{"id":30458,"date":"2023-12-06T10:40:08","date_gmt":"2023-12-06T15:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/?p=30458"},"modified":"2023-12-06T10:40:08","modified_gmt":"2023-12-06T15:40:08","slug":"actor-kristoffer-polaha-discusses-his-journey-back-to-christ-god-i-want-to-go-to-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2023\/12\/actor-kristoffer-polaha-discusses-his-journey-back-to-christ-god-i-want-to-go-to-you.html","title":{"rendered":"Actor Kristoffer Polaha Discusses His Journey Back to Christ: &#8216;God, I Want to Go to You&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_30464\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-30464\" style=\"width: 768px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/87\/2023\/12\/kristoffer-polaha-credit-kathy-hutchins-shutterstock-scaled.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-30464\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/87\/2023\/12\/kristoffer-polaha-credit-kathy-hutchins-shutterstock-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"kristoffer polaha\" width=\"768\" height=\"576\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-30464\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kathy Hutchins\/Shutterstock.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Actor Kristoffer Polaha recently opened up about his journey to Christ, saying he explored the world\u2019s religions and survived six years in a spiritual \u201cwilderness\u201d before God got his attention through a woman who eventually became his wife. Polaha stars as the lead character in the new Angel Studios film \u201cThe Shift\u201d and is perhaps best known for his roles in \u201cWonder Woman 1984,&#8221; \u201cJurassic World Dominion,\u201d and a series of Hallmark Channel titles.<\/p>\n<p>He grew up in a faith-centric household under a Pentecostal mother and a Catholic father but said he drifted as a teenager and, around the age of 17, told God he was taking a \u201cbreak\u201d from praying. He said, \u201cAnd I said, \u2018So Lord, I\u2019m not going to pray for six months; I\u2019m just going to take a little break.\u2019 And that six-month sojourn turned into the six years, sort of &#8212; I call it my time in the wilderness. I just kind of wandered. I still identified as a Christian, but I wasn\u2019t behaving like a Christian.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As a young adult, he joined a study-abroad program, Semester at Sea. He told Christian Headlines, \u201cAnd so when I was on this boat, I just wanted to see the whole world, and I wanted to study Shintoism and Buddhism and Islam and Judaism and Hinduism. I went to temples, and I listened to their prayers, and I talked to people. I was so curious. I became a student of world religion, because I wanted to understand. I [didn\u2019t] want to just accept Jesus [only] because my parents did, and that was my culture.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/fozskMtdwI8?si=wfpLeXDOQVShs11i\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>However, two events radically changed his life. First, he was walking down the sidewalk of New York City when an explosion nearly killed him.\u00a0 \u201cThe fire marshal was like, \u2018You should have been decapitated. It\u2019s a miracle that you\u2019re alive.\u2019 And the moment that that happened, my prayer life was activated. And all of a sudden, I had this yearning to go to God. And I would say at night, \u2018God, I want to go to You, I want to go to You. I want You in my life. And I was craving relationship.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The second event was meeting his future wife, the former Julianne Morris. She was an actress on \u201cDays of Our Lives\u201d and \u201cThe Young and the Restless.\u201d Before they met, Polaha says he\u2019d been praying, \u2018Lord, will You bring a woman into my life? Will you prepare my heart?\u2019 He told Christian Headlines, \u201cIt was just an instant love at first sight. She was just such a smart, beautiful person and came from this family where faith was the centerpiece. And all of a sudden, it was like faith in action. And that relationship became almost a metaphor for my relationship with God. And it started me on this journey of really wanting to dig in and understand my faith in a real way.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Polaha\u2019s faith was growing. Even then, though, he said he refused to hand his career to God.\u00a0 That began to change during a series of conversations with actor Rainn Wilson on the set of the series,\u00a0\u201cBackstrom.\u201d Polaha has starred in such faith-based films as\u00a0\u201cWhere Hope Grows\u201d\u00a0and\u00a0\u201cRun the Race.\u201d His newest film,\u00a0\u201cThe Shift,\u201d is a modern retelling of the book of Job.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Actor Kristoffer Polaha recently opened up about his journey to Christ, saying he explored the world\u2019s religions and survived six years in a spiritual \u201cwilderness\u201d before God got his attention through a woman who eventually became his wife. Polaha stars as the lead character in the new Angel Studios film \u201cThe Shift\u201d and is perhaps&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":657,"featured_media":30464,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7,3388,3],"tags":[2701],"class_list":["post-30458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrities","category-entertainment","category-faith-based","category-movies","tag-kristoffer-polaha"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Actor Kristoffer Polaha Discusses His Journey Back to Christ: &#039;God, I Want to Go to You&#039;<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Kristoffer Polaha recently shared how he found his way back to Christ after traveling the world and exploring different religions.\" 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