Actress Melissa Joan Hart, beloved for her iconic role in Sabrina The Teenage Witch, says prayer has deepened her faith, and even recalled a Holy Spirit encounter, which she described as her “born again” moment.
“I did have a born-again, Holy Spirit moment,” Hart told the Christian Post. “I never really understood the Holy Spirit or the Trinity in a sense. One day, we were in Bible study and it just hit, like the Holy Spirit made sense to me all of a sudden!”
“One day, I just felt it and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s the Holy Spirit talking to me. I get it now,’” she said. “Like a lightning bolt just hit me and I was like, ‘The Holy Spirit! I don’t know why it just hit me and I got it.’ Then I better understood the Trinity and all that.”
“My father-in-law once said to me, too, about the Trinity — because I was struggling to understand that — he said, ‘Well, I’m a father, but I’m also a son, and I’m also a brother, and I’m also an uncle. And he said, that’s how God can be all these things, so that hit me too,” Hart added.
The Sabrina the Teenage Witch star went on to say that while she can recall her “born again” moment, she has always felt that she “walked with God.”
“Everyone’s always talking about their moment of coming to Jesus or their moment of being born again. I feel like I’ve always walked with God, it’s just gotten deeper and closer and more fulfilling,” Hart said.
The actress continued:
While I was in a mom’s group [at the church], Katherine Wolf fell into a coma because of an aneurysm. And we, the mom’s group, wanted to pray for her. They wanted to surround her with 24 hours of prayer. Everyone had to take an hour. I just had my second son so I was breastfeeding at night, so I took something in the middle of night. I get my son out of the crib and I’m feeding him and I start to pray and I did my Our Father and my Hail Mary and My Glory Be and then I didn’t know what to do and I had 55 more minutes.
“I feel like that’s the moment that really opened up my prayer life,” she added. “I had a big moment there where my prayer life changed and where I started to understand more about how to pray and then my husband also helped me,” she testified. “My husband taught me to pray for mercy.”
The Clarissa Explains It All star also touched upon her experience working with World Vision in its efforts to provide clean water and resources for those in need, noting that her work with the organization in Zambia has been very impactful for her and her family.
Hart recently returned from a trip to Zambia, where she, her husband, and her three sons visited with several struggling families, including one that she has sponsored for the past several years.
“It was really eye-opening. It was encouraging,” Hart told the Christian Post of her recent trip to Zambia, adding that there was a noticeable difference in her sponsored family since her first visit in 2019.
In 2020, Hart reportedly moved from California to Tennessee, a move that has enabled her family to attend Sunday school. The actress has also been committed to the Community Bible Study program, which she as been a part of for the last 13 years.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.