By Lillie Jaenchen
THE CHOSEN’s Nick Shakoour always believed in God, but a radical encounter with the Holy Spirit took the actor, who plays Zebedee, from “believing” to “knowing” God.
“[THE CHOSEN has] been a conduit, I believe, to get me here for this specific encounter that I had,” Shakoour told The Christian Post.
That “encounter” happened at a church conference that he was invited to by two construction blueprint drafters, Seth and Brandon, who worked on the set of the hit series.
Initially he walked in jaded, but as the service went on, he began to pray for God to reveal Himself and to break the curse of violence that had affected his family because of the war-torn area of Beirut that he grew up in.
“Lord, whatever this is I’m carrying, I want it off of me,” Shakoour shared in an interview with 700 Club’s Ashley Key. “Twenty minutes doesn’t even go by. My buddy Seth, who invited me, his son, comes over behind me…taps me on the shoulder and says, ‘I want you to know I was praying for you from back there. And God told me to tell you that by showing up tonight, you broke your family’s generational curse.’”
Eventually a group of nine people prayed over the actor. That led him to a profound experience where he began to understand the “fear of the Lord.”
“I felt God’s presence, and it was frightening,” he recalled. “And it got to a point where I felt like I was being microwaved and vibrated at the same time. And it eventually just dipped into water before my body couldn’t handle any more burning.”
“It felt so weird, because I didn’t feel like myself anymore,” Shakoour continued. “And since then, it’s been one encounter after the next, and it went from, ‘Oh, I have faith to I don’t have faith anymore.’ I don’t need it because, like, I met him, and I jokingly said, ‘I know the guy, like, I know him.’”
He called this experience “radioactive love fire,” and it’s what inspired him to write his autobiography “Transformer: Awakening From A Spiritual Coma.”
Even though he grew up in a household of faith, with his grandfather a Greek Orthodox priest and both parents believers, he struggled with doubts like many others.
“Here’s the scary thing about slipping into a spiritual coma. It happens incrementally…you don’t even know you’re in it, yeah, and that’s the scary part,” he told Movieguide®. “That’s when you’re far removed from God, from Holy Spirit…from family. You might be around family and friends, but you’re not really there.”
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He shared about the faith of his family, especially his grandfather’s, that shaped his, as he recalls a story of his grandfather rescuing a child after being kidnapped by insurgents.
“What happened after…is just unbelievable,” Shakoour said. “What he did, one man against many men with rifles, and he has one, you know, a suit of armor, which is God.”
Despite growing up under constant threat of attacks due to civil unrest in the region, he always felt safe and that there was a sense of community.
“It was always like we were in on this together…so we’re gonna all help each other out,” Nick Shakoour said. “Whether it was sleeping in the underground bunkers with hundreds of other people, we never felt a sense of danger from other people.”
Shakoour explained that with the extreme stories that he shares in “Transformer,” he felt it was more appropriate for a “superhero, action packed” themed autobiography, “as opposed to the slow pace, very lovey dovey tribute to God and people that have poured into my life kind of autobiography.”
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