One of three performances this Season, for pastors on the Metro NY Church of the Nazarene.

It happens every Advent Season: I get floored by what the Lord did! This year it happened in an unexpected way, as I was preparing to portray Zechariah in Dennis Cole's "Unlikely People." Zechariah is the father of John the Baptist, and in this monologue he's reflecting on how the Angel Gabriel told him he and his barren wife Elizabeth would give birth to the prophet (John the Baptist) who would lead people to the Messiah. Because of Zechariah's disbelief, his ability to speak was taken away. There's a brilliant line in the monologue: "...my thoughts are my prayer to my God, Who would do for my bride Elizabeth what only God can do. Yes. Yes! ....in my silence He can!" After going through the script scores of times as a part of the memorization process it finally dawned on me that his ability to express his doubt to Elizabeth was significantly reduced when his voice was taken away! It made me think of how Jesus could not perform many miracles in his hometown, which led me to this exceptional article about it: " Why Jesus Couldn’t Do Miracles in His Hometown." It’s not our faith that makes God do what we want, or our lack of faith that prevents Him from moving, but the Creator of all things will not move where there is no faith.

Don't wait for God to answer a prayer for something you want before you'll have faith. Pray that He'll give you faith, and then watch the miracles flow! I'm WAY behind on the long list of miracles I've seen that I keep at the bottom of www.RichDrama.com/WarRoom.

If you have no faith, or if you'd like your faith renewed, visit www.RichDrama.com/MyPassion.

We prayed that the Lord would keep the bad weather away from Times Square so we could perform our play there as we planned, but He answered our prayer in an unexpected way: We performed it in the beautiful sanctuary of Holy Cross Church, and the Facebook Live recording of it is MUCH better than it would have been on Times Square, and we wouldn't have done a Facebook Live without broadcasting the images of strangers without their permission. So it's a miracle that you can watch it now:

Joyce and I play husband and wife in this intriguing romance, produced and directed by Daniel Knudsen, who I met on the set of Christmas Grace. He also directed me in Creed of Gold, The King's Messengers, and the upcoming film, Lifestone Velocity.

There's a scene in which Joyce and I are playing with our characters' children. The plan had been for me to swing a backpack around in Central Park, and then the actor playing my character's son would be spun around in a park in Michegan by someone wearing the clothes I had on in Central Park.

Just before we filmed with the backpack I told Daniel we might be able to find children who would want to be in the movie. We prayed at the top of a hill, walked to the bottom, and there was a family with a boy and a girl the right age for our film family. Daniel explained the idea to their father in a very professional way, and he listened with a very stoic look on his face. After Daniel finished, there was a brief pause, and then he said... "Sure." We had such a great time filming with them, and it turned out that they lived close enough to Detroit to see the premiere, which made us all so excited. Unfortunately Daniel said, "They lived in Wisconsin and had a scheduling conflict." He sent them a screener link and said, "They LOVED the movie..." and, "the dad told me that this made his son want to pursue acting."

In January, 2017, it was in theaters in Michigan, Minnesota and Illinois, and it's now available for streaming and on DVD through  CourageousLoveMovie.com and it was launched on www.PureFlix.com on Valentine's Weekend, facing off against 50 Shades Darker. In the interview below Daniel does a great job of expressing how Hollywood tries to tell a compelling love story, which has elements of the greatest love story, the Gospel.

Daniel has a real heart for the Lord and a vision for telling God's truth in powerful ways, and we were thrilled with how it turned out! It has one of the most creative arguments for the reality of God I've seen on film.

The first two films in which we played husband and wife were Indescribable and The Unexpected Bar Mitzvah.

When Joyce and I had our pre-engagement counseling session, our counselor drilled us with all the questions you don't want to ask when you're getting to know each other: political affiliation, denomination, etc. We were firing on so many cylinders I thought it would be safe to throw in some humor. When the counselor asked how many kids we each wanted I threw out twelve, just for laughs. Joyce nearly fell out of her chair. We have a big laugh about it now, especially since Rather to Be Chosen has brought us our twelfth screen child!

Our screen children connected with me at the 2016 Christian Worldview Film Festival.

Since then we played husband and wife in Mayflower II and A Matter of Perspective, so we now have 20 screen children and one screen grandchild!

Read the story on how this shot came to be by clicking here.

Courageous Love was an official selection at the 2016 Christian Worldview Film Festival with the original title, Rather to Be Chosen.

"The Making of Rather to Be Chosen" was an official selection at the 2015 Christian Worldview Film Festival.