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• We Christians often lose the enthusiasm and joy of our salvation.
• Illustration: Brown tells the humorous tale of a man who gave his mule a pill to boost its spirits, then had to take one himself to catch the animal.

• Illustration: Brown dramatizes the cloud of witnesses from the hall of faith in Hebrews 11 as they cheer on the downtrodden, the sinful, and the disheartened.
• Illustration: Hugh Latimer was awed by the martyrs before him, discovered faith, and found strength in the memory of them to be martyred himself.

• Illustration: Sammy's inner tube may have slowed him from jumping the fence, but once he dropped it, his flight was all the swifter.

• Illustration: A drug user was convinced that he had no choice but to be hooked on drugs until Brown explained that the choice was, and is, his.
• Illustration: The pastor insisted he needed to be more spiritual, the psychologist insisted it wasn't his fault, but the boy showed him he simply had to stop sitting on the tack.

• Illustration: Two radio executives take comfort in one another's arms during an earthquake, until one realizes her comforter has never been through a quake before either.
• Illustration: A North Carolina pastor discovers a poignant truth when he finds the words "God has cancer" inscribed on the bathroom wall.

• Illustration: Brown shares his personal story of God's relentless work to destroy Brown's public façade and replace it with an honest, humble preacher.

• Illustration: A civil war soldier is lost, forgotten, and hurting until a little boy befriends him and takes him to his father (the little boy turns out to be Todd Lincoln, the President's son).