After taking a break from Hollywood to focus on his family, Christian actor Lucas Black is back, starring in PureFlix’s film, Legacy Peak. Black plays Jason, a man hoping to impress the children of his soon-to-be fiancé, Sam and Ben. Jason takes Sam and Ben on a trip, but things soon go awry and Jason has to learn how to be a father in a survival situation. “Jason’s character is stepping into the unknown. He’s stepping into this fatherhood role that he doesn’t really know much about. He didn’t have a good role model. But what I really like about his character is that he looks to his heavenly Father for help. The things he really wanted, God had a different way of making that happen,” Black said in an interview with Momentum.

Black’s acting career began early, with his breakout role in 1996’s Sling Blade leading to a string of acting gigs, including a top spot on the popular show, NCIS: New Orleans in the role of Christopher LaSalle. However, in the background, there were changes going on in Black’s life. Although he had grown up a Christian, he had somewhat fallen out of his faith. That began to change however after he got married and started having a family. He married his wife, Maggie O’Brien in 2010. After he and his wife welcomed their third child in 2015, he began to turn back to the Bible and his faith. “That [2015] was when the Holy Spirit convicted me. And really, my faith and my relationship with the Lord became a lot closer. That was when I was stepping into the fatherhood role. So I really wanted to point my kids in the right direction,” he said.

By 2019, his priorities were beginning to shift as he began to want to spend more time with his family. “Being in the entertainment business since I was an early child, I was able to recognize how destructive it can be to families,” he told Fox News Digital in an interview. “Most of the time that’s because you’re away from home for a long time and the working hours are very long… For three years, it was normal to work 70 hours a week. I would go to work, the kids would still be in bed. I would come home and they would already be in bed for the night going to sleep again. That doesn’t bode too well with your relationship with your children… so for us, we knew that couldn’t last forever.” He left NCIS in 2019 and took a break from acting, only recently returning to reprise his role as Sean in The Fast and the Furious series.

He described the role in Legacy Peak as “an answer to prayer.” “We decided to take a year off and really reflect and connect with my Heavenly Father and spend time together as a family. [But] we also noticed a big culture shift in 2020. I felt like for a long time that entertainment [had] undermined the fatherhood role… The fatherhood role [was] under attack. So to get a script like ‘Legacy Peak,’ one that is a positive fatherhood story, one that puts fathers in a good light, one that uplifts and encourages… I couldn’t say no,” he said. He recalled how the Holy Spirit had convicted him while still on NCIS during an episode of “The Prodigal Stories Podcast” saying, “The Holy Spirit was nudging me to speak up at some of the things that were trying to be implemented on the show, to really fight for what is true. Some of the Hollywood agendas, the attack on the family or the attack on law enforcement … to really step up and try to be a voice to really fight against that agenda.” He now hopes to focus his acting on projects that “point people to Jesus.” In summing up his goals for the future, he said, “That’s kind of my journey; it’s been great. In ‘New Orleans,’ I felt like God moved in a big way, not only in my life but in my wife’s life as well and our whole family. So, you know, we just look to Him for answers and we just seek Him whenever we need help and just thank Him for how He’s carried us through our lives.”