Actress Jen Lilley's Easter Message: ‘There Is Nothing Stronger Than Christ and Christ Crucified’
- Michael Foust CrosswalkHeadlines Contributor
- Updated Apr 18, 2024
Actress Jen Lilley opens up about her faith in a pair of new Easter video devotionals for Great American Family that, she says, were birthed out of hours of studying God’s Word.
Great American Family officials initially asked her to record one video. Lilley, though, responded by asking them if she could make two. They agreed.
“It is hard for me to stop talking when I talk about Jesus because I just get extremely excited,” she told ChristianHeadlines, laughing.
Lilley is known for her roles in such Great American Family/Great American Pure Flix movies as Paris Christmas Waltz and B&B Merry.
She recorded a Palm Sunday video that launched on Great American Family’s social media channels this week and an Easter video that will debut this weekend.
“God knew before the foundations of the world were ever laid that He would take the most difficult route to adopt you and I as His children -- and He still did it. There is nothing stronger than Christ and Christ crucified. That’s the simple message that we get away from,” she told ChristianHeadlines.
In her videos, Lilley discusses the biblical observance of the Passover.
“After the Passover lambs were inspected for four days and found spotless, starting on the evening of Passover, the high priest would sacrifice the lambs and then at 3 p.m. the next day, when the last lamb was killed, the high priest would say, ‘It is finished.’ Now after Jesus went into the temple and was questioned for four days and found blameless, He celebrated Passover, which we call the Last Supper, and then that same night He was betrayed and handed over to Pontius Pilate, where He was tried and tortured all night and then handed over to be crucified,” Lilley says in her Easter video. “He was hung on the cross the next day, and at 3 p.m., He yelled, ‘It is finished’ as He breathed his last breath.
“As soon as He died,” Lilley added, “the curtain in the temple separating the people from the Holy of Holies, where God's presence was, tore from top to bottom. So on Easter, Jesus was both our perfect and final Passover lamb and our high priest. He saved us from death and He offered us new life and His blood became the door to access the holy of holies to God's presence. So now both of us, you and me, Jews and Gentiles alike, are able to be God's children. Isn't that amazing? So that's what Easter means to me. It's my God today and hopefully it's yours.”
Lilley told ChristianHeadlines she spent hours studying about the Passover, beginning last year when she was reading a book on the subject while sitting in a hotel room in Romania. That’s where she filmed Paris Christmas Waltz.
“I just remember reading this in my hotel room alone, and just sobbing in awe of the Lord,” she said.
HEAR JEN LILLEY SPEAK OF "A PARIS CHRISTMAS WALTZ":
Images credit: Great American Family.
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
