RUNNING THE BASES’ Brett Varvel Shares Testimony: Jesus Christ Is Enough
By Movieguide® Contributing Writer
In a Youtube video, actor Brett and his wife Christina Varvel, reflect on God’s faithfulness in the trial and triumph of family filmmaking. Varvel most recently appeared in RUNNING THE BASES.
The creative minds behind the 2014 film, THE WAR WITHIN, this dynamic husband and wife duo said of their experience:
It was early 2009, and I started having these strong visuals of what ultimately became The War Within….I kept coming back to this one simple question. If your world were to fall apart, could you say that God is enough. And we started asking ourselves: What are the three areas of a person’s life that they hold most dear to themselves – money, a marriage, or a significant other, and your children….[W]e were just excited to [be] getting the Gospel out through film. It just so happens that the message that God wanted me to share with the world, he also wanted me to live it.
As Brett threw himself into film production, eventually directing, co-writing the screenplay, and acting in THE WAR WITHIN, he began to lose sight of what is truly important in life, wrongly over-prioritizing the film and its progress in relation to his family and their needs. The twist to this part of the Varvel tale is ironic in that in making a film whose focus is “what is most important in life”, Brett admits that he temporarily lost track of what is most important in life. The two go on to say:
The spring of 2012 is when it really got busy….The stress was building. I could feel this production schedule breathing down my neck….I had replaced my ministry for Christina with my job….Where is the line between ministry and family?….We were looking for satisfaction in the wrong places. I was hoping she was going to be able to support me no matter what the cost. I was demanding Brett to be pretty much everything, and when he can’t be everything, Jesus Christ is the one who is everything and all sustaining. We reconciled that tension and grew closer together as we drew closer to Jesus Christ.
In 2013, Grace Films told the Varvels that money for the film was running out. Later, Christina’s second child, was born through an emergency operation that shook the family to its core. God saw them through and the husband and wife continued to pursue the film project to its end, despite the personal sacrifices that it was necessary for them to make. They conclude:
God was literally stripping my job away from me to shake me and make me realize that He’s the provider….I’m so thankful for what God allowed to happen to my son, because every day that I see him…and I look down at that scar on his belly, I’m reminded of my own salvation. I’m reminded that Jesus Christ is enough….The irony of the matter is that, while creating a movie called The War Within, I was experiencing my own war within. And now I will boldly be able to say for the rest of my life, that God truly is enough.
Theirs is a frank and forthright testimony to the faithfulness of God and how he brought them great personal growth and eventually great Kingdom impact.
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