like we used to do for ambulances. We don't do that for ambulances anymore, we do it for the Dominos guy. Why? Because he's in a hurry.

Now, you'll think I'm making this up, but I'm not. This is in USA Today. Taking a cue from Dominos Pizza, a Detroit hospital guarantees that emergency room patients will be seen within twenty minutes or treatment is free. So far, Doctor's Hospital has delivered. Since the offer was first made June 24th on cable TV, business has been up 30%. The mortality rate is up 120%. People are dying, but they're dying fast, and that's all we're really after.

We'll pay for anything that we think might free up some time. We're just surrounded by fax machines, Fed Ex's, ATM's, cell phones, beepers, pagers, Palm Pilots, modems, email, and we think all that stuff is going to save us, but it ends up enslaving us.

Newsweek had an article about a guy that went on vacation. He was in California on vacation for two weeks, came home to over 1,000 e- mail messages that he had to answer. We're just enslaved by this stuff.

Richard Swenson says, "You want to give somebody a great gift this Christmas?" He says, "The gift we mostly need would be a phoneless cord." You have to think about that one for a minute. In the late sixties–1967–expert testimony was given to the United States Senate that said because of all this labor-saving technology, people were going to have more time tha n they knew what to do with. It predicted that within 20 or 30 years, the average American would work something like only 30 hours a week, or something like only 30 weeks a year.

http://www.vbmb.org/uploads/stewardship/Sermons/Back%20in%20the%20Box.pdf

I paid for it!

In The Christian Reader, Paul Francisco writes:

When I was a child, our church celebrated the Lord's Supper every first Sunday of the month. At that service, the offering plates were passed twice: before the sermon for regular offerings, and just prior to Communion for benevolences. My family always gave to both, but they passed a dime to me to put in only the regular offering.

One Communion Sunday when I was nine, my mother, for the first time, gave me a dime for the benevolent offering also. A little later when the folks in our pew rose to go to the Communion rail, I got up also. "You can't take Communion yet," Mother told me.

"Why not?" I said. "I paid for it!"

This child's humorous story shows a very adult attitude. We may think we can earn God's salvation.

750 Engaging Illustrations.

Learning from children

When I look at a patch of dandelions, I see a bunch of weeds that are going to take over my yard. Kids see flowers for Mom and blowing white fluff you can wish on.

When I look at an old drunk and he smiles at me, I see a smelly, dirty person who probably wants money, and I look away. Kids see someone smiling at them, and they smile back.

When I hear music I love, I know I can't carry a tune and don't have much rhythm, so I sit self-consciously and listen. Kids feel the beat and move to it. They sing out the words, and if they don't know them, they make up their own.

When I feel wind on my face, I brace myself against it. I feel it messing up my hair and pulling me back when I walk. Kids close their eyes, spread their arms, and fly with it, until they fall to the ground laughing.

When I pray, I say "thee" and "thou" and "grant me this" and "give me that." Kids say, "Hi, God! Thanks for my toys and my friends. Please keep the bad dreams away tonight. Sorry, I don't want to go to heaven yet. I would miss Mommy and Daddy."

When I see a mud puddle, I step around it. I see muddy shoes and clothes and dirty carpets. Kids sit in it. They see dams to build, rivers to cross, and worms to play with.

I wonder if we are given kids to teach or to learn from? No wonder God loves the little children!

Citation: From the Internet; submitted by Debi Zahn; Sandwich, Illinois
Illustrations for Every Topic and Occasion - . – More Perfect Illustrations: For Every Topic and Occasion.

Thief's rules

In Words We Live By, Brian Burrell tells of an armed robber named Dennis Lee Curtis who was arrested in 1992 in Rapid City, South Dakota. Curtis apparently had scruples about his thievery. In his wallet the police found a sheet of paper on which was written the following code, sort of a robber's rules:
I will not kill anyone unless I have to.
I will take cash and food stamps—no checks.
I will rob only at night.
I will not wear a mask.
I will not rob mini-marts or 7-Eleven stores.
If I get chased by cops on foot, I will get away. If chased by a vehicle, I will not put the lives of innocent civilians on the line.
I will rob only seven months out of the year.
I will enjoy robbing from the rich to give to the poor.
This thief had a sense of morality, but it was flawed. When he stood before the court, he was not judged by the standards he had set for himself but by the higher law of the state.
Likewise when we stand before God, we will not be judged by the code of morality we have written for ourselves but by God's perfect law. – 750 Engaging Illustrations.