Actress Melissa Joan Hart recently opened up about her teenage son’s decision to get baptized as he dedicates his life to Jesus Christ.
The “God’s Not Dead 2” star shared in October that her 16-year-old son, Brady, made the “beautiful choice” to dedicate his life to Christ, but in a recent interview, she shared what led to that decision.
“Today, he made the decision to follow Christ and to have his church family witness his dedication and be a shining light for the Glory of God! God Bless and Keep you Brady! John 3:30,” she wrote in the Instagram post.
Hart recently told Us Weekly that while her kids witness her and her husband, Mark Wilkerson’s, love for the Lord, it was ultimately the family’s particularly tough challenges this year that may have inspired her son to delve deeper into his faith.
“We just went through some tough times this year with losing loved ones and a friend of ours getting cancer and things,” she explained. “So it’s been a little bit of a rough year, and we’ve really leaned into prayer as a family.”
As CBN News has reported, the Hollywood veteran has been outspoken about her faith in Christ for several years. Although she is best known for starring in 1990s TV shows like Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Clarissa Explains It All, and Melissa & Joey, her quiet devotion to God has become, as she describes, “deeper and closer and more fulfilling.”
Hart, who was raised Catholic, began attending a Presbyterian church after meeting Wilkerson, who was a Baptist.
The couple, who share three sons, have made it a focus to incorporate faith into their daily walk. She told Us Weekly that her kids “see their father reading the Bible every morning at 5:30” and hear the word while she plays it on tape in the car. And all five of them “quote Scripture a lot.”
“[My kids] were all baptized as babies, because I was raised Catholic and my husband was raised Baptist. We kind of raised them Presbyterian, but we’re back in a Baptist church now, and Brady just felt very called,” the 49-year-old told the outlet.
She added, “He has a great youth pastor that has inspired him. He’s got teachers at school that are constantly talking to him about faith, friends that he talks to about faith. And it started to really mean a lot to him in the last year. It started to really resonate with him.”
Hart says the decision did come as a surprise, sharing that she learned about it from Brady’s younger brother. She shared that she did help her son to coordinate the day he would get water baptized, and admitted she and her husband were very emotional during the service.
“People were handing us tissues! My husband and I sat in the front. We always sit in the back of the church. We were sitting in the front of the church, right in the aisle, and just bawling,” Hart said with a laugh. “And [Brady’s] like, ‘I looked over at you guys. You were just like a mess.’ Like, sorry!”
The mom has also shared that prayer plays an important role in her life.
“I think that all through my life, faith has always been there for me. As I talk to myself as I go through my day, I’m always going to God. It’s never just me talking to myself. I’m always talking to God about what the best course of action would be in a particular situation,” Hart told CBN.
“I’m constantly just finding little moments throughout the day to spend with God,” she said, adding, “Of course, I fall to my knees when I come to a real crossroads when I have a major conflict in my life or something that is really on my heart. As a family, we make it a habit to go to church every Sunday. We don’t show any shame in our faith. Prayer is just a very important part of our family. Faith is all very much an important part of our lives.”
Hart continues to put her faith into action in a variety of ways, including partnering with World Vision, a Christian humanitarian organization, over the years.
According to churchleaders.com, Hart and her family have sponsored three girls from Zambia for the last four years. In 2019 and 2023, she had an opportunity to see first-hand how her commitment is changing lives.
“I can tell you, in those four years of doing the program, the difference in the little amount of money we send over there every month was incredible,” she gushed. “They had, like, a tiny little structure on the property where, like, 15 of them would sleep, and they didn’t really have clean water nearby, so the girls were having to do the water walk, and they had a really small garden that only had these green leafy vegetables, and they didn’t really have a bathroom.”
She added, “As an ambassador for World Vision, as someone who has been there twice now, it is life-changing.”
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