Sermon Illustrations on Answered Prayer

Augustine spent years running from the faith his mother Monica had raised him in, and she prayed for him through all of it: following him to Rome and then to Milan, weeping about him to anyone who would listen. At one point she pressed a bishop to argue with her son. He refused, telling her that the young man was not yet teachable and would find out for himself, and then, worn down by her persistence, sent her away with a line she never forgot: it is not possible that the son of these tears should perish. Augustine records all of this himself, decades later, after his conversion.

Sourcing: From Augustine's Confessions, book 3, chapter 12: his own account, written in the late 390s. That is a primary source, which is unusually good provenance for a story of this kind.

The church is gathered praying for Peter, who is in prison and due to be executed in the morning. He is released by an angel, walks to the house, and knocks. A servant girl named Rhoda recognises his voice and is so overjoyed that she runs back inside without opening the door. The prayer meeting tells her she is out of her mind, and then that it must be his angel. Meanwhile Peter is still outside, still knocking.

Hannah prays at Shiloh in such distress that Eli assumes she is drunk. She explains, he blesses her, and then 1 Samuel records something before any news arrives: she went her way and ate, and her face was no longer sad. The child is not born for some time. Nothing about her circumstances has changed when she gets up. Something had already been answered, and it was not the request.

Paul says he asked the Lord three times to take away the thorn in his flesh. He does not tell us what it was, which is probably deliberate. The request was refused. What he received instead was a sentence: my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. He still had the thorn when he wrote the letter.

After the contest on Carmel, Elijah goes up to pray for rain, puts his face between his knees, and sends his servant to look towards the sea. There is nothing. He sends him again. Nothing. Seven times, and on the seventh the servant reports a cloud the size of a man's hand. The answer, when it comes, is almost too small to report, and Elijah tells Ahab to get moving before the rain stops him.

The story is told that George Muller, crossing the Atlantic to a preaching engagement, told the captain he had to be in Quebec by Saturday. The ship was stopped in dense fog. Muller asked to go to the chart room, prayed briefly, told the captain not to pray because he did not believe, and said the fog was already gone. They went up, and it had lifted. Muller's orphan work in Bristol is a matter of public record: thousands of children, decades of accounts. This particular story is not.

Sourcing: The fog anecdote is attributed to a Captain Dutton and appears in later devotional collections rather than in Muller's own published narratives; no contemporary record has been produced. Muller's orphanage work and his practice of publishing his finances are, by contrast, well documented. Keep the two clearly separate.

Someone prays for a job and gets one. There is a chain of ordinary causes: a friend mentioned a vacancy, a manager liked a CV, a previous candidate withdrew. Every link is explicable. A sceptic says that shows prayer did nothing. A certain kind of believer says the sceptic is missing the miracle. Both are claiming to know how it worked. The honest position is available to anyone: thank God for it, out loud, without asserting a mechanism you cannot see.

What is a good illustration about answered prayer?

Acts 12, where a praying church refuses to believe Peter is at the door, because it is true, funny and free of overclaiming. Monica praying for Augustine works too, and has the rare advantage of a primary source in his own writing.

Where do preachers find illustrations?

For this theme, your own congregation with permission, and scripture. Be sceptical of anthologies of miracle stories; they are the least sourced genre in Christian publishing and their contents mutate between editions.

How many illustrations should a sermon have?

Two or three, and at least one of them should be a prayer that was not answered as asked. A sermon with three yeses in it is not balanced by a caveat in the last minute.

Do I need to cite an illustration's source?

Yes, and this theme is the strongest case for it. The Muller fog story on this page is told from thousands of pulpits as fact and has never been traced to a contemporary record, while his orphanage accounts were published and can be checked.

How do I preach answered prayer to someone whose prayer was not answered?

Put their situation in the sermon rather than in a footnote. Name that some prayers in this room have been refused, preach 2 Corinthians 12 as seriously as you preach Acts 12, and do not offer a reason on God's behalf.

Is it wrong to call something a miracle if there is a natural explanation?

It is wrong to claim more than you know. You can give thanks for an outcome without asserting how it came about, and that habit keeps your credibility intact for the occasions when something genuinely has no explanation.