sermon-illustrations
Curated Sermon Illustrations on Happiness
Explore powerful illustrations on happiness. Discover stories, analogies, humor and more as you bring your sermon to life.
Featured Sermon Illustration
What Will Make you Happier?
What do you think would make you happier? Take a moment to consider. Might it be . . . A relationship? More flexibility at work? A new job that better provides for you and your family? An extra bedroom? A more attentive spouse? A baby? Looking younger? Relief from your bad back? Losing weight? Your child excelling at school? Knowing what you really want to do with your life? More supportive, loving parents? Cure from a chronic illness or disability? More money? More time? If your answers look anything like these, all of which friends have confided to me over the years, you’re in for a surprise. None of these things will make you substantially happier.
Search by topic, scripture, category etc..
28 Results in 68ms
Display
Sorted By
-
illustration
What Determines Happiness?
What Determines Happiness? Imagine a movie theater full of a hundred people. These hundred individuals represent the full continuum of happiness: Some are exceptionally happy, others less so, and ... -
illustration
What Will Make you Happier?
What do you think would make you happier? Take a moment to consider. Might it be . . . A relationship? More flexibility at work? A new job that better provides for you and your family? An extra bedroo... -
illustration
What Is the Smell of Happiness?
Have you seen The Good Place ? You should. The afterlife comedy TV show, starring Ted Danson and Kristen Bell, offers a quirky take on heaven and hell which offers plenty of grist for the mill fo... -
illustration
Any social science study will tell you
Any social science study will tell you relationships are key to happiness and well-being. But there’s more. Friendship isn’t just an elective in the course of life, it’s required. In my line of work I... -
illustration
Read any study on human satisfaction
Read any study on human satisfaction and you will see the paramount role of relationships with others. And yet, so many of us readily exchange friendship and community for success and achievement, onl... -
illustration
Creation at Play
Creation as it felt to God — since then every artist has felt an echo, a sympathetic vibration: a craftsman who squints at his finished product and reckons, “Very good”; a performer who cannot suppres... -
illustration
If This isn’t Nice, What is?
In a commencement speech at Rice University around the turn of the century (the 21st century to be precise) the author Kurt Vonnegut shared some of the wisdom of his life. He went on to share a story ... -
illustration
The Father is Fond of Me
Brennan Manning shares a true story about a priest from Detroit who traveled to Ireland to visit family. One morning, he walked along the shores of Lake Killarney with his uncle. As they watched the s... -
illustration
The Secret to Happiness Among the Famous
We’ve all seen and loved the movies about the young underdog becoming a star. I won’t claim to be 100 percent immune to it. In fact, I think there’s something natural about wanting to be famous, in te... -
illustration
The Connection between Trust and Happiness
Ruut Veenhoven, the Dutch sociologist known as the “godfather of happiness research,” maintains the World Database of Happiness. And when he looked at all the countries of the world in terms of happin... -
illustration
The Happiness Effect
After surveying an incredibly diverse cross section of college students across America, Donna Freitas found “the most pressing social media issues students face: the importance of appearing happy”—and... -
illustration
What We Get Wrong About Happiness
If you observe the people around you, you’ll find most individuals follow a formula that has been subtly or not so subtly taught to them by their schools, their company, their parents, or society. Tha... -
illustration
Fourteen Good Days
In a July 2014 New York Times article about happiness, author Arthur C. Brooks quotes tenth-century Moorish king Abd Al-Rahman III, who assumed his throne as a young man and enjoyed tangible abundance... -
illustration
Finding Happiness
Have you ever heard the story of the mother who wanted to teach her daughter a moral lesson? She gave the little girl a quarter and a dollar for church “Put whichever one you want in the collection pl... -
illustration
The Science of Happiness
What makes people happy? People have sought the answer to this question for thousands of years, but in the past two decades there has been an explosion of scientific research on this topic. In his pre... -
illustration
Does God Want Us to Be Happy? A Fictional C.S. Lewis Ponders…
The film Shadowlands tries to capture the emerging relationship between C.S. Lewis and the American Joy Davidson, who would inevitably succumb to cancer. In one dialogue between the pair, the subject ... -
illustration
What Suffering Does
People shoot for happiness, but they often feel empty, alone, and without meaning…People shoot for happiness but feel formed through suffering…Happiness wants you to think about maximizing your benefi... -
illustration
Rising GNP and Lowering GNH
There has been a paradigm shift going on in neighborhoods in the United States since the end of WWII. For decades before the 1940s, neighborhoods were places where people were known and were active. W... -
illustration
Doing What You are Good At
Research by Gallup shows that the more hours per day you spend doing what you’re good at, the less stressed you feel and the more you laugh, smile, and feel you’re being treated with respect. Eric Ba... -
illustration
How Do Screens Impact Happiness? A Scientific Study
In an article for The Atlantic, social scientist Jean Twenge shares the results of a study on the activities of American teenagers and their impact on happiness. Some of these activities included scre... -
illustration
Happiness: Acquire, Retire, and Aspire
The oft-used front door to happiness is the one described by the advertising companies: acquire, retire, and aspire to drive faster, dress trendier, and drink more. Happiness depends on what you hang ... -
illustration
Searching for Happiness in all the Wrong Places
In 1997, thirty-nine members of the cult Heaven’s Gate, led by Marshall Applewhite, participated in a mass suicide. They’d been taught that once they exited their earthly bodies, they would land on a ... -
illustration
Happiness Levels in Children and Adults
There’s a cartoon that makes a profound statement about happiness. The first panel shows happy schoolchildren entering a street-level subway station—laughing, playing, tossing their hats in the air. T... -
illustration
The Roots of Happiness
The word happiness has a fascinating etymology. Its root, hap-, appears in such words as perhaps and haply, but principally in happen. In some peculiar way, therefore, happiness has been seen as havin... -
illustration
Choosing Gratitude Makes You Happier and Healthier
While it might seem obvious in retrospect, one of the latest discoveries in the psychology of happiness has to do with gratitude. Multiple studies have shown a positive correlation between gratitude a... -
illustration
Charles Darwin’s Loss of Happiness
Charles Darwin, known for his theory of natural selection, noticed that his later life included a “loss of happiness.” While he never acknowledged that it might have been related to his changing world... -
illustration
Christopher Parkening’s Search For Happiness and Purpose
Considered perhaps the greatest guitarist alive, Christopher Parkening appeared to have it all. Signed to an international recording deal as a teenager, Parkening traveled across the world playing bea... -
illustration
George McDonald’s Great Fear
George MacDonald, The Scottish author who had a profound effect on C.S. Lewis among others, once wrote a letter to his father about what he believed would be a great obstacle to his faith; that once h...
Index by Topic
C
F
G
M
S
T
Index by Reference