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Sermon Illustrations: Success

When I was forty my boss came to me and told me something I didn't want to hear. "You're fired!" I was devastated. It was the Great Depression and we needed my wage. I went home to tell my wife. She said, "What will we do?" I said, "I'm going to mortgage the house and go into the building business." (His first venture was the construction of two small buildings. Within five years he was a millionaire. "If I could locate the man who fired me, I'd sincerely thank him for what he did. At the time I didn't understand why I was fired, but later I could see it was God's wondrous and unerring plan to make me go the way of His choosing." After building many convalescent hospitals Mr. Johnson went on to build motels and holiday inns which have outlets throughout the world.

Build on your hopes, not your hurts. Kong Hee

You can't soar like an eagle if you hang around turkeys. Kong Hee

Einstein was once asked for his formula for success. "If A is success, I should say the formula is A = X + Y + Z, X being work and Y being play." "And what is Z?" "Keeping your mouth shut."

For [Beatle George] Harrison, much more quickly than for the others, the magic of the moment flickered and died. "At first we all thought we wanted the fame and that," he said in 1988. "After a bit we realised that fame wasn't really what we were after at all, just the fruits of it. After the initial excitement and thrill had worn off, I, for one, became depressed. Is this all we have to look forward to in life? Being chased around by a crowd of hooting lunatics from one crappy hotel room to the next?" Time 10th December 2001, p 95

The higher a monkey climbs, the more you can see of his behind. General Stilwell

Asked by Spike TV to choose how they measure success, only 3% of men said through their work, while 31% said they did so through their faith in God, 26% through being the best person possible, 22% through their network of family and friends, and 17% through maintaining a balance between home and work. Time 23-8-04 p 41

A successful man is one who can make more money than his wife can spend. A successful woman is one who can find this man. Reader's Digest September 2005 p 71

We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like? Jean Costeau

Harvard researcher Robert Rosenthal studied how you can make people successful just by labelling them as such. Students were randomly assigned to two groups, "high potentials" and "low potentials". And those singled out as successful … were. Reader's Digest June 2006 p 127

On 10th May, 1996, Jon Krakauer finally reached the summit of Mt Everest. Several of his fellow climbers had died on the way. Later he wrote, "I understood on some dim, detached level that [it] was a spectacular sight. I'd been fantasising about this moment, and the release of emotion that would accompany it, for many months. But now that I was finally here, standing on the summit of Mt Everest, I just couldn't summon the energy to care."

I've missed more than 9000 shots. I've lost almost 300 games. I've failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. Michael Jordan Reader's Digest Nov 2007 p 49

Everything I know at the top, I learned at the bottom. - Dexter Iago

Humorist and television talk-show host Johnny Carson made millions of dollars from his late-night program, "The Tonight Show." With all his fortune, his candour and colourful jokes, you might think he would be one of the happiest people around. But in an interview, one of his relatives reported, "Johnny is one of the saddest people I know. He's someone who's always looking for a good time, but never finding it."1

In the western panhandle of Texas is a small town named Texline. It had an ostentatious beginning in the late 1800s as a thriving centre along a new railroad line. Within a few years, though, most of the shops had closed and town's population shrivelled to about 400. In 2000, the population was still just over 500. One online description of Texline says that it has "a city limits sign at one end, another at the other end, and not much in between." What a waste if the same description could be given of our spiritual journey! Our Daily Bread 6th October, 2009

1 Cordeiro, Wayne Attitudes That Attract Success p125-126