The Chosen's Messiah Jonathan Roumie Says Jesus "Will Change Your Entire Life; He Did Mine"
- Michael Foust CrosswalkHeadlines Contributor
- Updated Jan 18, 2024
The actor who portrays Jesus in the Bible-based sensation The Chosen says he hopes a new four-part Amazon Prime Video docuseries about him will encourage viewers to trust Christ in their day-to-day lives.
Jonathan & Jesus launched this month on Prime and follows actor Jonathan Roumie as he travels throughout the world and to Rome and then prepares to film Season Three of The Chosen. Roumie has portrayed Jesus in all four seasons of The Chosen.
When Roumie landed the role, he was struggling in his career and in life, too. He was broke and “deeply in debt,” he said.
“I got on my knees, and I prayed,” Roumie told Fox News Digital. “I said, ‘Look, God, I give everything to you. If you want this to work, you’re going to have to help me figure out a way to survive, to find food for tomorrow. And I'm not going to worry about it anymore.’ …The point was that I committed to not having control over it anymore. And when I did that, I think that's the thing that changed for me. My life, from that moment, has never been the same.”
Up until that point in his life, Roumie said, he was “trying so hard to control my career, to do all the things that I thought I needed to do, to check all the boxes.”
About three months later, he landed the role in The Chosen. The series became a global hit during the pandemic.
“I think the docuseries can serve as an example to other people who might be in a similar position that I was in -- just kind of struggling with something, you know, [maybe] at a bit of an impasse in their career,” Roumie said. “And maybe they're just holding on to the reins a little too tight. And once they let go of the reins, and just kind of put their trust in the divine, in God, that He will basically change your entire life the way He did mine. And so I completely put my fate into God's hands. I surrendered in that way and said, ‘I trust that if a door is meant to open, it's going to open and I can't force it open.’”
Prayer, he said, has power.
“I think when Jesus felt the pressure of life, of human life, often He would go off on His own to pray and get recharged and just find quiet time,” he told Fox News Digital. “I do this. I find that doing the same thing -- going off to pray by myself and just spend time with God in prayer alone -- is monumentally impactful to me.”
Season Four of The Chosen opens in theaters February 1.
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Image credit: ©The Chosen/Angel Studios
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.
