by Stuart Strachan Jr. | Apr 28, 2020 | Sermon Illustrations
Take the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages. Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. ‘He that will lose his...
by Stuart Strachan Jr. | Apr 21, 2020 | Conflict, Sermon Illustrations
When my kids were little, I used to hang piñatas from our favorite tree in the backyard as often as possible. Sometimes we did it for their birthdays, but sometimes we did it because it was Saturday, and what better day for a piñata than Saturday? I’d sneak off to the...
by Stuart Strachan Jr. | Apr 14, 2020 | Crisis, Sermon Illustrations
You fear you won’t. We all do. We fear that the depression will never lift, the yelling will never stop, the pain will never leave…We wonder: Will this gray sky ever brighten? This load ever lighten? We feel stuck, trapped, locked in. Predestined for failure. Will we...
by Stuart Strachan Jr. | Apr 8, 2020 | Death, Hope, Jesus' Death, Sermon Illustrations
What, as Christians, can we say to those who face death, either their own or that of their loved ones? We certainly can give them the hope of Christ’s resurrection, if they or their loved one has trusted Christ in repentance and faith. We can also assure them that...
by Stuart Strachan Jr. | Mar 31, 2020 | Glory, Palm Sunday, Sermon Illustrations
Just about 80 years ago, a crowd gathered on a humid August day to commence what was to be an unparalleled event for its time. Hundreds of thousands of spectators, police officers, and soldiers gathered for an event so spectacular, so colossal, it almost seemed to...
by Stuart Strachan Jr. | Mar 24, 2020 | Crisis, Fear, Peace, Sermon Illustrations
In his book, Running Scared, Pychologist Edward Welch illustrates how the fear of an event is often worse than the event itself. To demonstrate this, he provides two examples of people whose lives are seemingly about to end, and the peace that they experience in the...
