Matins Devotion: August 6, 2025

Acts 28:16-31

The biggest grudge I hold in my life is not against former friends or estranged family members. It’s not against ex-school mates who bullied me or made me feel small. No, the biggest grudge I hold is against screenwriters of 1980s teen movies whose movies convinced me that I could convince girls to like me by finding the perfect words. If I just chased a girl down, hopefully in the rain, and expressed my love with a perfectly crafted speech, or the words of Peter Gabriel emanating from a boombox, those words would kindle the fires of affection in her heart and she’d love me in return. That’s what I thought. But the truth was that these screenwriters weren’t depicting reality. They were projecting their fantasies on the screen. And what I learned the hard way was that, very often, there are no perfect words to convince people to love something they just don’t want to love.

In a sense, this is something we need to remember about confessing the Gospel to people, something we see in St. Paul’s preaching to the Jews in Rome. Nobody in the history of the world has written more beautiful Gospel words than St. Paul, many of which come in his epistle to this same Jewish community in Rome. And yet, despite his eloquence, despite his heartfelt conviction, despite the clear, straightforward and convincing case that Paul made showing from the Old Testament that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, the Son of God, it just didn’t work on many of those he preached to. Despite what 1980s teen movies tell us, you can’t talk people into loving something they don’t want to love. You can’t kindle love in a heart that doesn’t have the spark of the Holy Spirit.

So what do we do? We trust that the Spirit will, where and when it pleases Him, provide that spark. We don’t trust in ourselves to find the perfect words to convince people, but we also don’t despair when we fail to find the right words. So don’t worry about your eloquence. Read your Bible. Come to church. Love theology. Pray. But don’t worry one way or another whether your words will work. Just confess the blood of Jesus. Confess how he has destroyed your sins and given you eternal life. Confess that you’ve been made dead to sin and alive to Christ in the waters of holy baptism. Confess boldly and don’t worry if it works. Let God kindle love where and when He wills.