Tim Keller has written an outstanding book titled Hidden Christmas. In chapter 1, he gives a couple of thoughts/examples as to how one receives certain gifts. I have pasted a portion of it below. It is a great illustration to use at Christmas and one the preacher can tweak to his own situation and circumstances. Enjoy! . . .When we trust in Christ’s work on our behalf, rather than in our own moral efforts, God forgives and accepts us and implants his Holy Spirit in us to renew us from the inside out. This great salvation, this light that flashes...

Okay, so this is more of a “quote” for a sermon than an illustration. Nevertheless, it is great (and convicting!) food for thought. From Fleming Rutledge’s Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ: “Your calling is to discern the place of resistance that the Lord has set before you. You will recognize it by the temptation to avoid it. It will be way out of your comfort zone. It will be characterized by pressure, by disturbance, by antagonism, by pain, by humiliation.” (from the chapter “The Call to Resistance”)  

From Fleming Rutledge’s Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ: Waiting and hastening! How can you wait and hasten at the same time? That, my fellow Americans, is the secret of the Christian life, knowing how to keep those two modes in creative tension, “waiting and hastening the coming day of God. . . [the] new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.” This is so typical of Advent, the time of contrasts and opposites: darkness and light, good and evil, past and future, now and not-yet. Finding the right balance between waiting and hastening is the...

Did you know Thanksgiving first started with missionaries to America? I know, right? Here is how Stephen Mansfield tells it: It must have been the most horrifying experience of their lives. Though there were slightly more than a hundred people aboard The Mayflower, only 54 were from the band of Separatists who had lived in Holland the previous twelve years to escape persecution in England. They were farmers and sheepherders for the most part, though some may have been craftsmen of one kind or another. Yet never had they been on the high seas. So it must have seemed as...

Tremendous quote from Stephen Mansfield’s Healing Your Church Hurt: What to do When You Still Love God But Have Been Wounded By His People: “In time, I became aware that what is important is not so much the cause of the offense, but rather the common characteristics of the offended soul itself. No matter the size or importance of the event that had led to the offense, I encountered a poisoned soul. In each case, a soul was distanced from God. In each case, a leaking toxic bitterness was tainting everything that soul touched. In each case, morality, vision, and...