Sermon Illustrations on Perseverance

At the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, John Stephen Akhwari of Tanzania was injured in a fall during the marathon, dislocating his knee and injuring his shoulder. He kept going. He finished more than an hour after the winner. It was dark. Most of the crowd had gone home and the closing ceremony had already taken place. Asked afterwards why he had not withdrawn, he said his country did not send him seven thousand miles to start the race, but to finish it.

Sourcing — Documented; Akhwari finished 57th of 57 finishers on 20 October 1968. The quotation is widely reported from a later interview — the wording varies between retellings, so paraphrase rather than presenting it as verbatim.

The great medieval cathedrals routinely took longer to build than a working life. Construction on Cologne Cathedral began in 1248, halted for centuries, and was not completed until 1880 — more than six hundred years. The masons who cut the foundation stones knew with certainty that they would never see the building finished. Neither would their children. They cut them accurately anyway, including on the parts that would end up a hundred feet up, where no one standing on the ground would ever be able to inspect the work.

Sourcing — Cologne Cathedral's dates (begun 1248, completed 1880) are documented. The detail about masons' motives is a reasonable inference rather than a recorded statement — frame it as such.

Nobody quits a marathon at the start line. The adrenaline is up, the crowd is there, and the first stretch handles itself. Nobody quits in the final hundred metres either, however wrecked they are, because the end is visible. People quit somewhere around mile eighteen — far enough in that the excitement is gone, far enough out that the finish is not yet imaginable, and alone. Which means encouragement is almost always needed in the middle, and that is precisely where churches tend to stop offering it.

Immediately after the greatest public victory of his ministry, Elijah runs into the wilderness, sits under a tree, and asks God to let him die. What God does next is worth noticing, because it is not a sermon. There is no rebuke and no theology lecture. An angel wakes him and gives him food. He sleeps. He is woken and fed a second time. Only after sleep, food, sleep, and food does the conversation happen.

What is a good illustration for not giving up?

John Stephen Akhwari at the 1968 Olympics, because he finished last and in the dark — the point is completion rather than victory, which is the honest shape of most perseverance.

How do I preach to burned-out ministry leaders?

1 Kings 19. God addresses Elijah's exhaustion with sleep and food before any conversation about calling, which gives permission that a purely spiritual diagnosis withholds.