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Sermon Illustrations: Faithfulness

Texas National Guard magazine reports the motto of the parachute riggers: I will be sure always. They have to jump the chutes they pack.

Daniel was faithful when it was inconvenient. His three friends were faithful when it was dangerous.

The king of Syracuse was a tyrant. Having condemned a man named Damon to death, he granted him permission to visit his wife and children one last time. The condition was that if he failed to return, his best friend, Phintias, would be executed in his place. As the day of the execution got nearer and Damon still had not returned, the king visited Phintias and said, "What a fool you were to put up your life in exchange for your friend." Phintias replied, "My friend is a man of honour and will do his utmost to return. However, I am hoping and praying that for some reason he will be unable to return. I would be honoured to die in his place." Soon the day arrived, and there was still no sign of Damon. Phintias was led to the scaffold. There he addressed the people and told them how glad he was that he could ransom the life of his friend. Suddenly, from the back of the crowd, there was a great disturbance, and the crowd parted as Damon made his way to the front just in time. Damon was disappointed and said to the king that if he couldn't die for his friend, he'd die with him. And the king was so overwhelmed at this show of faithfulness, he pardoned them both.

John Wesley preached three sermons a day for 54 years, preaching more than 44,000 times. He travelled by horseback and carriage more than 200,000 miles (around 5,000 miles a year), knew 10 languages, published a four-volume commentary on the Bible, an English dictionary, five volumes on natural philosophy, four volumes on church history, histories of England and Rome, grammar books on Hebrew, Latin, Greek, French and English, three works on medicine, six volumes of church music, seven volumes of sermons and controversial papers, edited a library of fifty books, arose at 4 a.m., and worked solidly to 10 p.m. ARE YOU GETTING TIRED? He said, "I have more hours of private retirement than any man in England." At 83 he was irritated because he could no longer write more than fifteen hours a day without hurting his eyes. On his 85th birthday he wrote that he felt no weariness while travelling or preaching. But at 86 he was ashamed that he could no longer preach more than twice a day. He complained in his diary that he had an increasing tendency to sleep in till 5:30 a.m.

Will Smith has come up with a highly unconventional way of trying to ensure his Hollywood marriage to Jada Pinkett Smith doesn't end up on the rocks. His solution? When you want to cheat with one of your co-stars, get permission from your partner first. The Men In Black star and his wife say they have agreed it is all right to sleep with someone else as long as it isn't behind the back of the person you love. They researched the subject by meeting high-profile couples who have split - including Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, and Bruce Willis and Demi Moore - to find out what went wrong. "Our perspective is, you don't avoid what's natural," Smith, 36, said. "You're going to be attracted to people. In our marriage vows, we didn't say 'forsaking all others'. The vow that we made was that you will never hear that I did something after the fact. If it came down to it, then one can say to the other, 'Look, I need to have sex with somebody. I'm not going to if you don't approve of it - but please approve of it'." Smith said he was forced to admit he had sexual feelings for other women when working on his film Hitch, in which he stars with Eva Mendes, whom he described as "freaking gorgeous". Despite his attraction to Mendes, Smith insists his marriage is still strong - and that he and Jada, 33, still behave like newlyweds. Smith, who has been married to his second wife for seven years, added: "I don't let a day go past that Jada doesn't feel like the Queen of the World. I make sure every single day that she knows how I feel about her." But he said the couple have been shaken by the break-up of other Hollywood couples. They try to find out what went wrong so they can learn from their mistakes. "Every time somebody in Hollywood breaks up, Jada and I go and find out why," Smith said. "With Bruce and Demi, we spent hours talking to them. And Tom and Nicole - hours, just trying to understand what happened."¹

1 Sunday Mail 13-2-05 p 50