{"id":2493,"date":"2023-03-24T12:08:54","date_gmt":"2023-03-24T16:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/?p=2493"},"modified":"2023-03-24T12:08:54","modified_gmt":"2023-03-24T16:08:54","slug":"actor-carlos-penavega-hit-rock-bottom-before-coming-to-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/2023\/03\/actor-carlos-penavega-hit-rock-bottom-before-coming-to-god.html","title":{"rendered":"Actor Carlos PenaVega Hit \u201crock bottom\u201d Before Coming to God"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Kathy Hutchins \/ Shutterstock.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Actor Carlos PenaVega spoke to <\/span>Faithwire\u2019s<\/span><\/em><\/a>\u00a0Billy Hallowell and described how he came to faith at a time when he\u2019d hit \u201crock bottom.\u201d The\u00a0<\/span>Big Time Rush<\/span><\/em>\u00a0star was \u201csmoking a lot of weed,\u201d he said. \u201cI was drinking, and I was sleeping around.\u201d PenaVega said he had grown up Catholic and taken first communion but that \u201cI knew of God, but I didn\u2019t have a relationship.\u201d It was a miserable time for the actor until he called a friend, Andrew, to open up. Andrew had always seemed happy to PenaVega, and soon he found out why. \u201cHe was like, \u2018Oh, man, I got Jesus,\u2019\u201d PenaVega recalled. After attending church with his friend, he heard a message from the Bishop, who at one time had been in a similar situation as PenaVega. The connection made PenaVega hungry for more. \u201cHe preaches his whole sermon, literally directly into my soul,\u201d PenaVega said. \u201cAnd after it finishes, I was just [like], \u2018This is what I want. \u2026 I\u2019m on this Jesus high now.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He was invited to a Bible study where he would meet his wife, Alexa PenaVega. Alexa was an actor as well, having come to fame in her role as <\/span>Carmen Cortez<\/span><\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0<\/span>Spy Kids<\/span><\/em>. Alexa shared with\u00a0<\/span>Fox News<\/span><\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/em>how she, too, was seeking a stronger faith when she came to the Bible study. \u201cI had come right out of divorce and felt that I needed to realign my life. I wanted a deeper relationship with my faith. I wanted a relationship with God. I wanted to attend Bible study and just dive into my faith,\u201d Alexa told\u00a0<\/span>Fox<\/span><\/em>. She said that their search for faith bonded their relationship. \u201cWe were both trying to figure out what faith meant to each of us individually in the season that we met. I was ready to dive in with God. I grew up Christian, but\u2026 I didn\u2019t know what it truly meant to walk with God and represent him here on Earth. At the same time, Carlos was discovering who Jesus was in his life. So we both met each other at this foundation-building point in our lives where we were both really hungry to grow in our faith\u2026 And it was amazing because our entire relationship was based on Bible studies, church and our faith.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 The two were engaged in 2013 and married 4 months later. Carlos stated that his faith has really reoriented his focus. \u201cI always tell people that acting, singing all this stuff to me, producing writing, it\u2019s a hobby, right? My job is to spread God\u2019s love to everyone \u2026 That\u2019s my job. Everything else is to the hobby. I really do believe that God has a huge calling on mine and Alexa\u2019s life, and we\u2019re just going to continue powering through.\u201d The two starred together in a PureFlix mini-series called <\/span>Power Couple<\/span><\/em>\u00a0and have written a book,\u00a0<\/span>What if Love is the Point? Living for Jesus in a Self-Consumed World<\/span><\/em><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Actor Carlos PenaVega spoke to Faithwire\u2019s\u00a0Billy Hallowell and described how he came to faith at a time when he\u2019d hit \u201crock bottom.\u201d The\u00a0Big Time Rush\u00a0star was \u201csmoking a lot of weed,\u201d he said. \u201cI was drinking, and I was sleeping around.\u201d PenaVega said he had grown up Catholic and taken first communion but that \u201cI…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":2496,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nActor Carlos PenaVega Hit \u201crock bottom\u201d Before Coming to God<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Carlos PenaVega recently opened up about his journey of coming to God during a tough time.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/2023\/03\/actor-carlos-penavega-hit-rock-bottom-before-coming-to-god.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Actor Carlos PenaVega Hit \u201crock bottom\u201d Before Coming to God\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Carlos PenaVega recently opened up about his journey of coming to God during a tough time.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/2023\/03\/actor-carlos-penavega-hit-rock-bottom-before-coming-to-god.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Daily Cup of Wellness\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-03-24T16:08:54+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/410\/2023\/03\/carlos-penavega_credit-kathy-hutchins-shuttertock-scaled.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"768\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"576\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Cecilia Buchanan\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Actor Carlos PenaVega Hit \u201crock bottom\u201d Before Coming to God","description":"Carlos PenaVega recently opened up about his journey of coming to God during a tough time.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/2023\/03\/actor-carlos-penavega-hit-rock-bottom-before-coming-to-god.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Actor Carlos PenaVega Hit \u201crock bottom\u201d Before Coming to God","og_description":"Carlos PenaVega recently opened up about his journey of coming to God during a tough time.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/2023\/03\/actor-carlos-penavega-hit-rock-bottom-before-coming-to-god.html","og_site_name":"Daily Cup of Wellness","article_published_time":"2023-03-24T16:08:54+00:00","og_image":[{"width":768,"height":576,"url":"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/410\/2023\/03\/carlos-penavega_credit-kathy-hutchins-shuttertock-scaled.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Cecilia Buchanan","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/2023\/03\/actor-carlos-penavega-hit-rock-bottom-before-coming-to-god.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/2023\/03\/actor-carlos-penavega-hit-rock-bottom-before-coming-to-god.html","name":"Actor Carlos PenaVega Hit \u201crock bottom\u201d Before Coming to God","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/2023\/03\/actor-carlos-penavega-hit-rock-bottom-before-coming-to-god.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/2023\/03\/actor-carlos-penavega-hit-rock-bottom-before-coming-to-god.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/410\/2023\/03\/carlos-penavega_credit-kathy-hutchins-shuttertock-scaled.jpg","datePublished":"2023-03-24T16:08:54+00:00","dateModified":"2023-03-24T16:08:54+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/#\/schema\/person\/77cb6eeb5c74ee0eb8c77ea1ebc43c6a"},"description":"Carlos PenaVega recently opened up about his journey of coming to God during a tough time.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/2023\/03\/actor-carlos-penavega-hit-rock-bottom-before-coming-to-god.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/2023\/03\/actor-carlos-penavega-hit-rock-bottom-before-coming-to-god.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/2023\/03\/actor-carlos-penavega-hit-rock-bottom-before-coming-to-god.html#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/410\/2023\/03\/carlos-penavega_credit-kathy-hutchins-shuttertock-scaled.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/410\/2023\/03\/carlos-penavega_credit-kathy-hutchins-shuttertock-scaled.jpg","width":768,"height":576,"caption":"Kathy Hutchins \/ Shutterstock.com"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/2023\/03\/actor-carlos-penavega-hit-rock-bottom-before-coming-to-god.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Actor Carlos PenaVega Hit \u201crock bottom\u201d Before Coming to God"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/","name":"Daily Cup of Wellness","description":"Healthy Living, Mental Health, Nutrition, Fitness, and More","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/#\/schema\/person\/77cb6eeb5c74ee0eb8c77ea1ebc43c6a","name":"Leigh Pizzutilla","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/author\/lpizzutilla"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2493"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2502,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2493\/revisions\/2502"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailycupofwellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}