Kathie Lee Gifford: ‘I’ve Always Had A Boldness About My Faith’
By Movieguide® Contributor
Kathie Lee Gifford recently shared her testimony and how she has used her career in the entertainment industry to promote her faith.
“I’ve always had a boldness about my faith,” Gifford said while appearing on ERIC METAXAS ON TBN. “I’ve always had an awareness, even as a 12 year old girl when I first asked Jesus to be in my heart, that ‘to whom much is given, much is required.’”
She explained that, while she wasn’t raised in a Christian household, she was raised “into a home that honored God” — her father was Jewish, while her mother was not.
“We honored God, but we didn’t have an organized religion in our home,” Gifford said.
Everything changed when she was 12 years old. Gifford went to see a movie made by the Billy Graham Association “about a young woman…and she was given a choice; she had a boyfriend that was sort of a bad boy, or she could go walk with the Lord.”
“I heard the voice of Jesus sitting there say to me, ‘Kathie, I love you, and if you’ll trust me, I’ll make something beautiful out of your life,’” she shared.
Gifford has gone on to be a major voice for Christianity in the entertainment industry.
“Ever since I entered this industry in a full-time way when I was 17 years old, the Lord was very, very clear with me and He said: ‘Never separate the secular from the spiritual. You live in my world, you live in my world,’” she said while appearing on Sadie Robertson Huff’s WHOA THAT’S GOOD podcast. “People will try to say Hollywood is secular. [People say] there is such a godless world there. But God is everywhere.”
Gifford has worked on a variety of faith-based projects over the last few years, like the musical THE WAY and her book, “The God of the Way: A Journey into the Stories, People, and Faith That Changed the World Forever.”
She told The Christian Post she has no plans on slowing down anytime soon.
“Nobody in the Bible ever retired,” Gifford explained. “They died doing what God put them on this earth to do. Moses didn’t say, ‘I think I’ll play golf now.’ Mary Magdalene didn’t take up bridge. Not that there’s anything wrong with any of those things, but when you are on fire for the Kingdom of God, that will stay with you until the moment the Lord takes the breath from your body and takes you into His arms. And that’s the way I want to spend the rest of my life: refired, not retired.”
Movieguide® honored Gifford with the Visionary Award at the 28th Annual Movieguide® Awards Gala and Report to the Entertainment Industry.
Movieguide® previously reported on Gifford’s work creating projects that spread a message of faith:
Emmy award-winning television presenter Kathie Lee Gifford says that she believes God called her to make movies that reach audiences with Christ’s love and redemption.
“I felt the Lord’s calling on my life to write a movie for people who don’t know yet that God loves them,” Gifford told The Christian Post. “I didn’t know why I thought that was a strange thing for Him to say to my heart. But I have many, many, many friends, more nonbeliever friends than I have Christian friends actually in my life, people that I share my faith with and they respect it, but they’re not there yet.”
In her new movie, THEN CAME YOU, Gifford says the plot demonstrates how we can love like Jesus, despite some of the flaws in the church.
“I think the Church has failed nonbelievers in many, many ways through the years and one of the biggest ones is that we haven’t loved them into the Kingdom,” Gifford said. “We have created an atmosphere of self-righteousness at times and an attitude of condemnation towards them. I don’t think that’s what Jesus ever planned; we’re supposed to love people like Annabel and Howard (characters in the film), and just be a witness to them.”
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