sermon-illustrations
Curated Sermon Illustrations on Transformation
Explore powerful illustrations on transformation. Discover stories, analogies, humor and more as you bring your sermon to life.
Featured Sermon Illustration
Why We Love Makeover Shows
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition was one of my favorite shows for a while, mainly because I loved to see the before and after shots. The water damage in the bathroom, the rotting ceiling beams, and the messy kids’ rooms were all so extremely awful. Then poof! They move that bus and before our eyes is a new, beautiful, complete house.
No more rot, no more mold; a clean, fresh house with flat-screen TVs and themed bedrooms for the kids. Makeover shows are compelling for one reason: we love to see the bad turn good. To watch something that was falling apart be restored and renewed is encouraging and hopeful. It’s the same way with people.
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Psalms and the Power of Reorientation
Walter Brueggemann writes that the movement of the psalms is from orientation to disorientation and then to new orientation. The psalms give us a language for transformation in desert spaces: we move ... -
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Spiritual Food Belongs in the Heart
Spiritual nourishment cannot be seen purely in our outward behavior. The process of sanctification is a deeply internal process. Outside growth is merely a symptom, and acting better does not mean our... -
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Faithfulness in the Darkest Places
Josephine Bakhita’s life is a testament of God’s faithfulness in the darkest circumstances. She was born in Darfur, Sudan, among the Daju people. Her first years were happy, but at age eight she was k... -
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The Connection Between Grace & Gratitude
The words “gratitude” and “grace” come from the same root word, gratia in Latin and kharis in Greek, as mentioned earlier. In addition to being the name of a goddess, “grace” is a theological word, on... -
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Gandalf: I am looking for someone to share in an adventure
Gandalf: I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it’s very difficult to find anyone. Bilbo: I should think so—in these parts! We are plain, quiet folk and have n... -
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The Falling of Leaves
As fall temperatures drop, trees begin to lose their green (chlorophyll), and their fall foliage of vibrant red, yellow, and orange appears. Earlier in the year, maples have dropped seedpods (sometime... -
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A Savior Who Was a Spitter
Some time ago, I read about the work of a Wycliffe Bible translator in a remote village in Papua New Guinea. When the opening chapters of Genesis were first translated into the native language, the at... -
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Grace Upon Grace
A number of mature Christians have described the Christian journey as one in which the follower of Jesus experiences different levels of grace. Let us imagine . . . that there are many rooms in t... -
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Jesus: The Story-Tellin’ Man
One of my daughters has been singing a song about Jesus that contains the line “Jesus was a story-tellin’ man.” When I first heard that line it seemed a bit flip, as so many contemporary Christian son... -
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The Day of Epiphany
The Texas-based pastor Matt Chandler spent a decade working with teenagers, and during that time, he realized how a specific change takes place between sixth graders and ninth graders. As Chandler say... -
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How to Sing “Happy Birthday”
John Berkley told a story about how he loves live professional choir concerts. At one concert, the conductor asked if anyone in the audience was there celebrating their birthday. Now, it was actually ... -
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Blind Bartimaeus and One-Eyed Thor
I absolutely love Marvel movies. I’m talking about Thor, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Black Widow, Guardians of the Galaxy. All of them. In Ragnarok , Thor, the Norse god, played by the incredibly good-... -
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Not Wanting to Let Go of This Life
Ted Williams—often called the greatest hitter in Major League Baseball history—has spent the years since 2002 not in a hall of fame or resting beneath a headstone, but inside an unassuming warehouse n... -
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The Discovery of Curare & Two Forms of Christianity
In the early 1800s, the German naturalist and explorer Baron Alexander von Humboldt journeyed through South America on a scientific expedition. Deep in the Amazon rainforest, he encountered Indigenous... -
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Why We Love Makeover Shows
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition was one of my favorite shows for a while, mainly because I loved to see the before and after shots. The water damage in the bathroom, the rotting ceiling beams, and the ... -
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My friend Eugene has a black belt
My friend Eugene has a black belt in martial arts. During a sermon taping, I once held a block of wood as tightly as I could, right in front of my face, while Eugene did a 360-degree spin and splinter... -
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Praying with your Feet
A pilgrimage is a way of praying with your feet. You go on a pilgrimage because you know there’s something missing inside your soul, and the only way you can find it is to go to sacred places, places ... -
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Finding Grace after Contracting Leprosy
Peter Greave (1910-1977) was a British national who endured a challenging and tumultuous life, which took a severe turn in 1939 when he contracted leprosy while stationed in India, also his birthplace... -
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Developing an Anthropological Foundation for the Spiritual Disciplines
Before my mentor, Dallas Willard, passed over to glory, I asked him what he thought about the rapid rise of the Christian spiritual formation movement. He said, “It is a wonderful thing, but my fear i... -
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Never Stop Learning, Always Growing
The bottom line is this: never grow complacent. Never grow tired of learning. As soon as we stop learning we lose the capacity to grow and mature in our work and our relationships. This continual lear... -
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Take up and Read
In Book Eight of Confessions , St. Augustine recounts how, in a state of deep inner turmoil, he “heard from a nearby house a voice, as of a boy or girl, I know not which, chanting repeatedly, ‘Ta... -
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Finally Discovering Lordship
“A young man came to visit me with a question on his mind. He asked, “I prayed to receive Jesus as my Savior, but why has nothing really changed in my life?” I asked him, “Who is running your life?” H... -
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The Movement of the Psalms
Walter Brueggemann writes that the movement of the psalms is from orientation to disorientation and then to new orientation. The psalms give us a language for transformation in desert spaces: we move ... -
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Transformation in the Heartbreak Hotel
It was on November 28, 1965, that fighter pilot Howard Rutledge’s plane was shot down right into the hands of the North Vietnam Army. Quickly he was shuttled to the “Heartbreak Hotel,” one of the noto... -
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A Transformation of Stone
In 1463, members of the City Council of Firenze (Florence) Italy decided they needed a monument to enhance their city. They commissioned a sculptor to carve a giant statue to stand in front of city ha... -
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The Unmaking of the Ungodly
In this excerpt from a sermon preached at Trinity Church, Boston, the Episcopalian Priest Fleming Rutledge describes the amazing work of Will Campbell: The last time I was here, your rector Sam Lloy... -
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How Transformation Happens
In The Good and Beautiful God , James Bryan Smith describes a new Christian he happened to know who came to him one day feeling dejected. He was so excited to be a follower of Jesus, but he just co... -
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Conforming vs. Transforming
Conforming to boundary markers too often substitutes for authentic transformation. The church I grew up in had its boundary markers. A prideful or resentful pastor could have kept his job, but if eve... -
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Transformation Does Not Simply Come from Information
The goal is not for us to get through the Scriptures. The goal is to get the Scriptures through us. Some churches give people the idea that the only way to transformation is knowledge. There is an ass... -
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What the With-God Life Looks Like
There is a consistent pattern in Scripture of what happens in a life that God wants to use and improve: -There is always a call. God asks an ordinary person to engage in an act of extraordinary trust...
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Index by Topic
A
B
C
- Calling (2)
- Calling On God (1)
- Celebrations (1)
- Ceremonies (1)
- Change (2)
- Changing Habits (1)
- Changing Hearts (1)
- Changing Ourselves (1)
- Character Transformation (8)
- Christian Identity (1)
- Christianity (1)
- Christians (1)
- Christlikeness (1)
- Climbing the Ladder of Success (1)
- Communion (2)
- Completion (1)
- Connection (1)
- Consumer Christianity (1)
- Conversion (3)
- Convictions (1)
- Courage (1)
- Craftsmanship (1)
- Cry (1)
- Crying (1)
- The Christian Faith (1)
D
E
F
G
H
I
L
P
- Pain (1)
- Parables (1)
- Pentecost (1)
- Perseverance (1)
- Personal Transformation (5)
- Perspective (1)
- Pharisaism (1)
- Pharisees (1)
- Physical Blindness (1)
- Pilgrimage (1)
- Pilgrims (1)
- Place (1)
- Pornography (1)
- Power of Love (1)
- Power of Prayer (1)
- Prayer (3)
- Prayer Life (1)
- Preparation (1)
- Prepared (1)
- Presence (2)
- Priorities (1)
- Prison (1)
- Prisoners (1)
- Provision (1)
- Purposelessness (1)
- Putting God in a Box (1)
- The Psalms (2)
R
S
- Sacred (1)
- Sacrifice (1)
- Sanctification (7)
- Scripture (2)
- Scripture Application (1)
- Seasons (1)
- Seeds (1)
- Self-Destruction (1)
- Self-Improvement (1)
- Self-Justification (1)
- Self-Reliance (1)
- Self-Sacrifice (1)
- Showing Up (1)
- Sight (1)
- Slavery (1)
- Spiritual Blindness (1)
- Spiritual Disciplines (1)
- Spiritual Gifts (1)
- Spiritual Growth (1)
- Spiritual Problems (1)
- Spiritual Transformation (11)
- Stories (1)
- Storytelling (1)
- Struggles (1)
- Struggling to Pray (1)
- Success (1)
- Suffering (1)
- Surrender (2)
- The Spiritual Life (1)
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