Loving Others – Sermon Illustration Ideas

Pay It Forward

Caring for Others, Kindness, Love One Another, Loving Others, Praying

The film Pay It Forward (directed by Mimi Leder, Warner Bros, 2000) follows a seventh-grade boy who is given an assignment to develop a…

Love For God Seen Through Loving Others

Love For God, Love One Another, Loving Others, Loyalty, Priorities

A paradigm that has a loyal, singularly focused following is NFL teams. One website surveyed fan loyalty based on whether fans stay loyal after…

Walk In Love

Love, Loving Others, Sacrifice, Walking In Love

Here is a story that exemplifies what it means to walk in love, regardless of whatever else happens: “A man saw a snake being…

Loving Neighbors and Trusting God

Learning, Loving Others, Loving Our Neighbor, Trusting God

D. L. Mayfield documents her years in mission work to immigrant communities in her book Assimilate or Go Home. She hopes that many of…

Good News

Good News, Hope, Loving Others, The Gospel

When a weary world receives good news, it rejoices. It pays attention and wants more. During the height of the global shutdown from the…

God Calls Us To Care

Indifference, Loving Others, Lukewarm, Relationship with God, Relationships, Taking care of others

In her song, “I Forgot That You Existed,” Taylor Swift takes the listener through getting over someone who did them wrong: “It isn’t love,…

Love Overcomes

Forgiveness, Forgiving Others, Journey, Love, Loving Others, Loving Our Neighbor, Peace, Truth

NPR interviewed Koko Kondo, a woman who was just eight months old when the United States dropped a nuclear bomb on her city, Hiroshima….

Caring For Strangers

Caring for Others, Loving Others, Loving Our Neighbor, Self-Sacrifice

Folk tales throughout the ages have been told to express the sacred human duty of caring sacrificially for strangers. In these tales, a god,…

Being in One Another’s Lives

Brokenness, Love, Loving Others, Relationships, Unity

Jesus did not become a heretic because he ate with sinners, showed mercy to adulterers, or bucked certain religious traditions. Loving others well happens…

Tires Out of Balance

Failure, Imago Dei, Loving God, Loving Others, Pharisees, The Church

When our theology doesn’t extend to loving action, we look a lot like the Pharisees. We see this in the high-profile exodus of folks…

Radical Change

Change, Character, Loving Others, Path of Life, Sanctification

The best stories have a character arc, in which a character changes throughout the events of the story. The movie Iron Man (directed by…

Practicing Hospitality

Generosity, Hospitality, Kindness, Loving Others, Serving, Serving Others

In an episode of the television show Gilmore Girls, Lorelai Gilmore is having her home remodeled. Consider showing clips from this episode (season 6, episode…

Radically Ordinary Hospitality

Hospitality, Loving Others, Serve, Serving, Serving Others

The point is that hospitality is an opportunity to serve others. It isn’t about getting “repaid” but about serving someone who otherwise might not…

Invitations

Community, Generosity, Invitation, Loving Others, Serving Others

Jesus says, “But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind” (14:13). Invite people, then, who normally are…

Enhancing Others’ Lives

Community, Kindness, Loving Others, Serving, Serving Others

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus uses two sensory-rich descriptions for the people who are his disciples. He states, “You are the salt…

Being a Light

Evangelism, Light, Light of the World, Love, Loving Others

Like salt, light is something that can have a dramatic effect on everything it touches. Light makes it possible to see. A lighthouse warns…

Transformed By Love

Change, God's Love, Love, Loving Others, Transformation

A good modern example of a character transformed by love is Tony Stark in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. When we first meet Tony in Iron…

Messy

Evangelism, Helping others, Loving Others, Serving, Serving Others

Pulling someone from a raging river requires us to get muddy too. If we simply toss a rope, the current pulls the rope downstream…

Embracing God-Given Zeal

Apathy, Loving God, Loving Others, Passion, Purpose, Zeal

The book Nothing to See Here (Kevin Wilson [New York: Ecco, 2019]) is a story about two children who have a tendency to spontaneously burst into…

Unfazed

Apathy, Caring for Others, Distraction, Good Samaritan, Loving Others, Paying Attention

In the movie Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman [Columbia Pictures, 2018]), two Spider-Men, in full Spidey gear, become entangled…