A singer/actor best known for his appearance in NBC's Nashville Star and CBS' The Young and the Restless says his two daughters have helped deepen his Christian faith and taught him more about God's love.
Justin Gaston competed in season 6 of Nashville Star, performed on American Idol and has starred in The Young and the Restless, NBC's Days of Our Lives and in the Lifetime movie Santa Bootcamp.
His latest project is a faith-based film, God's Country Song, where he portrays a country music star who pauses his career in order to raise a four-year-old son he never knew. God's Country Song is on Pure Flix.
"It's a movie about God and faith and family and redemption and second chances and all of those things I'm passionate about," Gaston told Christian Headlines.
Gaston grew up in a Christian home, was baptized at age eight and began getting serious about his faith as a teenager.
"When I was a teenager, I went to a church camp and met God there," Gaston said. "I had a genuine encounter. ... I can remember being in high school and ... I would just sit there in school and read my Bible all day long. I don't even know what they were teaching me."
Gaston and his wife, actress Melissa Ordway Gaston, are instilling that faith in their two daughters, ages seven and five.
"They've taught me so much about God and His love for me. Through them, I understand that love more as a father," Gaston told Christian Headlines. "... I love them more than anything in the world, and I would do anything for them."
Being a parent, he said, has helped him better understand unconditional love.
Gaston cited scientific studies that show the positive impact of children on men.
"That's the way God set things up," he said.
Meanwhile, Gaston recently released a new single, The One, under his stage name, Justin Michael Gaston. The song tells how Jesus is the "only one that can save me," Gaston said.
"I think it is a beautiful song."
Photo courtesy: ©Getty Images/Julio Aguilar/Stringer
Video courtesy: ©Pure Flix
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.