Crown Media Danica McKellar and Candace Cameron Bure
Danica McKellar shared on social media that she’s now on a new faith journey, thanks in part to the influence of her fellow GAC and Hallmark co-star, Candace Cameron Bure. After visiting Bure’s church and receiving a Bible from Bure, McKellar shared that she’s “experiencing a relationship with God and Jesus that I’ve never had before.”
‘It Feels Miraculous,’ McKellar Wrote While Answering Fans’ Questions on Instagram
McKellar posted an Instagram video on April 24, sharing that for most of her life, she was skeptical of Christianity because of the hypocrisy that she saw in the faith. But she said she’s starting to see things in a different light after talking with Bure and visiting her church.
“In my life, starting in childhood, I had been made aware of all the hypocrisy in the various religions of Christianity, it being used for evil, power & control throughout history, and that had definitely biased me,” she wrote.
But now, she wrote, “I’m experiencing a relationship with God and Jesus that I’ve never had before, and it feels miraculous.”
She’s only been on this journey for a couple of weeks, McKellar shared in her Instagram video, so much of this is new for her. She wrote that she was struggling with the concept of forgiveness and asked Bure about a Bible passage that Bure had shared on Instagram. She said this led to Bure sending her a Bible and inviting her to church. That’s when her new faith journey began.
Bure replied to McKellar’s post, writing: “God’s love is bigger than any human love and when He sweeps you up in understanding how powerful it is, because He is, it’s undeniable. Praying for you on your journey and relationship with Jesus my sweet friend 🙌. Ephesians 2:8-9 💜”
She Got Emotional While Talking About the ‘Joy & Freedom’ She Was Feeling
McKellar shared more thoughts in her Instagram live video, answering questions from followers and fans. At one point, she emphasized that she was sharing this because of what a big impact it was having on her life, and she likes to focus her channel on finding ways to help her followers overcome challenges.
“I want to emphasize something… I am learning,” she said.
McKellar said in her Instagram video that she was wary of religion because she felt like it was just about a lot of rules controlling how you live. And even though her dad had started going to church decades ago, she just wasn’t interested personally until now.
“This stuff makes me feel emotional,” she said, and she was visibly blinking away tears as she spoke. “…It’s also really humbling because of the biases that I have had against organized religion… I want to share my very imperfect journey with you. … This feeling of actual joy and freedom… It’s actually available to everyone. And the price of admission is just a decision. It’s not even living your life perfectly because none of us are going to do that anyway…”
“This journey feels different from anything I’ve ever experienced before,” she later added. “…It’s blowing my mind. Because I have always had this preconceived notion about what that was when people talked about Jesus and the Lord… I just didn’t quite get it.”
McKellar shared that she’s currently looking for a church home since Bure’s church is so far away. And she wanted to make sure that people knew she doesn’t believe anyone has to be a Christian in order to live a life that’s pure.
“But this is a journey I’m on,” she said. “This is a path that’s feeling right to me…”
“I feel a lot of joy in my heart…” she later added. “I believe that we are put on this planet to experience joy and to spread joy. It just takes energy…to do that. And where do you find that energy? This might be a source of some of that energy… That omnipresent love is there for you whenever you want it, whenever you’re ready.”
Fellow Hallmark Stars & Instagram Followers Offered Their Encouragement
Many fellow Hallmark stars, colleagues, friends, and followers shared their encouragement in the replies to McKellar’s post.
Alicia Witt wrote, “amen ❤️ i too have been experiencing a deeper relationship with god through the last few months – what a gift that love is. it’s beautiful to see this, thank you for sharing. happy sunday 🙏🏻.”
Lacey Chabert wrote, “So beautiful ❤️.”
Jen Lilley replied, “Welcome home sweet girl!!! 🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌… You answer to God and that’s it. That’s so right girl. You’re so getting it! 🧡🧡🧡”
Nischelle Turner replied, “Yes ma’am! I don’t preach to folks but I KNOW the power of the WORD and how God’s grace will deliver you! Bless you and praying for you on your journey! Here for you. 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽.”
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Beautiful. I needed to see this story. Many years ago, my wife, mom, dad, and I all were involved with Evangelism Explosion and bringing it to our church, and later, I saw Kirk and Ray’s Way of the Master. My brother-in-law was on fire for that and took several people out to evangelize on the streets back in Chattanooga, and I ended up buying two eight-week video training packages and presenting them to our church. And I, too, brought people out to minister on the streets.
Time went by. My parents got old and sick, and we moved to be close to them. Mom passed away in 2014. Sadly, their pastor fell into adultery and my brother-in-law also fell away and divorced my sister-in-law. Eileen and I struggled as our church held services in Indonesian and she did not know the language. Eventually, it became difficult to find reliable help to care for my father while we were at church, and we stopped going. But then we also learned some things that changed our view of what Jesus created the church to be. A good friend and I became involved with doing kick-starts, and that was really good for ministering to people out in public places. But my friend and his wife fell ill to Covid and although his wife survived, he did not.
I still watch Kirk and Ray’s videos now and then along with some by Torben Sondergaard who I believe lives down in Southern California now. But we’ve been at the driest time in our lives spiritually and have been feeling the need to get back to where we once were spiritually. And somehow seeing your article about the two of you, Candice and Danica, was an encouragement to me. It was an answer to prayer. I am sorry I cannot honestly say they were prayers for you two or that I specifically had the two of you in mind, but I happened to see that some were leaving Hallmark for another network and I got curious. And from that, I saw Danica’s name show up. What surprised me about that is that Danica is a math whiz. I was a Math major in college with a minor in Physics, but professionally I have been more of a computer geek. Sadly, it has been mostly systems and databases rather than anything mathematically interesting until later when I became more interested in neural networks, machine learning, and dabbled some with quantum computing–something I want to return to and master when I’m done with my AI and machine learning studies.
Anyway, reading what Danica had to say about her experience going to Candace’s church made me happy and brought back more of a desire to return or be closer to God–something my wife and I have been feeling lately. You were both an encouragement.
I’m not sure if either of you will ever see what I have written here, but if you do, I hope you will know that your sharing can reach the hearts of people in ways they need to be reached, and I appreciate what you both shared.
Dan