Candace Cameron Bure rose to fame as a child actor in the late 1980s as D.J. Tanner on Full House. As an adult, she has appeared in countless Hallmark and Great American Family movies, as well as Dancing with the Stars, The View and Fuller House. She’s a wife, a mother of three, a producer and a best-selling author.
But she’s also become very well known for her love for Jesus.
“While I am thankful for all of those opportunities and titles, I feel that the most life changing one I identify with is ‘Christian.’” writes Candace on her website. “I am a Christian woman who loves Jesus and seeks to give Him the glory above all else.”
Candace’s faith is the core of who she is; it is not something that stays at home when she goes to work.
“My faith in Jesus Christ is the foundation of who I am. My faith is so important to me whether in celebration or in challenges,” Candace told Today.com in an interview. “I stay in God’s word, the Bible, so I am comforted by truth and the hope God gives to all humanity and not allow fear to drive my emotions or decisions. I also know that when I have feelings of hopelessness or fear, that God understands them and wraps His arms around us like the Father that He is.”
She was not always so grounded in her faith.
“Many people think I grew up in a Christian home, but I didn’t,” she writes on her website. “I grew up in a moral home, a home that stressed the importance of living by the golden rule but not a home that talked about Jesus. It wasn’t until my parents hit a hard place in their marriage that the four of us kids found ourselves in church. I was twelve when I accepted Jesus and was baptized.
“My teenage years were busy, and going to church wasn’t a priority. I was a responsible, good kid, and I liked pleasing my parents. I wasn’t the typical child star — no addictions or alcohol abuse or trouble with the law. I remember thinking that since He lived inside my heart, I could talk to God anytime, so I really didn’t need to go to church. Instead of a relationship with Jesus, my faith became more like a help line.”
While she became a Christian then, Candace didn’t have a personal relationship with Jesus until her early 20s.
In her book Reshaping It All, Candace said the years between child stardom and her adult career were difficult. She often felt isolated, found herself in different cities to follow her future husband Val Bure, a Russian-American pro hockey player, as he pursued his career. During this lonely period, she developed an eating disorder. “I ran to comfort food instead of running to God.”
In the book, she says she didn’t come to truly understand who God was until she and Val had their daughter, Natasha. That was when she began to question how she wanted to raise their kids to know about God. And this got her thinking about her own walk with God.
She reached out to her brother Kirk Cameron, a former child star from the sitcom “Growing Pains,” who directed her to The Way of the Master, a book by Christian author Ray Comfort. After reading it, she too became a vocal Christian.
“After reading a book my brother gave to me….it changed my walk with God forever!” Candace writes on her website. “It talked about the 10 commandments, and showed me my sin in its true light. As I went through every commandment, I saw that I’d broken all of them. I finally learned that God’s standard of goodness is different from the world’s standard, and for the first time I saw myself as a sinner. I really understood that I broke the law, that Jesus paid my fine, and that there was no love greater than that. He rescued me, He saved me, He delivered me, and knowing those truths led me to real repentance and change. Out of gratitude for what Jesus did for me, I started to live a life of service to Him, and my deepest desire is to hear Him say, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’”
Candace and Val have been married for 27 years. She says the glue in their marriage is Jesus. And Candace can see the Lord’s work in her career path.
“Look at the season that I had within motherhood. God took me out of the industry for a good 10 years. I didn’t work in the industry so that I could be a mom,” she said on her podcast. “There were days I struggled and struggled. And yet God was laying the foundation for the next season of my life going back into the industry and being a voice for him. I wouldn’t have been able to speak about him had I not had those 10 years to be home with my kids. That gave me the time to focus on the Bible and my relationship with the Lord.”
Candace looks to show God’s love in everything she does.
“The God we serve is a wildly creative and loving God,” she wrote in an Instagram post. “He didn’t just capture a small part of my heart, He has captured all of my heart. He will be reflected in everything I do and say; in my family, my work and my interactions with people from all walks of life, God’s love and God’s compassion is front and center.”
In an interview with Pure Flix Insider, Candace said, “Every day I pray, ‘God, please do not let this fire ever go out from under me.’”
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