Sermon illustrations
Repentance preaches best in the penitent's own voice. Each illustration below opens with a line the person actually wrote, then the story behind it — all in the public domain.
“Late have I loved you, Beauty so ancient and so new; late have I loved you.”Augustine, Confessions
For years Augustine wanted God 'but not yet,' chasing ambition and pleasure while his mother prayed. The turning, when it came in a Milan garden, was less a decision than a surrender — the end of running. His Confessions remain the West's defining portrait of a heart that finally stops resisting.
Psalm 51:17
“Grace abounding to the chief of sinners.”the title Bunyan gave his own account
Bunyan's repentance was no tidy moment but years of dread that he had sinned beyond hope, broken at last by the discovery that his righteousness was in Christ, not himself. He called the record of it Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners — the testimony of a man who repented from the very bottom.
Luke 18:13
From Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners by John Bunyan (1666) — read the account →
“I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see.”John Newton, “Amazing Grace”
The slave-ship captain turned clergyman put his repentance into six words the whole world now sings. He never pretended the 'wretch' was an exaggeration; the wonder of the hymn depends on the honesty of the confession underneath it.
Luke 15:24
From An Authentic Narrative by John Newton (1764) — read the account →
T.S. Baker Books — true stories of changed lives, free to read and quote.