Jump directly to the Content
Jump directly to the Content

Sermon Illustrations

Home > Sermon Illustrations

Andrew Garfield on Falling in Love with Jesus

Actor Andrew Garfield, who plays a priest in Martin Scorsese's adaption of the movie Silence, told an interviewer about his religious views. "Films were really my church," Garfield said. "That is where I felt soothed, that is where I felt most myself." But in preparation for the film, Garfield practiced something called the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius. Although it is a Roman Catholic spiritual process, it is rich in reading the Bible, especially the four Gospels. We do not know if Garfield actually committed his life to Jesus Christ, but he certainly was moved and changed by what seemed to be at least an introduction to the person of Jesus. Here's what Garfield said:

What was really easy was falling in love with this person, was falling in love with Jesus Christ. That was the most surprising thing … I felt so bad for [Jesus] and angry on his behalf when I finally did meet him, because everyone has given him such a bad name. So many people have given him such a [horrible] name. And he has been used for so many dark things.

And, like many of us, beneath this longing he carried a deep fear, a fear that he wasn't good enough. Garfield continued:

The main thing that I wanted to heal, that I brought to Jesus … was this feeling of not-enough-ness. This feeling of that forever longing for the perfect expression of this thing that is inside each of us. That wound of not-enough-ness. That wound of feeling like what I have to offer is never enough.

Related Sermon Illustrations

Secular Jewish Writer Comes to Faith in Christ

The popular novelist Andrew Klavan was raised in a non-practicing Jewish home. For about the first 45 years of his life, he lived as a "philosophical agnostic and a practical atheist." ...

[Read More]

N. T. Wright on Our Culture's Longing for God's Presence

There is all the difference in the world between waking up in a single bed and waking up in a double bed with nobody on the other side. Many in our Western culture may be atheists ...

[Read More]