Sermon Illustrations on manipulation

Learned Helplessness can be easily seen in a research study when participants are given a math test. In this study, some participants are told, “men don’t tend to do well on this test,” or “Millennia...

We might not say we believe a Jesus-plus-our-efforts idea of the gospel, but when we place our performances on the pedestal of personal progress, we’re not relying on the grace of God. We’re worshipin...

Henry Ford Sr. the car magnate, having already become massively wealthy, had decided to visit Cork, Ireland, the hometown from which his father had emigrated to the states. Upon arrival, he was warmly...

In June 2020, during nationwide protests over the killing of George Floyd, President Donald Trump posed with a Bible outside St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, DC. Police used riot-control tac...

A priest who had spent a fruitless day fishing picked out three fat fish in the market. “Before you wrap them,” he said to the store manager,” toss them to me, one by one. That way I’ll be able to tel...

Lord Halifax, a former foreign secretary of Great Britain, once shared a railway compartment with two prim-looking spinsters. A few moments before reaching his destination the train passed through a t...

One reason we can hardly bear to remain silent is that it makes us feel so helpless. We are so accustomed to relying upon words to manage and control others. If we are silent, who will take control? G...

In His book When Narcissism Comes to Church, Chuck DeGroat describes a common tool employed on social media, gaslighting: Gaslighting is a form of emotional abuse that draws its name from a 1938 Bri...

I recently found, hidden in plain sight, the secret formula for writing a bestselling book. Yes, you read that right. My discovery created a surge of power that I could hardly handle. It felt like lea...

Advertising as we now know it started not on Madison Avenue but in another city: Berlin. With another group of power brokers: the Nazis. They took the ideas of an Austrian psychotherapist named Freud,...

After a great act by the comedian George Ade, a renowned lawyer took his turn to speak. He began by commenting on Ade’s performance: “Doesn’t it strike the company as a little unusual that a professio...

Hoping does not mean doing nothing. It is not fatalistic resignation. It means going about our assigned tasks, confident that God will provide the meaning and the conclusions. It is not compelled to w...