America's Best Actor Comes to Christ

My favorite actor is Denzel Washington. He has won every imaginable award and is featured in some of the best and most successful films of all time. So you can imagine my surprise when he announced last week that he had given his life to Christ.

Washington grew up in church. In fact his dad was a pastor. But there came a time in his youth when he rejected it all. There came a time he said when, “I rejected God. I hated God.” All this even though when he was a kid a woman in his mother’s beauty parlor said: “Young man, you're going to travel the world and preach to millions of people.”

But Denzel didn’t start out preaching. He began living a dissipated ungodly life. A number of his friends went to prison. But then slowly, patiently, God began to reel him in. He said, "I've had no patience with God, and God has had nothing but patience with me. That's why they call it grace." 

In time he was able to say, “It’s my job to lift God up, to give Him praise, to make sure that anyone and everyone I speak to the rest of my life understands that He is responsible for me.”

Just before Christmas Washington was baptized then licensed to preach by the Church of God in Christ. At his baptism he said, “"To God be the glory. Hallelujah!...Anything I can do, I will do for…the Almighty. I just want to be in that number when the saints go marching in."

This past week he was speaking to the University of Colorado football team. (A privilege I have had on a number of occasions.) He told the players, “God found me long before I found him…In all that I say, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in God's sight." Then he added, “"God did not put me on this planet to act; God put me on this planet to preach."

There seem to be quite a few highly visible people these days who are coming to Christ. It has pleased our God to do this. Please understand, God does not “need” this. God doesn’t need anything. The early church became the most powerful force in the history of the human race without one, single celebrity in its ranks. God is no respecter of persons but he does draw to himself a number of people who are well known around the world. We praise Him for this. Just like we praise him for saving a little child, our neighbor down the street, the man in prison. We praise Him for saving us. On this day let’s all give praise to our God for His glorious grace and to His Son, Jesus Christ, whose death made it all possible.



More: England’s most notorious pagan becomes a Christian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0DDDkqcdNE

Denzel Washington: I was put on this planet to preach: https://www.christianpost.com/news/denzel-washington-says-his-purpose-is-to-preach.html?utm_source=Daily&utm_campaign=Daily&utm_medium=newsletter

Denzel Washington’s baptism and call to ministry: https://www.christianpost.com/news/denzel-washington-gets-baptized-receives-ministry-license.html