《Sermon Illustrations (P~R)》(A Compilation)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
P· PAIN
· PANTHEISM
· PARACHURCH
· PARALYSIS
· PARDON
· PARENTING
· PASSION
· PAST, living in
· PAST, overcoming
· PASTORING
· PATIENCE
· PATRIOTISM
· PAUL
· PEACE
· PEACE, of God
· PEACEMAKERS
· PEER PRESSURE
· PENTECOST
· PEOPLE
· PERFECTION
· PERFECTIONISM
· PERMANENCE
· PERSECUTION
· PERSEVERANCE
· PERSISTENCE
· PERSPECTIVE
· PERSUASION
· PESSIMISM
· PETER, the apostle
· PETS
· PHARISAISM
· PHILOSOPHY
· PICNIC
· PLANNING
· PLEASING GOD
· PLEASURE
· PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE
· PLURALISM
· PNEUMATOLOGY
· POISON
· POLITICIAN
· POLITICS
· POLYCARP
· POLYGAMY
· POOR
· POPULARITY
· PORNOGRAPHY
· POSITIVE
· POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT
· POSITIVE THINKING
· POSSESSIONS
· POSSIBILITIES
· POTATO
· POTENTIAL
· POVERTY
· POWER
· POWER evangelism
· PRACTICE
· PRAGMATISM
· PRAISE
· PRAYER
· PRAYER, answered
· PRAYER, unanswered
· PRAYERLESSNESS
· PRAYERS
· PRAYERS, children's
· PREACHING
· PRECAUTION
· PRECISE
· PREDESTINATION
· PREDICTION
· PREJUDICE
· PREMARITAL SEX
· PREMONITION
· PREPARATION
· PRESENT
· PRESERVATION
· PRESIDENT
· PRESSURE
· PRESUMPTION
· PRETENSE
· PREVENTION
· PRIDE
· PRINCIPLE
· PRIORITIES
· PRISON
· PRIVATE
· PRIZE
· PROBLEMS
· PROBLEM SOLVING
· PROCESS
· PROCRASTINATION
· PROFIT
· PROGRESS, cf. growth
· PROMISE
· PROMISES, God's
· PROMOTION
· PROOF
· PROPHECY
· PROPHECY, gift of
· PROPHET
· PROPHET, false
· PROPITIATION
· PROPOSAL, marriage
· PROSPERITY
· PROSPERITY THEOLOGY
· PROTECTION
· PROVERB
· PROVIDENCE OF GOD
· PROVISION
· PSYCHIATRY
· PSYCHOLOGY
· PUNCTUALITY
· PUNISHMENT
· PURGATORY
· PURITY
· PURPOSE
· PURPOSE STATEMENT
Q
· QUALIFICATION
· QUALITY
· QUARREL
· QUESTIONABLE
· QUESTIONS
· QUICK THINKING
· QUIET TIME
· QUITTING
R
· RACE
· RAIN
· RANDOM
· RAPTURE
· RATIONALIZE
· REACTION
· REALISM
· REALITY
· REBELLION
· REBUKE
· RECIPROCITY
· RECOGNITION
· RECOMMENDATION
· RECONCILIATION
· RECRUITMENT
· REDEMPTION
· REFINE
· REFORMATION
· REGENERATION
· REGRET
· REINCARNATION
· REJECTION
· RELATIONSHIPS
· RELATIVISM
· RELAX
· RELIABLE
· RELIEF
· RELIGION
· RELIGION AND HEALTH
· RELIGION, empty
· RELIGION, irrelevance of
· RELIGIONS OR UNIVERSALISM
· REMEMBER
· REMORSE
· RENEWAL
· REPENTANCE
· REPETITION
· REPLY
· REPUTATION
· RESEARCH
· RESENTMENT
· RESOLUTION
· RESOLUTIONS
· RESOLVE
· RESOURCES
· RESPECT
· RESPONSIBILITY
· REST
· RESTING IN CHRIST
· RESTITUTION
· RESTLESS
· RESTORATION
· RESTRAINT
· RESULTS
· RESURRECTION
· RETALIATION
· RETIREMENT
· RETREAT
· REUNION
· REVELATION
· REVELATION, general
· REVENGE
· REVIVAL
· REWARDS
· RICH, becoming
· RICHES IN CHRIST
· RIGHT
· RIGHT, being in the
· RIGHTEOUSNESS
· RIGHTS
· RISK
· RIVALRY
· ROB PETER TO PAY PAUL
· ROCK AND ROLL
· ROGERS, Will
· ROUSSEAU
· ROUTINE
· RULES
· RUMOR
· RUSHMORE
· RUT
PAIN
We can rest contentedly in our sins and in our stupidities, and everyone who has watched gluttons shoveling down the most exquisite foods as if they did not know what they were eating, will admit that we can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.
C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain.
I heard Professor Bruce Waltke describe a Christian's response to pain this way: We once rescued a wren from the claws of our cat. Thought its wing was broken, the frightened bird struggled to escape my loving hands. Contrast this with my daughter's recent trip to the doctor. Her strep throat meant a shot was necessary. Frightened, she cried, "No, Daddy. No, Daddy, No, Daddy." But all the while she gripped me tightly around the neck. Pain ought to make us more like a sick child than a hurt bird.
Dan Foster.
Though thou with clouds of anger do disguise
Thy face; yet through that mask I know those eyes,
Which, though they turn away sometimes,
They never will despise.
John Donne, "A Hymn to Christ".
Everything difficult indicates something more than our theory of life yet embraces.
George MacDonald.
Dr. Paul W. Brand, the noted leprosy expert who was chief of the rehabilitation branch of the Leprosarium in Carville, Lousiana, had a frightening experience one night when he thought he had contracted leprosy. Dr. Brand arrived in London one night after an exhausting transatlantic ocean trip and long train ride from the English coast. He was getting ready for bed, had taken off his shoes, and as he pulled off a sock, discovered there was no feeling in his heel. To most anyone else this discovery would have meant very little, a momentary numbness. But Dr. Brand was world famous for his restorative surgery on lepers in India. He had convinced himself and his staff at the leprosarium that there was no danger of infection from leprosy after it reached a certain stage. The numbness in his heel terrified him.
In her biography of Dr. Brand, Ten Fingers for God, Dorothy Clarke Wilson says, "He rose mechanically, found a pin, sat down again, and pricked the small area below his ankle. He felt no pain. He thrust the pin deeper, until a speck of blood showed. Still he felt nothing...He supposed, like other workers with leprosy, he had always half expected it...In the beginning probably not a day had gone by without the automatic searching of his body for the telltale patch, the numbed area of skin." All that night the great orthopedic surgeon tried to imagine his new life as a leper, an outcast, his medical staff's confidence in their immunity shattered by his disaster. And the forced separation from his family. As night receded, he yielded to hope and in the morning, with clinical objectivity, "with steady fingers he bared the skin below his ankle, jabbed in the point--and yelled."
Blessed was the sensation of pain! He realized that during the long train ride, sitting immobile, he had numbed a nerve. From then on, whenever Dr. Brand cut his finger, turned an ankle, even when he suffered from "agonizing nausea as his whole body reacted in violent self-protection from mushroom poisoning, he was to respond with fervent gratitude, 'Thank God for pain!'"
Dorothy Clarke Wilson, Ten Fingers for God, pp. 142-145.
Pain is not good in itself. What is good in any painful experience is, for the sufferer, his submission to the will of God, and, for the spectators, the compassion aroused and the acts of mercy to which it leads.
C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain.
The story is told about the baptism of King Aengus by St. Patrick in the middle of the fifth century. Sometime during the rite, St. Patrick leaned on his sharp-pointed staff and inadvertently stabbed the king's foot. After the baptism was over, St. Patrick looked down at all the blood, realized what he had done, and begged the king's forgiveness. Why did you suffer this pain in silence, the Saint wanted to know. The king replied, "I thought it was part of the ritual."
Source Unknown.
PANTHEISM
As pantheists readily admit, they believe that there is no real difference between good and evil "on the highest level of consciousness." The absurd consequences of this are vividly illustrated by the late Francis Schaeffer:
"One day I was talking to a group of people in the digs of a young South African in Cambridge. Among others, there was present a young Indian who was of Sikh background but a Hindu by religion. He started to speak strongly against Christianity, but did not really understand the problems of his own beliefs. So I said, "Am I not correct in saying that on the basis of your system, cruelty and non-cruelty are ultimately equal, that there is no intrinsic difference between them?" He agreed...the student in whose room we met, who had clearly understood the implications of what the Sikh had admitted, picked up his kettle of boiling water with which he was about to make tea, and stood with it steaming over the Indian's head. The man looked up and asked him what he was doing and he said, with a cold yet gentle finality, "There is no difference between cruelty and non-cruelty." Thereupon the Hindu walked out into the night."
Quoted by Norman Geisler in False Gods of Our Time, pp. 85-86.
PARACHURCH
PARALYSIS
Between the great things that we cannot do and the small things we will not do, the danger is that we shall do nothing.
Adolph Monod.
PARDON
An item in the May 2, 1985, Kansas City Times reminds us of a story you may be able to use in an evangelistic message. The item had to do with the attempt by some fans of O. Henry, the short-story writer, to get a pardon for their hero, who was convicted in 1898 of embezzling $784.08 from the bank where he was employed. But you cannot give a pardon to a dead man. A pardon can only be given to someone who can accept it. Now, for the story:
Back in 1830 George Wilson was convicted of robbing the U.S. Mail and was sentenced to be hanged. President Andrew Jackson issued a pardon for Wilson, but he refused to accept it. The matter went to Chief Justice Marshall, who concluded that Wilson would have to be executed. "A pardon is a slip of paper," wrote Marshall, "the value of which is determined by the acceptance of the person to be pardoned. If it is refused, it is no pardon. George Wilson must be hanged."
For some, the pardon comes too late. For others, the pardon is not accepted.
Prokope, V. 11, #5.
PARENTING
In the 1950s a psychologist, Stanton Samenow, and a psychiatrist, Samuel Yochelson, sharing the conventional wisdom that crime is caused by environment, set out to prove their point. They began a 17-year study involving thousands of hours of clinical testing of 250 inmates here in the District of Columbia. To their astonishment, they discovered that the cause of crime cannot be traced to environment, poverty, or oppression. Instead, crime is the result of individuals making, as they put it, wrong moral choices.
In their 1977 work The Criminal Personality, they concluded that the answer to crime is a "conversion of the wrong-doer to a more responsible lifestyle." In 1987, Harvard professors James Q. Wilson and Richard J. Herrnstein came to similar conclusions in their book Crime and Human Nature. They determined that the cause of crime is a lack of proper moral training among young people during the morally formative years, particularly ages one to six.
Christianity Today, August 16, 1993, p. 30.
According to a recent study, young men with high self-esteem shared some common childhood influences. There were three major characteristics of their families. (1) The high-esteem group was clearly more loved and appreciated at home than the low-esteem group. (2) The high-esteem group came from homes where parents had been significantly more strict in their approach to discipline. By contrast, the parents of the low-esteem group had created insecurity and dependence through their permissiveness. Their children were more likely to feel that the rules were not enforced because no one cared enough to get involved. (3) The homes of the high-esteem group were also characterized by democracy and openness. Once the boundaries were established, there was freedom for individual personalities to grow and develop. Thus, the overall atmosphere was marked by acceptance and emotional safety.
Dr. James Dobson, Focus of the Family Bulletin, July 1994.
Undoubtedly, the most stressful time for any couple is parenthood. Carolyn and Philip Cowan, psychologists with the University of California, Berkeley, found that 92 percent of new parents report more conflict and lower satisfaction. Pennsylvania State psychologist Jay Belsky, who has just completed a seven-year study of 250 sets of new parents, finds that only 19 percent say their marriages improved after the birth of a child. Couples usually look forward to the birth of a baby as a time of closeness, but Belsky found that nearly all new parents grew more polarized and self-centered in response to the fatigue and strain.
Difficult transitions like parenthood are also the times when spouses are most vulnerable to an extramarital affair, find psychologists Tom Wright and Shirley Glass. But more often than not, Glass and Wright find, having an affair says more about the individual than the marriage. Spouses with loving marriages but with an excessive need for admiration or thrills are notorious for extramarital dalliances. But even for more regular folks, taking on new roles makes one ripe for philandering. "Even given a rich, happy marriage, it's often easier to form a new image in the eyes of someone new," says Glass. "Trying to change your identity inside a marriage is akin to the new CEO of a major company visiting his parents, only to find they still see him as the baby of the family."
An affair is arguably the most shocking blow to a marriage. Yet study after study finds that wayward spouses are quite happy with their love life at home, both the quantity and quality -- as happy, in fact, as their faithful counterparts. Psychologists are divided about the ramifications of an affair. "I liken an affair to the shattering of a Waterford crystal vase," says Gootman. "You can glue it back together, but it will never sing again." But Glass and Wright, currently studying couples recovering from affairs, find that not only do two thirds decide to stay together, but many report a newfound richness and closeness gained through conquering the ordeal together.
Perhaps the best ideas about what keeps a marriage alive through thick and thin come from couples who, after decades of marriage, bask in blissful unions. Berkeley psychologist Robert Levenson is now in the process of studying pairs who have been together 40 years or more. So far, reports from the front indicate that these couples are masters in soothing one another and preventing each other's distress during conflict. These enduring couples also display a distinctly mellowed approach to marital differences, with far less conflict and far more pleasure than younger couples. And as a couple ages, gender differences appear to fade away, replaced by a more unified view of marriage and life. A nice ending to a bumpy ride.