True, sourced stories for sermons and lessons. Search by keyword, theme, or Bible book.
195 illustrations found
Jim Abbott’s No-Hitter
Jim Abbott grew up in Flint, Michigan, born without a right hand. He became a left-handed pitcher anyway.
Jim Thorpe Got His Gold Back
At the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, Jim Thorpe, a member of the Sac and Fox Nation, won both the pentathlon and the decathlon in dominant fashion.
Jimmy V: Don’t Ever Give Up
In 1993, college basketball coach Jim Valvano, who had led North Carolina State to the 1983 national championship, was dying of cancer. At the first ESPYS awards, he received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award.
John Deere Made a Plow from a Broken Saw Blade
When pioneer farmers reached the Illinois prairie, their cast-iron plows couldn't handle that thick, sticky black soil. It kept clinging to the plow instead of turning over.
John Newton: Amazing Grace from a Slave Trader
John Newton spent his early years working in the slave trade, about as far from God as a man could get. Later he became a preacher, the rector of the parish in Olney, England, and he ended up fighting to abolish slavery.
John Snow Took the Handle Off the Pump
In 1854 most people believed cholera spread through bad air. Dr. John Snow held the unpopular view that it spread through water.
Johnny Appleseed Walked Through a Snowstorm for His Seedlings
Johnny Appleseed was a real man named John Chapman, born in Massachusetts in 1774 and raised in a home where he grew a lifelong devotion to the Bible.
Joseph Meister Came to Pasteur’s Lab
On the morning of July 6, 1885, a nine-year-old boy named Joseph Meister was brought to Louis Pasteur's laboratory in Paris. A rabid dog had bitten him fourteen times.
Julio Diaz Buys His Mugger Dinner
Julio Diaz was a 31-year-old social worker in the Bronx who always got off the subway one stop early so he could eat at his favorite diner. One night in early 2008, a teenager pulled a knife on him on the platform and took his wallet.
Kerri Strug’s Second Vault
At the 1996 Atlanta Olympics the U.S. women's gymnastics team was on the edge of its first-ever team gold, but the Russians were closing fast.
Kevin Briggs Listened for 92 Minutes
On March 11, 2005, Kevin Berthia went to the Golden Gate Bridge. Overwhelmed by depression and medical bills for his premature daughter, he climbed over the rail.
Lasse Viren Got Back Up
At the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Finland's Lasse Viren was one of the favorites in the 10,000 meters. Then on the 12th lap, he got tangled up with Tunisia's Mohamad Gammoudi and both men went down on the track.
Lipscomb Stayed Through the Cholera
In the summer of 1873, cholera swept through Nashville. Close to 1,000 people died, roughly one in every 25 residents.
Livingstone Died on His Knees
David Livingstone spent his childhood working 14 hours a day in a cotton mill. He trained to be a medical missionary to China, but the Opium War shut that door.
Lottie Moon Gave All She Had
Lottie Moon served as a missionary in China for nearly 40 years. Her letters home kept begging for more workers and more support, and in 1888 Southern Baptist women started a Christmas offering for foreign missions.
Lou Gehrig: The Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth
Two weeks after an ALS diagnosis forced him out of baseball, Lou Gehrig stood at home plate in Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939, in front of 61,808 fans.
Louis Zamperini: From Revenge to Release
Louis Zamperini was an Olympic runner who survived a plane crash, weeks adrift on a raft in the Pacific, and brutal treatment in Japanese prison camps during World War II.
Make Seeing Eyes Blind
Andrew van der Bijl grew up poor in the Netherlands and lived through the 1944 famine, when he ate tulip bulbs to survive. After he gave his life to God, he began reaching believers behind the Iron Curtain.
Malala Kept Going to School
When Malala Yousafzai was eleven, she started writing an anonymous blog for the BBC's Urdu site. Under the heading "I am afraid," she wrote about her nightmares of being too scared to go to school because of the Taliban in her Swat Valley.
Mamoudou Gassama Climbed Four Floors
In May 2018, a 22-year-old undocumented migrant from Mali was walking down a Paris street when he saw a crowd staring up at a four-year-old boy dangling from a fourth-floor balcony.