For over 50 years I've collected quotes and illustrations from every book I've read. A pastor is never out of the preparing to preach mode. I've gathered quotes from the back of sugar packets, fortune cookies, and what I've read and heard. The collection, now over 5,000 pages is a storehouse of resources ready to use. No matter the years you have preached, this practice will make you more effective. 

Most stories I use while preaching or personal experiences, but there are times when something like what is below says something I'm not able to express.

A businessman in San Antonio, came to his pastor's home late one night two weeks after Christmas. As I opened the door I asked him, “What brings you out this evening?”

He answered, “I’ve got to tell you something that made this Christmas the most wonderful one of my life.” He got comfortable before the fire and began. “‘About four weeks ago, my brother gave me a Cadillac as a Christmas present. A few days before Christmas, I came out of my office and walked over to my car. A little boy who clearly lived in poverty was walking around my Cadillac, touching it with a finger, and looking through the windows. He came around on my side when I put the key in the door. He was ragged and dirty, and duct tape held his shoes together.

The boy squinted at me and said, ‘Is this your car, mister?’

I said, ‘It sure is, son. Isn’t it a beauty?’

‘Mister, what did it cost?’

“When I told him I didn’t know, he looked me up and down carefully and then spoke. “Mister, you don’t look like a man who would steal a car. Where did you get it?’

“

With a bit of pride, I told him, My brother gave it to me for a Christmas present.’

“You mean - ‘ he said, ‘ you mean your brother gie it to you, and it didn’t cost you nothing?’

“I said, ‘That’s right. My brother gie it to me, and it didn’t cost me nothing.’

“He dug his toes down against the sidewalk for a minute and was lost in thought, then he began, ‘I wist’ - I knew what he was going to wish. He was going to wish he had a brother like that, and I had the answer ready for him.

But he didn’t say that, and what he did say jarred me all the way down to me heels. ‘I wist I could be a brother like that.’

“ ‘ What did you say?’ I asked in astonishment.

“He repeated, ‘I wist I could be a brother like that.’

“It confused me so that I couldn’t find an answer. And I blurted out, ‘Don’t you want to ride in my car?’

“He looked at his clothes and answered, ‘It’s so pretty and clean, and I’m dirty I would muss it up.’

“You might be dirty on the outside, but you’re mighty clean on the inside, You will do my car good. Get in.

The boy wanted to know what everything on the panel board was, and I sat there and explained it to him. We hadn’t gone far when he turned and with his eyes aglow said, ‘Mister, would you mind driving in front of my house?’

I smiled a little as I squeezed the big car down a alley. I thought he wanted to show his neighbors that he could ride home in a big automobile, but I had him wrong again.

“He pointed ahead and said, ‘Stop right where those two steps are. Will you stay here,’ he asked, ‘till I come back? It will be just a minute.’ He ran up the steps, and then in a little while I heard him coming back, but he was not coming fast.

He was coming down like he was carrying a load and putting his best foot down first and then the other one even with it. On the steps that came down on the inside I saw his feet first, and then I saw two more feet, withered and dangling. He was carrying his little brother. Infantile polio was written all over him.

The well boy set his brother down on the bottom step and then sat down by him, sort of squeezed his handicapped brother against him and pointed to the car.

‘There she is, Buddy, just like I told you upstairs. His brother gie it to him, and it didn’t cost him a cent, and some day I’m gonna gie you one.’

“I slowly climbed out and sat down by them. ‘So that’s the reason,’ I said, ‘that you wanted to be a brother like that?’

Yes,’ he answered. ‘You see, the store windows are full of pretty things and I try to remember them, but I can’t tell him about them very well, and some day I’m gonna gie him a car so he can see them himself.’

“I said to them both, ‘We won’t wait until then. I’m going to put you both in the car and let you see them today, and I’m going to let you pick out anything you want, and I’ll buy it for you.’ I put a Christmas tree up in that house and played Santa Claus for them. It was the grandest Christmas I ever had.”

He had learned what Jesus meant when he said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

Happy hunting of stories, illustrations, sermon ideas and all the rest. 

You may want to read my earlier blogs on how to most effectively read. Unless I'm focused on a particular book or passage of scripture, my reading is almost never about getting ready to preach this Sunday. 

Instead, my reading is done to accumulate ideas that can potentially be used at some future date. Using this approach, I've over fifty funeral sermon ideas ready to develop, and messages for every season or event. That idea of being instant in season and out of season is important.