Actor Kristoffer Polaha recently opened up about his journey to Christ, saying he explored the world’s religions and survived six years in a spiritual “wilderness” before God got his attention through a woman who eventually became his wife. Polaha stars as the lead character in the new Angel Studios film “The Shift” and is perhaps best known for his roles in “Wonder Woman 1984,” “Jurassic World Dominion,” and a series of Hallmark Channel titles.
He grew up in a faith-centric household under a Pentecostal mother and a Catholic father but said he drifted as a teenager and, around the age of 17, told God he was taking a “break” from praying. He said, “And I said, ‘So Lord, I’m not going to pray for six months; I’m just going to take a little break.’ And that six-month sojourn turned into the six years, sort of — I call it my time in the wilderness. I just kind of wandered. I still identified as a Christian, but I wasn’t behaving like a Christian.”
As a young adult, he joined a study-abroad program, Semester at Sea. He told Christian Headlines, “And so when I was on this boat, I just wanted to see the whole world, and I wanted to study Shintoism and Buddhism and Islam and Judaism and Hinduism. I went to temples, and I listened to their prayers, and I talked to people. I was so curious. I became a student of world religion, because I wanted to understand. I [didn’t] want to just accept Jesus [only] because my parents did, and that was my culture.”
However, two events radically changed his life. First, he was walking down the sidewalk of New York City when an explosion nearly killed him. “The fire marshal was like, ‘You should have been decapitated. It’s a miracle that you’re alive.’ And the moment that that happened, my prayer life was activated. And all of a sudden, I had this yearning to go to God. And I would say at night, ‘God, I want to go to You, I want to go to You. I want You in my life. And I was craving relationship.’”
The second event was meeting his future wife, the former Julianne Morris. She was an actress on “Days of Our Lives” and “The Young and the Restless.” Before they met, Polaha says he’d been praying, ‘Lord, will You bring a woman into my life? Will you prepare my heart?’ He told Christian Headlines, “It was just an instant love at first sight. She was just such a smart, beautiful person and came from this family where faith was the centerpiece. And all of a sudden, it was like faith in action. And that relationship became almost a metaphor for my relationship with God. And it started me on this journey of really wanting to dig in and understand my faith in a real way.”
Polaha’s faith was growing. Even then, though, he said he refused to hand his career to God. That began to change during a series of conversations with actor Rainn Wilson on the set of the series, “Backstrom.” Polaha has starred in such faith-based films as “Where Hope Grows” and “Run the Race.” His newest film, “The Shift,” is a modern retelling of the book of Job.