Resources > Sermon Illustrations Illustrations Vol.3 Posted by Rev. Jeff Dixon, Senior Equipping Minister, Covenant Community Church on Jan 30, 2003, 19:22

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

One day [childrens television's] Mister Rogers was making a trip to California and decided to pay a visit to a teenager with cerebral palsy. "At first, the boy was made very nervous by the thought that Mister Rogers was visiting him," [Tom] Junod writes. "He was so nervous, in fact, that when Mister Rogers did visit, he got mad at himself and began hating himself and hitting himself, and his mother had to take him to another room." Mister Rogers waited patiently and when the boy came back, Mister Rogers said, "I would like you to do something for me. Would you do something for me?" On his computer, the boy answered yes. "I would like you to pray for me. Will you pray for me?"

Junod says that the boy was "thunderstruck" because "nobody had ever asked him for something like that, ever. The boy had always been prayed for. The boy had always been the object of prayer, and now he was being asked to pray for Mister Rogers, and although at first he didn't know if he could do it, he said he would, he said he'd try, and ever since then he keeps Mister Rogers in his prayers and doesn't talk about wanting to die anymore because he figures Mister Rogers is close to God, and if Mister Rogers likes him, that must mean God likes him, too."

Tom Junod asked Mister Rogers how he knew what to say to make the boy feel better. He responded: "Oh, heavens no, Tom! I didn't ask him for his prayers for him; I asked for me. I asked him because I think that anyone who has gone through challenges like that must be very close to God. I asked him because I wanted his intercession."

 
Citation: Wendy Murray Zoba, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" Christianity Today (March 6, 2000), p. 45

 
Prayer That Pleases God
 
If our churches don't pray, and if people don't have an appetite for God, what does it matter how many are attending the services? How would that impress God? Can you imagine the angels saying, "Oh, your pews! We can't believe how beautiful they are! Up here in heaven, we've been talking about them for years. Your sanctuary lighting—it's so clever. The way you have the steps coming up to the pulpit—it's wonderful. . . ." I don't think so.

If we don't want to experience God's closeness here on earth, why would we want to go to heaven anyway? He is the center of everything there. If we don't enjoy being in his presence here and now, then heaven would not be heaven for us. Why would he send anyone there who doesn't long for him passionately here on earth?

Citation: Jim Cymbala, Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire (Zondervan, 1997), pp. 58–59
 

What Prayer is Not!
 

There’s something exquisitely luxurious about room service in a hotel. All you have to do is pick up the phone and somebody is ready and waiting to bring you breakfast, lunch, dinner, a chocolate milkshake, whatever your heart desires and your stomach will tolerate. Or by another languid motion of the wrist, you can telephone for someone who will get a soiled shirt quickly transformed into a clean one or a rumpled suit into a pressed one. That’s the concept that some of us have of prayer. We have created God in the image of a divine bellhop. Prayer, for us, is the ultimate in room service, wrought by direct dialing. Furthermore, no tipping, and everything is charged to that great credit card in the sky. Now prayer is many things, but I’m pretty sure this is not one of the things it is.

 
—Kenneth Wilson, quoted in Lloyd Cory, Quote Unquote

 
Charles R. Swindoll, The Tale of the Tardy Oxcart and 1,501 Other Stories, (Nashville: Word Publishing) 1998. (p.453)

Keeping it short and on target

Depth, not length, is important.… When the Gettysburg battleground became a national cemetery, Edward Everett was to give the dedication speech and Abraham Lincoln was asked to say “a few appropriate words.” Everett spoke eloquently for one hour and fifty-seven minutes then took his seat as the crowd roared its enthusiastic approval. Then Lincoln stood to his feet, slipped on his steel spectacles, and began what we know today as the “Gettysburg Address.” Poignant words “… The world will little note nor long remember …” —suddenly, he was finished. No more than two minutes after he had begun he stopped. His talk had been so prayerlike it seemed almost inappropriate to applaud. As Lincoln sank into his settee, John Young of the Philadelphia Press whispered, “Is that all?” The President answered, “Yes, that’s all.”

Don’t underestimate two minutes with God in prayer.

 
Charles R. Swindoll, The Tale of the Tardy Oxcart and 1,501 Other Stories, (Nashville: Word Publishing) 1998. (p.454-455)

One More

Minister: “So your mother says your prayers for you each night. What does she say?” The youngster replied, “Thank God he’s in bed.”

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